Tuesday, August 9, 2016

August 9, 2016 Ridley's Believe It Or Not Book Lovers' Day

Ridley’s Believe It Or Not For August 9, 2016 Only 91  days to go for Trump to pivot before we elect a new president (his speech yesterday on economic policy was a good start) and 248 days since Hillary has held a formal press conference (although she has finally did meet informally with a group of black and Hispanic journalists to admit she may have “short circuited” her responses (whatever that means) but continued  to push the lies that the FBI did not find her untruthful and scolded the press for not holding Trump accountable (any hypocrisy here you think?); political theater running rampant as parents of two of the Americans killed in Benghazi have sued Hillary for defamation over calling them liars; 50 establishment Republican security advisers have published an open letter claiming Trump not fit to be president; Hillary lambasted Trump over his economic ideas but had nothing much to otherwise offer; Chicago police are concerned as rumors abound that Chicago’s notorious gangs are plotting to assassinate officers due to recent police shooting; while Obama racked up his 300th
round of golf, Putin’s tanks are massing on the Crimea/Ukraine border.
         On the sports front in Rio, Lily King won the gold in the 100 meter breast stroke against Russian Yulia Efimova, one of the Russian athletes in the center of the doping scandal; five foot Laurie Hernandez the first Hispanic in 12 years to be on the U.S. Olympics Gymnastics Team is becoming a superstar as the team relentlessly moves toward a gold medal; U.S. men trounced Venezuela in basketball.
       Going to www.lyingcrookedhillary.com is a great way to start your day along of course with www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com
       As always, I hope  you enjoy today’s meager holidays and observances, a music link to the Doors, factoids of interest, a relevant quote from Admiral William Leahy, while looking forward to enjoying a serving of rice pudding, blessed with a positive attitude and  secure in  the knowledge that if you want to find a gift for any memorable events like birthdays, weddings, or  anniversaries, you know that the Alaskanpoet can provide you with a unique customized poem  at a great price  tailored to the event and the recipient. You need only contact me for details
1. International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples—created by the General Assembly in 1994 to celebrate the contributions of indigenous peoples to the betterment of this world.
2. Book Lovers’ Day—if a bibliophile this is your day to crack open a favorite book or turn on your Nook or Kindle and start reading.       
3. 1968 Number One Song—celebrating the number one song in 1968 on a run of two weeks in that position “Hello I Love You” by the Doors. Here is a link to a recording of “Hello I Love You”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1z-nHvt3c
4. National Rice Pudding Day—celebrating another great desert especially if you spice it up with raisins, dried blueberries or cinnamon.
5. Advocacy Journalism—celebrating or bemoaning depending on one’s political views the birthday on this day in 1970 of Chris Cuomo, son of former governor of New York Mario Cuomo and brother of the current governor Andrew Cuomo and news anchor on Good Morning America; since he was a former lawyer skilled in advocacy, journalism on a network that has a hard time being objective when covering politics should come easy to him.        
On this day in:
a. 1854 Henry David Thoreau published Walden.  
b. 1936 to the dismay of Adolf Hitler’s touting of the Aryan Race as being superior, Jesse Owens won his 4th Gold Medal in the Berlin Summer Olympics.
c. 1945 the U.S. Army Air Force dropped the second atomic bomb, Fat Man, on Nagasaki, killing some 35,000 civilians and roughly 150 Japanese soldiers.  
d. 1969 in a chilling murder that shocked the nation and sent shivers of fear down the spines of residents of Southern California, followers of Charles Manson (still in prison and denied parole once again) murdered a very pregnant Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, the heiress to the Folger fortunes and three others unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.       
e. 2014 Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson and the myth that he was shot with his hands up as opposed to the reality that he was struggling to get Officer Wilson’s gun prompted two weeks of rioting, looting and burning of buildings when a grand jury did not indict Officer Wilson. The shooting led to the Black Lives Matter Movement and the debate of police/community relations in communities of color continues unabated to this day.       
Reflections on the necessity and morality of dropping atomic bombs on a nation that was clearly beaten and ready to surrender if it could retain the Emperor as a constitutional monarch: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and defacto head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wonder how different our world would be if at Potsdam we have not issued a demand for unconditional surrender but had allowed the Japanese to keep Hirohito as Emperor.  Please enjoy the poems on events of interest on my twitter account below (if you like them, retweet and follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and entertaining poems on my blogs—click on the links below. Go to www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com for Ridley’s Believe It Or Not—This Day In History, poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy and poems on breaking news items of importance or go to Ridley's Believe It Or Not for just This Day in History.
© August 9, 2016, Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet 
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