Sexual assaults in the military and how to handle them
Kirsten Gillibrand is a United States senator from New York and she's a Democrat (if that matters in this context). She's trying to change how the military prosecutes cases involving sexual assault. She wants prosecutors who are outside of the chain of command to decide which cases to prosecute. Her fellow Democratic U.S. Senator, Carl Levin of Michigan is opposed to her idea and since he's the Chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, he's likely to get his way.
I haven't seen her proposal, but she's on the right track. The answer is to undertake a major change in how the military handles criminal offenses. Unit commanders should retain the right to undertake non-judicial punishment (Article 15's, Captain's Masts) but issues that involve a potential court-martial should be given to an organization outside of the chain of command.
A unit of military lawyers, commanded by and responsible only to someone outside of the host unit's command structure would review all cases. Those they choose to prosecute will go directly to court-martial. Those they choose not to prosecute are referred back to the unit commander, for a possible non-judicial action.
Then, give the general court-martial authority (usually the senior commander at the installation) the same authority they currently have. They can reduce the sentence handed down by the court-martial board. Because they weren't involved with the process until it reaches their desk, their decisions to engage in sentence reductions would be subjected to a lot of outside scrutiny.
This concept would make it much harder for a commander to influence the outcome of such a case. By instituting harsher punishments for commanders who attempt to exert influence, they will be much more reluctant to do so.
The military needs to police itself. That's part and parcel of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Civilian oversight is part of that process. While the first level of appeal of a court-martial conviction is heard by military judges, the next level is a panel of five civilian judges, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
* * *
An open note to those who are sending me offers via email to give me millions of dollars, enhance certain parts of my anatomy. Unless you want to deliver the millions to me in cash, without any strings, obligations, or attempts to defraud me of my own hard-earned money, I'm not interested. Unless you can restore my body to the condition it was in back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I'm not interested.
I never cease to be amazed at how much effort scam artists are willing to put out in order to get what is essentially something for nothing. Oh, I'm sure they consider themselves hard-working, but only to steal from others. Sometimes I wonder how many of those people hold the political view that society shouldn't re-distribute wealth, only they should.
* * *
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Which free meals to enjoy on Monday, as our nation gives back to its veterans. I'm pretty sure it will be the all you can eat pancakes at Denny's for breakfast, Hooters or Red Robin for lunch and dinner at the Olive Garden. There isn't an Applebee's or a Golden Corral close by.
Seriously I think it is a wonderful thing that all of these businesses are reaching out to those who have served. There are over 25 million veterans in the U.S. and all who have served, whether volunteers or draftees, during peace or time of war, deserve the tributes.
* * *
Being a working journalist today is clearly a much tougher gig than it was when I covered the news for pay. Many more media mavens trying to get the story first. But that doesn't justify the trend of major gaffes news organizations continue to make.
Rathergate I understand. Dan Rather is a staunch Democrat and let his political views color his objectivity enough to allow documents that weren't properly vetted to make a specious claim about President George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard. Now I don't know for a fact that they were right or wrong about whether or not the former President met his military obligations, but I do know the documents they used to back their story were not proof of anything except that someone wasn't a very talented forger.
I admire CBS managing editor Scott Pelley for his admission this past May that he was wrong in going with the story that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza's mother Nancy was a teacher at Sandy Hook and that he'd attacked her classroom. We all know he'd murdered her in her home before going to the school. When he said "we're getting the big stories wrong, over and over" he took responsibility.
Then there was the San Francisco local station getting the names of the Air Asia crew wrong and producers not verifying information prior to allowing it to air. In case you've forgotten, these are the names they aired:
Captain Sum Ting Wong
Wi Tu Lo
Ho Lee Fuk
Bang Ding Ow
Could you have read those names without wondering just a little what was wrong with them? Here's the actual video/audio of the newscast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmclgO6w0C0
It isn't just the big stories, Mr. Pelley. It's everything. It's the spelling errors that go by without being noticed, the grammatical mangling of the English language online by sites who care only about traffic and revenue; without concern for accuracy.
* * *
Typhoon Haiyan is currently roaring through the Western Pacific and is one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever. Having lived through a couple of much smaller typhoons while stationed on Guam, I can tell you that the intensity of a storm like this is almost unimaginable.
Typhoons can become immense in size and scope. The sustained measured wind speed of Haiyan ties it as the second most intense typhoon in history. This claim is accurate, although since our ability to accurately measure sustained wind speed only dates back to the 1970s, we don't know if there were stronger typhoons back when wind speeds were measured inaccurately.
I first became familiar with the destructive power of tropical cyclones when I was assigned to military training in Biloxi, MS in 1977. There wasn't a storm then. But the devastation that Hurricane Camille had caused eight years earlier was still visible in several areas near the base. That nearly a decade had passed and rebuilding wasn't complete got me to thinking about what awesome power a storm like that contains.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Should I be concerned the apocalypse is upon us? Vanilla Ice said something that made sense today. "You are who you are because of who you were" scared me coming from him.
Rather than apologizing for misleading the American public, maybe the President should have apologized for the inept management displayed by his administration since he took office? Maybe that's a little harsh but they are their own worst enemy. Great at getting elected, but not so good at the execution of what are at heart, excellent ideas.
If Scott Disick's mother Bonnie were still alive, I'd want to ask her if she ever wanted to be the top trending item at Yahoo.com. I suspect the answer would have been no. But her death is currently at the #1 trending position. Should the passing of a parent of someone who is famous for no other reason than being on a reality TV show really be of that much interest to the population in general?
Wow. Tom Cruise admitted during a deposition in a lawsuit that his divorce from Katie Holmes was at least partly caused by Katie wanting to protect Suri Cruise from Scientology. In other exciting news, the sun will come up tomorrow.
Yes, that was a real wedding in Sri Lanka where the bride has 126 bridesmaids and 23 flower girls.
Former President Gerald Ford would love the fact the new aircraft carrier bearing his name is more efficient and requires fewer personnel than present carriers.
A Georgia teacher who said "I don't know" when confronted with recorded evidence of her bullying of her class has a lot of nerve.
Will the fact that the Mormon Church is about to become the largest private landowner in Florida lead to a rise in the sale of magic underwear in the Sunshine State?
* * *
November 9th in History:
694 – At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.
1282 – Pope Martin IV excommunicates King Peter III of Aragon.
1313 – Louis the Bavarian defeats his cousin Frederick I of Austria at the Battle of Gamelsdorf.
1330 – At the Battle of Posada, the Wallachian Voivode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army of Charles I Robert.
1456 – Ulrich II of Celje (Slovene: Ulrik Celjski, German Ulrich von Cilli, Hungarian: Cillei Ulrik), last prince of Celje principality, is assassinated in Belgrade.
1494 – The Family de' Medici are expelled from Florence.
1520 – More than 50 people are sentenced and executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath
1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1688 – Glorious Revolution: William of Orange captures Exeter.
1697 – Pope Innocent XII founds the city of Cervia.
1720 – The synagogue of Yehudah he-Hasid is burned down by Arab creditors, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.
1729 – Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.
1764 – Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter.
1791 – Foundation of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen.
1793 – William Carey reaches the Hooghly River.
1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).
1822 – The Action of 9 November 1822 between USS Alligator and a squadron of pirate schooners off the coast of Cuba.
1848 – Robert Blum, a German revolutionary, is executed in Vienna.
1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
1857 – The Atlantic is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
1861 – The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto.
1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.
1867 – Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872.
1880 – A large earthquake strikes Zagreb and causes many casualties. One of them is the Zagreb Cathedral.
1883 – The Royal Winnipeg Rifles of the Canadian Forces (known then as the "90th Winnipeg Battalion of Rifles") is founded.
1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1888 – Mary Jane Kelly is murdered in London, widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1907 – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.
1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.
1914 – SMS Emden is sunk by HMAS Sydney in the Battle of Cocos.
1917 – Joseph Stalin enters the provisional government of Bolshevik Russia.
1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
1921 – The Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), National Fascist Party, comes into existence.
1923 – In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
1935 – The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.
1937 – Japanese troops take control of Shanghai, China.
1938 – The Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).
1940 – Warsaw is awarded the Virtuti Militari.
1953 – Cambodia gains independence from France.
1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.
1963 – At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning.
1965 – Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
1965 – The Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.
1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.
1970 – Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1979 – Nuclear false alarm: the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.
1989 – Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.
1993 – Stari most, the "old bridge" in Bosnian Mostar built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing.
1994 – The chemical element Darmstadtium is discovered.
1998 – A US federal judge orders 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement in United States history.
1998 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.
2005 – The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
2005 – Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
2007 – The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.
Famous Folk Born On November 9th:
Gail Borden
Benjamin Banneker
A. P. Hill
Edward VII of England
Alfred Francis Blakeslee
Ed Wynn
Erika Mann
Hedy Lamarr (that's Hedley, Hedley)
Sargent Shriver
Spiro Agnew (not sure if I like "pusillanimous pussyfooters" or "nattering nabobs of negativity" better)
Byron de la Beckwith (rot in Hell)
Dorothy Dandridge
Carl Sagan (one of my favorite interviews)
Bob Graham
Mary Travers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXXx9706tc
Tom Weiskopf
Phil May
Benny Mardones
Lou Ferrigno
Jim Riggleman
Fernando Meirelles
Chris Jericho
Eric Dane
Nick Lachey
Scottie Thompson (loved her in her brief stint on NCIS)
Movie quotes today come from the hysterical "Car Wash":
Duane: Why don't you tell everybody how you "got so rich" Daddy Rich? This is one nigger you aint fooling! I'm onto the game you're running to these people here.
Daddy Rich: What can I do for you, brother?
Duane: The same thing you're doing for everyone else. Nothing!
Daddy Rich: Guess you don't believe in my church. The Church of Divine Economic Spiritual Light.
Duane: Yeah, that's right. I don't belive in it.
Daddy Rich: So, you don't belive in God?
Duane: Not "your" God. I'm a Muslim.
Daddy Rich: My God's doing all right by me. Why don't you come on board brother, and I'll take you nearer to God thy hee, and I'll show you everything it takes to make it with money. 'Cause it's better to have money than not having it. There is a good place in this world for money and I know where it is. It's right here in my pocket!
Duane: You talkin' just like a pimp!
[everyone jeers and looks as Duane with scorn]
#2
Lindy: I'm more man than you'll ever be, and more woman than you'll ever get!
#3
Arresting Cop: Do you own a white Cadillac with the California license plate YNL-H77?
Slide: I sure do.
Arresting Cop: Well, your under arrest! Turn around! You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right...
Slide: [as he is being handcuffed] For what, man?
Arresting Cop: You have over 37 parking violations that you haven paid!
Slide: Oh, no! Man, I gave my sister a lot of money this morning to pay it off.
Mr. B: Look, is there any other way we can straighten this out, officer?
Arresting Cop: [to Mr. B] Afraid not. Stand back, please. We have a warrant for his arrest.
Slide: Listen to me! I gave my sister who works at the May Company a check for $75 to pay it off. I would have paid the tickets off myself but I thew it away, man.
Arresting Cop: Tell it to the judge!
And of course who can forget this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0GT6x66ZQ
I haven't seen her proposal, but she's on the right track. The answer is to undertake a major change in how the military handles criminal offenses. Unit commanders should retain the right to undertake non-judicial punishment (Article 15's, Captain's Masts) but issues that involve a potential court-martial should be given to an organization outside of the chain of command.
A unit of military lawyers, commanded by and responsible only to someone outside of the host unit's command structure would review all cases. Those they choose to prosecute will go directly to court-martial. Those they choose not to prosecute are referred back to the unit commander, for a possible non-judicial action.
Then, give the general court-martial authority (usually the senior commander at the installation) the same authority they currently have. They can reduce the sentence handed down by the court-martial board. Because they weren't involved with the process until it reaches their desk, their decisions to engage in sentence reductions would be subjected to a lot of outside scrutiny.
This concept would make it much harder for a commander to influence the outcome of such a case. By instituting harsher punishments for commanders who attempt to exert influence, they will be much more reluctant to do so.
The military needs to police itself. That's part and parcel of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Civilian oversight is part of that process. While the first level of appeal of a court-martial conviction is heard by military judges, the next level is a panel of five civilian judges, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
* * *
An open note to those who are sending me offers via email to give me millions of dollars, enhance certain parts of my anatomy. Unless you want to deliver the millions to me in cash, without any strings, obligations, or attempts to defraud me of my own hard-earned money, I'm not interested. Unless you can restore my body to the condition it was in back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I'm not interested.
I never cease to be amazed at how much effort scam artists are willing to put out in order to get what is essentially something for nothing. Oh, I'm sure they consider themselves hard-working, but only to steal from others. Sometimes I wonder how many of those people hold the political view that society shouldn't re-distribute wealth, only they should.
* * *
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Which free meals to enjoy on Monday, as our nation gives back to its veterans. I'm pretty sure it will be the all you can eat pancakes at Denny's for breakfast, Hooters or Red Robin for lunch and dinner at the Olive Garden. There isn't an Applebee's or a Golden Corral close by.
Seriously I think it is a wonderful thing that all of these businesses are reaching out to those who have served. There are over 25 million veterans in the U.S. and all who have served, whether volunteers or draftees, during peace or time of war, deserve the tributes.
* * *
Being a working journalist today is clearly a much tougher gig than it was when I covered the news for pay. Many more media mavens trying to get the story first. But that doesn't justify the trend of major gaffes news organizations continue to make.
Rathergate I understand. Dan Rather is a staunch Democrat and let his political views color his objectivity enough to allow documents that weren't properly vetted to make a specious claim about President George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard. Now I don't know for a fact that they were right or wrong about whether or not the former President met his military obligations, but I do know the documents they used to back their story were not proof of anything except that someone wasn't a very talented forger.
I admire CBS managing editor Scott Pelley for his admission this past May that he was wrong in going with the story that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza's mother Nancy was a teacher at Sandy Hook and that he'd attacked her classroom. We all know he'd murdered her in her home before going to the school. When he said "we're getting the big stories wrong, over and over" he took responsibility.
Then there was the San Francisco local station getting the names of the Air Asia crew wrong and producers not verifying information prior to allowing it to air. In case you've forgotten, these are the names they aired:
Captain Sum Ting Wong
Wi Tu Lo
Ho Lee Fuk
Bang Ding Ow
Could you have read those names without wondering just a little what was wrong with them? Here's the actual video/audio of the newscast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmclgO6w0C0
It isn't just the big stories, Mr. Pelley. It's everything. It's the spelling errors that go by without being noticed, the grammatical mangling of the English language online by sites who care only about traffic and revenue; without concern for accuracy.
* * *
Typhoon Haiyan is currently roaring through the Western Pacific and is one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever. Having lived through a couple of much smaller typhoons while stationed on Guam, I can tell you that the intensity of a storm like this is almost unimaginable.
Typhoons can become immense in size and scope. The sustained measured wind speed of Haiyan ties it as the second most intense typhoon in history. This claim is accurate, although since our ability to accurately measure sustained wind speed only dates back to the 1970s, we don't know if there were stronger typhoons back when wind speeds were measured inaccurately.
I first became familiar with the destructive power of tropical cyclones when I was assigned to military training in Biloxi, MS in 1977. There wasn't a storm then. But the devastation that Hurricane Camille had caused eight years earlier was still visible in several areas near the base. That nearly a decade had passed and rebuilding wasn't complete got me to thinking about what awesome power a storm like that contains.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Should I be concerned the apocalypse is upon us? Vanilla Ice said something that made sense today. "You are who you are because of who you were" scared me coming from him.
Rather than apologizing for misleading the American public, maybe the President should have apologized for the inept management displayed by his administration since he took office? Maybe that's a little harsh but they are their own worst enemy. Great at getting elected, but not so good at the execution of what are at heart, excellent ideas.
If Scott Disick's mother Bonnie were still alive, I'd want to ask her if she ever wanted to be the top trending item at Yahoo.com. I suspect the answer would have been no. But her death is currently at the #1 trending position. Should the passing of a parent of someone who is famous for no other reason than being on a reality TV show really be of that much interest to the population in general?
Wow. Tom Cruise admitted during a deposition in a lawsuit that his divorce from Katie Holmes was at least partly caused by Katie wanting to protect Suri Cruise from Scientology. In other exciting news, the sun will come up tomorrow.
Yes, that was a real wedding in Sri Lanka where the bride has 126 bridesmaids and 23 flower girls.
Former President Gerald Ford would love the fact the new aircraft carrier bearing his name is more efficient and requires fewer personnel than present carriers.
A Georgia teacher who said "I don't know" when confronted with recorded evidence of her bullying of her class has a lot of nerve.
Will the fact that the Mormon Church is about to become the largest private landowner in Florida lead to a rise in the sale of magic underwear in the Sunshine State?
* * *
November 9th in History:
694 – At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.
1282 – Pope Martin IV excommunicates King Peter III of Aragon.
1313 – Louis the Bavarian defeats his cousin Frederick I of Austria at the Battle of Gamelsdorf.
1330 – At the Battle of Posada, the Wallachian Voivode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army of Charles I Robert.
1456 – Ulrich II of Celje (Slovene: Ulrik Celjski, German Ulrich von Cilli, Hungarian: Cillei Ulrik), last prince of Celje principality, is assassinated in Belgrade.
1494 – The Family de' Medici are expelled from Florence.
1520 – More than 50 people are sentenced and executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath
1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1688 – Glorious Revolution: William of Orange captures Exeter.
1697 – Pope Innocent XII founds the city of Cervia.
1720 – The synagogue of Yehudah he-Hasid is burned down by Arab creditors, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.
1729 – Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.
1764 – Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter.
1791 – Foundation of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen.
1793 – William Carey reaches the Hooghly River.
1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).
1822 – The Action of 9 November 1822 between USS Alligator and a squadron of pirate schooners off the coast of Cuba.
1848 – Robert Blum, a German revolutionary, is executed in Vienna.
1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
1857 – The Atlantic is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
1861 – The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, University of Toronto.
1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.
1867 – Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872.
1880 – A large earthquake strikes Zagreb and causes many casualties. One of them is the Zagreb Cathedral.
1883 – The Royal Winnipeg Rifles of the Canadian Forces (known then as the "90th Winnipeg Battalion of Rifles") is founded.
1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1888 – Mary Jane Kelly is murdered in London, widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1907 – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.
1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.
1914 – SMS Emden is sunk by HMAS Sydney in the Battle of Cocos.
1917 – Joseph Stalin enters the provisional government of Bolshevik Russia.
1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
1921 – The Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), National Fascist Party, comes into existence.
1923 – In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
1935 – The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.
1937 – Japanese troops take control of Shanghai, China.
1938 – The Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).
1940 – Warsaw is awarded the Virtuti Militari.
1953 – Cambodia gains independence from France.
1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.
1963 – At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning.
1965 – Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
1965 – The Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.
1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.
1970 – Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1979 – Nuclear false alarm: the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.
1989 – Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.
1993 – Stari most, the "old bridge" in Bosnian Mostar built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing.
1994 – The chemical element Darmstadtium is discovered.
1998 – A US federal judge orders 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement in United States history.
1998 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.
2005 – The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
2005 – Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
2007 – The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.
Famous Folk Born On November 9th:
Gail Borden
Benjamin Banneker
A. P. Hill
Edward VII of England
Alfred Francis Blakeslee
Ed Wynn
Erika Mann
Hedy Lamarr (that's Hedley, Hedley)
Sargent Shriver
Spiro Agnew (not sure if I like "pusillanimous pussyfooters" or "nattering nabobs of negativity" better)
Byron de la Beckwith (rot in Hell)
Dorothy Dandridge
Carl Sagan (one of my favorite interviews)
Bob Graham
Mary Travers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXXx9706tc
Tom Weiskopf
Phil May
Benny Mardones
Lou Ferrigno
Jim Riggleman
Fernando Meirelles
Chris Jericho
Eric Dane
Nick Lachey
Scottie Thompson (loved her in her brief stint on NCIS)
Movie quotes today come from the hysterical "Car Wash":
Duane: Why don't you tell everybody how you "got so rich" Daddy Rich? This is one nigger you aint fooling! I'm onto the game you're running to these people here.
Daddy Rich: What can I do for you, brother?
Duane: The same thing you're doing for everyone else. Nothing!
Daddy Rich: Guess you don't believe in my church. The Church of Divine Economic Spiritual Light.
Duane: Yeah, that's right. I don't belive in it.
Daddy Rich: So, you don't belive in God?
Duane: Not "your" God. I'm a Muslim.
Daddy Rich: My God's doing all right by me. Why don't you come on board brother, and I'll take you nearer to God thy hee, and I'll show you everything it takes to make it with money. 'Cause it's better to have money than not having it. There is a good place in this world for money and I know where it is. It's right here in my pocket!
Duane: You talkin' just like a pimp!
[everyone jeers and looks as Duane with scorn]
#2
Lindy: I'm more man than you'll ever be, and more woman than you'll ever get!
#3
Arresting Cop: Do you own a white Cadillac with the California license plate YNL-H77?
Slide: I sure do.
Arresting Cop: Well, your under arrest! Turn around! You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right...
Slide: [as he is being handcuffed] For what, man?
Arresting Cop: You have over 37 parking violations that you haven paid!
Slide: Oh, no! Man, I gave my sister a lot of money this morning to pay it off.
Mr. B: Look, is there any other way we can straighten this out, officer?
Arresting Cop: [to Mr. B] Afraid not. Stand back, please. We have a warrant for his arrest.
Slide: Listen to me! I gave my sister who works at the May Company a check for $75 to pay it off. I would have paid the tickets off myself but I thew it away, man.
Arresting Cop: Tell it to the judge!
And of course who can forget this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0GT6x66ZQ
posted by me at 8:06 PM
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