Highlights of this day in history: Adlai Stevenson shows photos of Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba; The United Nations admits the People's Republic of China and expels Taiwan; The US and allies invade Grenada; "Charge of the Light Brigade" -The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War; Geoffrey Chaucer dies; Payne Stewart dies in a plane crash.
Other notable October 25th events include:
1415 – The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1760 – George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia.
1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1995 – A commuter train slams into a school bus in Fox River Grove, Illinois, killing seven students.
2007 – The first Airbus A380 passenger flight, operating for Singapore Airlines, with flight number SQ 380, flying scheduled service between Singapore and Sydney, Australia.
I love baklava!
ReplyDelete/oh. wait...
Haven't clicked the link. The Charge of the Light Brigade was the first instance of the awarding of the Victoria Cross. Three medals were given to survining troopers. The medals themselves were made from the melted down cannons captured from the enemy. Also was an example of incompetent leadership.
ReplyDelete/all from the top of my head. :)
Damn, this is really going to screw up my football watching day.
ReplyDelete/beer supply, way good, sleep, not so much
Ooops, I got it wrong on the VC
ReplyDeleteAh well, going to have to upgrade my memory banks again.
G'morning, afternoon all!
ReplyDeleteThis might interest some Mac geeks among you: Google Chrome for Mac developer preview available.
Powerline: The "Chicago Way" won't play in Peoria.
ReplyDelete"President Obama has one particularly good reason for concern that a rising economy might not lift the Democratic boat in 2010 -- his agenda has been so aggressively left-liberal that voters may want to create greater balance in Congress just to check the president's power to effectuate radical change, regardless of how the economy is faring.
This doesn't mean that Obama should tone down his agenda. He has a once in a half-century or so opportunity to move this country decisively towards his leftist vision. The smart move, plainly, is for him to take advantage of that opportunity and hope for the best in 2010.
But if voters are going to be ambivalent or worse about some of Obama's important policy initiatives, it's important from his perspective that they continue to like him and his style of governing. And it's vital that they not fear him or the way he wields power.
This is why the administration is making a potentially serious mistake by taking on a harsh, almost Nixonian air when it comes to dealing with its critics and opponents. The more Obama enables the "Chicago Way" meme to catch on -- by targeting Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, and Humana Corporation, for example -- the more incentive he gives voters to curb his power in 2010.
I don't expect Obama to moderate his administration's approach, however. This, it turns out, is who he is."
Who's gonna pay for 0bamacare?
ReplyDelete"Ask first who won't pay. Doctors? Maybe not. One reason the Senate's latest plan didn't worsen the deficit by the $1 trillion that congressional accountants earlier reckoned was that its writers hid huge sums in Medicare payments off the books. They did this to buy the support of the American Medical Association. Doctors are right not to want to be shafted. Trust that they'll lobby to make sure of it.
Insurance companies won't. Their pleas will be heard, bailouts granted. The industry, in fact, seemed to be going along with Obamacare in hopes of finding a utility-like role in a government-dominated system.
You, however, may have an ATM-like role. The plan assembled by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) dictates premiums on a sliding scale - 12% of income, about $8,700 a year, for the median Waukesha County family, for instance. We'll all be paying extra to cover people who earn less. Those figures assume, by the way, massive, improbable cuts in costs.
Who else pays? The healthy: Patsies who obey the law and buy insurance before they're sick. Their premiums will cover those who don't bother until they've incurred huge bills.
Mainly, the young will pay. They tend to use less care. Obamacare depends on this: Young workers' premiums are needed to fill the pool as aging workers drain it. That's how insurance works, they say. They mistake insurance, which pools similar risks, with the pooling of known dissimilar costs, which is called a raw deal.
The arrangement is like another "compact between generations," Medicare, in which young workers pay with the expectation of collecting later. But Medicare, which works fine for now, will be insolvent by 2017, say its trustees. The young will pay for that now and later.
The real winners in Obamacare aren't the elderly. They're already covered, though Baucus' plan cuts Medicare massively. It is, rather, the pre-retirement demographic, not old enough for Medicare, insured but worried, and costly to cover.
Such people usually are in their peak earning years. They've had time to save up, pay off the mortgage. They are typically far better off than the young who will subsidize them. Yet Congress would transfer huge sums from low-wealth twentysomethings to higher-wealth boomers.
And the young will pay still more. Congress' plans portend huge deficits, even before the evaporation of reformers' fantasies about cutting costs. This will be funded by unprecedented debt. The costs will be paid later, by citizens now so young as to not yet be born.
They'll pay in much higher taxes. They'll pay in withered job opportunities when payroll levies and value added taxes are heaped on as costs spiral. They'll pay as Congress looks for more villains to blame for this debacle and picks some other industry to demolish."
Good morning folks!
ReplyDeleteSomebody mentioned Cornwell's book "Azincourt"on the book thread last night. A great fun read for anybody wishing to learn some history and be entertained while you're at it. The battle was won by the British archers, and lost by the stupidity of the French aristocracy. The expensive shiny suits of armor the French wore slowed them down in the thick mud, while the English bodkin arrow heads punched straight through the armor.
Hey Phil... I saw an episode on the history channel where they went back to the location in the Crimea to reconstruct the Charge of the Light Brigade. They confirmed that the legend of the battle bares little resemblance to what actually happened.
Morning Kenneth. Yeah, and I kinda flubbed my history a bit too. :)
ReplyDelete/gotta get those mental files organized again.
Wretchard: Outlaw
ReplyDelete"The problem of process haunts every “progressive” proposal, especially life and death matters because ultimately “death panel” and euthanasia orders have to be written out by bureaucrats just like the guys you have down at the DMV or the Post Office. And while you probably might prefer to trust the clerk at the DMV over some of your relatives, if you are parent of loving children you will be S.O.L. if the decisions over your welfare are taken from your son and daughter and handed over to the bureaucrat, who might decide your fate on a Monday while eating coffee and donuts, hung over from the weekend. Once upon a time people feared giving the government power over their lives. They insisted for example on extensive due process before you could condemn a Charles Manson to death — and he wasn’t. But today compassion can give the government power over granny that we would never give it over a suspected terrorist in Guantanamo Bay.
One can make the argument that government should act only in cases of compelling public interest and not when someone makes the argument from putative reasons of ‘compassion’ or good feeling. Too little law is often a bad thing. That’s why Wyatt Earp was hired back in the Wild west. With respect to reducing the scope of choice to one bureaucratically mandated process, too much law may be a bad thing too. When we put all our eggs in one basket be ready to make a big, big omelet."
RTWT!
Finally Free,
ReplyDeleteObama insists cost won't rise. If he does manage to bring in public healthcare system that holds costs steady, or even lowers costs as some hyper-partisans are proclaiming, Obama will have accomplished something no other government in the world has ever done. IN every country with public healthcare, the cost rise & rise without limit. The only solution to control runaway healthcare costs is rationed care. Hospitals and doctors will be limited to a finite number of services per year. That what we have in Canada. That's what you will get with ObamaCare.
Moreover, Canadian medicare does not cover meds, physiotherapy, dental or eyecare. For those who can afford it, we buy additional private coverage.
Kenneth, re: Agincourt, that was me. Very good read. And yeah, there seemed to be no leadership on the French side, and a whole lot of folly.
ReplyDeletePhil,
ReplyDeleteWhat you said is pretty accurate. The Charge OLTB was a military dissaster caused by command incompetence. The British charged into the wrong direction, straight at one Russian position while crossing in front of another Russian position. The British cavalry was torn to pieces by the interlocking enemy canon fire. The surviving British commanders covered up their incompetence by promoting a myth of courage, and by spreading the rumour that the Turkish allies had let them down. Not so, the Turks held their position under incredible fire from the Russians.
Yeah, the part I got wrong was about the VC. Wrong battle all together.
ReplyDeleteIf Team Obama is so damn sure of their policies, they would be taking the high road when dealing with the Republicans.
ReplyDeleteOf course, they are not sure of these policies. They wrap them up as something they are not, conceal the real and hidden nature of them and sell them as nice and sweet sounding facade.
Obamacare is an attempt to take over the medical insurance delivery system in the USA and put private (and "greedy & evil" too)medical insurance out of business. Cap N' Trade is a giant negative reinforment program designed to tax the living crap out of everyone and do very little actual reduction of the evil greenhouse gases.
Both of these are about control. Government control and money. But, you would never know this if you listened to Team Obama.
Israeli Police storm Jerusalem's holiest site
ReplyDeleteThe headline is deceiving. Why did they "storm" the site?
Centaur said...
ReplyDeleteKenneth, re: Agincourt, that was me. Very good read. And yeah, there seemed to be no leadership on the French side, and a whole lot of folly.
Technology did the French in....they were used to fighting as mounted knights and hacking the English to little bits. The longbow changed the nature of European warfare.
Centaur,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed how Cornwell worked in the technical information about how English warbows were made, the mass production of arrows and the training required to use them. A few weeks ago, I met a fellow at a large farmers market with a tent & table set up where he was selling authentic handmade yew bows (& other woods too). Man, these were beautiful pieces! For some reason my wife didn't think I really needed to spend $1000 on one.
The Al-Aqsa mosque was built as an insult to the Jewish people. Just as every church and synagoge the Muslims converted into a mosque when they took over an area was.
ReplyDeleteThe linking of Jerusalem to the Koran is a stretch and the fact that they built that POS on top of the most holy spot in all of Judaism is an afront.
It is a beautiful building and the architecture is very nice, but that is not a "holy site" for Islam. That is BS.
For some reason my wife didn't think I really needed to spend $1000 on one.
ReplyDeleteAhhhh, the joys of being single. :D
/not that I can afford one either...
It's a bit early, and I do not see Desert Sage around, but here some Morning Helen for you all:
ReplyDeleteVeteran reporter's 5 lessons for Obama
Re: Agincourt: did anybody yet link the "St. Crispin's Day Speech" from Shakespeare's Henry V ?
ReplyDeleteTo make up for the Helen post, here's an interesting one about Mayan pyramids. I will travel down there one day to see of that cool stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe Forgotten City of Mirador
Good morning y'all - from a cold (46 degrees when I awoke, going up to 68 degress)mostly sunny Charlotte!
ReplyDeleteI'm doing fine, though really tired cause we hadda call the cops at 2:30 this morning and I didn't get back to sleep until around 3:30 AM.
How is everyone doing today?
Call the cops at 230am!?!
ReplyDeleteAbout the Charge of the Light Brigade...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Gallant-Six-Hundred-Tragedy-Obsessions/dp/B001QV409E
MANY
TO
BLAME,
R
Desert Dog - yeah why? They got people who are supposed to be working at that hour!?
ReplyDeleteGak - not only is the headline misleading but it is insulting to boot. the mosque is not the holiest tot eh muslims and surely not the Jews. The Western Wall is the holiest. All around the NYT is servingup its regular pile of steaming dog shit.
ReplyDeleteGood morning all.
Real: Whats up with cops at 2:30? Rowdy neighbors?
ReplyDeleteI hope it was nothing bad, RW, that's all.
ReplyDeleteOrigin of Specious - Nah, nothing that simple.
ReplyDeleteMom got up to go to the bathroom, sneaked a peak through her blinds to see if it
was raining (??) and saw a car parked by the garbage Dumpster with it's lights out (Dumpster is opposite and 100 feet or so away from Mom's windows). Mom thought that was strange, so she went to bathroom, checked again and it was still there so she came in AND GOT ME UP -and I saw the car, mom said it'd been there like that for 15-20 minutes or so, so it wasn't someone dropping off a used and broken stove (which is against the rules here) or anything. We called the local Poice, within one minute a patrol car went past and just kept going, so we called back 10 minutes later when the car was still there and the cop who'd drove past the first
time came past again and then the cop came to our door and said it was just some young woman who couldn't find a parking place near where one of her friends lived (she was visiting) but the whole thing took like over an hour. I'm exhausted but have to medicate now so can't just hop back into bed.
Such excitement!
////
Shit.
Thanks DD - nothing bad, just a buncha lost sleep is all.
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing today?
@Origin of Specious:
ReplyDeleteBottom story of the day: When it comes to Israel, the NYT has its head under its tail
real: Sorry to hear of the "excitement." very glad to hear it was nothing serious.
ReplyDeleteFF: LOL. I never heard that before. Nice euphamism (sp?) for head up ass.
ReplyDeleteOrigin of Specious - Yeah, me too! But two years ago someone DID TRY try to break into our apartment through Mom's bedroom windows and that was serious so we treated the dark, parked car suspicious as hell!
ReplyDeleteReal: ANYTHING out of the ordinary around your house should be treated with suspicion
ReplyDeleterender64 said...
ReplyDeleteYour Forum is empty.
/300,000+ Wehrmacht encircled history is a bitch
I was going for a hike, but my fellow hikers are still sleeping.
ReplyDeleteI guess when you are such big pussies that you let a rag tag band of terrorists take over you government, and routinely get you ass kicked by the evil Jews, this is all you have left:
ReplyDeleteBEIRUT (AP) -- Lebanese chefs prepared a massive plate of hummus weighing over two tons Saturday that broke a world record organizers said was previously held by Israel - a bid to reaffirm proprietorship over the popular Middle Eastern dip.
"Come and fight for your bite, you know you're right!" was the slogan for the event - part of a simmering war over regional cuisine between Lebanon and Israel, which have had tense political relations for decades.
Lebanese businessmen accuse Israel of stealing a host of traditional Middle Eastern dishes, particularly hummus, and marketing them worldwide as Israeli.
"Lebanon is trying to win a battle against Israel by registering this new Guinness World Record and telling the whole world that hummus is a Lebanese product, its part of our traditions," said Fady Jreissati, vice president of operations at International Fairs and Promotions group, the event's organizer.
DD: I love to hike alone, especially out in the desert
ReplyDeleteHey DD - I thought you said last night/early this morning, that you liked to hike alone?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are going with fellow hikers this time; let 'em sleep for another 10 minutes then yell "COUGAR"!!
That'll wake 'em up!
Shocking news from Ireland!
ReplyDeleteShopkeeper to electrocute drunken revellers who wee
Origin of Specious - You DO understand the dangers of hiking alone in the wilderness doncha?
ReplyDeleteI mean any small thing can become a BIG DEAL - even just spraining your ankle or something could keep you from getting to help.
Just sayin.............
Morning all, new thread up with something a little different for today.
ReplyDeleteI have done this trail before, there are loads of people out this time of year. If my #2 and #3 sons fail to roll out of bed, I will take off without them. The weather is perfect in the morning.
ReplyDeleteReal: I hike as far from people comensurate with my outdoor skills - meaning not too far. For example, I took a day hike a few weeks ago on a remote part of the ice age trail in Wisconsin. Although I was only gone for a few hours, I had food and water for a few days, rain gear, extra clothes, first aid, etc.
ReplyDeleteI try to have a healthy respect for nature and my own fallibility.
Moving over to new thread!
ReplyDelete@Origin: hummus/khumus/khoumous/choomoos (depending on the transliteration) is a generic Middle Eastern thing, not just Israeli or Lebanese. It's a good cheap (and vegetarian) protein source, but many Westerners (including many Ashkenazi Jews) might like to take "Beano" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_galactosidase) when eating large amounts of the stuff (or risk being accused of waging gas warfare ;-))
ReplyDelete