The first Olympic torch relay was for the Olympics in Berlin in 1936, so I guess we can stop worrying about the current relay being sullied by politics.
I saw this mentioned at Daily Kos and did some homework to verify it.
When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance the budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth – and approvingly cited the example of President Ronald Reagan.
There was one thing he did not mention during his response: the deficit nearly tripled during the Reagan presidency, partly due to tax cuts and increases in military spending.
The man is a moron — 894th out of 899 in his graduating class at Annapolis. (Jimmy Carter was 59th in his class of 820. Dwight D. Eisenhower was 61st of 164 in his West Point class. Even Ulysses Grant was 21st of 39 at West Point.)
As they so often do, The Edge of the American West has good background on an important historic event that took place on this date. The essay begins:
On this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln returned to Washington from a trip to Virginia, where he had visited Grant’s headquarters, surveyed Richmond in captivity and sat in Jefferson Davis’s chair, contemplating the imminent end of war.
Arriving back in the capital, Lincoln stopped first by the house of William Seward, his Secretary of State, who was laid up owing to a carriage accident that left him with a broken arm and jaw. The president proposed a national day of thanksgiving, and held his face close to Seward’s to hear his colleague’s answer. Seward counseled, not yet. Sherman had still to secure the surrender of Joseph Johnston. Until then the Confederacy remained unconquered.
Lincoln would not live to see the end Seward advised him to await. But when that conclusion came, Lincoln’s trip to Virginia would hang heavy over it.
It’s 41º and raining prettily steadily at Casa NewMexiKen. Did I move to Seattle already?
Update: At 5:40PM, 36º F and wet snow.
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As noted earlier, one of the reasons April 9th should be a national holiday is Paul Robeson. He was born 110 years ago today.
Listen to him sing “Ol’ Man River.”
In a lawsuit that legal scholars call “amusing,” a Reno man is seeking to keep U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton off the Nevada ballot with the argument that the U.S. Constitution prohibits a woman from holding the office.
Douglas Wallace, 80, contends that because the U.S. Constitution relies on the pronouns “he” and “his” in describing the duties of the president, no woman can hold the office.
Wallace argues the constitution would have to be amended to specifically allow a female president and accused Clinton of trying to make an “end run around the Constitution.”
Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano takes exception to a defense attorney. Read why.
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Jana has A Chile Rant.
“It’s pure and simple and tastes like earth, if earth was delicious and made your sinuses drain in a sweet epiphany of heat.”
Most importantly, it’s chile with an “e” — the plant. That’s what makes New Mexican cuisine different. Chili with an “i” is a stew they make in Texas and Cincinnati (good as it is).
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1. No, Albuquerque is not as hot as Phoenix, Las Vegas or Tucson. Last year the temperature got to 100º F just once. Not at all in some years. The temperature gets to 100º or more in Phoenix one hundred or more days a year.
2. Yes, Albuquerque is just as high above sea level as Denver. In fact, parts of Albuquerque are higher than any part of Denver. The altitude in Denver ranges from 5,130 to 5,470 feet above sea level. The altitude in Albuquerque ranges from 4,946 to 6,120 feet above sea level. Albuquerque has the highest altitude of any of the 50 largest cities.
[1692 in America] is an account of several notable events that took place in the Western Hemisphere during the year 1692, giving a day-by-day description of every little occurrence within each of these events that was recorded in a form that has survived to the present day. The idea behind it is to give a sense for what was happening at the same time in different places during a very tumultuous and eventful year for the European colonies in America.
The most important and best-documented events of 1692 in America were the Salem witch trials and the reconquest of New Mexico. Accordingly, a great deal of this blog is devoted to these two events.
Link via The Edge of the American West.
When it comes to breast cancer, a traditional Mexican diet may serve up an ounce of prevention for a variety of women.
A study involving hundreds of women living in the Four Corners region (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) shows that a diet emphasizing Mexican cheeses, beans, soups, tomato-based sauces, and meat may help lower the risk of breast cancer in both Hispanic and non-Hispanic women.
There’s more info. Like most of these kinds of studies, the results are mixed. Still …
An excellent look at China and the upcoming Olympics from Functional Ambivalent. Good stuff.
An excerpt:
The Chinese wanted the Summer Games for the same reason everyone else does: the P.R. value of having everyone in the world stop by when the house is clean and the kids are in their Sunday best. The Chinese government promised, in effect, to not be itself — abandoning it’s longstanding policy of horrifying oppression and cruelty in pursuit of a perfect society. Landing the games was a triumph, but I wonder now if there aren’t a few high in the bureaucracy massaging their foreheads and asking themselves, “What were we thinking?”
Today we celebrate the birthdays
… of Hugh Hefner. Hef is 82.
… of Michael Learned. Momma Walton is 69.
… of Jerry Lee Lewis, Gordon Cooper, Doc Holliday, Sam Houston and, lest we forget, New Orleans Det. Remy McSwain. Dennis Quaid is 54.
… of Cynthia Nixon. The Sex in the City star is 42. Nixon played the maid hired by Salieri to spy on Mozart in the film Amadeus.
… of Rudy Huxtable. Keshia Knight Pulliam is 29.
Paul Robeson was was born on this date in 1898.
Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.
Read more from the profile of Robeson at the PBS site for American Masters.
Head Quarters of the Armies of the United States
Appomattox C.H. Va. Apl 9th 1865Gen. R. E. Lee
Comd’g C.S.A.General,
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms to wit; Rolls of all the officers and men be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands - The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side arms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority as long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside—
Very Respectfully
U. S. Grant
Lt. Gen
The two generals met shortly after noon on April 9, 1865, at the home of Wilmer McClean in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all United States forces, hastened the conclusion of the Civil War.
In the weeks following, Confederate forces surrendered, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured. On April 14, President Lincoln’s name was added to the list of over 1 million Civil War casualties, and the bloody era the that began four years earlier in the corn fields of Manassas, Virginia finally was brought to a close. (Library of Congress)
The ill-fated René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Mississippi River on this date in 1682 and claimed the Mississippi watershed in the name of France, naming it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV.
Je, René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle, en vertu de la commission de Sa Majesté que je tiens en mains, prêt à la faire voir à qui il pourrait appartenir, ai pris et prends possession, au nom de Sa Majesté et de ses successeurs de sa couronne, de ce pays de la Louisiane, mers, havres, ports, baies, détroits adjacents et de toutes les nations, peuples, provinces, villes, bourgs, villages, mines, minières, pèches, fleuves, rivières compris dans l’étendue de ladite Louisiane.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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