It's all over but the screaming and shouting. A country whose citizenry isn't outraged by this (see below) is a country that doesn't deserve what was bequeathed to it.

Mark Penn's two firms awarded millions from stimulus for public relations work

A contract worth nearly $6 million in stimulus funds was awarded by the Obama adminstration to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster in 2008.

Labels: history, weekend

...was a real a-hole!

(1) Everton in talks to sign Donovan on loan

(1a) Howard: Donovan Will Bring Strength

(2) How to Make GeekKids Watch Sports

(3) Impotent futurism: the design of Allende's cyber-utopian boondoggle (first seen on Instapundit)

(4) From the Greek poet Hesiod:

And I wish that I had no part
in the fifth generation
of men, but had died before it came,
Or been born afterward:
For here now is the age or iron. Never by daytime
will there be an end to hard work and pain
nor in the night
to weariness.

(5) Shameful: 83 percent of Americans failed a basic test on knowledge of the American Revolution and the principles that have united all Americans.

Labels: history, quotes, soccer, weekend

In Soccer, It's Manchester Divided: A Gritty Town Finds Itself With Two of the World's Richest Teams—and an Epic Rivalry (WSJ)

Grave Matters: The surprising origins and enduring importance of Arlington National Cemetery. (WSJ)

Labels: books, history, soccer, weekend

On July 7, 1779 the British attacked Fairfield and most of the down town area was razed. This weekend the Fairfield Museum and History Center had a festival commemorating the 230th anniversary of the attack.


Red coats press their advantage.


A costly advance.


Held in reserve.

Other Photos
A soldier's gear
Fairfield's Militia needs you!
Requisitioned
The Union Flag

Labels: england, history, weekend

"He rode hell for leather to escape..."

This is how Adrian Goldworthy describes the flight of Constantine to Britain in How Rome Fell. What a brilliant use of words.

Labels: books, history, weekend

The vast sweep of an early Revolutionary War battle, with well-trained and equipped British troops on the left and the raggle-taggle citizens' army ranged against them, brings to life a stirring chapter in America's history.

- Excerpt from Walt Disney's EPCOT Center: Creating the New World of Tomorrow. Panorama created for The American Adventure.

Labels: history, weekend

"The emperor needed the wealthier classes to help him run the empire. Senators in particular were the class he lived amongst and their attitude towards him tended to dictate how he would be portrayed in later histories."

- How Rome Fell, Adrian Goldsworthy

Related
Amid Criticism, Post Drops "Appalling" Plan to Sell Access (ABC)
Barack Obama Seeks to Turn America into a Third World Country
Again, Why the Diffidence?
National Security & the Cult of Personality
Congress's Travel Tab Swells: Spending on Taxpayer-Funded Trips Rises Tenfold; From Italy to the Galápagos (WSJ)

Labels: dodd, history, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, quotes, reid

I've just started this meaty book by Adrian Goldsworthy and will eventually post a full book review. For now, I found this quote in the preface rousing:

The Roman Empire did not fall quickly, but as part of a very slow process, and this should warn us against magnifying current events and their likely consequences on the long-term fortune of countries. Britain has been a fairly depressing place in the last decade or so. Ministers caught out in incompetence, corruption or blatant deceitfulness cling on to power like limpets, first denying everything, before finally apologising and expecting this to be enough. Bureaucracy and regulation continue to grow apace, while the basic efficiency of institutions declines, rendering them incapable of even the apparently simple tasks. Yet while the number of civil servants rises, the size of the armed forces shrinks at the very time they are more committed to serious campaigns. It would be easy to draw parallels with the Roman Empire in the fourth century. The self-righteous tone of so much government legislation certainly chimes with late Late Roman imperial decrees, as does the apparent failure of so much of this to achieve its aim. Such comparisons are unlikely to assist our analysis of the Roman Empire, and would be no more than the author indulging himself. Understanding the history must come first.

And as soon as I read the word limpets I thought about this post at Instapundit (and hyenas).
Our elected officials are like a pack of hyenas (Dodd and his sweetheart loan from Countrywide). I can just see Obey and Waters standing over the carcasses of hard-working taxpayers, forcibly extracting money as payoffs to special interest groups and to engorge their own private coffers. These are filthy people.

en·gorge
- verb (used with object), verb (used without object), -gorged, -gorg·ing.
1. to swallow greedily; glut or gorge.

Labels: books, dodd, history, quotes

I know Obama is fond of Churchill but he may take issue with this quote:

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent trait is the equal sharing of misery."

- Sir Winston Churchill

Related
Obama & Churchill & the President's Sources
Obama Throws Churchill Out of Oval Office
Barack Obama sends bust of Winston Churchill on its way back to Britain

Labels: history, obama

I just finished Conquering Gotham by Jill Jonnes. It is an historical narrative of the building of Penn Station (and its tunnels) by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

I'm going to skip the review (dirty politicians, distinguished engineers, despicable journalists, dastardly union leaders and a couple of dashing industrialists that make Jeffrey R Immelt look like a dandy) and post links* to some of the main characters.

Alexander J. Cassatt
McKim, Mead and White
Daniel Hudson Burnham
Samuel Rea
Evelyn Nesbit
William Randolph Hearst
Seth Low
Richard Croker
Colonel DeWitt Clinton Haskins
Gustav Lindenthal
Mary Cassatt

This is a gripping tale of blood, toil, tears and sweat and it makes you wonder whether or not we squandered such an embarrassment of riches. I will be taking Burgoyne by rail to the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum in Strasburg, PA this summer to see the statue of Alexander Cassatt that once adorned the steps leading from the Arcade to the General Waiting Room at Penn Station.

Update
I forgot August Belmont Jr.! A big omission considering his namesake is on one of my favorite places to drop some coin.

*Wikipedia Free

Labels: books, history, railroads

With his simian air of ferocious, sullen reserve, he exuded an intensely intimidating power dedicated to horses, graft and politics. For decades, Tammany Hall had ruled through a very simple formula, explained by Croker in a rare interview: "Think of the hundreds of foreigners dumped into our city. They are too old to go to school. There is not a mugwump [reformer] who would shake hands with them...Tammany looks after them for the sake of their vote, grafts them upon the Republic, makes them citizens in short; and although you may not like our motives or our methods, what other agency is there...If we go down into the gutter, it is because there are men in the gutter."

It was really quite elementary, wrote muckraker Lincoln Steffens: Tammany owned the "plain people" because in the absence of government services, Tammany provided a helping hand. "They speak pleasant words, smile friendly smiles, notice the baby, give picnics up the River or the Sound, or a slap on the back; find jobs, most of them at city expense, but they also have news-stands, peddling privileges, railroad and other business places to dispense." And with those votes, Tammany ruled the city government and its tens of thousands of jobs and the vast ocean of boodle harvested from controlling the docks, the police, the health department, and the courts. It was a reliably rich take.

- Conquering Gotham, Jill Jonnes

History Repeats Itself

Christopher Dodd coerced banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to extend loans to uncreditworthy persons. In a free market, unfettered by interlopers, lending institutions would not have assumed such risk.

Thanks to Sen. Christopher Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank and others, the lending industry spent years issuing mortgages to millions of Americans who had no hope of repaying. Sen. Dodd and Rep. Frank believe homeownership is a right unfettered by income or credit history, and over time, they were instrumental in forcing the industry to lend to some of the least creditworthy Americans.

As everyone knows, the results were disastrous. The housing bubble they helped create and inflate has burst, driving the economy into recession, the lending industry into chaos and millions of Americans into foreclosure, bankruptcy or both. (But at least Sen. Dodd got his millions in campaign cash from the financial industry and special rates on his mortgages from Countrywide Financial.)

And how about this via Instapundit:

The main problem with a payroll tax holiday is that it minimizes Congressional opportunities for graft and larding out goodies to their contributors. That makes it both wise and politically unfeasible, at least until we get a better class of congresscritter.

How about one more? This one puts the DEMOCRATIC graft in perspective:

A GS-9, or a lowly municipal clerk, has far more life-and-death power over us. It's they to whom we must turn to for permission to build a house, ply a trade, open a restaurant and myriad other activities. It's government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable. Coercive power goes a long way toward explaining political corruption.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's hawking of Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat; Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel's alleged tax-writing favors; former Rep. William Jefferson's business bribes; and the Jack Abramoff scandal are mere pimples on the government corruption landscape. We can think of these and similar acts as jailable illegal corruption. They pale in comparison to what's for all practical purposes the same thing, but simply legal corruption.

The cost of this government largesse/graft is going to come in the form of higher taxes and there are some estimates that taxes as a share of GDP will be 24 percent by 2050!

Labels: books, economics, history, obama, pelosi, reid

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit wrote a post about Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus by Samuel Eliot Morison in honor of Columbus Day. Glenn chose an interesting quote from the book to feature in his post. I read the book in college (not for college) and just pulled it from the shelf and found a quote I highlighted:

Their issue with their commander was the eternal one between imagination and doubt, between the spirit that creates and the spirit that denies. Oftentimes the doubters are right, for mankind has a hundred foolish notions for every sound one; it is at times of crisis, when unpredictable forces are dissolving society, that the do-nothings are tragically wrong. There are tides in the affairs of men, and this was one of them.

Labels: history