Archive for February, 2009
Secretary of State of the Day: John C. Calhoun (16th Secretary of State)
Term in Office: April 1st, 1844 – March 10th, 1845
Succeeded by: James Buchanan
- Born at “the Long Canes settlement”, in what became Abbeville County, South Carolina, March 18, 1782;
- Graduated from Yale College in 1804 and from Litchfield Law School in 1806;
- Admitted to the bar in 1807 and practiced law in Abbeville, South Carolina;
- Married Floride Bonneau Colhoun in 1811;
- Gave up the practice of law and established himself as a planter;
- Member of the State House of Representatives, 1808-1809;
- Representative from South Carolina, 1811-1817;
- Secretary of War in President Monroe’s Cabinet, 1817-1825;
- Vice President of the United States 1825-1832, when he resigned; was a Senator from South Carolina 1832-1843;
- Secretary of State in President Tyler’s Cabinet from April 1, 1844 until March 10, 1845;
- As Secretary of State, signed an abortive treaty for the annexation of Texas and aided in accomplishing annexation by joint resolution of Congress;
- Delegate of South Carolina to, and presiding officer of, a railroad-and-waterway convention held in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1845;
- Again a Senator from South Carolina 1845-1850;
- Author of voluminous writings and speeches;
- Died in Washington, DC, March 31, 1850.
Today in History: February 21st (Year One, Day 33 in The Golden Age of Obama)
1440 – Prussian Confederation formed
1543 – Battle of Wayna Daga: Combined Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeat muslim army of Ahmed Gragin
1613 – Mikhail I elected unanimously as Tsar by national assembly, beginning 300 years of Imperial Romanov Dynasty
1804 – Self-propelling steam locomotive makes its debut at the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales
1842 – First US patent for sewing machine
1848 – Karl Marx and Freidreich Engles publish the Communist Manifesto
1878 – First telephone book issued (in New Haven, Connecticut)
1885 – Newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated (soon to be renamed The Obama-Washington Monument, no doubt)
1893 – Thomas Edison receives two US patents: “Cut Out for Incandescent Electric Lamps” and a “Stop Device”
1913 – Greece acquires Ioannina after Balkan Wars
1916 – Battle of Verdun begins
1918 – Last Carolina parakeet dies at Cincinnati Zoo
1921 – Democratic Republic of Georgia establishes first constitution
1925 – New Yorker publishes first issue
1937 – First successful test of flying car: Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile
1937 – Leauge of Nations bans foreign national volunteers in Spanish Civil War
1947 – Polaroid instant camera introduced
1948 – NASCAR incorporates
1952 – ID cards abolished in Great Britain by Winston Churchill
1952 – UNESCO International Mother Language Day
1953 – Francis Crick and James Watson discover structure of DNA molecule
1958 – “Peace Symbol” developed as commission by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
1960 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro nationalizes all businesses in Cuba
1970 – SwissAir Flight 330: mid-air bomb explosion kills 38 near Zurich, Switzerland
1971 – Convention on Psychotropic Substances signed in Vienna
1972 – President Richard Nixon visits China
1972 – Soviet Luna 20 lands on the Moon
1973 – Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 crash kills 108
1975 – Former US Attorney General John Mitchell and White House aides HR Halderman and John Ehrlichman sentenced to prison for Watergate
1995 – Steve Fossett becomes first person to cross Pacific in a balloon
2004 – European Greens established in Rome as first European political party organization
Sarah Palin interviewed on rural food drops to Alaskans
We. Love. This. Woman.
Go, Sarah, Go!
Goodbye Socks
This morning, Socks the Cat was put to sleep, after battling feline cancer since last year.
Socks was Chelsea’s pet when the Clintons still lived in Arkansas, and came with them to the White House, before moving in with President Clinton’s secretary, Betty Curie, once Chelsea was grown and the Clintons moved to Chappaqua. Curie wanted Socks to live with her, as they had become good friends and spent most of the day together during President Clinton’s 8 years in office.
Socks lived a remarkable life of 20 years, filled with adventure and intrigue, visits with world leaders, and a part in one of Hillary’s books…and today, of course, he warrants an obit in People Magazine:
Former First Cat Socks, one of the world’s most famous felines, died Friday at the age of 20 after battling throat cancer since November. A stray cat rescued by the Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, Socks lived in the governor’s mansion in Arkansas and later moved with the family to the White House.
“Socks brought much happiness to Chelsea and us over the years, and enjoyment to kids and cat lovers everywhere,” the Clintons said in a statement, released first to PEOPLE.COM. “We’re grateful for those memories, and we especially want to thank our good friend, Betty Currie, for taking such loving care of Socks for so many years.”
Currie, the president’s personal secretary, and her husband, Bob, took over care of Socks after the Clintons left the White House. It was near their home in Maryland that Socks was put to sleep Friday morning. “He could no longer stand and wasn’t eating,” according to family friend and presidential historian Barry Landau.
His Pal Buddy the Lab
Though much was made of the fact that Buddy, the family’s beloved brown Labrador retriever – who died after being hit by a car in 2002 – remained with the Clintons while Socks did not, Landau says, “The truth be known, Betty asked if Socks could come live with her. The Clintons didn’t abandon Socks. They were totally conflicted. It broke their hearts, but they knew it would be the right thing for Socks’ welfare.”
“Betty had lost a close family member and a dog and they wanted to do something nice for her,” continues Landau, noting that Hillary Clinton had just been elected to the U.S. Senate.
Hillary Clinton with Socks in 1999 During the family’s days in the White House, Socks had become attached to Betty, with whom he spent many hours every day. “Socks was always curled up on a blue striped silk chair, next to Betty,” in her office outside the Oval Office, Landau says. “Socks didn’t act like a cat. Socks was very dog-like, and Buddy and Socks got along well.” Landau adds that even visiting heads of state asked to have pictures taken with the cat.
A Taste for Chicken
In the years since he left the White House, Landau says, “Socks had an incredible life. Betty cooked for Socks,” he said, noting the cat loved chicken. He was also the subject (along with the family dog) of a book by Hillary Clinton titled Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets.
On Thursday, Currie took Socks for one last walk; she plans to have the cat cremated.
NOTES: There’s a surprisingly large number of bizarre things related to Socks the Cat, much more than any other presidential pet we can think of. Here are some of our favorites, starting with (1), that just makes us giggle.
(1) Republican Rep. Dan Burton once publicly questioned the use of White House staff, postage, and stationery to answer mail addressed to the cat
(2) A cartoon book called Socks Goes to Washington: The Diary of America’s First Cat, written by Michael O’Donoghue and Jean-Claude Suares, was published in 1993.[9]
(3) Socks was a character in If…, Steve Bell‘s cartoon strip in The Guardian, where he was described as the “world’s most powerful cat”, and as “Chief of Staff for Fish”.
(4) Socks was featured prominently in an episode of the sitcom Murphy Brown in December 1993 entitled Sox and the Single Girl, in which Socks is inadvertently removed from the White House during a press dinner.[10][11] On the April 1, 1994 edition of Larry King Live, a Muppet version of Socks was a special guest interviewed by Kermit the Frog, who was guest hosting for Larry King at the time.[12]
(5) In 1996, Socks appeared on a series of stamps in the Central African Republic with Bill Clinton.
(6) In Berkeley Breathed‘s comic strip Outland, Socks was involved in a homosexual affair with Bill the Cat. They appeared together on a talk show, along with Checkers Nixon, Rex Reagan, and Millie Bush, on the topic of “Gay Presidential Pets.”
(7) The video clip for the song “Blister in the Sun” by the band the Violent Femmes, used in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, depicts an obsessive fan donning a Socks costume and attempting to assassinate Socks while he was speaking in public. Socks survived the incident unscathed while the would-be assassin was apprehended.
(8) Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill is an unreleased video game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. It stars Socks, the pet cat of 42nd US President Bill Clinton, and his family, in a platforming adventure in which he has to make his way past spies, crooked politicians and the media to warn the White House of a stolen nuclear missile. Scheduled for a release in the Fall of 1993, the game was complete and ready to be shipped to retailers, but was suddenly cancelled following the closing of publisher Kaneko’s US branch.[citation needed]
The game’s bosses were made out to be caricatures of former Republican leaders such as Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush. Nintendo‘s own censorship policies during the late 1980s and early 1990s condemned games that had “subliminal political messages” or “overt political statements”.[1]
In a pre-release review of the game, Nintendo Power openly questioned the reason that such figures were in the game, and deemed the title as politically controversial.[citation needed] This, coupled with the fact that Kaneko’s US branch was closing down, prevented Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill from ever being shipped, and no known ROM has been found on the Internet.
(9) The collectible wooden house series Cat’s Meow Village reissued its White House piece in 1993, with a tiny version of Socks painted alongside the black cat Casper traditionally featured on the pieces.
"Just don't tell Dan Burton I wrote you"
Goodbye peoples. I can haz cheezburger now.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu: "I feel like I have been dumped into the deep end of the pool"
We have consistently maintained around here that Dr. Steven Chu is, by all acounts, a very nice man, and a very brilliant physicist, but when even he admits he “feels like he has been dumped into the deep end of the pool” as Secretary of Energy, you need to dial back and acknowledge this is exactly what we warned everyone about the moment his name was first floated for the Cabinet.
Dr. Steven Chu should be running a super lab of high-tech experiments trying to create new chimeric forms of energy development with his acknowledged brilliance — not fumbling with the bureaucratic hydra that is the United States Department of Energy and Colossal Resistance to Sense, Acceptable Change, and Progress (AKA, Department of Energy for short).
In particular, Chu admits he’s really struggling to get a grasp on Oil Policy (all that bubbling crude, oil that is, black gold, Texas tea).
Chu famously also said “coal is my worst nightmare”.
And we know it’s not the way in The Golden Age of Obama to criticize someone who has many fancy degrees from all sorts of Ivy League schools, but our personal worst nightmare is a Secretary of Energy who doesn’t have a grasp on Oil Policy, feels like he’s been thrown into the deep end of a pool, and is hostile towards fossil fuels while simultaneously failing to laser in his brilliance on creating viable “renewable” alternatives.
The pie-in-the-sky, Hope!, Change!, Unicorns! nonsense from the campaign expired on January 20th when the new administration was sworn in — and reality kicked into gear.
Dr. Steven Chu is no longer Professor Chu in his laboratory, with his feet up on his desk with research assistants scurrying around finishing papers on this or that theory, and sharing soft, squishy, gummi bears with one another (warmed to perfection all day in their shirt pocket lairs).
It’s no longer time for Chu to sit in the basement with grad students drinking bottled Aquafina out of plastic cups (hey…wait a minute Dr. Chu, aren’t water bottles and plastic cups made from petroleum products, directly linked in so many ways to the Oil Policy you have absolutely no practical experience with, or appreciation of the irony of, considering your gluttonous personal use of plastic products while casting your nose down on fossil fuel use and development), talking about how terrible coal and oil are for the environment.
It’s time for Chu to craft a coherent energy policy, while also successfully managing another Herculean feat we believe will be impossible for him: preventing the billions and billions of dollars slotted to the Energy Department from Obama’s Trillion Dollar Spending Spree from being funneled into wasteful projects that never go anywhere.
The reason we don’t have any confidence whatsoever in Chu to properly run the Energy Department rests in his nature as a career academian with unlimited funding afforded to his world-acknowledged scientific genius. When has Chu ever pulled the plug on any project that wasn’t working — unless he lost funding for it?
Scientists don’t operate on deadlines of production.
They follow paths of research and development as long as there’s money to keep the lab open.
Obama’s handed Chu billions and billions in funding that almost anyone on Earth would find impossible to spend in just 4 years — giving every indication that a great deal of interesting projects will begin under Chu at Energy, with possibly a Guinness-Records-breaking order of new surveys and studies on everything under the sun, without much actually getting done, in real terms, to show for it before Obama’s term is up.
When has a scientist of Chu’s caliber ever produced a well-funded, major, academic project in 4 years or less?
And that’s exactly what we feel Chu believes his role as Energy Secretary is, an academic, not a bare-knuckles practical, exercise with a whole lot of someone else’s money.
Your money.
He’s a nice, nice, nice, brilliant man…who we just trust less and less each day to competently run that large of a governmental department, managing all of that money effectively.
Hope!
Change!
Deep end of the pool!
Will Sarah Palin be in Washington DC for the Winter Governors' Conference this weekend?
We caught a few references today to “Obama’s first dinner” at the White House (where Michelle will most likely wear something hideous that looks like the fabric of either the couch or the table cloth). It’s for the Governors attending the Winter Governors’ Conference.
For the last few days, Palin’s been visiting remote Alaskan villages, and we have not heard anything about her making the trip to Washington, DC for the meeting on Sunday.
We’ll update this as soon as we hear one way or the other (or if one of you can chime in and let us know).
To our knowledge, if Palin does attend, it would be the first time that she and Obama had ever met…and certainly the first time the two of them had ever been photographed together (that we’ve ever seen).
Could 2012 start, in a way, this coming Sunday?
UPDATE: Our first hunch was correct, and Governor Palin will not be heading to Washington for the Governor’s Conference because of her commitments to Alaskans in remote areas of the state.
But check out Politico.com — they either think Governor Palin is coming, or they’re purposefully misleading their readers into believing she is (so possibly they can accuse her of flaking out later). Here’s the headline up at Politico right now, with a giant pic of Palin:
It sure looks like they’re trying to make people think Palin’s going to be in Washington this weekend.
Terrible Person Update: Stephen Fowler Edition
O-bam-a! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!
This is something we’d like to turn into a regular Friday feature around here: Terrible Person Update.
We intend it to be a weekly update, to the best of our abilities, on what’s been happening with Terrible People who did bad things either during the campaign (Helen Jones-Kelley, David Kernel, Claire McCaskill, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, etc.) or that otherwise caught our attention, such as Stephen Fowler and Renee Stephens, the Obama voters (as Rush would call them) in Noe Valley, San Francisco who mercilessly and gleefully insulted and ripped apart a middle class family from Missouri on ABC’s “Wife Swap” two weeks or so ago.
The media often floats out people like Stephen Fowler here and there, tells their story, and let’s us see how terrible they are, but then completely forgets all about them and moves onto the next story (involving either Britney, Paris, Lindsay, or a crazed chimp, most likely).
We never get any updates as to whether these people remained Terrible, redeemed themselves, became slightly less terrible and approached a status that could be considered just borderline Bad, and not full-on Terrible, or whatever.
Well, Great Merciful Zeus, there’s a wonderful site called www.StephenFowlerSucks.com that’s all about just how Terrible Stephen Fowler and his wife Renee Stephens really are.
And they update it every day, too.
Kudos!
It always bothers us when people from Europe come to America and belittle hardworking rural or small town people, and when they insult America in general. We always wonder: if England (where Fowler is from) is so great, then why did he leave?
Doesn’t England miss a being of his pure unalloyed magnificence?
It’s the same thing we wondered during the summer when Obama left for Europe and insulted Americans for not speaking a foreign language, and having to go to France only being able to say “merci beaucoup”. Well, Obama doesn’t speak a foreign language himself. Neither does Michelle. Neither do either of the Obama daughters. So, for all their privilege and advantages, if the Obamas, and all their advanced degrees from the Ivy League, couldn’t learn a foreign language, then how can rural people in Missouri?
And for all of Stephen Fowler’s airs, and all of his claims of superiority over the common American rabble around him, we just keep wondering: why on Earth did he move here, if everyone and everything in Europe is so superior to the US?
Europe, where the economy’s constricted 8.5% in the same period the US has only shrank 3%.
Europe, where Americans sometimes go to visit, while Europeans come to America to permanently live.
Europe, where American TV shows, food, verbiage, movies, books, magazines, clothes, opinions, attitudes, and ideas are borrowed and plastered all over, not because America forces any of that on them, but because Europeans greedily grasp for all things American (whether they deign to admit it or not). There is no one with a gun forcing a McDonald’s onto every corner — and those burger joints couldn’t stay open unless the British and French wanted big, Oprah-sized butts just like we’ve got “across the pond”.
We’ve been to Europe. Saw a lot of great stuff. Had a blast. Made new friends. Broke a few hearts. Hella glad we went.
And then we came home, where every day we’re thankful for our blessings, and mindful of our manners.
Something, evidently, people like the far-superior-to-us-gun-and-religion-clinging-mere-mortals Fowler clan in the Obamatopia of Noe Valley don’t seem to understand.
Who do you think you're calling an ELF?
Did you just call us elves?
Who you calling an ELF?
Oh. No. You. Didn’t.
We as gay men representing all of Boystown object to the culturally insensitive and downright HOMOPHOBIC use of the term “elf”, by anyone, anywhere, at any time, unless we ourselves are calling each other elves, particularly at awards shows or in popular music videos.
Elves, as you know, live in the enchanted forests near gumdrop lakes, where pixies and fairies also dwell, tending to herds of stimulus unicorns, in the sparkling glitter of cascading rainbows.
So, basically, you’re calling us a bunch of fairies. Because elves and fairies are almost the same thing, but not really. And fairies are a long-established forest-dwelling metaphoric slam on gay people and all things fit and fabulous.
Which is a bigoted and HOMOPHOBIC action requiring instant grievance and redress, you, you, YOU HOMOPHOBES – and now we need to organize a big, loony protest against you, whoever and wherever you are. And comb our hair all crazy and put on all our flashiest bling and then wear truly ugly glasses and sweat a lot in the glare of all the many, many cameras we’ll attract…rolling Sharpton/Clyburn/Holder style.
Elf, you!
Where the Hell’s our pixie sticks and back issues of Vogue?
Do you know what the Chicago definition of irony is? Jan Schakowsky talking about ethics and people obeying the law
Biggest Oxymoron in Washington: Jan Schakowsky on the INTELLIGENCE Committee
We’re sorry, but in the three (hundred) ring circus that’s Illinois politics, Rep. Jan Schakowsky is one of the most vile and hypocritical clowns (with the Barnum & Bailey makeup to prove it. Here’s a helpful unsolicited tip, Jan: lipstick goes ON the lips, not AROUND them, and it’s usually a good idea to comb your hair once or twice a week, whether you particularly want to or not).
She’s currently waging a very spirited campaign calling on Senator Roland Burris to resign his seat, talking about ethics and how the 17th Amendment gives Governors the right to rescind Senate appointments and call for special elections.
For those of you not from Illinois, and who have no idea who Rep. Jan Schakowsky is, let us remind you that her husband is convicted felon Robert Creamer — notorious check-kiting criminal and all around major fan of bank fraud.
How can Schakowsky ever, with a straight face, talk about the subject of ethics — when she’s married to someone who went all around Chicagoland scamming banks with bogus checks, in a purposeful racquet in which Creamer wrote checks to Bank A on accounts in Bank B for deposit, while simultaneously writing checks to Bank B on accounts in Bank C, all the way through the alphabet, every day moving around money he didn’t have that didn’t exist, to further the undeservedly charmed life he still enjoys with Schakowsky?
And when did Schakowsky miraculously learn how to read?
She didn’t seem to understand the law when her husband, convicted felon Robert Creamer, was out and about check-kiting. Where did this miraculous ability to read legal statutes come from? Can she only read the Constitution, or just parts of it she finds enjoyable or interesting, while boring statutes that don’t interest her or apply to her charmed family, like those applying to criminal bank fraud, are wholly illegible?
It’s beyond absurd for Rep. Jan Schakowsky to take a moral stand on anything, when this vile and offensive woman certainly has zero moral ground to stand on.
But, hold up, why don’t we tell you how we REALLY feel?
DISGUSTED.
Today will be another zany day in Illinois: Governor Quinn to hold anti-Burris press conference around noon
None of this makes any sense to us, but today around noon sometime Governor Quinn is going to hold an anti-Roland Burris press conference, where he will apparently call for a special election provision to be written into the state constitution by the collection of circus performers we in the Land of Lincoln must regard as our duly elected state house and senate.
Of course, our equally accurate and journalistically professional local media breathlessly reported the above (minus any Barnum & Baily references that would hit too close to home for their comfort (along the lines of Liza Minnelli ever calling anyone a big drunk or Oprah telling someone they’re out of their damn mind)), but failed to mention WHY Governor Quinn is doing this.
Is it to try to unseat Burris?
Is it to use Burris as an example to force the legislature to pass the bill to ensure all future vacancies are filled by special election?
Is it something Quinn is doing to raise his own profile in hopes of securing the Democrats’ nomination unchallenged in 2010 for what should be a tough general election (if not a tough primary challenge by ambitious Illinois Attorney General Lisa “My Father’s Speaker of the Illinois House” Madigan)?
Like Jessica Fletcher in Cabot Cove trying to figure out who murdered her latest friend or neighbor this week, we’re all just left to wonder and try to piece things together as best we can (kicking it Angela Lansbury-style on a cold Chicago Friday).
Events in Illinois are so random and nonsensical we could have easily worked in a reference to anything from Alf to Love Boat and the Banana Splits just now. Truly, anything goes in this state. It’s like the wild, wild, west without all the hunky, hunky cowboys. Instead of ten gallon hats, we’ve got former governors with scary is it or isn’t it hairpieces, and newly-minted Governors with something to prove and a clueless media unable to professionally report on any of it.
But, we’ve sure got enough manure to go around, just like out west, so that’s something we guess. Oprah, corruption, manure, nonsense, imperial Mayor Daley, the never-ending Burris drama…welcome to Illinois’s embarrassment of riches!
