Lives in a Shoe

Hoffa

Controversial Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing on July 31, 1975 after vanishing from a restaurant parking lot in Detroit, Michigan the previous day. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance still remain a mystery and have made Hoffa a permanent fixture of American folklore. This Day in History: July 31st

 

The Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Necessarily Your Friend

NY Times:

Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent

 After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.

 “The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.

 

 

 

 

Linda Ronstadt

She was awarded the National Medal of Arts.  I tried to pull a few songs to share but it was not possible to limit it to just a few without thinking -- but but..this one and this other, and surely can't leave out "Different Drum", "Silver Threads" and "Blue Bayou" and...

But to lead off I thought to share a song she did with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, showing a side of her a bit less known.

 

Then, if you have the time, go below the fold for "He Dark the Sun" and some "Lovestick Blues".

I look at skirts in some of these videos and remember around the early 70s when we visited my grandmother in Minnesota and she peered at me through her thick glasses and asked snappishly, "Is that a dress or a shirt?"

Europe's Kristallnacht

What would I do if I had knowledge of what was happening in Europe in 1939?  What will I do now?

All the peoples of Europe can see this but none of them want to identify it. We live so in terror of being politically incorrect. We live in a rightful disgust for racism of any kind. And yet here we see -- and nowhere more clearly than in Germany -- the new racist nightmare for Europe. We thought we had abolished the beast of anti-Semitism from our shores and had made it totally unacceptable. And yet here are people Europe has imported in their millions, failed in varying degrees to assimilate and who now (in considerable numbers) look as if they have taken up precisely the hatred we had all hoped to have left behind. These are dark days in the Middle East. But they are darker days in Europe. Whether we deal with this returned evil or not will be the challenge of this generation.

What will I do?  Start by reading the whole thing.

Heinlein -- "Bad Luck"

Always worth revisiting --

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.

-- Robert A. Heinlein

Scientists' Logos

 

Thanks to Jacky Schnarre.

Be This Guy

 

It’s a an now-iconic photo of civil disobedience: A German man standing at a rally in 1936 Hamburg refuses to give the Nazi salute.

The photo lay unnoticed for nearly 55 years, resurfacing in 1991, when one of the children of August Landmesser identified the disobedient man as her father when the photo appeared in a German newspaper.

The picture went viral last year, according to The Washington Post, when it resurfaced on a blog that was launched to help with relief efforts of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The picture has resurfaced again recently on websites like Cracked, Reddit, and this author’s Twitter account, where it garnered over 900 retweets.

Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of gaining employment and was a member until 1935, when he was expelled for marrying a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler. Landmesser had two daughters with Eckler and it cost him jail time for Rassenschande (dishonoring the race).

Landmesser is believed to have served prison time from 1938–1941, after which he was discharged to serve in the military. Landmesser, however, quickly went missing and was presumed dead.

His wife, Irma, suffered a similar fate. She was jailed by the Gestapo and died during the war. The children of Irma and Landmesser were separated.

 andrewkaczynsk

Civil Rights Group? Not So Fast.

Chloe Valdery

The student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. Indeed, as an African-American, I am highly insulted that my people’s legacy is being pilfered for such a repugnant agenda.

She concludes by saying,

It is of course your prerogative to continue to utilize platitudes for your cause. You are entirely within your rights to chant words like “equality” “justice” and “freedom fighter.”

You can keep using those words for as long as you like. But I do not think you know what they mean.

Read the whole thing,