Crabs and Beer!

Today is the birthday, in 1777, of Robert Brooke Taney (pronounced Taw-nee). He was the fifth chief justice of the United States from 1836 until his death in 1864. Taney delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ruling that African Americans could not be considered U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories.

Taney was born into a wealthy, slave-owning family in Calvert County, His family had established themselves as prominent Catholic landowners of a flourishing tobacco plantation powered by slave labor. At the age of fifteen, Taney was sent to Dickinson College, where he studied ethics, logic, languages, mathematics, and other subjects. After graduating from Dickinson in 1796, he read law under Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase in Annapolis.

After gaining admission to the state bar, Taney established a successful legal practice in Frederick, Maryland. In 1826, Taney and Daniel Webster represented merchant Solomon Etting in a case that appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1827, Taney was appointed as the Attorney General of Maryland. Taney supported Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election and the 1828 presidential election. He was appointed by Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Taney considered slavery to be an evil practice. He freed the slaves that he inherited from his father early in his life, and as long as they lived, he provided monthly pensions to the older ones who were unable to work. He believed, however, that slavery was a problem to be resolved gradually and chiefly by the states in which it existed.

He is most famous, however, for the Dred Scott Decision which he wrote. In the decision he wrote that no African American, free or enslaved, had ever enjoyed the rights of a citizen under the Constitution. He argued that, for more than a century leading up to the ratification of the Constitution, blacks had been “regarded as beings of an inferior order, altogether unfit to associate with the white race … and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

Taney died on October 12, 1864, at the age of 87, the same day his home state of Maryland passed an amendment abolishing slavery. He served as Chief Justice for 28 years, 198 days, the second-longest tenure of any chief justice, and was the oldest-ever serving Chief Justice in United States history. Taney had administered the presidential oath of office to seven incoming presidents.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, photograph by Mathew Brady

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How to keep a secret…

BADA BINGGGGG

They told me if I voted for Harris grocery prices would rise and we would be at war. I did vote for Harris, and they turned out to be right.

Winner of the internet… Q: Have you ever met someone truly evil? Guys answer: My cousin is Stephen Miller.

Good news: my plumber, Markwayne Mullin, from when I managed an Applebees is now in charge of homeland security and that is one of the least crazy things about the current administration so that’s fun for all of us.

Why do Republicans say AOC is “just a bartender” when she has a masters degree in economics,  but they don’t say Markwayne Mullin is just a plumber?

I was told there would be a handbasket.

Reports are circulating that Sweden has officially recognized sex as a sport, with plans for a first-of-its-kind championship evaluated by a panel of judges. (Where do I sign up?!)

Back when I was a kid you didn’t need Joe Rogan. Your best friend had a 27 year-old brother who was a fucking loser who would smoke pot in a room with blacklight posters and tell you that the Mayans invented cell phones.

If we’re ever in a situation where I am the “voice of reason”, then we are in a very very bad situation.

I was born in 1951. I’ve walked like an Egyptian, moonwalked, walked this way, walked on the wild side, walked on sunshine, walked the line, and walked 500 miles. I’m tired of walking.

I’m pretty sure I’ve reached my “what the hell??” quota for the year, and it’s only March 17th.

Does Pete Hegseth realize he’s not George C. Scott in Patton? He’s George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove.

How many countries do you have to bomb to win a Nobel Peace Prize these days? Asking for a felon.

If you put a Jumbotron on the side of a blimp, does that make it an LED Zeppelin? (Bilbo)

Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25.

A priest, a pastor, and a rabbit walked in to blood donation clinic. The nursed asked the rabbit, “What is your blood type?” “I’m probably a type O”, said the rabbit.

un Fact: A paper airplane can be in flight yet remain stationery.

Sometimes people ask me how I know all the random shit I know and all I got is, “I have ADHD, an internet connection, really good research skills, and zero self-regulatory mechanisms”.

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Here are the Dropkick Murphys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaPGMUP4P50

This day marked the beginning of the Great St. Patrick’s Day flood of 1936, the worst flood in the history of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Other areas of the Mid-Atlantic on both sides of the Eastern Continental Divide were also affected.On March 16, 1936, warmer-than-normal temperatures and torrential rain followed a cold and snowy winter, leading to the rapid melting of snow and ice on the upper Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. They and their tributaries were already over their banks and were threatening the city of Pittsburgh. On Tuesday, March 17, the waters reached flood stage of 25 feet. Heavy rains overnight caused the waters to rise quickly, and on March 18, the water peaked at about 46 feet, 21 feet above flood stage.

The impact to the city was devastating. Total property damage was estimated at between $150 – 250 million (as high as $5.87 billion today). Steel mills that were located around the three rivers suffered devastating damage and 60,000 steel workers within a thirty-mile radius were out of work due to the damage that the mills suffered. Sixty five percent of the downtown business district had been under water from the Point all the way up to Grant Street.

The flood eventually led to calls for the construction of a dam upstream on the Allegheny to prevent future floods of this magnitude. Laws providing for the construction of the dam were passed in 1936 and 1938, but it would take nearly three decades, and a bitter fight with the Seneca Nation of Indians, before the Kinzua Dam was finally completed in 1965.

The Potomac and James Rivers, across the continental divide from the Ohio and its tributaries, also suffered severe flooding during mid-March 1936.^[3] Potomac River crossings at Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown, both in West Virginia, and Hancock and Point of Rocks, both in Maryland, were all destroyed. Great Falls experienced what were, as of July 2014, its highest floods on record. Washington, DC, saw its airport, Washington-Hoover Airport in Arlington, Virginia, flooded.

Washington, DC, experienced floods, including at Navy Yard on the Anacostia River.

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Clear instructions are always good…

A BARGAIN!!!

Today is the birthday, in 1954, of American guitarist, singer and songwriter, Nancy Wilson who with her sister Ann Wilson as a part of Heart had the 1986 US No.1 single ‘These Dreams’, (with Nancy on lead which became Heart’s first No.1 single) and the 1987 US No.1 & UK No.3 single ‘Alone’. Heart is considered the first hard rock band fronted by women to achieve widespread commercial success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMvMNpvB5M

Today is the birthday, in 1892, of Janet Flanner. She was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name “Genêt“. She was a prominent member of America’s expatriate community living in Paris before WWII. Along with her longtime partner Solita Solano, Flanner was called “a defining force in the creative expat scene in Paris”. She returned to New York during the war. Flanner split her time between there and Paris until her death in 1978.

After a couple years at the University of Chicago and a stint at the Indianapolis Star, she moved to New York and was in the circle of the Algonquin Round Table, but was not a member. She also met the couple Jane Grant and Harold Ross and Ross offered Flanner the position of French Correspondent to The New Yorker. Ross famously thought Flanner’s pen name “Genêt” was French for “Janet”. Flanner and Grant had been members of the Lucy Stone League which fought for women to preserve their maiden names after marriage, in the manner of Lucy Stone.

Flanner was a prominent member of the American expatriate community in Paris which included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Djuna Barnes, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein – the world of the Lost Generation and Les Deux Magots. While in Paris she became very close friends with Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas.

She played a crucial role in introducing her contemporaries to new artists in Paris, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, André Gide, and Jean Cocteau, and the Ballets Russes dance company.

Her New Yorker work during World War II included not only her famous “Letter from Paris” columns, but also included a seminal 3-part series in 1936 profiling Hitler. Flanner covered the Nuremberg trials for The New Yorker. She covered the Suez Crisis, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the strife in Algeria which helped the return to power of Charles de Gaulle.

Flanner at Les Deux Magots, during the liberation of Paris, 1944, with Ernest Hemingway

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Whose stupid idea was this?????

I’m not surprised…

There’s a lesson here somewhere…

Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American singer Donald York the original vocalist for the rock and roll and doo-wop revival group Sha Na Na. After gaining initial fame for their performance at the Woodstock Festival, made possible with help from their friend Jimi Hendrix, the group hosted Sha Na Na, a syndicated variety TV series that ran from 1977 to 1981. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isvK4PzeA4c

On this day in 1989, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, submited his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web. implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web’s subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web.

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet:

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web.

— Tim Berners-Lee

Berners-Lee published the first website, which described the project itself, on 20 December 1990; it was available to the Internet from the CERN network. The site provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server and a website. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee first posted, on Usenet, a public invitation for collaboration with the WorldWideWeb project.

In a list of 80 cultural moments that shaped the world, chosen by a panel of 25 eminent scientists, academics, writers and world leaders in 2016, the invention of the World Wide Web was ranked number one, with the entry stating: “The fastest growing communications medium of all time, the Internet has changed the shape of modern life forever. We can connect with each other instantly, all over the world.”

Berners-Lee, 2005

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Useful police report…

Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American pianist Bill Payne who co-founded with Lowell George the American rock band Little Feat. Their best-known songs are ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Sailin Shoes’. Payne has also worked and recorded with J. J. Cale, Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Toto, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks and Robert Palmer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-GwdaKrn8

On this day in 1708, Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill – the last time a a monarch vetoed British legislation.

Anne was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 8 March 1702, and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland following the ratification of the Acts of Union 1707 merging the kingdoms of England and Scotland, until her death in 1714. Anne was born during the reign of her uncle King Charles II. Her father was Charles’s younger brother and heir presumptive, James, whose suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England. On Charles’s instructions, Anne and her elder sister Mary were raised as Anglicans. Mary married her Dutch Protestant cousin, William III of Orange, in 1677, and Anne married Prince George of Denmark, a Lutheran, in 1683.

On Charles’s death in 1685, James succeeded to the throne, but three years later he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Mary and William became joint monarchs. After Mary’s death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.

Anne was plagued by poor health throughout her life. Despite 17 pregnancies, she died without surviving issue and was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. The loss of her young son, Prince William, precipitated a potential succession crisis. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded all Catholics, Anne was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover.

The Scottish Militia Bill was intended to arm the Scottish militia, which had not been recreated at the Restoration. On the day the bill was meant to be signed, news came that the French were sailing toward Scotland for the planned invasion of 1708 and there was suspicion that a significant portion of the Scottish population might be disloyal. Therefore, support for a veto was strong and the Queen refused her royal assent to the bill.

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a couple of possible interpretations…

Valuable Coupon!

Can’t Touch This! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo