I just received A Doughboy With the Fighting 69th: A Remembrance of World War I in the mail very shortly after ordering it online. I am using it in my research for a book of my own on the 1868^th Iowa Infantry, which was the 3^rd Iowa National Guard. Both the 69^th and the 3^rd became part of the 42^nd (Rainbow) Division. Thankfully the author and his son, Albert Ettinger and A. Churchill Ettinger, left us something colorful and insightful to read.

AJH

AJH

According to the New York Daily News, a serious rift developed between George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during the administration's final days.

Both can obviously be stubborn and persistent. I happen to agree with “The Dark Lord” on this one. Why Bush let Libby take the fall without some serious backup shows how letter-of-the-law (or anal) he can be.

“Sources close to Cheney told the Daily News the former vice president repeatedly pressed Bush to pardon Libby, arguing his ex-chief of staff and longtime alter ego deserved a full exoneration - even though Bush had already kept Libby out of jail by commuting his 30-month prison sentence.”

“He went to the mat and came back and back and back at Bush,” one source said. “He was still trying the day before Obama was sworn in.” Another source said, “He's furious with Bush. He's really angry about it and decided he's going to say what he believes.”

Richard Armitage should be answering questions and, if he were an honorable man, would speak up in defense of Scooter. Bob Novak did not quite understand why his source, Armitage, let it go on for so long, although prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew the deputy secretary of state was the guilty party and not Libby. Even some liberals were taken aback by Libby's targeting.

AJH

Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico is a dissenter when it comes to man-made climate change.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

“I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect,” Schmitt said. “Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age. But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming.”

Schmitt grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque. He has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University.

Scientists “are being intimidated” if they disagree with the prevailing global warming theory, he said. “They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming.” 

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by one degree per century since around the year 1400, and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity."

The complete article is at the Boston Herald website (“Former astronaut speaks out on global warming”). It was originally published in The Santa Fe New Mexican.

Meanwhile, Belgium has just inaugurated a “zero emissions” science post in Antarctica to study climate change at a cost of €20 million.

Midmorning Sunday several people in Texas reported “a fireball in the sky.” Numerous reports of falling debris with at least one fireball and an accompanying explosion — probably a sonic boom — possibly from the recent collision of American and Russian satellites (Iridium-Cosmos), were submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Airline pilots were warned previously, on Saturday, via a NOTAM, although the source of the debris has not been confirmed and the warning did not mention the satellite incident. Some of the objects appear to have landed in Williamson County, where local authorities were tracking and searching using a helicopter without success. It could have been a large meteor burning up in the atmosphere.

Roland Herwig, a spokesman for the FAA's Southwest Region, spoke with reporters on Sunday. He said there was no immediate “evidence of damage, no evidence of injuries, no evidence of anyone yet finding a chunk of satellite.”

Until someone actually recovers debris, he noted, it may be impossible to tell whether the sightings involved wreckage from the Iridium-Cosmos crash, some other satellite or debris from a meteor. The Limestone County sheriff's office reported on someone who claimed to have a picture of the fireball and a smoke trail and a Plano, Texas, police cruiser may have capture images from a dashboard camera.

The Associated Press reported that the “chief of Russia's Mission Control says clouds of debris from the collision will circle Earth and threaten numerous satellites” in the coming days. How long this may last is unknown.

AJH

AJH

What one finds at the Dollar Tree is usually somewhat surprisingly hip, in a Jack Benny cheap sort of way. I especially like rummaging through a boatload of DVD knockoffs which have probably been sitting in the store for ages, and before that in warehouses and cargo ship containers from Los Angeles to Shanghai and beyond.

There is so much much “lost” television programming out there that it is sad to think of all the fascinating performances that have been neglected. Of course, a lot of this material, including the early years of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, has been lost forever, unless some smart fellow somehow tracks down the original broadcast signals floating about in the far reaches of space.

Recently I found two movies on one disc, The Beatniks with a young Peter Breck (Nick on The Big Valley) and Wild Guitar with a very young Peter Boyle and a nice head of hair, too. In fact, both of them have impressive hair as does the lead in Guitar, Archie Hall Jr.

Boyle is probably best known for his curmudgeonly role on Everybody Loves Raymond coupled with Doris Roberts. He plays the “monster” in Young Frankenstein, which is a terrifically funny flick. This was Mel Brooks at his best. I am not really a fan of his other work, which partly explains why it took so long for me to get around to seeing Frankenstein. The opening scene with Gene Wilder really gets me laughing every time. Another Wilder vehicle that I happen to adore is Silver Streak.