“More than 200 years after it was born at the base of a buttonwood tree, Wall Street as we have known it is ceasing to exist.”
Carrick Mollenkamp and Mark Whitehouse in The Wall Street Journal.
From a change-of-heart column by Richard Cohen that you should read:
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains — his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that’s all — but just as honorably. No more, though.
. . .
Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
“Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.”
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.
. . .
For starters, the McCain health plan would treat employer-paid health benefits as income that employees would have to pay taxes on.
“It means your employer is going to have to make an estimate on how much the employer is paying for health insurance on your behalf, and you are going to have to pay taxes on that money,” …
These aren’t fly-by-night companies going under, being sold, or in danger.
They all made it through 1929.
… of Jackie Cooper; he’s 86. Cooper’s first appearance in film was in 1929; his last 60 years later. He played Perry White in the Superman films but his real fame was as a child actor, most notably Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island (1934). He was nominated for the best actor Oscar for Skippy in 1931. This is the role where the director got him to cry on camera by telling Jackie (falsely) that his dog had just been run over by a car.
… of baseball hall-of-famer Gaylord Perry, 70.
Gaylord Perry achieved two of pitching’s most magical milestones with 314 wins and 3,534 strikeouts. Distracting and frustrating hitters through an array of rituals on the mound, he was a 20-game winner five times and posted a 3.10 lifetime ERA. With the Giants in 1968, Perry no-hit the Cardinals and starter Bob Gibson. An outstanding competitor, he won Cy Young awards in 1972 with Cleveland and with San Diego in ‘78, becoming the first pitcher to win the award in both leagues.
… of Jessye Norman, 63 today. From a biographical essay by the Kennedy Center:
Jessye Norman is one of the most celebrated artists of our century. She is also among the most distinguished in a long line of American sopranos who refused to believe in limits, a shining member of an artistic pantheon that has included Rosa Ponselle, Maria Callas, Leontyne Price and now this daughter of Augusta, Georgia. “Pigeonholing,” said Norman, “is only interesting to pigeons.” Norman’s dreams are limitless, and she has turned many of them into realities in a dazzling career that has been one of the most satisfying musical spectacles of our time.
… of Tommy Lee Jones. He’s 62. Jones has been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor twice, winning for The Fugitive, but not for JFK. And he was nominated for best actor for In the Valley of Elah, a fine, fine performance. NewMexiKen like Jones also in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Jones and Harvard roommate Al Gore were the inspiration for Oliver Barrett IV in Erich Segal’s best-seller Love Story.
… of Oliver Stone, also 62. Stone has been nominated for ten Oscars and won three — he won for writing for Midnight Express and for best director for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.
Football hall-of-famers Merlin Olsen, 68, and Dan Marino, 47, share this birthday.
County music immortal Roy Acuff was born on this date in 1903.
Roy Claxton Acuff emerged as a star during the early 1940s. He helped intensify the star system at the Grand Ole Opry and remained its leading personality until his death. In so doing, he formed the bridge between country’s rural stringband era and the modern era of star singers backed by fully amplified bands. In addition, he co-founded Acuff-Rose Publications with songwriter Fred Rose, thus laying an important cornerstone of the Nashville music industry. For these and other accomplishments he was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1962 as its first living member.
Humorist Robert Benchley was born on this date in 1889. In 2005 The Writer’s Almanac said:
He started writing humor as a kid in school. Assigned to write an essay about how to do something practical, he wrote one called “How to Embalm a Corpse.” When he was assigned to write about the dispute over Newfoundland fishing rights from the point of view of the United States and Canada, he instead chose to write from the point of view of the fish.
He’s the grandfather of Peter Benchley, author of Jaws.
Agatha Christie was born on this date in 1890. Two years ago The Writer’s Almanac has this (and more):
During World War I, she was working as a Red Cross nurse, and she started reading detective novels because, she said, “I found they were excellent to take one’s mind off one’s worries.” She grew frustrated with how easy it was to guess the murderer in most mysteries, and she decided to try to write her own. That book was The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) about a series of murders at a Red Cross hospital.
Christie’s first few books were moderately successful, and then her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came out in 1926. That same year, Christie fled her own home after a fight with her husband, and she went missing for 10 days. There was a nationwide search, and the press covered the disappearance as though it were a mystery novel come to life, inventing scenarios and speculating on the possible murder suspects, until finally Christie turned up in a hotel, suffering from amnesia. During the period of her disappearance, the reprints of her earlier books sold out of stock and two newspapers began serializing her stories. She became a household name and a best-selling author for the rest of her life.
William Howard Taft, both president and later chief justice of the United States, was born on September 15, 1857:
In 1900, President William McKinely appointed Taft chair of a commission to organize a civilian government in the Philippines which had been ceded to the United States at the close of the Spanish-American War. From 1901 to 1904 Taft served successfully as the first civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt named Taft secretary of war.
After serving nearly two full terms, popular Teddy Roosevelt refused to run in 1908. Instead, he promoted Taft as the next Republican president. With Roosevelt’s help, Taft handily defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Throughout his presidency, Taft contended with dissent from more liberal members of the Republican party, many of whom continued to follow the lead of former President Roosevelt.
Progressive Republicans openly challenged Taft in the Congressional elections of 1910 and in the Republican presidential primaries of 1912. When Taft won the Republican nomination, the Progressives organized a rival party and selected Theodore Roosevelt to run against Taft in the general election. Roosevelt’s Bull Moose candidacy split the Republican vote and helped elect Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
From 1921 until 1930, Taft served his country as chief justice of the Supreme Court. In an effort to make the Court work more efficiently, he advocated passage of the 1925 Judges Act enabling the Supreme Court to give precedence to cases of national importance.
… but I prefer politicians that have the courtesy — enough respect for us citizens — to quit lying when they are found out.
The video (9 seconds) was this morning (Monday).
“But since 2000… Put it this way: we have just finished the first American business cycle ever, the first since British settlers landed at Jamestown and promptly began dying of malaria, the first ever in which median household incomes did not grow from peak to peak.”
But today, John McCain declared that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” — and also explained that we’re “the most innovative, the most productive, the greatest exporter, the greatest importer.”
Exactly why we’re boasting about being the biggest importer isn’t clear — not to get all mercantilist, but buying a bunch of stuff isn’t a great achievement. And last I looked, we weren’t the greatest exporter; that distinction went either to the European Union, or, if you restrict yourself to countries, Germany.
“Country first” — whatever it means it shouldn’t mean saying we’re number one when we’re not. McCain is supposed to be running for president, not head cheerleader.
“I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain…”
Joe Biden
I can understand that there are many reasons an individual might not want to vote for Barack Obama, but I fail to see why anyone would choose to vote for this doddering, mendacious old man. Just watch him — it’s only 28 seconds.
“And Edmunds.com, which has suffered the slings and arrows of tedious car testing, says an emphatic yes. The venerable car group found that using cruise control improved gas mileage by 7 to 14 percent, except in mountainous terrain.”
Via Huffington Post
… was proclaimed a national monument 100 years ago today. It was redisignated a national historical park in 1990.
Tumacácori NHP protects three Spanish colonial mission ruins in southern Arizona: Tumacácori, Guevavi, and Calabazas. The adobe structures are on three sites, with a visitor center at Tumacácori. These missions are among more than twenty established in the Pimería Alta by Father Kino and other Jesuits, and later expanded upon by Franciscan missionaries.
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