Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojkt1987 – Dirty Dancing featuring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters. A coming of age story set in a 1963 summer resort in the Catskill Mountains of New York and involving young love, abortion, and Ayn Rand, this movie is so bad it is a must-watch classic. With dialogue like “Nobody puts baby in the corner!”, who can resist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28A9Jgo92GQ
1959 – Hawaii officially becomes the 50th, and to date the last, state to join the union. Established as a US protectorate in 1894, Hawaii is officially annexed in 1898 and becomes a formal US territory in 1900. (I have no idea what the distinction is between being annexed and being a formal US territory.) The Japanese attack on the Hawaiian naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 firmly establishes Hawaii in the national psyche, and 18 years later it becomes a full fledged member state. Best of the Hawaiian Islands? Maui, without a doubt.
1940 – In a stirring speech to the House of Commons in the midst of the Battle of Britain, the greatest political leader in the history of war, Winston Churchill praises the men of the Royal Air Force for their efforts against the Luftwaffe by exclaiming the now famous line “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Eventually members of the RAF will come to be known simply as “The Few”. I’m pretty sure that on the top 10 list of history’s great wartime leaders, Winston Churchill holds the top 5 positions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y60xvkJ8ko
1858 – The first of seven debates between Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas takes place in Ottowa, Illinois. The debates center on the issue of slavery, and are perhaps the most well-known political debates in the history of the US. The debates are a preview of the very issue that would be the focus of the presidential election 2 years later, in which both Lincoln and Douglas would again be opposing candidates, along with a third, John C. Breckinridge. Although Douglas would win the Senate election (actually, his fellow Democrats would win the Illinois house of representatives, which then appointed him Senator), Lincoln would get his revenge by winning the 1860 presidential election, leading directly to Southern secession and the Civil War.
Filed under: This Day in History |
All Things in Moderation 
Oh God, “Dirty Dancing” in addition to “Cry Baby”, I hate to think how many times we watched those when the girls were young.
The first time I was in Hawaii, almost entirely at the beaches in Lahaina, Maui, I read Michener’s Hawaii. What a great vacation. Reading on the beach, swimming and raiding the pineapple fields.
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we’re coming for you.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/21/winning-progressive-think-tank-demos-tar#fold
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Don’t discount Lincoln as a Great War Time Leader
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McWing:
Don’t discount Lincoln as a Great War Time Leader
Agreed, but I still rank Churchill. Perhaps Lincoln was handicapped by his time, as Churchill had tools of modern communication unavailable to Lincoln. But damn, Churchill was good.
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you know what really sucks. I was born in 78. So Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama.
most of my life has been under a “wartime” leader. not counting greatness of course.
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Does Grenada really count? It makes Reagan perhaps 2% wartime leader.
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yello:
It makes Reagan perhaps 2% wartime leader.
Cold War?
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Cold War?
Seeing as that lasted 45 years, I’m not sure it counts. Eisenhower had Korea, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had Vietnam. That leaves Ford, Carter, and Clinton as our non-war presidents of the last 60 years.
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“Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama”
I’d count these. I include Clinton b/c of
KosovoBosnia. and i include that because I was friends with the daughter of an Air Force officer who was KIA over there.LikeLike
This speech by President Obama on why we needed to bomb more brown people was bullshit at the time. Read it as wonder why, if what he bullshitted were true for Libya, why is it not applicable to Syria?
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The really interesting part of Churchill’s life as a wartime leader came during World War I. See his working relationship with Jackie Fisher.
For those who haven’t read it, Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie is one of my favorite history books of all time.
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Paging Mr. Orwell.
Click to access n-13-45.PDF
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At least we’re so unpopular here that we don’t attract “trolls” (unless it’s part of your name). I’m wondering how they’re going to enforce this.
“Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier, and I just came from London, where there are threats of rape and death threats,” Barb Darrow reports Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington said at a conference in Boston. Huffington said the site would rescind anonymity in September: “I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity.”
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/221779/huffington-post-will-end-anonymous-comments/
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