My new friend Carla, who I’ve only known for a half-century starts off this round of Ask Roger Anything:
The star in the center, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, is known as V1331 Cyg and is located in the dark cloud LDN 981.
If you had the chance to ask three different people (living or dead, famous or not) ONE question… who and what would you ask?
The one requirement for this exercise, I suppose, is that they would have to answer honestly. What would I ask? What is your sense of how God manifests God’s self if, in fact, God does that? Or maybe Does knowing God just take practice?
I’d ask Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967. I’m thinking of his disappointing experiences in his previous couple of years might have changed his world view of God’s plan.
I’d ask Thomas Jefferson c. 1820, long after he had left the presidency. As this article explains, his “relationship with Christianity was complicated.” So where was it near the end of his life?
I’d ask Donald Trump in 2020. But I’d wonder if he’d understand what I was trying to get at. Maybe I’d need some clarifying questions. Does he think God favors the rich? Does he believe that God supported him in herding demonstrators so he could hold up a Bible in front of a church? And if so, what was God saying to him?
Does he believe God wanted him to be reelected? Does he actually read the Bible? And if so, what parts resonate with him?
He was asked this last question around 2017, and he gave the non-answer “Oh, all of it.” Anyone who has ACTUALLY read the Bible will admit that there are some parts of Scripture with which they are uncomfortable.
What a coincidence
Uthaclena, being their usual mystical self, asks:
Isn’t “coincidence” an ALTERNATIVE Fact??
So, what do we know here? “A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another.” So a coincidence is a fact.
“The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims.” So the perceptions of coincidences may be alternative facts.
“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.”
Abraham Lincoln, Congressman-elect from Illinois. icholas H. Shepherd, photographer. Springfield, Ill., 1846 or 1847
Some Presidential trivia:
CITING THE PRESIDENT $400: In the 1970s: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $800: In the 1970s: “Our long national nightmare is over”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $1200: “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved–I do not expect the house to fall–but I do expect it will cease to be divided”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2000: In an early 20th c. message to Congress: “We have stood apart, studiously neutral”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2,000 (Daily Double): In the early 20th c.: “I took the canal zone, & let Congress debate, & while the debate goes on the canal does also”
JEOPARDY! game #7806 aired 2018-07-16
4, 4 (two words, each with four letters) $1000: In 1848 Martin Van Buren was the presidential candidate of this party that opposed slavery in western territories
JEOPARDY! game #7868 aired 2018-11-21
PRESIDENTIAL IRONY, Final Jeopardy! 1 of the 2 Presidents who offered Daniel Webster the VP slot; he declined both, thinking the job went nowhere.
“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.” Rutherford B. Hayes
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union Message to Congress, January 11, 1944, including the Second Bill of Rights:
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence… People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race, or creed.”
“I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s Hell.” – Harry S Truman, 1948
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956
Summer Bowl 9:
The number of the age difference between the President and his First Lady
Jimmy Carter
JEOPARDY!
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt
Free Soil
William Henry Harrison or Zachary Taylor
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and John Kennedy talking at their wedding reception, Newport, Rhode Island / Toni Frissell. 1907-1988, photographer, 12 September 1953
Dustbury’s blog turns 19. I love that Steely Dan song. Speaking of which, he masterfully blends Meghan Trainor, Maya Angelou and Steely Dan in a piece about selfies.
Jack Rollins celebrates his 100th birthday. He has managed Harry Belafonte, Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Joan Rivers, Nichols and May, Tony Bennett, Jim Carrey, Dick Cavett, Diane Keaton, David Letterman, and a bunch more.
Apparently, Dancing with the Stars and The Voice are using the arrangements of Postmodern Jukebox without acknowledging the group. Here are their versions of Wiggle (Jason Derulo/Snoop Dogg cover) and Creep (Radiohead cover).
From JEOPARDY show 6666: MY “SON”, THE PRESIDENT (each answer has the word “son” in it)
*Chronologically, he was the first who fits the category
*He was preceded & succeeded as president by the same man
*He beat Clinton–DeWitt Clinton–in 1812
*For refusing to shine the boots of a British officer as a child, he got a saber across the face
*He whipped 2 former presidents in the same election by an electoral score of 435-88-8
Another quiz question: Who was the last president to outpoll non-voters in a presidential race?
Some music trivia: What blues legend, who performed under a pseudonym, was actually named after a US President?
(Answers at the end)
“Nixontapes.org is the only website dedicated solely to the scholarly production and dissemination of digitized Nixon tape audio and transcripts. We have the most complete digitized Nixon tape collection in existence–approximately 2,300 hours spread over 2.5 terabytes of hard drives that contain more than 7,000 audio files. This is the only website in the world that makes the complete collection of Nixon tapes available directly to the public in a user-friendly format, free of charge.” There are a total of 3,700 hours of tapes, so the job is only 2/3s done!”
If Hillary Clinton becomes President, will she name Bill as Secretary of State? No, she can’t, unless they get divorced. And I gather the law banning it was in reaction to John Kennedy naming his brother Bobby as Attorney General.
“Expansionism and intervention are oppressive forms of activism. From that perspective, it’s easier to arrive at the four worst Presidents.
ANSWERS –
Who was:
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
James Madison
Andrew Jackson
Woodrow Wilson
and Theodore Roosevelt.
I had guessed LBJ, who beat Barry AuH2O badly in 1964. Dan reminded me that “Johnson got the highest vote total of the century, but the non-voters still beat him. Goldwater’s veep went to Albany Law School. He was also the first Catholic veep nominee for the Re-pubs. His name? [which I DID remember] ‘Here’s a riddle, it’s a killer/ Who the hell is William Miller?’ His daughter is comedienne and talk show host Stephanie Miller.”
The musical answer is Howlin’ Wolf, who was born Chester Arthur Burnett.
Oh, the guy pictured: Martin Van Buren, whose native language was Dutch. This was a quiz on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanapoulous earlier this year, and NONE of the panelists got it right.
With his opponents dividing the vote, this Democratic challenger was elected This incumbent president accepted the Republican nomination & did no campaigning; electoral votes: 8 Theodore Roosevelt used this metaphor when announcing his run, hence the button seen here Eugene V. Debs garnered almost 1 million votes representing this left-leaning party *Everyone wanted change even back then; the opposing campaign slogans were The ____ Freedom & The ____ Nationalism (same word)
The other guy who got a lot of play was Thomas Jefferson. There was Master of the Mountain: “The real truth about Thomas Jefferson. Forget Sally Hemings — a historian discovers the ugliest side of a founding father in his ledgers.” Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and previously, American Lion [Andrew Jackson] and Franklin and Winston, insists he’s not letting Jefferson off the hook.
The Meacham book was one of the Good Reads’ best history & biography, along with Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard: “A riveting historical narrative of the shocking events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the follow-up to mega-bestselling author Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln.” Also selected: The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #4) by Robert A. Caro.
As of early September 2012, Jimmy Carter became the U.S. president who lived the longest after leaving the office, overtaking Herbert Hoover. Navigate the length of retirement field on this Wikipedia page, and you’ll see that they are followed by Ford, J. Adams, Van Buren, Fillmore, GHW Bush, who just passed Truman, then after him, Nixon, and Madison, the first person this list who served two full terms (though Truman practically did). If I Google for the answer, John Adams often comes up as the answer. That was accurate until Hoover overtook him in 1958.
There was a What’s Your White House IQ quiz in Parade magazine. The print version was better. It would ask “Which four presidents were assassinated?”, whereas the online version would make it multiple choice. I DO know the answer, BTW, without the prompts.
The 2012 Chester A. Arthur Presidential Dollar was finally released after a lengthy delay. It was the first Presidential coin not minted for circulation and struck only in very limited quantities for collectors only. Still hate that; the next three are out now, Cleveland 1, B. Harrison, and Cleveland 2. More on Chester A. Arthur.
JEOPARDY! answers
Woodrow Wilson William Howard Taft Throwing his hat into the ring The Socialists New
