Notes from around the Human Experience…

THE LATEST FROM THE FIASCO FACTORY: Oh dear me, President Trump – President Trump! – is now defending his right to pardon people. He feels so strongly about the matter he tweeted about this weekend.

WHAT IN THEEE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? Why was this necessary? Has anyone disputed this? Anyone who has hasn’t read the Constitution, because it is very clear on the matter, Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 1 stating, in part:

…and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

That’s pretty clear: a president can pardon anyone for any reason, from murder to color of socks. The only stipulation is the pardon will have no effect on the impeachment of a federal official, including the president.

Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: So why would a president defend a power expressly granted to him by the Constitution? Well, it could be because Trump – no dummy, though unread and still a bit childish – feels like sticking his chest out and showing how powerful he is.

More likely, however, is that Trump is laying the groundwork for pardoning himself.

Good Luck With That: We’re not Constitutional experts here at The Daily Dose, but it seems to us presidents cannot pardon themselves.

One, it is one of Justice’s fundamental tenets that a person cannot be their own judge and jury. And, two, why would the Founding Fathers have subjected the president to impeachment if he could pardon himself?

Dry, Technical Matter: The pardon power stems from the English monarch’s power to pardon their subjects. A complete review of this power is, thankfully, beyond the scope of your Daily Dose, but a monarch pardoning themselves never came up because English monarchs were above the law and it is possible the writers of our Constitution never considered the matter.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SECRETARIAL WORK: The first patent for a typewriter in the United States is issued on this date in 1829 to William Austin Burt, a Michigan surveyor. Known as a typographer, it worked on more or less the same principle as the typewriter, except characters were moved into position by moving levers.

Burt built his typographer to speed up the time the correspondence his work as a government surveyor required, but his typographer wasn’t a whole lot faster than writing it out by hand and there was no market for it and Burt sold the rights to the typographer the following year for $75.

Name Game: Typographer would be upgraded to type-writer in 1874, and would remain hyphenated until 1886.

Fix Or Repair Daily: The newly-incorporated Ford Motor Company sells its first car on this date in 1903, a Model A. The company had incorporated in June with twelve investors ponying up $28,000. Within two months Ford had sold over 200 Model A’s and by October Ford would show a profit of $37,000.

FunFact: The car had been ordered by a Chicago dentist, had a two-cylinder engine and cost $850, about $21,000 in today’s dollars.

Up, Up And Away…Or Not: Air Canada Flight 143 makes a safe, emergency landing at Gimli, Manitoba on this date in 1983. The flight from Montreal to Edmonton had run out of fuel above Red Lake, Ontario and glided 150 miles to a former Royal Canadian Air Force base.

Whoops, My Bad: The investigation into the incident showed that fuel taken on in Montreal had been logged in in pounds instead of kilograms, so the plane had less than half the fuel crew members thought it had. No one was injured, though the plane, which was virtually silent because the engines were shut down, did scare a couple of kids riding their bikes on the runway.

The Catch: Dwayne Wise of the Chicago White Sox turns in one of the great defensive plays in baseball history on this date in 2009, making a running, leaping and juggling catch of a fly ball at the wall in the ninth inning of what would turn out to be a perfect game pitched by Mark Buehrle.

Oh Yeah: The Catch came off the bat of Gabe Kapler of the Tampa Bay Rays and led off the ninth inning.

The Post Game Show Is Brought To You By Old Style Beer: It was the 18th perfect game in major league history and the second for the White Sox. Charlie Robertson had pitched the first in 1922.

Quote Book: I had found what I was looking for- a man…who had paid every price and not counted it a sacrifice; who was paying it still and would pay it till he died…who had reduced his life to the one thing that mattered to him, and was free. – John LeCarre, The Secret Pilgrim

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Of the twelve humans who have walked on the moon, six are still alive.

Today’s Stumper: Which major league baseball team has been involved in the most perfect games? – Answer next time!

Gaylon was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the United States House of Representatives in 2016. All told, he was able to con just under 70,000 to vote for him.

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Notes from around the Human Experience…

MUST SEE TV: Watching the GOP flounder like a fish out of water is turning out to be very compelling to watch.

It is not only compelling, it is also both funny and sad.

ROTFLMAO: It’s uproariously funny because here sits the Republican Party, a party that’s been around for 150 years, in control of both the White House and the Congress and they cannot pass anything more substantive than a lunch order. They had seven years to prepare for this moment, to have a workable alternative to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, but they didn’t bother with that, preferring to wait and throw something together at the last moment.

OTOH: It is sad because their signature issue is being pursued not because any Republican really believes what they are offering will do our country any good, but merely because the evil Democrats enacted it. Their attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is as petty as it is vindictive, and it is a lot of both those things.

Is This Official Daily Dose Policy? We said this in an earlier column:

Please, GOP, go away. Your time has passed. It is time to fold up your tent and call it a day. You are not doing anybody any good whatsoever.

You are not doing anybody any good. You’re led by a president whose only real talent is drawing attention to himself. Your Speaker of the House was able to get something passed – on the second attempt – but your Senate Majority Leader cannot get votes on your signature issue in a chamber you control.

Somewhere, Lyndon Johnson, one of the very best there ever was at getting people in Congress to do things for him, is spinning in his grave, cackling.

Dry, Technical Matter: Faced with a leadership that cannot get anything done, you would think the rank and file would flee, that a significant number of GOP senators and congressmen would collectively say “let’s blow this taco stand” and go join the Libertarians or form another party. The GOP, however, seems to be content to circle the wagons and continue to defend their indefensible behavior.

MAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE: Man reaches the moon for the first time on this date in 1969 when Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land the lunar module (LM) Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility. Command Module Pilot Michael Collins remained in Columbia, orbiting the moon.

Fly In The Ointment: While the launch and the flight to the moon were flawless, landing on the moon was fraught with peril.

Fly In The Ointment: First, about 6,000 feet above the surface, Eagle’s computer got snitty and set off a couple of alarms. After a few frantic moments, a computer operator named Jack Garman, who was really good at his job, advised everyone that the computer was merely overworked and would perform as programmed and the mission could continue. Armstrong and Aldrin adjusted the landing procedure slightly, so the computer didn’t have to work as hard.

Uh-Oh: Then Armstrong realized the computer generated landing area was a crater strewn with boulders, so he and Aldrin had to manually guide Eagle to a safe landing spot.

More Fly In The Ointment: And 72 seconds before landing, a fuel alarm went off, and Eagle ultimately landed with about 45 seconds of fuel remaining, according to official NASA documents.

“We Copy You Down Eagle”: The first indication they would make it was when one of the four 67-inch probes touched the surface, setting off a contact light. A bit more than a second after landing, the engine shut down.

Houston, Tranquility Base here…The Eagle has landed.

LOL: The schedule actually called for a rest period between lunar landing and the first moonwalk. We are not making this up. Some wizard actually thought the first humans to land on the Moon would be up for a nappy-poo before they became the first humans to walk on the Moon. Fortunately, Neil Armstrong realized the folly in this and requested the moonwalk be moved up.  

“I ‘m Going To Step Off The LEM Now…That’s One Small Step…”: Armstrong and Aldrin then spent a couple of hours checking the LM’s systems and preparing it for a stay on the lunar surface. They then ate, put on their space suits and depressurized the LM’s cabin. Armstrong then became the first human to set foot on the Moon, made a visual inspection of the LM and collected a contingency sample in case they ran into monsters and had to leave the moon’s surface immediately. Twenty minutes after Armstrong, Aldrin became the second human to set foot on the moon.

FunFact: Because NASA wasn’t altogether sure how well the space suits would hold up on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin were only scheduled for two-and-a-half hours on the surface.

FunFact II: President Richard Nixon had a speech ready to go in case Armstrong and Aldrin ended up stuck on the moon and unable to leave.

The Bottom Line: Regular readers of this crap know we are big Apollo fans here at The Daily Dose and we’ve always regarded July 20, 1969, s one of the great lines of demarcation in human history, seperating everything that came before from everything that followed. Why July 20 isn’t a national holiday is beyond us.

Quote Book : The dreams that draw humanity forward seem always to be redeemed, if we believe in them strongly enough and pursue them with diligence and courage. – Richard Nixon

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Roger Connor broke Harry Stovey’s all-time career home run record in 1895 with his 123rd career home run.

Today’s Stumper: Of the 12 twelve human beings who have walked on the Moon, how many are still alive? – Answer next time!

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CAPSULE BOOK REVIEW: Fat Ollie’s Book By Ed McBain: While we can usually remember how we were introduced to one of our favorite authors, in Ed McBain’s case we are at a complete loss. We know we’ve been 87th precinct fans since an awfully long time and we may well have picked up our first Ed McBain book in the library at Los Angeles Lutheran High School, but we can’t really remember.

Oh Jesus H: For example, Gore Vidal’s Lincoln was on my parent’s book shelf. Nero Wolfe was an old TV series on NBC that Dad and I enjoyed watching together and he told me about the Rex Stout novels. My mother sent up a Louis L’Amour book with her sister when she came to visit years ago.

You Can’t Tell The Characters Without A Scorecard: Ed McBain wrote 87th precinct novels from 1956 right up until his death in 2005. Like Nero Wolfe novels, the characters – Steve Carella, Myer Myer, Bert Kling, the Deaf Man, et al,  – don’t age, though the novels to keep up with the times.

Fat Ollie is Oliver Wendell Weeks, a detective from the neighboring 88th precinct. Fat Ollie appears in 87th precinct stories from time to time and not only is he fat, he is an obnoxious racist. This is the only McBain novel where Fat Ollie, as he is invariably known, is the main character.

Dry, Technical Matter: For the uninitiated, the 87th and 88th precincts are in a fictional city called Isola which even the most casual observer can tell is based on New York City.

Shorthand Me: The story concerns a city councilman who is shot dead while preparing for a rally. The murder happens in the eight-eight and Fat Ollie catches the squeal, to steal a phrase all McBain fans will recognize. Though Fat Ollie might not be anyone’s first choice to hang out with, he is a good detective and while Carella and company assist with their usual competent work, it is a bit of brilliance on the part of Fat Ollie that cracks the case.

If you are the type who tries to solve the case before the detectives, you probably figured out who the murderer was. McBain offers a couple-three decent suspects, but even casual readers are not left scratching their heads at the end of an 87th precinct novel.

This is par for the McBain course. Looking at them strictly on the quality of the mystery to be solved, McBain ranks higher than Robert B Parker’s Spenser, but below Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, which are sometimes harder to crack than a German war code.

Final Ranking: Good: Fat Ollie’s Book is not McBain’s best, but is good and, as always, it was a treat to visit the gang at the old eight-seven again and it was nice to see Fat Ollie do well in his own story.

ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE! Rome catches fire on this date in 64 AD. Ten of Rome’s 14 districts sustained at least some damage and three were completely destroyed and the fire burns for almost a week before it is completely doused.

The Emperor Giveth, The Emperor Taketh Away: History is not entirely clear on who or what caused the fire. A number of theories implicate Emperor Nero, though some credit Nero with spearheading the effort to put the fire out. Nero being Nero, he may have done both. For his part, Nero blamed the Christians, which led to the empire’s first persecution of the them.

More Great Moments In Religious Tolerance: England’s King Edward I bans all 16,000 Jews in England on this date 1290, the culmination of two centuries of increasing Jewish persecution in England. Jews would not be permitted in England again until the 1650’s.

Get Out Your Record Books: Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees becomes baseball’s all-time home run leader on this date in 1921, hitting is 139th career homer of Bert Cole of the Detroit Tigers. Ruth broke Roger Connor’s record, who had set the mark in 1895.

The Post Game Show Is Brought To You By Old Style Beer: The blast came in the 8th inning at Tiger Stadium, then known as Navin Field, as the Yankees beat the Tigers 10-1.

Oh Jesus H: The deadliest mass shooting to date in America occurs on this date in 1984 when James Huberty opens fire at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, killing 21 and injuring 19 others. Armed with an Uzi, a pistol and a shotgun, Huberty’s spree lasted 81 minutes, from around 4pm until a SWAT officer stationed on the roof of a nearby post office shot him in the heart.

After the massacre, Huberty’s family relocated to another part of San Diego County and his children attended school under an assumed name. His wife died in 2005.  

Quote Book : It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement. – Mabel Newcomber

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Disneyland’s monorail opened in 1959.It still operates today on 2.5 miles of track. A trip around the park takes about ten minutes. 

Today’s Stumper: Whose career home run record did Roger Connor break? – Answer next time!

Gaylon was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the United States House of Representatives in 2016. All told, he was able to con just under 70,000 to vote for him. He lives in northwest Colorado. 

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WELL MR KNOW-IT-ALL, WHAT DO YOU GOT?: Lost in the cacophony surrounding Republican attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is what this nation’s healthcare system really needs:

It needs the government to butt out.

Gaylon For Congress: Vote Early, Vote Often: We said this every hour on the hour when we were the Libertarian nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the US House last year. Few mainstream voters were willing to embrace this concept fully, but most found it intriguing.

It should be something every concerned voter thinks about because even the most casual glance shows that our government is mucking this up. Doctors and health insurers must have the same access to the free market that other businesses have.

Dry, Technical Matter: Doctors and health insurers answerable to a free market of consumers instead of government rules and regulations will be obliged to produce the services the public wants at whatever price the market will bear, just like every other business. The quality of care will increase and prices will come down.

A Warm, Personal Remembrance: We can still recall Dad paying for our doctor visits with a personal check and it would not surprise me if those days returned. Health insurance would be reserved for long-term, catastrophic or other illnesses, its original purpose.  

Fly In The Ointment: Right now neither doctors or insurers are truly answerable to the consumer. The doctor is getting paid by the insurance company and the insurance company in most cases is getting paid by an employer. The consumer is completely left out of the equation.

This is wrong, and one of the reasons the American medical system is such a fiasco. Returning doctors and insurers to the free market will make both answerable to us consumers. Doctors in competition with each other will be forced to deliver the best service at an affordable cost. Liberated from the web of government intervention, insurers will be able to offer policies consumers want. Costs will come down.

The Bottom Line: As always, we get the government we elect. We elect people who do not have our country’s best long-term interests at heart and we get the imbroglio we have now. We will not get anything better until we have the courage to demand it at the ballot box.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME: Two 300-game winners meet in a major league baseball game for the first time on this date in 1890. Meeting in New York, Pud Galvin of the Pittsburgh Burghers starts against Tim Keefe of the New York Giants in a Player’s League matchup. The Giants would beat the Burghers 8-2 that day.

More Dry, Technical Matter: The Player’s League was one of three major leagues in 1890, along with the American Association and the National League. 1890 was the Player’s League only year of operation.

And You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To More Parties: Galvin and Keefe would meet three more times, and the feat would not be accomplished again until Don Sutton met Tom Seaver in 1986, a game we happened to be at. Sutton would become an old hand at this, later meeting 300-game winners Phil Niekro and Steve Carlton, and the feat was last accomplished in 2005, when Roger Clemens met Greg Maddux.

Great Moments In Meeting To Partition Germany: President Harry Truman, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill begin meeting in Potsdam, Germany on this date 1945, to decide how to decide the future of Germany, which they had defeated in World War II. The conference would last until early August, and would result in German being divided into four sections and Nazi leaders being tried for war crimes.

FunFact: Churchill was lost his job as prime minister during the conference, and was replaced by Clement Attlee on July 25.  

It’s A Small World, Especially When The Plumbers Are On Strike: Disneyland opens on this date in 1955 to the media and other invited guests.

Fly In The Ointment: The opening was not magical. One, the plumbers were on strike. Walt Disney was given the choice of working drinking fountains and flushing toilets and chose the latter, which left a lot of people thinking it was a ploy to sell more soda. Also, some concrete and been poured that morning and hadn’t set yet, so people, particularly women in heels, got stuck. It was also insanely hot, 101 degrees, and in finest southern California tradition traffic was a mess.

No, We Don’t Have A Funny Lead Line For This One: Two walkways collapse into a tea dance at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City on this date in 1981. 114 people are killed and over 200 are injured. The investigation found that changes into the walkways steel tie rods was responsible for the collapse. It would remain America’s deadliest structural collapse until the World Trade Center collapsed in 2001.

Quote Book : We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.  – Albert Einstein

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Maryland and Virginia were the states that contributed the land that would become Washington, D.C.

Today’s Stumper: When Disneyland’s monorail system open? – Answer next time!

Gaylon was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the United States House of Representatives in 2016. All told, he was able to con just under 70,000 to vote for him.

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AMERICA, RIP: The UPI article was routine, reporting that almost two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the GOP healthcare plan. 

Bully For Them: As they should. The GOP plan is petty and vindictive, born not of any desire to do something good for our country, but done out of spite, to negate something simply because the Democrats did it.

Back On Message: The accompanying photo, however, was telling. It showed protesters carrying signs that said “Guaranteed Healthcare For Californians” and “Health Care Is A Human Right”.

Fly In The Ointment: No, medical care is not a human right. Medical care is a human need, of course,  just like food, clothing and shelter are human needs, but medical care is not a human right.

Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: Friends, we must start paying closer attention to what our government is doing to this once proud nation and ask ourselves:

How much do we want our government to do for us?

Because if we elevate medical care to the same plane as free speech and freedom of the press, what’s next? Our we going to let our government butt in to how we feed and clothe ourselves? What’s next, government provided shelter for everyone except the poor? 

This Isn’t Official Daily Dose Policy, Is It?: Friends, the America of yesteryear is gone. Well, that’s not true. America is still here, but the American of yesteryear is gone. There was a time when, collectively, us Americans would not have tolerated government control of our lives like this, when all an American wanted our government providing was a chance to build a good life for ourselves.

That time, however, has passed  We have accepted complete government meddling in medical care and we will probably accept whatever further chains our leaders choose to place on us.

The Bottom Line; The only thing government should be in charge of providing – under the supervision of a demanding and participating electorate, of course – is 24 hours every day to make something good happen for ourselves.

WHEN WILL A ROBERTO’S TACO SHOP MOVE IN?: The Mission San Diego de Alcala is founded in what is now San Diego, California by Father Junipero Serra on this date in 1769. Serra would ultimately found nine of the 21 missions built in California.

FunFact: The current church is the sixth to stand on the site.

Great Moments In US Capital Naming: President George Washington signs a bill establishing a new capital on the banks of the Potomac River on this date in 1790. The capital was then in New York City and the bill specified the capital would be moved to Philadelphia until the new federal district was ready.

Uh-Oh: The bill didn’t leave much margin for error, specifying the new capital was to be occupied by the first weekend in December, 1800 and, in fact, the new capitol building was not ready when Congress moved in.

Dry, Technical Matter: The new capital would be named after President Washington the following year.

The More Things Stay The Same, The More They Stay The Same: Congress back then wasn’t any different than Congress today, and no small amount of bickering went on about where a new capital would be located.  However, unlike today, Congress back then was actually able to compromise and get something done.

Can We Go Bomb Somebody Now?: Mankind enters the Atomic Age on this date when the United States successfully tests the first nuclear bomb on this date in 1945 in New Mexico. The bomb left a crater five feet deep and twenty feet wide.

The government, of course, lied about what happened. When pesky civilians started inquiring about what the hell that bright light was, the Air Force was up to the challenge, issuing a statement saying a “considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded”.

FunFact: The Air Force actually had assorted press releases ready, depending on whether the test was successful or catastrophic.

3…2…1…Blastoff: Man’s greatest adventure begins on this date in 1969, when Apollo 11 blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to attempt man’s first landing on, and exploration of, the Moon. It came 3,340 days after President Kennedy had committed the United States to put men on the Moon before the end of the 1960’s.

Commanded by Neil Armstrong with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, and spurred on by the tremendous applause of 3.6 billion Earthlings, Apollo 11 entered Earth orbit twelve minutes later and would begin heading toward the Moon after one-and-a-half orbits.

FunFact: The man who did the countdown – which is a brilliant example of knowing when to provide useful information and when to keep your yap shut – was NASA Chief of Public Information Jack King.

QuoteBook: Wait till I ‘m allowed to be wise after the event.– John le Carre,  Our Kind of Traitor

Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Nelson Rockefeller was vice president of the United States under Gerald Ford. Like Ford, Rockefeller was nominated for the position under the terms of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  

Today’s Stumper: Which states contributed land for the new federal district that would become Washington, D.C.? – Answer next time!

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