The Charlotte News
Wednesday, May 7, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President's proposal for a new top-level space agency under civilian control, NASA, had run into bipartisan criticism this date before the Senate Space Committee, the details not being provided.
Martin Folsom had resigned this date as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and the President had picked as his successor Arthur Flemming, president of Ohio Wesleyan University.
Before the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct of unions and management, a New York City publishing house official, Sidney Lewis, had died of a heart attack this date in the Senate Office Building, prior to his testimony.
In Algiers, it was reported that the French had claimed to have killed or captured 273 Nationalist Algerian rebels, bringing the insurgent losses to 1,613 since April 28.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, a responsible military source had reported this date that the first Communist jet fighters and bombers had arrived in the country.
In London, it was reported that residents had gone to work by car, subway and on foot again this date as the big bus strike entered its third day, there being no sign of a settlement.
In Dubuque, Ia., an astronomer and a veteran Navy balloonist had made a safe, soft landing in Illinois this date after a 12-hour ascent to 40,000 feet on an experimental stars and space flight. Commander Malcolm Ross, longtime Navy aeronaut, had called it "the best landing I've ever experienced." He said that delicate equipment aboard the balloon had been undamaged. In Washington, a Navy medical officer said that flight data suggested a possible built-in hazard in a pressure-breathing arrangement which had been designed as a safety factor. Both Cmdr. Ross and astronomer Alfred Mikesell were fatigued but in high spirits. It was the first ascent for the latter, whose specialty was studying the scintillation or twinkling of the stars. He said, "I'm very charmed by this unique method of conducting astronomy." The ascent had provided the first test of techniques which one day would be used to record man's physical reactions in an orbiting satellite. Heartbeats, respiration and other physical reactions were recorded by radio and transmitted 1,300 miles by telephone to a Naval Medical Research Institute laboratory near Washington. Observers described the balloon's return to earth as an expert landing. The commander had maneuvered the balloon away from river bluffs so that it descended about a mile from the Mississippi River, near Highway U.S. 20. Between the ascent the previous night from an open mine pit near Crosby, Minn., and the descent about 12 hours later, the pair had crossed part of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois in a small fiberglass basket open to the air. As protection against cold, which reached 76 below zero at the 40,000-foot level, the two said that they had worn several thicknesses of heavy Navy clothing, and above 12,000 feet, had breathed oxygen. The commander had reached 84,000 feet the previous fall in an ascent in a sealed gondola.
In Sydney, Australia, the country was considering allowing a quota of Asians into the country, but action in the near future appeared doubtful.
Rain-swollen rivers and streams had menaced wide areas of four Southern states this date, forcing hundreds of persons to leave their homes and causing extensive damage to crops and property. More rain had fallen during the night in sections of West Virginia, southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky, increasing the threat of further flooding. Overflows from the Red River spilled across sections of northwestern and north-central Louisiana, with damage to crops and property estimated at ten million dollars. Two deaths had been attributed to the flooding in Louisiana and about 100 families had been evacuated from their homes in the Markesville area, south of Shreveport. Governor Earl Long of Louisiana had toured the flooded area the previous day and the agriculture commissioner for Louisiana said that it was almost impossible to estimate the damage, with the floods having hit hardest the cotton, corn, and sweet potato crops and pasture land. Hastily constructed levees were thrown up throughout the area as flood fighters kept watch on a sheet of water roughly two miles wide to the northwest of Shreveport. An undetermined number of families had been moved out of low-lying homes in the path of the surging Tug River in West Virginia, and in Pikeville, Ky., where the Big Sandy River had risen two feet above flood level. The normally placid Tug surged at three feet above the flood stage and had sent back water eight inches deep into Williamson's city hall. Several families had been evacuated in low-lying areas of Matewan and Chattaroy, which lay in the path of the flood waters of the Tug. The Tug had dealt a major disaster to the coal field city of Williamson in late January and early February, 1957, and so its residents began buttressing for the worst.
Tornadic winds in South Carolina and flooding streams in North Carolina had caused undetermined amounts of damage to private and public property, with sporadic tornadoes occurring in southern South Carolina the previous day, and a tornado tearing through lightly populated areas near Walterboro and St. George, blowing a farmhouse from its foundations about 7 miles west of Walterboro, with all eight occupants, including several children, escaping injury, the mother having suffered slight cuts to her legs. The twister which struck St. George had unroofed a barn and two tenant houses, but there were no injuries reported. Tobacco barns were demolished by tornadic winds the previous night in a North Carolina community south of Angier, also with no injuries reported, though causing significant property damage. The Weather Bureau promised a gradual ending this date of the showers which had poured down as much as five inches of rain in some places the previous day. The downpour appeared likely to send the Neuse and Tar Rivers out of their banks in a number of locations.
In Macon, Ga., a young widow was facing murder charges this date in the arsenic poisonings of her nine-year old daughter, two former husbands and a mother-in-law during a six-year period. The 32-year old woman was arrested in a hospital room the previous day and placed under guard, reportedly having been hospitalized since shortly after the death of her daughter on April 5. The sheriff said that the county physician would examine the woman and confer with other doctors to determine whether she could be moved to the county jail. Through her attorney, the woman said that she had committed no crime. She was also accused of murdering her first husband on January 25, 1952, her second husband on December 2, 1955, and her mother-in-law on September 29, 1957. The warrants had been obtained by the coroner, who said that tests by the Georgia State Crime Laboratory had shown arsenic poison in the bodies of all four victims. The accused operated a restaurant in Macon. The sheriff would not release information on a possible motive, saying that he had "many facts which need verification before they can be released." Her second husband had been a pilot for Capital Airlines and the body was exhumed after burial in Macon and sent to El Paso, Tex., the home of his parents. The accused had another daughter, age 7, who was placed under the custody of the juvenile court following the mother's arrest. The coroner said that he had received a report three weeks before the death of the nine-year old daughter that the child had been poisoned, but that the information had been so sketchy that he was unable to take action. The day after the death of the child, the vital organs had been sent to the crime laboratory, which reported that they contained arsenic, leading to an examination of the other bodies, with the lab also reporting that they contained arsenic.
In Lincoln, Neb., defense counsel for Charles Starkweather, 19, accused of killing 10 persons during a one-week rampage at the end of the prior January, with an additional victim the prior December, was currently on trial on a first-degree murder charge on only one of those cases, that of Robert Jensen, 17, who had been murdered along with his girlfriend in an abandoned storm cellar, to which the prosecution claimed that Mr. Starkweather had directed the young couple after they had picked up Charles and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, 14, from the side of the road near Bennet after the Starkweather car had become mired in the mud near a farm where Charles was accused of killing the owner whom he knew, his fourth victim after the two were accused of murdering Caril's mother, stepfather, and baby sister earlier that week. The prosecution alleged that they had then returned to Lincoln where, to gain another car, they had killed a well-to-do couple in their home along with their deaf maid, had then left for Wyoming where the last victim, a salesman, was murdered after being awakened by Charles as he slept in his car alongside the road, again for the purpose of stealing his car. Charles had also admitted killing a service station attendant the prior December in Lincoln so that he could obtain a stuffed animal for Caril. Defense counsel this date had released to reporters a statement taken by the deputy county attorney that Charles had said he had become upset with Caril as the two had driven away from the storm cellar and told her, "I'm going to give myself up." He had quoted Caril as replying, "No, I wouldn't," and then saying that she "wasn't going to give up and she wasn't going to let anything stand in the way of her giving up [sic]." Caril was also charged as an accomplice in the murder of Mr. Jensen. The jury, still being chosen, would ultimately decide their fates, with the first-degree murder charge capable of carrying either a life sentence or a death sentence.
In Columbia, S.C., a Chesterfield County probate judge had won a postponement of a hearing probing charges of his persistent misconduct and neglect of duty. Following the presentation of the State's testimony late the previous day, Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., had granted an indefinite postponement of the hearing until after the June 10 Democratic primary, a delay sought by the probate judge so that he could campaign for re-election. The Governor had presided over the hearing and commented that his decision would be based on what was presented at the hearing and not by the vote in the primary. Testimony presented the previous day had centered around the alleged flagrant irregularities in the issuance of marriage licenses by the probate judge, with his attorney seeking to show through cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses that the alleged irregularities were standard procedure and had been carried out by previous probate judges in that county. A clerk in the probate judge's office had said that she had acted under the judge's instructions in taking applications for marriage licenses by telephone and telegram, and that she had signed the judge's name to the applications in his absence, claiming that she was unaware that either practice was illegal. The judge was also charged with predating marriage applications to get around South Carolina's 24-hour waiting period for a marriage license. Other witnesses had testified that the judge had frequently been treated for alcoholism and consumption of barbiturates. Whether his defense counsel would also maintain that such was a common practice among previous probate judges in the county apparently remained to be seen.
In Raleigh, it was reported that the State Supreme Court had reversed this date the conviction of a black doctor of Union County on charges of his having performed an illegal abortion, based on his defense counsel not having been permitted to investigate his claim of racial discrimination in the selection of the grand jury which had indicted him. The case was remanded back to the Superior Court for further proceedings. He had been indicted and convicted the previous October on a charge of performing an abortion on a white woman, whose surname was Rape—believe it or not. The doctor was the vice-president of the Union County chapter of the NAACP. He had been sentenced to between one and two years in prison on the charge. His lawyer at trial had moved to quash the indictment on the basis that blacks had been systematically excluded from the grand juries of Union County, a violation of due process and equal protection under both the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and under the North Carolina Constitution. The motion to quash had also requested that the defendant be given the right to investigate the alleged violation of his Constitutional rights, that motion having been denied by the trial judge and the trial having then proceeded. Justice R. Hunt Parker, who had written the Court's opinion, said that "after a careful examination of all the facts in the … case it is our opinion that the trial court denied the defendant a reasonable opportunity and time to investigate and produce evidence, if such exists, in respect to the allegations of racial discrimination as to the grand jury set forth in the motion to quash…"
In Charlotte, efforts would be exerted to have a 200-year old Spanish cannon installed on the front lawn of the City Hall by May 20, the anniversary of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, with City Manager Henry Yancey having been instructed this date by the City Council to proceed with the previous arrangement of moving the cannon from the yard of Alexander Graham Junior High School, where it had been for decades, to the City Hall lawn. City Council member and former Mayor Herbert Baxter, who had made the motion to make the move, had asked Mr. Yancey whether he could have it in place by May 20, and Mr. Yancey had replied that every effort would be made to do so, needing first to build up an earthen mound for the base. A trustee of the Mecklenburg Historical Association had sent a letter to Mayor James Smith and members of the Council, expressing appreciation by the Association for the Council's interest in preservation of the old cannon, renewing his plea to place it in Freedom Park on a hill overlooking the lake, just as it had overlooked the waters of the West Indies nearly 200 years earlier. The park was dedicated to freedom, he said, and to those who had obtained it and kept it, and yet the park did not have any relic of the country's victories. He said, therefore, that it was appropriate that the prize of war ought be placed in that park on the hill where everyone could see it as an "eternal reminder".
In London, Hal Cooper of the
Associated Press reports on a woman who was trapped inside a public
loo after inadvertently locking herself inside. She had sought to
climb over the door using the toilet tissue roll as a foothold, but
it had started to roll and she broke her ankle. The result was that
she and her husband never got to the Olympia Hall bird show, and also
that two of their tropical fish had died. A question now was put
before the British Court of Appeal, after the woman filed suit, as
to whether there was negligence on the part of the Harlow Urban
District Council, operator of the loo, such that it would have to pay
damages. The three judges of the Court had heard testimony that while
the woman was trapped, her husband had been waiting outside in the
street with two delicate tropical fish they were taking to a pet
doctor for treatment, after which they had planned then to attend the
bird show. The woman said that she had banged on the jammed lock and
shouted "help" for 15 minutes until finally seeking to
climb out, before the lavatory attendant eventually rescued her.
The two fish had in the meantime died and the attendance at the bird
show had to be canceled. The Council, in response, had denied any
negligence, indicating that the woman had become panicked instead of
waiting calmly for her rescue. The lower court had agreed. Her lawyer
contended that she had remained calm, but just wanted to get out of
the loo. The "master of the rolls" of the appellate court
said that the matter would be taken under submission, after asking
counsel for the Council: "What would you have done if you were
locked in such a cubicle and had tried vainly to attract attention?
Would you just sit there, light a cigarette and wait for someone to
come along?" The counsel had responded: "I trust that I
would not have put my weight on a revolving toilet roll." Had
counsel been aware of the New Hampshire case from 1929, Hawkins v.
McGee, he might have been very clever and stated that he would
have relied on the fickle finger of fate rather than resorting to the
hairy hand the predicament to escape. But, it was staid Britain, after all,
where the periwig and all its formal trappings
In Gander, Newfoundland, it was reported that Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth, had flown home this date from a 14,000-mile tour of British possessions around the Caribbean, her plane having made a 90-minute refueling stop in Gander during the morning. We hope that during the 90 minutes, she got to gander aplenty and neither had her royal goose cooked.
On the editorial page, "Plan a Unified School System NOW" begins with a quote from the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill from 1949, regarding consolidation of city and county school systems, indicating that the important thing was that each taxpayer throughout the county would be paying for the schools at the same rate, and that the children of each taxpayer in the area, regardless of where the children happened to be living, would be in a position to enjoy the benefits of the best educational opportunities offered any child in the area.
It indicates that the time to prepare Mecklenburg County's two school systems for consolidation had clearly arrived, that apathy, timidity and false fears were crumbling at last beneath the pressure of enlightened public opinion. The first compelling public demand for action had come from the county, but support for a single unified public school system had likewise been growing in the city. It urges that there was no need for further dawdling at the official level.
The County School Board had broken the ice, and its invitation to negotiate ought be accepted promptly by City school officials, after which a reasonable formula for consolidation ought be put together and appropriate enabling legislation prepared for the 1959 General Assembly.
"Mr. Nixon Hankers for Hometown Talk" indicates that every traveler was subject to sudden pangs of loneliness and tiny fears that there was something about which he ought to know happening back home, and that the Vice-President doubtless felt that notion strongly as he continued his tour of Latin America, shaking innumerable hands, hearing strange languages and trying to build good will for the "colossus of the north".
In Washington, they were talking his language, politics, and about his possible ascension to the presidency by means other than through election in 1960, that is by the President stepping aside prior to that time so that Mr. Nixon would gain valuable leadership experience and have a leg up for the 1960 election through incumbency.
It indicates that a politician hated to miss such gossip, but that Mr. Nixon could be consoled by the fact that the speculation would still be ongoing when he returned, that such speculation would not easily die among Democrats, and that every White House denial of that prospect would be searched minutely for escape clauses, with every visit by Mr. Nixon to the White House becoming a cause for fresh speculation.
While there were no facts to credit the theory, anxious Democrats could make a case for their fear, reasoning that because the President's future health was unpredictable and that he had never demonstrated particular lust for the office or the exercise of its powers and because Mr. Nixon nearly hungered for the presidency and would be so much more easily elected as an incumbent, it would be a neat strategy for the campaign to allow Mr. Nixon to try out the informal presidential disability agreement which he and the President had reached only a few weeks earlier.
It finds, however, that a better guess might be that Mr. Nixon was more fearful that such would not happen than the Democrats were that it would, as he could not have forgotten the White House rebuke for his call for a tax cut or the President's unfavorable response to suggestions that he be given an executive post within the Administration. The President's statement recently that Republican presidential timber was not limited to one man also could not have helped but give him pause.
It concludes that barring any disabling illness of the President, there would not be any such scheme, for if the President had appeared to lack zest for the office and was weary of its responsibilities, he had also been careful never to demean it.
"There'll Always Be a Plainclothesman" indicates that a U.S. publishing firm, Prentice-Hall, had clad its executives in uniform navy blue blazers with embroidered pocket patches, the intent being to boost esprit de corps among the brass. But readers of Business Week, which had reported the matter, believed it an insult to individualism, with one reader calling it "an abortive attempt at cross-fertilization with a gray flannel suit," while another asked, "Do the pretty blazers have pockets big enough to carry, for ready reference, a copy of William H. Whyte's book, The Organization Man?"
It finds, however, that the most sweeping indictment had come from a New York engineer, who saw the blazers as the beginning of a business ceremonial "modeled on that of the Knights of the Garter, say, with keys to the executive washroom replacing swords." He had added, "There would be plainclothes executives, too, charged with sneaking up on lazy employees."
The piece suggests that the last part was at least likely.
Honi soit qui mal y pense. Better than getting stuck in there and having your fish die.
A piece from the New Orleans
States, titled "The Marshal", indicates that those who
groaned that the Hollywood and television interpretations of the old
West were gross distortions of the original, now had a Federal court
ruling to support their complaint. The owners of the Wyatt Earp
The manufacturer had replied that Mr. Earp had been a nonfictional historical character, whose name no one could monopolize for trade purposes.
But the Court had said: "It is perhaps not too much to say … that the name of Wyatt Earp has been battered into the public consciousness by the television program to an extent far beyond any fame or notoriety ever previously attached to the marshal's name."
It concludes that in other words, "any resemblance to persons living or dead…"
Well, to hell with these stuffy Eastern ways. We shall just move on to the town
Drew Pearson indicates that Israel, presently celebrating its tenth anniversary since its founding in 1948, had accomplished miracles but faced grave problems ahead, problems which were not only its own but belonging also to the rest of the world, from three points of view, one being materialistic, the problem of Arabian oil vital to the West, on which the industry of France, England and Western Europe was dependent; from the point of view of peace, the Middle East being the boiling point most likely to erupt in war, having done so twice since May 8, 1945, the end of the war in Europe; and from the humanitarian point of view, those of the Christian world, as well as the Moslem world, having a moral obligation for the murder of the six million Jews in Germany during World War II. He indicates that the minimum obligation was to ensure peace for the Jews in the ancient land of their forefathers.
He indicates that most people had forgotten that it was during the reign of Hitler that anti-Jewish hatred was planted in the Arab world, that looking through his old columns, he had found that on August 25, 1946, he had published the secret testimony of Walter Schellenberg, head of Hitler's SS foreign espionage arm, in which the latter had told American examiners of how he had been ordered by Heinrich Himmler in 1942 to pay the grand mufti of Jerusalem to stir up anti-Jewish prejudice, with the payment having been made of $250,000 by der Fuhrer and another $150,000 by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. Herr Schellenberg had further testified: "The mission carried along one-half hundredweight in gold coins, twenty thousand in English pounds, and ten thousands in U.S. dollars."
The public had also forgotten that Hitler's campaign of terror against the Jews had started in 1933 and continued while those of the Christian world had looked on, blasé and with little concern, doing nothing until other religions and other lands began to feel the imprint of the Fuhrer's hatred. For at least a year after the war had started, certain American diplomats had sought to keep secret the gruesome reports which had come to the State Department regarding the Nazi concentration camps, the persecutions, the starvation, the eventual transition of gas chambers and soap factories. He suggests that they were memories which those of the Christian world had forgotten, while Jews could never forget. "They constitute a reason why the rest of the world, including the Moslems (also descended from the prophet Abraham), have a deep, unpaid obligation to the Jewish people."
He suggests that the most complete way to make restitution was to bring peace in the Middle East. The Jews had already made great sacrifices to establish their homeland and they now needed peace. Furthermore, the Christian world had an obligation to bring peace to that part of the world where God, whose religious precepts the Christian world professed to follow, had first taught peace on earth, good will to men. He says that the Christian world had not followed it anywhere else in the world, and that it could begin at least where God had taught.
Joseph Alsop tells of having once been told by a British field marshal's wife, well-known for her strong tree-dwelling tendencies, that is, being a bird-watcher, that instead of talking about Joseph Stalin and the Soviets, "Oh, why not try birds?" That had been in 1946, when it was fashionable not to question the motives of Premier Stalin.
He suggests that the time had come again to take that oft-remembered advice, one being the unbounded admiration for the pair of mourning doves which had triumphantly reared twin dovelets in an ivy-hidden nest high above their garden terrace. He suggests that someone ought to do a serious survey of wildlife in the American city, possibly to be called "The Ecology of Urban Areas", perhaps as a doctoral dissertation. He says that in the heart of Washington, one acquired many unpaying tenants if there was a city garden with a little cover for the wildlife. But aside from the opossum, the squirrels, and the detestable half-wild cats, the birds were the chief tenants of the refuge among the urban asphalt.
He informs that there were no quail, even if the Swedish Embassy always used to have at least one covey, until subtopia swallowed up their feeding grounds. But the cardinals appeared to be preparing to nest again and, with luck, the mockingbird, which had been inspecting the place rather carefully, would finally decide that the advantages outweighed the drawbacks. Above all, there were the mourning doves.
The appearance of the latter was charming, as they appeared as game birds, which they were, yet as with game birds, having a special fragile elegance and a call resembling musical falling water, full of love, haunting sadness and memories of dear things lost. "But all this charm, which might otherwise be cloying, is splendidly seasoned with sheer spunk."
The doves had started nesting in early March and had stuck to the task grimly, the male tending the nest all day and the female, all night, through the bitter winds, icy rains and deep snows of the current terrible spring. He gathers that they must have lost at least two clutches of eggs, as their eggs had taken only about two weeks to hatch, but they had succeeded in their task. Just recently, the first pierced eggshell had proudly dropped from the nest. Then, repeatedly there was the sight of the doves hurrying to find food and then returning hurriedly to disgorge their find for the eagerly awaiting beaks of the young. Now, two of the young were hopping about on the terrace bricks, learning to take grain themselves.
He suggests that the writing about birds might really be too self-indulgent, "but circle the free world's great periphery, from Berlin to Seoul, and you will see every vital position either decaying fast or in deadly danger already. Go to the West's other citadel in Europe, and you will discover the great alliance crumbling into imbecility. Come back to Washington, and you find economic depression plus a response to the sharp strategic challenge of the Sputnik that has only consisted of not making the further defense cuts that were planned before the Sputnik's warning."
He concludes that he wished he could always write about birds, until the country rediscovered its old knack of leadership.
With different crises and different actors, he might well have been talking about the present situation here in mid-2025, in which the country finds itself in a domestic and foreign mess, thanks to the lack of true leadership by Il Duce. Oh, to long for the way things were a mere six months ago, when the country was calm and the world relatively so, despite the supposed hordes of rapists and murderers coming over the border daily, supposed rampant inflation, the world on the brink of World War III, and all the other fantastic lies which this crowd of fascists perpetrated on the gullible and those who like to remain quite uninformed, save through the likes of Fox Propaganda, that is, infotainment for an hour or so each night, and then believe themselves quite informed enough to vote, thus forming the personality cult born of too much "reality television" some 20 years ago and more. Do not ever say we did not warn you long ago.
Fooled you once, shame on you; fooled you twice, shame on yous.
Doris Fleeson indicates that the conservative manner in which the President handled the Government economy, including the recession, had been highlighted from an unexpected source, the Rockefeller report, which was the work of a committee led by Nelson Rockefeller—to become the Republican nominee in the New York gubernatorial election in the fall, defeating incumbent Governor Averell Harriman, eventually becoming in 1974 the second appointed Vice-President, under President Gerald Ford, who, in 1973, had been the first appointed Vice-President—no one in 1958 having any means of understanding that complex to occur less than 20 years hence, along with a lot of other complex and unimaginable scenarios along the way, all of which seemed miraculously to dissipate once Richard Nixon was out of politics—not at the death of President Johnson, occurring just after the start of Mr. Nixon's second term.
Ms. Fleeson indicates that the anti-recession measures, which had been suggested in the report, had obtained the headlines, especially regarding the tax cut proposal, which seemed to cut across the President's program. The business and financial community had since had time to give the report more intensive study and was drawing conclusions, one being that the report, far from attacking the welfare state, took the country further and faster along that path than had Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, with the report indicating that the nation was dedicated to economic growth and full employment, and that to that end, real wages ought be doubled in 30 years, with a possible rate of growth of five percent per year.
By contrast, the President had referred to the recession as "a minor emergency we are meeting internally." He believed that there was ongoing a gradual resurgence in the economy and so had offered no growth plans.
Detailed forms of desirable Government regulation of the economy had been set forth also in the Rockefeller report, including use of the taxing power and monetary and fiscal policy. The Federal Government was urged to take the lead in transportation policy, land and water use on a national scale, urban problems and various other social needs.
The authors of the report did not represent all of business and their philosophy was perhaps overweighted with Eastern internationalism, but were sufficiently inclusive to prove that a revolution in the thinking of important business interests had taken place since President Roosevelt had taken office in 1933.
She posits that their interests intended to be counted in American politics and had supported in large part the candidacy of General Eisenhower in 1952 and again in 1956, and it was an irony of history that at the present time, the Midwest smaller business backers of the late Senator Robert Taft, the primary opponent of General Eisenhower in 1952, seemed to have the greater influence presently with the President on economic matters, such as former Treasury Secretary George Humphrey.
She indicates that the report accepted in a broad sense that the nation was in a race for expansion with the Soviet Union, and in its details, had set up a timetable and directions and signals for that race. She finds its significance politically to be two-fold, demonstrating that the Democrats could not count on a monopoly of liberal and progressive ideas in national campaigns, no matter how many Republicans coalesced with Southern Democrats in Congress to impede that effort, and, second, that a Republican presidential candidate who struck out as the champion of economic growth and expansion could count on very telling support.
A letter from Paul Ervin, chairman of the Mecklenburg Democratic Club, finds the editorial of the previous Friday, noting the fact that the Democratic precinct meetings would be held for the most part in schools, had caused him to wonder if it would not be interesting to the students of the high schools to have the opportunity to attend a political rally. He says he had discussed the matter with the board of governors of the Mecklenburg Democratic Club and that they had requested that he extend an invitation to the student bodies of the senior high schools in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to attend the Democratic rally which would take place the following Friday at the Park Center building in the evening, at 8:30. He hopes that many of the young people would attend, and hear the address by Senator George Smathers of Florida.
Oh, my goodness, we have to go to the movies on Friday nights. You expect us to go to school every day and then on Friday night, the one night of the week for pure frivolity, get more education? Why not postpone it until Sunday night when all homework and all praying are complete?
A letter writer indicates that the story of the creation of the earth and man in the first chapter of Genesis was of particular interest at present, along with the story of the life of Jesus in the New Testament, his suffering and resurrection, along with the story of the Tower of Babel. "Having created the earth and furnished it comfortably, we are told that God created man in His own image, and gave him dominion over the earth and all that dwelt thereon. He provided lights in the firmament of the heavens, especially two great lights, the greater to rule over the day, and the lesser over the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years—certainly not targets to shoot at." He finds that the presentation of earth to man had made no provision for permission to occupy or desecrate outer space, suggesting that if God had intended man to fly, he would have been given wings like birds, bees or bats. He indicates that the resurrection and ascension to heaven of Jesus provided a promise that in a life after death, man would occupy and enjoy the beautiful heavens, finding it doubtful that in this life, man could ever conquer space, and, with the millions of square miles of undeveloped land on earth, was not needed. Even after 50 years since manned flight had begun, aircraft could be torn asunder like the petals of a fragile flower, their occupants scattered over the landscape, "men looking like barbecued pork; women and children smeared over the stones like jam." He suggests that if the expenditure of resources and energy to build the Tower of Babel had incurred the wrath of God, then the much greater expenditure to travel into outer space had to make God sore. "And aren't the proposals and promises of today's national leaders just as confused and meaningless to each other as they discuss proposals for a summit conference, as were the conversations between the masons and hod-carriers as they tried to build the tower?" He says that although admonished to replenish the earth and subdue it, man had not done so, that as populations became more skilled and educated, it seemed they were more likely to be the lowest forms of life, abandoning the spacious countryside to congregate in crowded cities "like flies around a cesspool; driving blindly at the bright lights, like the lowly moth flying into the flame—some even considering flying to the moon." He suggests that had as much research, resources and energy been spent in developing the world's vast wastelands, as had been expended on research and experiments regarding outer space, the Mojave Desert could have been irrigated and the entire South air-conditioned, while Siberia could have been converted to a garden spot. Homes could have been provided for all of the displaced people of the world and jobs made available for all of the unemployed—"even the tailend of a Republican administration."
The writer makes some valid points, though quite overstating the case of expenditures on outer space to that point being enough to make the conversions he suggests, though if including all of the 200 billion spent by the U.S. on World War II, with the debt service since, and the 40 billion or more being spent each year on defense since World War II, added into the mix, he might have a point, at least at 1958 prices. But then, the U.S. did not start World War II. That was Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese warlords. Any true student of history must always bear that singular fact in mind. Otherwise, you become a Trumpy-Dumpy-Doer.
Speaking of whom, we saw a partial interview with a sitting United States Senator, being questioned about his statement that he was raised to believe that Israel had to be blessed, in order for the person so blessing to receive blessings, and that if not, the person not blessing Israel would be cursed—making God seemingly over in the image of Trump and his "perfect phone call" soliciting a bribe from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy in 2019, that if he got the goods on former Vice-President Joe Biden and provided them to Trump, he would release the aid to Ukraine already appropriated by Congress and over which he had no authority to withhold, certainly not for his potential political benefit against his probable 2020 opponent.
The Senator was referring to Genesis 12:1-3, which, in the King James Version, refers to the blessings, not of Israel per se, but of Abraham and the land to which he would go at the direction of God, the "Promised Land", including Canaan, present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and the other land to which he would migrate, Egypt. So the Senator, to go beyond the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the promise of the British Conservative Government under Prime Minister Lloyd George to establish a homeland for Jews, finally fulfilled in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust, should understand the Biblical injunction issued by God to Abraham to include, not only present-day Israel, but all of what had been Palestine prior to 1948, as well as the so-called Levant states, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and Egypt—something which former President Jimmy Carter appeared to understand in arranging between Egypt and Israel the historic Camp David Accords of 1978, without resort to the Bible to try to earn votes through half-baked offerings of Biblical interpretation, as if the Scripture was written yesterday or in 1948.
The Senator also needs to be reminded of another passage in the Bible, that of Isaiah 2:4, which states, also as an injunction: And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
We do not see in the Bible any exception in that injunction made for either the descendants of Abraham or any particular nation, whether Israel or any other. It appears to say, in effect, that thou shalt not wage an offensive, preemptive war against any people or nation, which would include preemptive wars against immigrants.
Latter-day evangelical Christians gone adrift and agley need to study their Bibles more thoroughly as a whole book, rather than concentrating only on the first chapter, which, we reiterate, refers to "gods", suggesting a polytheistic rather than monotheistic form of religion in the Old Testament, or any other isolated verse or verses out of context of the whole fabric, similar to interpreting the Constitution only through the lens of the Second and Tenth Amendments, as such people are also prone to do, eschewing exegesis in favor of feeling.
But that is olde. Today is now. And Senators from Texas, last we heard, are not to be offered up as Biblical scholars, or for that matter, experts on much of anything else, at least not these days, after Texas was taken over by Republicans of the most disingenuous sort, led, in large part, by those teaching the new religion of high finance through oil and where to get it by exploitation of the Middle East to aid in propping up a faltering economy from unsound Republican fiscal policies of tax cuts for the very rich while giving the peons a few dollars with which to play at Walmart, to buy a new tv on which to watch, gluefully, Fox Prop and the like each evening for about an hour to be properly informed by the highest lights the far-right has to offer, on topics ranging from the New Bible, as you like it in leather and gold-embossed, to politics to economics to salvation by worshiping at the well of the Republican du jour, he who presents the greatest promise of leading the poor lost little lambs to the promised land, away from those horribly corrupt, Marxist, Commie, liberal Democrats. (Someone ought also to point out to these people that Proverbs 11:25 states: The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself"—the Bible saying nothing of "conservatives", who, probably, if translated into modern terms, would be best represented by the Pharisees, or perhaps even more accurately, the Philistines.)
Anyway, Senator, please read the whole of it before you pluck things completely out of context, including Big, Beautiful Bills you might be considering.
A letter writer from Clinton, S.C., wonders why there was the hue and cry about jackleg Communists overthrowing the Government. He quotes from Karl Marx: "Communism cannot come to that country until conditions necessary for it have been established." He says that in the U.S., such conditions were now being established, but that capitalism was bringing on those conditions, not Communists. He says that the U.S. economy was sick and that a sick person would try any remedy, and that any healthy person or organism carried within itself the germ of dissolution. "Capitalism is decaying from within. All the Scales in the world can't add anything to it."
The Trumpies still say so today, don't they? The same sort of people were saying so before World War II, ever since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. And yet…
Get out of your very confused heads that socialism and communism are the same thing or that they necessarily go hand in hand. Socialism is an economic system, and limited socialism, as exists in otherwise traditionally capitalistic countries, only a means of controlling the extremes of capitalism which tend, if left to their own mercurial tendencies, to result in periodic recessions or depressions without proper controls on the effects resulting from the inevitable variations in supply and demand, which control the fluctuating price structure and thus inflation and interest rates, the latter to make available more or less money with which to invest and purchase things. Marx predicted that this inevitable cycle would, on each occasion of recession or depression, press down increasing numbers of people into the proletariat, that is the working class, while enriching the ruling class, until there would be such disparity between the two groups that the proletariat would ultimately rise up and overthrow the ruling class in the capitalist state. But he did not foresee the development of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, born primarily in this country out of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, which some of these crackers still wish to call "socialism", while the limited control of the economy thus exerted only prevents the extremes of capitalism and thus the very destruction of capitalism in favor of their greatest horror, that prophesied by Karl Marx, who was no more than a socio-economic theorist, not the founder of Communism, per se, as practiced in the former Soviet Union or as practiced in Communist China or North Korea. Communism is actually the state seemingly sought by the most devout Trumpies, no government. Those latter societies, with present-day Russia seeking to re-create the old Soviet Union to provide itself with greater economic stability again, rather than working with the nations created from the old Soviet Union to effect trade so as to increase the standard of living for all, not just the old, displaced Communist Party members, such as Vladimir Putin and his fellows, were and are totalitarian societies, ruled by dictatorships and oligarchies, a ruling class enslaving the peasant class, both mentally and physically, keeping them so without the means of accumulation of property that they are forced to scrounge each day for meager food and shelter, with little time left for any revolutionary thought of their own, thus brainwashed to believe in the Revolutions of their esteemed Leaders, "elected" only in nominal elections.
You Trumpers seem not to realize that you are part of the same societal complex, carefully orchestrated, which gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution and continued it. You might as well listen directly to Russian State propaganda as Fox Prop, as the two are practically synonymous, the flag waving on the latter being the only difference.
All the gaudy American flags flown from overlarge flagpoles, dangerous in windstorms, hiding the natural beauty of the White House, meant traditionally to have only one small American flag atop it, to show an humble nation before the flag, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, not worshiping a damned piece of cloth, but rather existing under a Constitution, will not put Humpty-Dumpty Trumpty back together again, a man who has gone wandering into total dissociation from reality.
Next, he will build a theme park on the South Lawn, dubbing it Three Flags over Washington. When he will be asked inevitably to explain the name, he will say: "I don't know. It's one of those things the people I hired came up with. I'm just the groundskeeper and ticket-taker."
Framed Edition
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