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Astronomers expect that this year’s Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower will be an epic outburst with possible rates of up to 400 shooting stars an hour. ================================================================= Sky-watchers may get to see 2019 really go out with a bang, with the expected arrival this week of an explosion of shooting stars. If astronomers’ predictions hold true, the Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower could come to life in dramatic fashion on November 21 and 22, with possible rates of up to 400 shooting stars an hour during its relatively brief peak. Such an outburst would make this shower at least four times more...

Here is a quote from the book Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network by James Der Derian."In a remarkable 1935 essay for Harper's magazine, "The Revival of Feudalism," political theorist and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr interpreted the rise of Hitler as a reaction to a misguided effort by liberalism to suppress "the organic character of society" that is expressed, sometimes excessively, in displays of tradition, community, and ethnic loyalty. "Fascism," says Niebuhr, "is this outraged truth avenging itself." He concludes that Nazism "could not have achieved such monstrous proportions if our culture had not foolishly dreamed and hoped for the development...

A muezzin’s call to prayer reverberated inside the sixth-century Istanbul landmark Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years on July 1. The building in the city’s historic Sultanahmet district broadcast the azan from its minarets following July 1’s Laylat al-Qadr, or night of power, marking the first revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Although the...

I love this work. And the violinist is sort of transfixing too.

152nd Field Artillery participates in the First Army Maneuvers near Pine Camp NY in August 1935, as part of the 68th FA Brigade and the 43rd Division. For a companion reading piece, see the Field Artillery Journal article from the Nov-Dec 1935 edition: http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/1935/N...

Ramón Mercader from Barcelona killed Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico City. On 20th August 1940, the exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded at his home in a suburb of Mexico City when an ice axe was driven into his skull. He cried out to his guards as they burst into his study, ‘Don’t kill him! He must talk.’ Despite struggling fiercely, and even managing to bite the hand of his assassin, Trotsky died the next day, and the man who wielded the murder weapon was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He insisted throughout his trial and his...

What would you do if you had just pissed off approximately 150 to 180 million people? Some pretty serious damage control, that’s what. Hence, His Majesty, King Hussein Obama the First will deliver a speech in Iowa this Thursday to kick off the Democratic effort to avoid a crushing loss in this November’s Congressional mid-term elections. Who knows what tortured arguments His Majesty and his minions will try to employ in this seemingly impossible task but I think the Congressional debate from Sunday gives us some idea of how they will try to defend this disastrous reform. More specifically, several...

Vote Tallies1935 Social Security Act Proposal Introduced in Congress Shortly after the 74th Congress convened in January 1935, President Roosevelt sent his "Economic Security Bill" to Capitol Hill. The Administration proposal was transmitted to the Congress on January 17, 1935 and it was introduced that same day in the Senate by Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) and in the House by Congressman Robert Doughton (D-NC) and David Lewis (D-MD). The bill was referred to Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee. Hearings The House Ways & Means Committee held hearings on the bill from January 21, 1935 through...

The May Day Moscow, 1935   William Christian Bullitt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Moscow May 1, 1935 Dear Mr. President: I have just come back from the May Day parade on the Red Square. It has been a great show with tanks galloping across at 60 miles per hour and new pursuit airplanes at 400 kilometers p.h. Stalin came late and left early due, I was told, to a last minute hitch in the negotiations with the French. It was also noticeable that when he walked the short space from the Kremlin wall to Lenin’s tomb he held a...

"Yes, we should be knowing their judicial philosophy, we should be knowing their legal form of reasoning. There are lots of questions that are legitimate. . . . What's your view on the right to privacy, which was established in Griswold 40 years ago?" Sen. Charles Schumer, "Meet the Press"      I recently attended a legal symposium in Philadelphia organized by Philip K. Howard of Common Good. It ended a day or so before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation, followed by much praise for her 24 years on the Court. At the symposium, Mr. Howard's organization released a poll done for...

cartoon by FReeper IPWGOP (aka Linda Eddy)courtesy of www.iowapresidentialwatch.com click here for really large versionThis is an email-able, copyright-ready graphic you can use in emails, on blogs, in flyers, on posters... anything that's noncommercial.

If we're seeking lessons from the past to help us deal with Saddam Hussein, then the way we dealt with Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia in 1935 is - as the Prime Minister understands - the place to look. I was particularly reminded of my own Abyssinia moment when I read about Saturday's anti-war march - hauntingly matched by the Peace Ballot of 1935, the national referendum in which millions voted for peace at almost any price, thus unwittingly persuading Hitler and Mussolini that bold predators had not much to fear. Then, as now, the authority of what was then the...