The Real State of the Union
Tomorrow night President Obama will give his annual State of the Union Address. Almost everyone who is anyone of major importance in Washington, D. C. will be there. The Vice-President. All nine of the Supreme Court Justices. Fourteen of the fifteen members of President Obama's Cabinet (the 15th is the "designated survivor and watches from another location, just in case of a catastrophe wiping out the rest of our government). Almost every member of Congress (again, some are kept elsewhere to ensure government would continue, "just in case").
Why does the President make this annual speech? Because of this text from our Constitution regarding the duties of a president: "He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Thomas Jefferson decided to send his message to Congress in writing, being of the opinion that making such a speech would make him look more like a king than a president. It wasn't formally referred to as the "State of the Union" until President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the label. But there's no mandate to deliver the message in person, and as recently as President Jimmy Carter, presidents have chosen to send a written message to Congress in lieu of making a speech.
We always hear about the strength of the "Union" and the President pays tribute to guests in the gallery who have done things worthy of note. But what is the real state of our union at the moment? It isn't really discussed in this speech as it probably should be. I see the present state of our nation as follows:
As of my last glance at www.usdebtclock.org, the national debt of the Federal government stood at $17.33 trillion dollars. $54,618 per citizen. $150,253 per taxpayer. The number of people actually not working, adding together those on unemployment and those no longer receiving unemployment who have stopped looking for work is over 19 million, nearly double the amount of the 10 million who are "officially" unemployed and used to create that artificial number showing unemployment is shrinking. If measured without gimmicks, the number of people who want to work in our country who are not working is growing, not shrinking.
Homelessness is increasing. Unemployment is increasing. The concentration of wealth at the top of the income scale is increasing. The inequality of income distribution is increasing. These are issues that get nowhere near the amount of attention they deserve.
More Americans are living below the poverty line since the Great Depression of the 1930s. One in five households is receiving food stamps. One person going to bed hungry in a nation of so much food production is tragic. Millions going to bed hungry is inexcusable.
The party that says Taxed Enough Already aren't wrong when they call on the American people to be self-reliant, in a nation where there is means and opportunity to provide for oneself. The stockholders of corporations are much more interested in earning more and more on that investment than they are ensuring there are Americans able to afford the products and services these corporations generate.
It isn't impossible. Look at Sam's Club Warehouses and Costco. The former is laying off 5% of its workforce (2,500 people), adding to the unemployment lines. Costco is hiring. Read this excerpt from the Costco employment website to see why: "Costco offers benefits to hourly full-time employees first of the month after 90 days on the job and hourly part-time employees first of the month after 180 days. Salaried employees are offered benefits the first of the month after date of hire. Those benefits all may include health, dental & vision care, a prescription drug plan, 401k plan, disability & life insurance and a variety of work/life programs to meet employee needs."
Both businesses are sellers of large quantity items in big box warehouses. Membership clubs that sell at a discount to only those members. Costco's CEO knows that investing in employees pays off with lower turnover, lower training costs and the fact that a happy employee population has fewer sick days. Sometimes narrow focus on the bottom line results is fiscal blindness in regards to the big picture.
Government at every level in this nation has unfunded and underfunded liabilities in pensions and benefits that they continue to ignore. Using the tactic of the ostrich is not going to help.
That's how I see the State of our Union. Let's see if President Obama has any real solutions.
* * *
Two men apply for law licenses with the state of California. He graduated from a law school that is...well, less than top tier. Only 45% of its graduates pass the bar exam. One once used a false alien registration number and falsely attested that he was a lawful permanent residence. Then he failed to disclose this information on his application to join the bar. He is also in this country in violation of the nation's immigration laws. He cannot be hired by any law firm and almost certainly cannot appear in or practice law in the federal court system.
The other man graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law School, regularly in the top 14 law schools in the nation as ranked by U. S. World News and Reports. As far as I can determine, he did not fail to disclose any violations of the law, or any other types of transgressions from his application.
So the California Supreme Court decides that the first man, Sergio Garcia, can be granted a law license, and the second man, Stephen Glass cannot. Why? Because during a three year period that ended almost fifteen years ago, he fabricated information for articles he wrote for "The New Republic." The court said he'd failed to "sustain his heavy burden of rehabilitation..." and questioned his moral fitness to be an attorney.
I disagree with both decisions by the court. Yes, it is really, really wrong to do what Stephen Glass did, on a moral basis. But he apparently committed no crimes. He was never prosecuted. He's spent 15 years since his days making up information for his supposedly factual writings being a pariah. How much time does one have to spend before we begin to forgive them their transgressions. He didn't kill anyone. He didn't enable others to engage in criminal behavior.
My objections to giving Sergio Garcia are well known. We need to fix the immigration problem rather than making patchwork solutions like the one that permitted him to get around a 1996 federal law prohibiting states from granting professional licenses to those here in violation of immigration law.
Personally I find the fact that Mr. Glass (a professional journalist at the time) did what he did, to be reprehensible. However, I also think that he's paid his penance.
* * *
Rand Paul is dredging up the affair between then President Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky to label Clinton as a "predator" as his response to claims Republicans are conducting a war on women. Well Senator Paul, how about we discuss former Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who was having an affair with a staffer and paying hush money to keep it quiet? Former Senator Bob Packwood, who resigned rather than face Senate hearings on allegations of sexual harassment of at least ten women who had worked in his offices?
The notion that one side of the political aisle is any worse or better when it comes to mistreating women in the workplace is silly. People are people. There's no causal connection or correlation between one's politics and one's proclivity to be a sexual predator.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Movie theater owners are demanding that the trailers they are obligated to show before the feature film plays be made shorter. Maybe if they didn't insist on showing seven or eight of them, their length wouldn't be an issue.
While Quentin Tarrantino wasn't required to put a copyright notice on his pilfered screenplay before it was pilfered, it would have been a good idea to do so.
While I'm usually game to read almost anything, I can't imagine bringing myself to read the letters of Heinrich Himmler that were recently published online. If the universe was just, he'd be in a Hell where he was being led to the showers and being gassed to death over and over.
Did I really just hear Newt Gingrich criticize Hilary Clinton because she hasn't driven a car herself for more than a decade? What a stupid non-issue to raise.
The only surprise about recent revelations about misconduct by general officers in our military is that anyone finds it surprising. It's amusing that a general who warned his troops that the Army has a zero tolerance for sexual harassment and sexual assault said those words when he was under investigation for groping one of his mistresses (yes, it reads plural) on numerous occasions. BTW, Senator Paul, the general in that case, almost certainly a registered Republican, was having affairs with two of his subordinates. Still want to try and claim one party has a monopoly on sexual predators?
One of the reasons I don't watch awards shows (the Oscars and Independent Spirit Awards being exceptions) came to pass last night. The Grammys honored Cory Monteith, a non-Grammy winner in their "In Memoriam" tribute, and failed to include multiple Grammy winner Jeff Hanneman, guitarist for Slayer. Disgusting. Something wrong with heavy metal, NARAS?
Would someone please explain to Yahoo's editors the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual? Oh wait, apparently no one edits the pablum written by Yahoo's writers. Never mind.
So the actor who played the Marlboro Man in commercials died of lung cancer? No surprise there.
It has to really hurt to be a high school boys basketball team and lose a game in overtime where the entire overtime was played as a 5 on 3 and you had the 5.
* * *
January 27th in History:
98 – Trajan succeeded his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire would reach its maximum extent.
661 – The Rashidun Caliphate ends with the death of Ali.
1142 – Song Dynasty General Yue Fei is executed.
1186 – Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, marries Constance of Sicily.
1343 – Pope Clement VI issues the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. Nearly 200 years later, Martin Luther would protest this.
1593 – The Vatican opens the seven-year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno.
1606 – Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.
1695 – Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his abdication in 1703.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Henry Knox's "noble train of artillery" arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1785 – The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States.
1825 – The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears".
1868 – Boshin War: The Battle of Toba-Fushimi between forces of the Tokugawa shogunate and pro-Imperial factions begins, which will end in defeat for the shogunate, and is a pivotal point in the Meiji Restoration.
1869 – Boshin War: Tokugawa rebels establish the Ezo Republic in Hokkaidō.
1870 – The Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity is founded at DePauw University.
1888 – The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C.
1909 – The Young Left is founded in Norway.
1927 – Ibn Saud takes the title of King of Nejd.
1939 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
1943 – World War II: The VIII Bomber Command dispatched ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany of the war.
1944 – World War II: The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1945 – World War II: The Red Army liberates the remained inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazi Germans on the territory of Poland.
1951 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat.
1961 – Soviet submarine S-80 sinks with all hands lost.
1967 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
1967 – The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.
1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.
1974 – The Brisbane River breaches its banks causing the largest flood to affect the city of Brisbane in the 20th century.
1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.
1983 – The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, breaks through.
1984 – Pop singer Michael Jackson suffers second degree burns to his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium.
1993 – American-born sumo wrestler Akebono Tarō becomes the first foreigner to be promoted to the sport's highest rank of yokozuna.
1996 – In a military coup Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane.
1996 – Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
2002 – An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others.
2003 – The first selections for the National Recording Registry are announced by the Library of Congress.
2006 – Western Union discontinues its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services.
2010 – The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis ends when Porfirio Lobo Sosa becomes the new President of Honduras.
2011 – Arab Spring: The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sana'a.
2013 – 241 people die in a nightclub fire in the city of Santa Maria, Brazil.
Famous Folk Born on January 27th:
Samuel Foote
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Lewis Carroll
Samuel Gompers
Elizabeth Israel (she lived from 1875-2003)
Hyman Rickover
Otto P. Weyland
William Randolph Hearst, Jr.
Skitch Henderson
Elmore James
Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.
Donna Reed
Bobby Bland
Troy Donahue
James Cromwell
Nick Mason
Ed Schultz
Brian Engblom
John Roberts
Mimi Rogers
Frank Miller
Susanna Thompson
Cris Collinsworth
Keith Olbermann
Karen Velez
Bridget Fonda
Tamlyn Tomita
Patton Oswalt
Josh Randall
Jake Pavelka
Rosamund Pike (she was friends with Chelsea Clinton when they were in college together)
Movie quotes today come from "The Road to Wellville", one of the few films in 1994 that wasn't very good, but it has some very funny lines/moments:
Interviewer: Sir, how often should one evacuate one's bowels?
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: One should never, ever, interrupt one's desire to defecate. I have inquired at the Bronx and London Zoos as to the daily bowel evacuations of primates. It is not once, twice, or three times, sir, but four. At the end of an average day, their cages are filled with a veritable mountain of natural health.
Interviewer: And, sex?
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: Sex is the sewer drain of a healthy body, sir! Any use of the sexual act other than procreation is a waste of vital energy! Wasted seeds are wasted lives!
#2
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: My own stools, Sir, are gigantic and have no more odor than a hot biscuit.
#3
William Lightbody: Oh, no, no, I can't eat fifteen gallons of yoghurt.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: Oh, it's not going in that end, Mr. Lightbody.
#4
Waiter: What would you like for dinner?
William Lightbody: Toast.
Waiter: And how would you like that, sir?
William Lightbody: Toasted.
#5
William Lightbody: They're dead! They've been electrocuted!
Endymion Hart-Jones: Rather a severe cure for flatulence, I do admit.
Why does the President make this annual speech? Because of this text from our Constitution regarding the duties of a president: "He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Thomas Jefferson decided to send his message to Congress in writing, being of the opinion that making such a speech would make him look more like a king than a president. It wasn't formally referred to as the "State of the Union" until President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the label. But there's no mandate to deliver the message in person, and as recently as President Jimmy Carter, presidents have chosen to send a written message to Congress in lieu of making a speech.
We always hear about the strength of the "Union" and the President pays tribute to guests in the gallery who have done things worthy of note. But what is the real state of our union at the moment? It isn't really discussed in this speech as it probably should be. I see the present state of our nation as follows:
As of my last glance at www.usdebtclock.org, the national debt of the Federal government stood at $17.33 trillion dollars. $54,618 per citizen. $150,253 per taxpayer. The number of people actually not working, adding together those on unemployment and those no longer receiving unemployment who have stopped looking for work is over 19 million, nearly double the amount of the 10 million who are "officially" unemployed and used to create that artificial number showing unemployment is shrinking. If measured without gimmicks, the number of people who want to work in our country who are not working is growing, not shrinking.
Homelessness is increasing. Unemployment is increasing. The concentration of wealth at the top of the income scale is increasing. The inequality of income distribution is increasing. These are issues that get nowhere near the amount of attention they deserve.
More Americans are living below the poverty line since the Great Depression of the 1930s. One in five households is receiving food stamps. One person going to bed hungry in a nation of so much food production is tragic. Millions going to bed hungry is inexcusable.
The party that says Taxed Enough Already aren't wrong when they call on the American people to be self-reliant, in a nation where there is means and opportunity to provide for oneself. The stockholders of corporations are much more interested in earning more and more on that investment than they are ensuring there are Americans able to afford the products and services these corporations generate.
It isn't impossible. Look at Sam's Club Warehouses and Costco. The former is laying off 5% of its workforce (2,500 people), adding to the unemployment lines. Costco is hiring. Read this excerpt from the Costco employment website to see why: "Costco offers benefits to hourly full-time employees first of the month after 90 days on the job and hourly part-time employees first of the month after 180 days. Salaried employees are offered benefits the first of the month after date of hire. Those benefits all may include health, dental & vision care, a prescription drug plan, 401k plan, disability & life insurance and a variety of work/life programs to meet employee needs."
Both businesses are sellers of large quantity items in big box warehouses. Membership clubs that sell at a discount to only those members. Costco's CEO knows that investing in employees pays off with lower turnover, lower training costs and the fact that a happy employee population has fewer sick days. Sometimes narrow focus on the bottom line results is fiscal blindness in regards to the big picture.
Government at every level in this nation has unfunded and underfunded liabilities in pensions and benefits that they continue to ignore. Using the tactic of the ostrich is not going to help.
That's how I see the State of our Union. Let's see if President Obama has any real solutions.
* * *
Two men apply for law licenses with the state of California. He graduated from a law school that is...well, less than top tier. Only 45% of its graduates pass the bar exam. One once used a false alien registration number and falsely attested that he was a lawful permanent residence. Then he failed to disclose this information on his application to join the bar. He is also in this country in violation of the nation's immigration laws. He cannot be hired by any law firm and almost certainly cannot appear in or practice law in the federal court system.
The other man graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law School, regularly in the top 14 law schools in the nation as ranked by U. S. World News and Reports. As far as I can determine, he did not fail to disclose any violations of the law, or any other types of transgressions from his application.
So the California Supreme Court decides that the first man, Sergio Garcia, can be granted a law license, and the second man, Stephen Glass cannot. Why? Because during a three year period that ended almost fifteen years ago, he fabricated information for articles he wrote for "The New Republic." The court said he'd failed to "sustain his heavy burden of rehabilitation..." and questioned his moral fitness to be an attorney.
I disagree with both decisions by the court. Yes, it is really, really wrong to do what Stephen Glass did, on a moral basis. But he apparently committed no crimes. He was never prosecuted. He's spent 15 years since his days making up information for his supposedly factual writings being a pariah. How much time does one have to spend before we begin to forgive them their transgressions. He didn't kill anyone. He didn't enable others to engage in criminal behavior.
My objections to giving Sergio Garcia are well known. We need to fix the immigration problem rather than making patchwork solutions like the one that permitted him to get around a 1996 federal law prohibiting states from granting professional licenses to those here in violation of immigration law.
Personally I find the fact that Mr. Glass (a professional journalist at the time) did what he did, to be reprehensible. However, I also think that he's paid his penance.
* * *
Rand Paul is dredging up the affair between then President Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky to label Clinton as a "predator" as his response to claims Republicans are conducting a war on women. Well Senator Paul, how about we discuss former Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who was having an affair with a staffer and paying hush money to keep it quiet? Former Senator Bob Packwood, who resigned rather than face Senate hearings on allegations of sexual harassment of at least ten women who had worked in his offices?
The notion that one side of the political aisle is any worse or better when it comes to mistreating women in the workplace is silly. People are people. There's no causal connection or correlation between one's politics and one's proclivity to be a sexual predator.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Movie theater owners are demanding that the trailers they are obligated to show before the feature film plays be made shorter. Maybe if they didn't insist on showing seven or eight of them, their length wouldn't be an issue.
While Quentin Tarrantino wasn't required to put a copyright notice on his pilfered screenplay before it was pilfered, it would have been a good idea to do so.
While I'm usually game to read almost anything, I can't imagine bringing myself to read the letters of Heinrich Himmler that were recently published online. If the universe was just, he'd be in a Hell where he was being led to the showers and being gassed to death over and over.
Did I really just hear Newt Gingrich criticize Hilary Clinton because she hasn't driven a car herself for more than a decade? What a stupid non-issue to raise.
The only surprise about recent revelations about misconduct by general officers in our military is that anyone finds it surprising. It's amusing that a general who warned his troops that the Army has a zero tolerance for sexual harassment and sexual assault said those words when he was under investigation for groping one of his mistresses (yes, it reads plural) on numerous occasions. BTW, Senator Paul, the general in that case, almost certainly a registered Republican, was having affairs with two of his subordinates. Still want to try and claim one party has a monopoly on sexual predators?
One of the reasons I don't watch awards shows (the Oscars and Independent Spirit Awards being exceptions) came to pass last night. The Grammys honored Cory Monteith, a non-Grammy winner in their "In Memoriam" tribute, and failed to include multiple Grammy winner Jeff Hanneman, guitarist for Slayer. Disgusting. Something wrong with heavy metal, NARAS?
Would someone please explain to Yahoo's editors the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual? Oh wait, apparently no one edits the pablum written by Yahoo's writers. Never mind.
So the actor who played the Marlboro Man in commercials died of lung cancer? No surprise there.
It has to really hurt to be a high school boys basketball team and lose a game in overtime where the entire overtime was played as a 5 on 3 and you had the 5.
* * *
January 27th in History:
98 – Trajan succeeded his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire would reach its maximum extent.
661 – The Rashidun Caliphate ends with the death of Ali.
1142 – Song Dynasty General Yue Fei is executed.
1186 – Henry VI, the son and heir of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, marries Constance of Sicily.
1343 – Pope Clement VI issues the papal bull Unigenitus to justify the power of the pope and the use of indulgences. Nearly 200 years later, Martin Luther would protest this.
1593 – The Vatican opens the seven-year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno.
1606 – Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.
1695 – Mustafa II becomes the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul on the death of Ahmed II. Mustafa rules until his abdication in 1703.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: Henry Knox's "noble train of artillery" arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1785 – The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States.
1825 – The U.S. Congress approves Indian Territory (in what is present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears".
1868 – Boshin War: The Battle of Toba-Fushimi between forces of the Tokugawa shogunate and pro-Imperial factions begins, which will end in defeat for the shogunate, and is a pivotal point in the Meiji Restoration.
1869 – Boshin War: Tokugawa rebels establish the Ezo Republic in Hokkaidō.
1870 – The Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity is founded at DePauw University.
1888 – The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C.
1909 – The Young Left is founded in Norway.
1927 – Ibn Saud takes the title of King of Nejd.
1939 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
1943 – World War II: The VIII Bomber Command dispatched ninety-one B-17s and B-24s to attack the U-Boat construction yards at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. This was the first American bombing attack on Germany of the war.
1944 – World War II: The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is lifted.
1945 – World War II: The Red Army liberates the remained inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazi Germans on the territory of Poland.
1951 – Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flat.
1961 – Soviet submarine S-80 sinks with all hands lost.
1967 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
1967 – The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.
1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict's last recorded American combat casualty.
1974 – The Brisbane River breaches its banks causing the largest flood to affect the city of Brisbane in the 20th century.
1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian Caper.
1983 – The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world's longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, breaks through.
1984 – Pop singer Michael Jackson suffers second degree burns to his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium.
1993 – American-born sumo wrestler Akebono Tarō becomes the first foreigner to be promoted to the sport's highest rank of yokozuna.
1996 – In a military coup Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane.
1996 – Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
2002 – An explosion at a military storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 1,100 people and displaces over 20,000 others.
2003 – The first selections for the National Recording Registry are announced by the Library of Congress.
2006 – Western Union discontinues its Telegram and Commercial Messaging services.
2010 – The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis ends when Porfirio Lobo Sosa becomes the new President of Honduras.
2011 – Arab Spring: The Yemeni Revolution begins as over 16,000 protestors demonstrate in Sana'a.
2013 – 241 people die in a nightclub fire in the city of Santa Maria, Brazil.
Famous Folk Born on January 27th:
Samuel Foote
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Lewis Carroll
Samuel Gompers
Elizabeth Israel (she lived from 1875-2003)
Hyman Rickover
Otto P. Weyland
William Randolph Hearst, Jr.
Skitch Henderson
Elmore James
Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.
Donna Reed
Bobby Bland
Troy Donahue
James Cromwell
Nick Mason
Ed Schultz
Brian Engblom
John Roberts
Mimi Rogers
Frank Miller
Susanna Thompson
Cris Collinsworth
Keith Olbermann
Karen Velez
Bridget Fonda
Tamlyn Tomita
Patton Oswalt
Josh Randall
Jake Pavelka
Rosamund Pike (she was friends with Chelsea Clinton when they were in college together)
Movie quotes today come from "The Road to Wellville", one of the few films in 1994 that wasn't very good, but it has some very funny lines/moments:
Interviewer: Sir, how often should one evacuate one's bowels?
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: One should never, ever, interrupt one's desire to defecate. I have inquired at the Bronx and London Zoos as to the daily bowel evacuations of primates. It is not once, twice, or three times, sir, but four. At the end of an average day, their cages are filled with a veritable mountain of natural health.
Interviewer: And, sex?
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: Sex is the sewer drain of a healthy body, sir! Any use of the sexual act other than procreation is a waste of vital energy! Wasted seeds are wasted lives!
#2
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: My own stools, Sir, are gigantic and have no more odor than a hot biscuit.
#3
William Lightbody: Oh, no, no, I can't eat fifteen gallons of yoghurt.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: Oh, it's not going in that end, Mr. Lightbody.
#4
Waiter: What would you like for dinner?
William Lightbody: Toast.
Waiter: And how would you like that, sir?
William Lightbody: Toasted.
#5
William Lightbody: They're dead! They've been electrocuted!
Endymion Hart-Jones: Rather a severe cure for flatulence, I do admit.
posted by me at 9:05 PM
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