Throughout your life there are things you learn about and forget. Then there are things you never learned about! I think the following falls into the later category. But on this date in 1933, there was an attempt made to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Miami, Florida. Here’s what happened on that fateful day.
As I write and read about political and musical matters I am always learning something new. Here are two things I just learned about at 72!
The first political thing I learned came via the book Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.. I just finished the book.a few days ago. It’s really a terrific read. It’s a book anyone who’s concerned about the future of our country should read. I’ll write more about it later,
Needless to say, I haven’t posted at this site for eons! Hopefully, I can start it up again and post on a more regular basis.
So let’s begin with an On This Day In History. On January 23, 1907 Charles Curtis, of Kansas, became the first Native American to serve in the United States Senate. In 1929 Curtis became U.S. President Herbert Hoover’s Vice President. From Wikipedia….. I
On this day, January 12th in 1932 Hattie Caraway became the first woman elected to the United States Senate!! Caraway was the wife of Arkansas politician Thaddeus Caraway. Her husband was elected to the House of Representatives in 1912 and served as a Representative until 1921,. He became a Senator in that year and served in that capacity until he died in office in 1931. It had been a precedent at that time that the widows were appointed to temporarily take their husbands positions. Following that precedent Governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to the vacant seat and she was sworn in to office on December 9th of 1931. Caraway with the backing of the Arkansas Democratic party easily won the special election held in 1932 for the remaining months of the term and became the first women elected to the Senate!
So I have not ever been a fan of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, The obvious reason, he was Defense Secretary, at the beginning and the height of the war in Vietnam, in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. But as I read his autobiography In Retrospect The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, I realize that the administrations that he served in were really in a no-win situation in Vietnam, and that he and others may have kept the US from being involved in the war far earlier. He also admits that the course the US chose concerning the war was the wrong one! At one point, he reveals for the first time what he thought John Kennedy would have done regarding the situation in Vietnam ..
In November of 1971, I was 20 years old and entering my sophomore year at the University of Florida. On the 24th of that month……
A hijacker calling himself D.B.Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State. He had $200,000 in ransom money in his possession.
I was all ready to have some Archer Farms Korean Barbecue for lunch, until I went to Wikipedia to see what was happening outside of my world today! What I discovered is that today is World Vegan Day and the start of World Vegan Month! So Korean Barbecue didn’t seem quite right fork today.Luckily I still had a vegan meal in the cabinet….Punjab Choley! For those of you who like me may not know that much about World Vegan Day here is some background from Wikipedia……
I’m pissed that Republicans and Right-Wing conservatives keep blaming liberals for the conditions of our inner cities and actually America in general. They say that liberal policies have had a negative impact on the residents of our inner cities. What has destroyed the lives of many in the inner cities, destroyed the American Dream in the Inner City and the majority of the country? I’ll tell you – Republican policies and conservative corporate policy!! Who destroyed the unions, who shipped American jobs overseas and most of all who created an income gap between the rich and normal Americans! Not the Liberals, it’s the frigging fraudulent conservative trickle-down economics! America grew in the 50s through the 80s because the lower and middle classes had money! Money to spend to buy the products that corporate America was selling! Then Reagan came along selling his lies that if we made corporate America rich, it would trickle down to all! It was voodoo economics then and it is voodoo economics now! And over the last 35 years the effects of those policies have been compound by corporations outsourcing American jobs giving the middle and lower class even less disposable income!!
