The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 30, 1953

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had appointed Governor Earl Warren of California as the new Chief Justice, replacing deceased Fred Vinson, who had died September 8. The President said he would make a great Chief Justice, having a reputation for integrity, honesty and moderate politics, and that because the appointment was a recess appointment, subject to confirmation by the Senate when Congress reconvened in January, he would be sworn in and would be on the bench when the Court opened its new term the following Monday. It had been predicted from the outset that Governor Warren, who had served three terms as Governor since 1943, was the leading candidate for the appointment. For 14 years, he had been District Attorney of Alameda County, of which Oakland is the county seat, and had served four years, beginning in 1939, as State Attorney General. He had been the vice-presidential nominee of the Republicans with Governor Thomas Dewey in 1948, and had received 81 delegate votes for the presidential nomination at the Republican convention of 1952. He had been both the Republican and Democratic nominees for the gubernatorial race of 1946, the only candidate who had ever been so nominated by the voters, made possible by California's cross-filing primary system. In the 1950 gubernatorial election, he had beaten Democrat James Roosevelt, son of the late President, by more than a million votes, despite registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by a three to two margin. During a campaign speech that year, in answer to critics who claimed his policies bordered on socialism, he had said that he was convinced that the American people were not socialists and would not tolerate socialistic government, but were definitely committed to social progress. He advocated social security and compulsory health insurance, and favored collective bargaining for unions.

Your Final Jeopardy answer is, in the category of Chief Justices: Three. You have 60 seconds to write down your question, making sure that you phrase it in the form of a question.

The President also said this date at his brief press conference that his Administration had no intention of proposing a retail sales tax, but did not rule out the possibility of a manufacturers' excise tax. He said that barring unforeseen developments, the Administration did not expect to call a special session of Congress regarding increasing the debt limit, despite spending having been, at the close of the session in August, hovering within 2.5 billion dollars of the 85 billion dollar limit. He said that Russia's progress on the hydrogen bomb required close study by the U.S., but would not indicate what effect it might have on defense spending, that subsequently, after he had studied the matter, he would provide the American people with a frank statement on what had to be done. He stated that the action of the Polish Government in relieving Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski of his church duties had been discouraging of efforts to achieve an understanding with Russia and the satellite countries. He said he was always willing to take any steps which would relieve world tensions, but that the issue of whether more harm than good might come from a Big Four conference had to be considered. He also angrily denied that he had ever broken any pledge made to former Labor Secretary Martin Durkin to present to Congress 19 proposed amendments to Taft-Hartley, which Mr. Durkin had claimed the President had pledged to do, having resigned after saying that he had broken the pledge. The President said that he had never broken any agreement with any associate in his life, and that no agreement had been reached with Mr. Durkin. Reporters present observed that he displayed in the denial greater indignation than at any previous press conference. The President also hinted that the Administration was considering invoking of Taft-Hartley to prevent a strike of longshoremen in New York and 11 other East Coast ports, set to begin at midnight this date. Invoking the law would trigger an 80-day cooling off period.

At the U.N. in New York, Russia, through chief delegate Andrei Vishinsky, said, in an address to the General Assembly's 60-member political committee, that there was no possibility of hoping that the Korean political conference, set to begin in October, would occur unless the Korean War allies reconsidered their decision to ban neutral nations from the table. Ambassador to the U.N. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., immediately denounced the statement as a maneuver designed to force the U.N. to change its mind, that the question of inviting India and other neutral nations had already been debated and defeated at the earlier meeting of the U.N. in early September, specifically devoted to the peace conference. Mr. Vishinsky had rebuffed Mr. Lodge's previous statement that the conference, itself, could consider whether to invite neutral nations. The U.S. and Britain were confident that they had enough votes to block any further consideration of the matter.

The U.S. and France jointly announced plans this date to increase efforts against the Communists in Indo-China, with a 385 million dollar increase in U.S. assistance to be provided to France for the purpose in the ensuing 15 months, with France stating that it was determined to make every effort "to break up and destroy the regular enemy forces" in Indo-China. The plans called for increasing the forces of the native governments of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the three constituent states of Indo-China, and temporarily to build up French military strength "to levels considered necessary to assure the success of existing military plans". The French had reportedly promised to transfer nine battalions of regular French Army troops from Europe to Indo-China to reinforce some 200,000 French soldiers already fighting there, to grant independence to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam so as to increase anti-Communist support among the people, and to increase the training of loyal Indo-Chinese armies by borrowing some of the techniques used by U.S. forces in training and equipping the South Korean Army.

In Hamilton, Mass., Beatrice Patton, widow of General Patton, was killed this date after being thrown from a saddle horse on a bridle path, pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The General had been killed in a collision between his staff car and another vehicle shortly after the end of the war, and their daughter, Beatrice, had died about a year earlier. Mrs. Patton, 67, had been riding with 30 friends in a drag hunt, sponsored by the exclusive Myopia Hunt Club. Riders on the course had discovered her missing at a checkpoint and retraced the course to find her lying on the ground, with her riderless horse nearby. The horse apparently had balked at a jump and thrown her.

Trumpies, there is another conspiracy you must investigate. Maybe the Army was trying to silence her because she had discovered that the Army, and the Communists populating it, had actually murdered her husband in 1945. And, since it happened in Massachusetts, there was probably a Kennedy connection somewhere, for everything untoward which transpires in Massachusetts is bound to have a Kennedy connection somewhere, including the death of Lizzie Borden's pa and step-ma, probably silenced by Honey Fitz for some knowledge they had, all leading forward to the 2020 election and the Hugo Chavez-George Soros Globalist conspiracy to deny Trump a second term in office. Think holistically...

In Taipeh, an American woman explorer left this date for disease-ridden "Death Island", Botel Tobago, located 50 miles off Formosa, where women were king. The island was rarely visited because of its high disease rate, had 1,429 inhabitants, known as Yamis Yuamis, believed to have originated in Malaya, all of whom had malaria. The woman, who was the wife of a well-known American explorer, was going to study the natives for the American Museum of Natural History. The natives wore scant clothing and divorce was common, with women often going through 10 to 15 husbands, picky in their choice, usually scorning of those who were homely and those with poor fishing records. The natives ate fish, taro and sweet potatoes, would not eat chicken or rice, which they found to have a bad odor, and also eschewed the eating of eggs. If a woman bore twins or triplets, only the first-born was allowed to live. The hot, windy climate was almost unbearable and the island had no modern comforts.

Tom Fesperman of The News reports that school authorities had said that the state needed 7,783 new classrooms, while health authorities had said that the state needed 10,000 more beds for mental patients, and that Governor William B. Umstead and the General Assembly favored passage, therefore, of the 50 million dollar bond issue for schools and another issue of 22 million for mental hospitals, on the ballot for the following Saturday. He provides further detail of the bond issues and the need for them.

Harry Shuford of The News indicates that the State Highway Patrol, which had deployed a radar device to catch speeding motorists, would begin using the "Double Whammy", two black hoses stretched across the roadway, 132 feet apart, on selected stretches of road to catch speeders. The Patrol said that the device was as accurate as a stopwatch, which is what it essentially was. Mercury switches attached to the hoses measured the amount of time a vehicle took to pass between them. Plugs in the middle of the tubes prevented traffic passing in the other direction simultaneously from tripping the switches. If you trip the switches too fast on those black snakes, you will be singing the Black Snake Moan.

Come to think of it, incidentally, that tired, old joke about a snake in the road, the lawyer and the skidmarks for the one, not the other, probably derives from the double-whammy, as in some jurisdictions, lawyers worked in cooperation with the police and highway patrol to obtain representation of unsuspecting speed-trap offenders.

On the editorial page, "Illegal Slot Machines Still Operating" indicates that a report showing that 20 clubs and organizations had paid at least $250 in Federal taxes to operate one or more slot machines, nevertheless against state law, had prompted question of why the law against them was not being enforced. The organizations included two American Legion posts, in Hamlet and Hickory, five country clubs, in Newton, Shelby, Henderson, Kings Mountain and at Lake Hickory, three Elks Clubs, in Henderson, Hickory and Shelby, Moose lodges in Gastonia and Hickory, VFW posts in Hamlet, South Rockingham and Hendersonville, and a café in Taylorsville.

It indicates that there were those who distinguished between the operation of slot machines in private clubs and in public places, but it finds no distinction, as they were all illegal. Persons who belonged to private clubs were generally in higher economic brackets, were, in some cases, community leaders, and when they condoned illegal behavior, they lowered the standards of the broader community.

It indicates that until two years earlier, slot machines had been operated in a number of private clubs within Charlotte, which had become dependent on their revenue. Eventually, the police chief and the City Manager had ordered their removal. Apparently, the clubs then made other financial arrangements, as none of them had gone broke. None of those clubs had been listed among those who had paid the Federal tax.

It concludes that apparently law enforcement officers in the communities which were tolerating the slot machines were looking the other way, and that the citizens of those communities did not care.

"Ernst Reuter, Friend of Freedom" indicates that the Mayor of West Berlin, who had just died at age 64, represented the best in the new democracy in Germany, a militant anti-Communist and the source of "inspiration and strength" to West Berliners. He had not cowered before threats of Russian violence and had not been fooled by Russian intrigue, instead standing firm against anything which smacked of Russian imperialism or threatened the territorial integrity and freedom of West Germany. He had been discussed as the next chancellor of West Germany, to succeed Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, with whom he had worked closely. It concludes that the free world had lost one of its most "vocal and influential leaders, a man who, tested by the fire of historic events, was found not wanting."

"Free-for-All within the Family" finds that the American people had been spectators of many rowdy brawls among Democrats during the Truman Administration, and now during the Republican Administration, arguments among Republicans were openly transpiring. Representative Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania had stated in American Magazine that "a baker's dozen of Republican obstructionists in the Senate, and at most two or three dozen in the House" had tried to block the Administration's program, acting as if they were still in the minority party. Senators Robert Hendrickson and Irving Ives echoed that opinion. That prompted Senators George Malone and Joseph McCarthy, plus Representatives Noah Mason and Clare Hoffman, the four singled out by Representative Scott, to reply fairly calmly, with Mr. Hoffman being a bit angrier than the others. He suggested that the criticism by Mr. Scott was a concerted plan by "Dewey Republicans, New Dealers and one-worlders" to take over the Republican Party, while abandoning the "principles of the party and its campaign promises". Congressman Usher Burdick of North Dakota said that Mr. Scott was one of the "elite Republicans" who seldom fraternized with ordinary men, "silk-stockinged, mustached, a la Hollywood, and a drooling follower of the internationalists".

The piece adds that the scrap was still in the early rounds.

"A Welcome" indicates that brothers Roger and Charlie Peace, along with J. Kelly Sisk, had purchased the Asheville Citizen and Times, and it welcomes them as publishers of high integrity and wide reputation, and as successful businessmen, also being publishers of the Greenville, S.C., News and Piedmont. It also hopes that they would not change the "broadly liberal and progressive policies" of the Asheville newspapers.

"They're Legal… No They're Not" indicates that a ruling by State Attorney General Harry McMullen that voting machines could not be used in the upcoming October 3 bond election, while perhaps in strict accordance with the law, was a "pretty silly business". The law which had authorized the bond election was passed by the General Assembly, and one of its sections had been interpreted to mean that only paper ballots could be used. General laws of the state permitted the use of voting machines for all elections, and several counties had installed them. It urges that henceforth, the Assembly ought be mindful of that result and ensure that every special act calling for any sort of election would make it clear that it did not intend to amend existing state law in the manner of taking votes.

In 2020, the Republican challengers to reality, the alternative-fact adherents, would have us not only return to paper ballots, without any form of machine tabulation, but would insist on having 50 types of identification, birth certificate, passport, driver's license, footprints, fingerprints, DNA cross-referencing, and, preferably, a data chip embedded in the forehead which could readily be scanned by an electronic device, and then hand-count every ballot submitted by the voter to ensure that the machine was not pre-programmed to harm Republicans or at least Trump. Meanwhile, a good proportion of those voters in large cities who line up at the polls at 6:00 a.m. won't make it in to vote by closing time. Perfect. We can't have rigged elections, making it easy to register and vote, 'cause you don't know who's who then.

Never in the history of the country has there been anything so ludicrous as the Trump challenge to the result of the 2020 election. It is nothing but plain sour grapes, has no place in the public discourse. His attorneys have proven themselves repeatedly to be liars and charlatans in the matter, just as their boss has been routinely during his time in office. To insinuate and even directly state that Democrats are "thieves" stealing the election—at least most Democrats, excluding the good 'uns, the rest being Commies and socialists—, is to sound as the typical fascist dictator in a third world country. Step back a moment and look at yourselves in the mirror. You are disgraceful and increasingly becoming a standing joke. That is no way to go out. At least have the discretion and wisdom to exit the stage with some remaining shred of honor and dignity.

We found laughable, incidentally, the claim of Rudy Giuliani that "we" gave Al Gore 37 days after the election to challenge the results in one state in 2000, and so he and his fellow clowns ought have more than three weeks to challenge the results of the 2020 election in several states, apparently not realizing the joke on himself, that in 2000, the result in Florida had been determined by 537 votes, which, in turn, determined the outcome of the election in the electoral college, after Vice-President Gore had defeated Governor Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the nationwide popular vote, and, on top of it, the 537-vote margin had not tracked the exit polling data on election day, at a time when mail-in ballots did not overload the system, as in the current year during a national pandemic, killing thus far in eight months more than 250,000 Americans. Moreover, in 2000, it was Governor Bush's campaign which filed the challenge to Vice-President Gore's simple request for a recount in four Florida counties, his right under law, then expanded by the Florida Supreme Court to encompass all counties of the state, following the objection by the Bush campaign to the limited recount. It was the Bush campaign objection which caused the matter to extend for 37 days, not the request by Vice-President Gore and his campaign to have the limited recount—the Trump campaign's right to which in close states as Georgia no one has questioned. Get your facts straight. Vice-President Gore did not initiate any challenge in the courts, other than to seek a contest, allowed by state statute, of the premature certification by the Florida Secretary of State effectively blocking the recount, which is why the case is titled Bush v. Gore, not Gore v. Bush. Had the Supreme Court not intervened in the matter, the recount in Florida would have been completed by the week after Thanksgiving, less than three weeks after the election on November 7. But, of course, that would have led to the electoral college victory of Vice-President Gore, and so that would never have been satisfactory to the alternative-fact crowd, who were very much in evidence in 2000, as well as in 2016 and 2020.

There is nothing even slightly similar going on in 2020, where Trump has lost the popular vote by at least six million—admittedly, though, still nearly two million shy of the number of stories in "The Naked City"—, has lost the electoral college by 306 to 232, and, in the states being challenged, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, the margins were all more than 11,500 votes, with the larger states of Michigan and Pennsylvania being won by President-elect Biden by margins of 150,000 and 80,000, respectively.

What is your problem? Millions of votes being changed by software? Then why, pray tell, did that not show up in the hand recounts which have already occurred in Georgia and elsewhere? You are simply lying to your little minions, whom you know are so stupid and uneducated, unable to read with very much close discernment, that they will fall for this garbage, being brainwashed and indoctrinated to the alternative-facts world for the last five years, indeed, prior to that for the previous 20 years or so via such outlets as Fox News and talky-talk radio, the blazing, rushing limbecks. No one would fall for this garbage except an idiot who does not read. Those who accept the Trump lines without question brand themselves as uneducated boobs.

Examine the facts and stop taking the word of these liars. They want to provide you some mystical "evidence", anecdotes of individuals, whose veracity has never been tested in a court of law or by cross-examination, many of whom have already retracted their claims, and in every single case, involve a number of votes in the single or double digits, less than 100, nowhere close to changing the outcome. They talk in vague generalities when it comes to numbers, either "millions" or "significant numbers", but offer no proof of any deliberate change of votes via software anywhere in this election, only that the software utilized in some states may have been that used in Venezuela 15 years ago to rig elections, nevertheless being used in presently Republican-controlled states. The 5,800 votes previously uncounted, for instance, found in Georgia during their canvass were in four counties, three of which are Republican-majority counties, and there was no indication of any deliberate omission of them from the count, merely an inadvertent misunderstanding by voting officials regarding the computer software in three of the cases and misplaced ballots, placed in a wrong bin, in a fourth case, resulting in a total change in the margin of about 1,400 votes, significant in Florida in 2000, not in Georgia in 2020. That which has not been widely reported is that during the recount, President-elect Biden picked up a net gain of 560 votes among those found to have been omitted in the original machine-count in heavily Democratic Dekalb County, almost as many as Trump picked up in the largest discrepancy of the four misplaced-vote counties, Floyd, where he had a net gain of 686. If there was any grand design afoot in the original vote count, why would election officials in a heavily Democratic county leave out votes for the Democratic candidate? The important point is that during the canvass, those mistakes were uncovered and rectified—unlike Florida in 2000 where the Supreme Court's spare majority blocked continuation of the statewide recount for want of a uniform standard. Otherwise, the hand recount in Georgia differed by only a handful of votes from the original machine count.

A good example of the minuscule number of votes actually involved, while being blown out of proportion by the Trump team, comes from the Republican canvasser who first refused to certify the Wayne County, Michigan, vote because of the fact that 73 precincts showed "mismatched" votes, more ballots issued than counted, then changed her mind and agreed to certify, then sought to rescind her certification, the latter act, according to the Michigan Secretary of State, being outside the law and thus having no legal effect. That which was of concern to the canvasser, by her own statement at a press conference a couple of days ago, was that the mismatched votes in the 73 precincts, amounting to no more than a total of about 400 votes, not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, might have an effect on local races, not the presidential race, determined in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.

The whole claim of "widespread fraud at the polls" is a fanciful lie dreamed up by Trump and then echoed by his lying defense team. It is cobbled together out of exaggerated commonplace anomalies in the vote-counting process, taking place in every election, an example of which was suggested by the Michigan canvasser, that sometimes a ballot might be issued but is then spoiled by the voter making an error, then having to start over with a fresh ballot, thus if not recorded properly as a "spoiled ballot", leading to the issuance of a ballot without a corresponding vote, or in the case of most of the issues, simply an occasional omission during the original machine counts, not important, save to the obsessive-compulsive, except in an election decided by fewer than, say, 2,000 votes, again, as in Florida in 2000. We should strive for absolute accuracy, but the whole purpose of the electoral college, to the extent to which it has any viable remaining purpose in modern times, is to enable an early call of the election to provide a stable government transition process to be initiated as early as possible, having become instead the object of attempted strategic manipulation to provide the popular vote loser a chance to "win" the election, never minding that such "wins" do not produce effective governance, instead producing a presidency crippled from the outset with questions, rightfully so, of its legitimacy. As the House of Representatives, the constituency of which determines 435 of the 538 electors, has not been expanded since August 8, 1911 to reflect growth in population, though supposed to be done after every decennial census, the electoral college does not any longer even reflect representatively the substantial changes in demographics of the country since that time 109 years ago and is merely an outmoded political football, one laced together with leftovers from grandpa's and grandma's horse-and-buggy whip. It is thus highly hypocritical for Republicans of late, such as McConnell, to say on the one hand that "every vote deserves to be counted" while also not standing for abolition of the electoral college, the most fundamentally anti-democratic of our conventions left over from the Founding, diametrically opposed to the concept of one-person, one-vote.

Especially given that outmoded status of the electoral college, one does not have the right to go forth at press conferences before the American people, regarding something as important as a presidential election, and simply start lying about the integrity of the vote, even suggesting that the opposing candidate "had to know" in advance about a supposed plan to steal the election, as it appeared coordinated in the states in question, the attorneys representing themselves in the process as officers of the court, preparing to submit "proof" accompanying prospective lawsuits, yet, never having presented an iota of evidence to back up any of their bizarre assertions, especially given the fact that both have been Federal prosecutors in the past and are relying on those past credentials to give them credit presently. As the campaign ended on November 2, these statements are not simply campaign rhetoric supporting a candidate, in which hyperbole and stretching of the truth are commonplace. Their irresponsibility and willingness to fabricate a skein of unfounded accusations about such a critical matter as the election of the President, having implications for future foreign relations as well the ability to govern effectively at home in the four years ahead, taking isolated examples, things which occur in every election, and blowing them up into pervasive schemes supposedly impacting millions of votes, deliberately orchestrated by some unseen outside force—, the "globalists", George Soros, Hugo Chavez, the socialist pizza parlor on the corner, the unknown gremlin sitting next to you in the mask when you go out to eat, the dogs which howl in the night for no reason, the faraway wail of the siren in the wee hours appearing to come closer and closer before drifting away just to be annoying, defunded, the obviously trained fly which lands on the candidate's head during a debate inexplicably—, cause one to wonder just how many innocent people may have gone to jail behind the arrogant mendacity of these two former prosecutors.

By the way, we were briefly watching, for the sake of three minutes of self-flagellation, we suppose, one of the John Birch Society Redux programs this date, in which a former preacher and Governor was answering call-in questions from his audience, one of whom had asked why former Vice-President Biden could not be prosecuted for having withheld aid from the Ukraine unless a corrupt prosecutor was fired, to which the host said that, hey, he didn't know because he was no FBI agent, but, hey, it sounded fishy to him. First, the FBI investigates. They do not determine whether to prosecute Federal crimes, that being the exclusive province of the Justice Department and the various U.S. Attorneys across the country. Second, there was no crime because President-elect Biden, at the time in 2015, was transacting the business of the Administration, after full consultation with President Obama, appropriate Cabinet officials, diplomatic personnel, Congressional leaders and the U.N., all of whom had approved the action in advance. Moreover and most important, he was not seeking to receive something for his personal benefit and was only withholding, with authorization, U.S. aid in exchange for a change of policy, something which has constantly been done throughout our history as a nation, both with respect to domestic policy vis-à-vis the states and with respect to foreign nations—something you would already know had you read very much U.S. history with any discerning eye or watched at all the hearings before the House Intelligence Committee last fall, investigating that "perfect phone call", and heard that past practice confirmed by all of the career diplomats who testified, distinguishing the conduct of Vice-President Biden from that of Trump, which they found unprecedented. Had he, as did Trump, made an overture for a special personal "favor" to dig up dirt on a probable U.S. political opponent in exchange for the aid, then he would have been guilty of a felony, soliciting a bribe by a public official, pursuant to 18 USC 201(b)(2), and would be subject to prosecution, a fine and sentence of up to 15 years in jail, and being barred from ever again serving in Federal public office, that latter aspect of the punishment, in the case of Trump, being that which ought be the primary object of any such prosecution when he leaves office, so that he can never again hope to inflict upon the nation that which he has in the past four years.

Also, your efforts to have President-elect Biden indicted under the Logan Act for merely consulting with foreign leaders in anticipation of becoming President on January 20, on the preposterous notion that Michael Flynn was prosecuted thereunder for "the same thing", are premised on facts stuck inside your turkey baster. Flynn was prosecuted and pleaded guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement, for lying to the FBI, having nothing to do with the 1799 "Logan Act", under which there has been only one prior prosecution shortly after its passage, a case which was dismissed. President-elect Biden is doing nothing unusual to the transition process of every prior President-elect and would be remiss in his responsibilities not to consult with foreign leaders, as well as members of Congress, especially when the outgoing sore losers, in another unprecedented action, will not cooperate with him in the least, behaving as the petulant child, the role which the White House occupant has played throughout his tenure. You are confusing the post-election role of a president-elect with pre-election shenanigans by the private citizen candidate designed to undermine U.S. foreign policy in an effort to benefit politically in the election, as Richard Nixon did in October, 1968 by promising the South Vietnamese more favorable peace terms to prevent success of the Johnson Administration in the Paris peace talks, and the Reagan-Bush team did in October, 1980, in an effort to prevent release of the hostages from Iran prior to the election to avoid a sudden surge by President Carter—also likely being the genesis of the Reagan Administration's Iran-Contra arms deal with Iran, the probable offer that if the Iranians held the American Embassy hostages until inauguration day, the new Administration would sell them arms, but that's another story...

Get your facts straight, and, while about it, Mr. Peacherman, teach your daughter not to be such an unmitigated liar as she goes through life, whether as press secretary to the White House or in any other role. We suppose it runs in the family. Also, learn to read rather than spouting off on the public airwaves about things of which you have obviously no understanding or knowledge. We get tired of you self-righteous, born-again Bircher hypocrites and Pharisees wasting our time by lying to people whom you seek to manipulate to do your political bidding, ultimately seeking only to line your own pockets and achieve fame and fortune, hardly the work of God, rather that of the flim-flam man whom you not only admire but with whom you share many unsavory characteristics.

A piece from the Richmond News-Leader, titled "For Mr. Burns, Three Cheers", tells of Grover Burns of Fredericksburg having invented a combined household and clinical thermometer on which he had obtained a patent. It enabled the patient to view their temperature without taking the thermometer out of the mouth, as it registered on an L-shaped index, situated about 9 inches from the user's face. It finds that it would be a boon to the sick person who previously had to suffer the indignity of having the thermometer snatched from the mouth by doctors or members of the family, who would then say "just a little above normal", to keep from disturbing the patient. Then, maybe a week afterward, they would finally tell the person, following recovery, that the hallucination of the wallpaper leaping from the wall had been the result of a temperature of 104.6. The invention would take away that kind of secrecy and permit the patient to understand the problem. It comments that the medical profession probably took a dim view of the matter, but thinks Mr. Burns's invention was "a splendid blow for freedom".

Drew Pearson indicates that Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, who had more influence on the President than virtually anyone else within the Cabinet, had been worried the day following the President's speech in Boston, calling the President to point out the manner in which newspapers had underscored his remark that "no sacrifice, no tax" was too great for the defense of freedom, interpreting it to mean that the excess profits tax and high personal income tax might not be allowed to expire on schedule at the end of the year. The President reassured Mr. Humphrey that such was not what he intended to imply, prompting Mr. Humphrey, in his speech to the American Bankers Association convention in Washington, to reassure his audience that the slated tax reductions would expire on schedule. He had not mentioned, however, the national sales tax, still under consideration. Mr. Pearson notes that the President's stance had changed since he had addressed a dinner at the F Street Club before his run for the presidency, telling Republican leaders that if young men had to give up their lives in wartime, businessmen ought surrender profits in wartime, resulting in many Republicans present saying that they would not support him as a candidate for the presidency.

Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, chairman of the Banking & Currency Committee, had appointed 121 leaders from business, labor and finance to develop a course for future foreign aid. In a meeting with them recently, he had received some conflicting advice, especially from UMW head John L. Lewis and former Marshall Plan administrator Paul Hoffman, presently chairman of Studebaker. Mr. Lewis suggested that a large part of the aid had not benefited the common people, being used instead for bankers and politicians to speculate rather than raising the standards of living. He said that he had been informed that 2.46 billion dollars in aid had been used to purchase Government bonds on which the U.S. had to pay interest. He also complained that many Latin American countries, such as Brazil, were not reciprocating in trade, that they shopped around for cheaper markets rather than trading with the U.S. after receiving U.S. dollars in aid. Mr. Hoffman expressed dislike for any program which gave away something, that Americans had the right to insist that the aid money would return in the form of future trade, adding that some nations might not survive to trade unless the foreign aid were continued. He said that he did not believe the free world would remain free or continue to gain strength unless the nations were able to obtain U.S. goods and services worth about 16 billion dollars per year.

Joseph Alsop, in Hong Kong, indicates that before his appointment as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Arthur Radford had been known to believe that the free world could not afford to allow the consolidation and development of Communist power in China. Mr. Alsop observes that in Hong Kong, "the Free World's best window on China", it was easy to understand the Admiral's view, as well as the motives and purposes of the U.S. and other Western leaders, eager to grant the Chinese Communists the Korean truce on their own terms. He finds that the truce would mainly permit consolidation and growth of Chinese Communist power, with the result likely of an upset in the fragile power balance in Asia.

Three years earlier, the Chinese Communist armies had been masses of half-armed manpower which had beaten the Nationalist Chinese. The massive attacks in the early days of the Korean War had been cold-bloodedly planned to overcome their weakness in firepower through unstinted expenditure of manpower. Communist Chinese General Lin Piao, trained in Russia, had been transferred from his former command and placed in charge of a vast military reorganization and re-equippage of the Chinese military, and as a result, had become the chief military figure in China, while the hero of the Chinese civil war, General Chu Teh, had become a figurehead. Within two years, China would have a force of about 170 infantry divisions, 20 armored divisions, 15 heavy military divisions and the remainder in proportion, albeit with its heavy equipment still needed from Russia, though able to supply its own light weaponry.

A similar process, on a smaller scale, would also be expected within the Chinese air force, which presently had fewer than 100 IL-28 jet bombers, perhaps 200 additional medium bombers and fewer than 700 MIG-15 jets. But the Chinese air training schools were presently graduating between 1,200 and 2,000 pilots every six months.

With the end of the drain on manpower in Korea, the Chinese military build-up would be expedited, and its best equipment and manpower would no longer be tied down to Korea.

Robert C. Ruark, in Munich, in the third of a series of seven columns regarding the morale of officers and men of the German occupation forces of the U.S., indicates that the case which had begun a charge against Maj. General Kenneth Cramer that his handling of his troops had led to a diminution in morale, had been the court-martial of Lt. Col. William Lane and his dismissal from service with loss of all pay and allowances.

Col. Lane had been badly wounded during World War II and had 12 years of consecutive service as an officer. He was attached to a quartermaster regiment in the German occupation zone, and like most officers and men, sought out and found amusement, leading to 13 specifications of misconduct, which he lists, eight of which had been dropped when some of the witnesses recanted their statements prior to trial. Most of the conduct related to being drunk and disorderly and sexual misconduct with women. The four specifications on which he had been tried were assault on a German woman, sexual relations with her, throwing a glass at another German woman and fondling the breasts of his maid against her will. The three women testified against him and the colonel did not testify in his own defense. His sentence of dismissal was presently under review in Washington. The morals charges had resulted from an investigation of his life after his drinking habits had come to light. The woman who had claimed to have an affair with him and that he had assaulted her, refused to answer the prosecution's question as to whether they had been intimate, claiming that it would have exposed her to criminal prosecution in the German courts and to a civil suit for alienation of affections by the colonel's wife. After being jailed overnight for contempt, she testified that she had been intimate intermittently with the colonel.

Whether the story is to be continued or not, will have to await the next installment, as Mr. Ruark leaves his reader abruptly dangling somewhere between drinks. We are not yet sure of his point. Is he trying to say that a routinely drunk and disorderly colonel was the right person to lead men in their occupation duties in Germany? If that is what he is trying to say, it would be par for the course for Mr. Ruark, who would die in 1965 as a chronic drunk.

A letter writer from Pittsboro comments on an editorial of September 23 anent U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge John J. Parker, favoring his nomination to the Supreme Court. He finds that the editorial had answered the objection to his appointment based on any form of racial prejudice. He says that he had known Judge Parker since 1904, when they had both been students at UNC and roomed in the same area of Old East dormitory for more than one year. He finds that while his age might work against him in receiving an appointment, he had the requisite qualifications as a lawyer and jurist, and, opines the reader, was better than the average member of the present Court, of whom he does not think much.

A letter writer from Kinston urges support of the bond issues on the October 3 ballot, for 72 million dollars, 50 million of which would be for building school facilities and the remaining 22 for improving the state's mental hospitals.

A letter writer from Franklinville—of the same name as the member of the UNC Board of Trustees, brother of Dave Clark—, indicates that he had been considering the editorial appearing September 23 which had stated that Chapel Hill "Commies" had done no permanent damage to the institutions of the state, wonders whether they were a distinct species, says that about a year earlier, after speaking with a friend in Concord who had recently lost a son in Korea, he had set out for Charlotte, stopping for gas at a country service station, wherein he noticed the attendant was in tears, explaining that she had received a message that her son had been killed in Korea. He questions whether Chapel Hill had been a part of a larger movement which had filled the State Department with "spies and hirelings of the Russian Government, aided the communists in China and finally sent Alger Hiss and his associates to Yalta to turn North Korea over to Stalin and set the stage for the murder of thousands of young men who now lie in unmarked graves in faraway Korea." He indicates that a letter in the September issue of the American Mercury had said that Mr. Hiss had been on the list of Communists in the Government 3 1/2 years prior to the Yalta conference in February, 1945, and that the heads of every Congressional committee investigating Communism, including former and present Congressman Martin Dies, former Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, since jailed for arranging Government staff kickbacks, and Senator McCarthy, had been attacked by Drew Pearson, wonders whether the presence of his column on the editorial page had an undue influence on the thinking of some people.

No, only on nuts like you.

You might have a job ahead in 2024 as Trumpy's campaign manager, assuming by then he is still eligible to hold public office.

A letter writer from Durham, the publicity chairman for the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Chapter of the American Association of Social Workers, indicates that the organization wanted to go on record in support of the bond issue, recognizing the need for additional funds for schools and mental institutions within the state.

Framed Edition [Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]Links-Date Links-Subj.