The Dallas Morning News reports today that Texas state Rep. Marc Veasey, who is running for Congress in the Democratic primary for the 33rd District, blasted rival Domingo Garcia on Wednesday for remarks about the automobile manufacturer and other large, longtime employers in Tarrant County, including American Airlines, Lockheed Martin, and General Motors (all unionized employers, by the way, a rarity in Texas).
“I support GM jobs and workers, I oppose the corporate bosses that make gas guzzlers Americans don’t want to buy and that cannot compete in the world marketplace,” [Garcia says],. “People like Mitt Romney and Marc Veasey think the corporations are people, too.” says Garcia.
Oh really? Maybe the Arlington plant should be making the super-successful Volt that so many Americans want to buy. Corporations are persons by law, or did Garcia sleep through that class in law school? Corporations are owned by millions of people who depend on publicly held corporations’ profitability for their livelihood and their retirement. What planet is this guy from? Surely not Mars or Venus. Mongo, perhaps?
A news article in today’s Wall Street Journal chronicles that when pharmaceutical executive Andrew G. Bodnar pleaded guilty to white-collar crime in 2009, the judge didn’t throw the book at him—he ordered him to write one to reflect upon “the criminal behavior in this case so that others similarly situated may be guided in avoiding such behavior,” said the judgment from U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington. And make it 75,000 words.
The finished book, written during Dr. Bodnar’s two-year probation, has been submitted into the court record. His lawyer—who says he had never heard of such a punishment for a crime—says the former Bristol-Myers Squibb executive has now completed his sentence, in a case in which he was accused of providing false information to regulators.
The case involved a certification Dr. Bodnar made concerning the blood-thinning drug Plavix.
Another drug maker wanted to sell a generic copy of Plavix years before the patent was to expire. Dr. Bodnar, then a senior vice president at Bristol-Myers, helped negotiate a proposed agreement of patent litigation in 2006.
But the deal required antitrust clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state regulators. That is when Dr. Bodnar entered a new chapter of his life.
Dr. Bodnar signed a certification verifying with the FTC certain aspects of the proposed settlement. Later the Justice Department alleged Dr. Bodnar had made oral representations to an executive of the other manufacturer that weren’t spelled out in the written agreement— allegedly contradicting the signed certification.
In the book, Dr. Bodnar writes that he learned during a business trip in July 2006 that FBI agents were raiding his office at Bristol-Myers’s Park Avenue headquarters. (No doubt in their ninja suits with guns drawn.)
The merits of the case, to which Dr. Bodnar pleaded guilty, have been adjudicated. He served no jail time. Judge Urbina’s sentence seems to make sense, and, who knows, may result in some interesting literature. Many of the so called “white collar crimes” are better handled by the civil law or by such sentences. Most of those accused are not dangerous criminals, but productive citizens whose misdeeds, such as they are, should be compensated for by making use of their talents and abilities. Many of the cases prosecuted by our runaway Justice Department are strict liability regulatory offenses which do not require criminal intent as an element. (And I am not critical of just the political hack who is the current Attorney General; previous administrations including those of the two Bushes, overreached in this regard). So far, the Supreme Court has not definitively weighed in on whether a person can be a felon for inadvertently violating one of the myriad of obscure regulations. It has, however, wisely held that criminal violation of the Internal Revenue Code requires a “willful” standard; that is, that it must be prove that the accused knew it was a violation. That standard should be applied to all regulatory offenses.
Creative sentences are not unheard of, but the article mentions some noteworthy ones:
In April of this year, an Alabama circuit court judge ordered a man accused of receiving stolen property to serve three days in jail for contempt of court for wearing sagging pants during a hearing. In 2008, a housing-court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, ordered a landlord accused of building-code violations to serve six months of house arrest in one of his dilapidated rental properties. (I wonder if he could take his cat to ward off the rats.) Since the 1990s, a municipal judge in Fort Lupton, Colorado, has sounded off on teenagers accused of blasting too-loud music. His prescription calls for them to listen to the ballads of crooners like Barry Manilow. (Cruel and unusual punishment for sure; please take note, ACLU.)
For some offenses, I’d like to see the stocks and the pillory brought back. Only spoiled produce (re-recyclable!) could be thrown at the miscreant; no rocks or feces.
Why does France have so many 49 employee companies?
Companies say the biggest obstacle to hiring is the 102-year-old Code du Travail, a 3,200-page rule book that dictates everything from job classifications to the ability to fire workers. Many of these rules kick in after a company’s French payroll creeps beyond 49.
Tired of delays in getting orders filled, Pierrick Haan, CEO of Dupont Medical (not to be confused with chemical company DuPont (DD)), decided last year to return production of some wheelchairs and medical equipment to France. The 150-year-old company, based in Frouard in eastern France, created 20 jobs making custom devices at a French plant—and will stop there. Faced with France’s stifling labor code, Haan probably will send any additional production of standard equipment to what he calls “Near France”—Tunisia, Bulgaria, or Romania. “The cost of labor isn’t the main problem, it’s the rigidities,” Haan says. “If you make a mistake in your hiring plans, you can’t correct it.”
It appears France has over 10% chronic unemployment.
50 is also a magic number for bringing a business under many regulations here in the US. Any company that expands its workforce to 50 or more employees will have to contend with numerous additonal mandates. Depending on the industry, that fiftieth new hire may require an additonal four or five just to comply, not to mention legal advice to be sure no regulation goes un-noticed.
Texas Rangers Josh Hamilton’s four home run game this past week jolted a lot of memories of an earlier time for me. One month shy of fifty-three years ago Cleveland Indians’ Rocky Colavito accomplished the same feat and in the same city. During the 1959 season, I was an avid if not rabid baseball fan. Early in the year I read a sports magazine that had stories of players the editors predicted would be the stars for each of the then eight major league teams in the coming season. I remember Nelson Fox of the Chicago White Sox, Ernie Banks of the Cubs, Roger Maris of the Kansas City Athletics, Sure enough, Fox was an MVP for the White Sox and Colavito hit his four 4-baggers in one game, and hit 42 for the season. The Indians came in second to the White Sox in the American League. I don’t recall what kind of season Maris had, but he went on to break Babe Ruth’s season home run record (with an asterisk, because the season had more games) two years later after he had been traded to the Yankees. Banks may have had a good season too, but Cubs, being the perennial heart breakers, probably did not.
Until the late 1950s, major league baseball was mostly confined to the northeast quadrant of the country. This was because traveling from city to city for games was by train or bus, and a journey from the east to the west coast was two days by those modes. Air travel was coming into its own, but was expensive and the safety was not universally accepted. The fear that a team’s plane might crash and kill everyone was a consideration. And the South did not have a city considered large enough to support a major league team. To follow the majors in most of the nation a fan was dependant on radio networks, the clear-channel AM stations in the evening, and newspaper accounts the next day. Television coverage was sporadic, and mostly confined to Saturday or Sunday afternoon. One of the networks had a “game of the week” on Saturday in which former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean was the color announcer. Big games like the World Series might be televised nationwide on week nights, but that was about it.
Early in 1959, I became a carrier for the Dallas Morning News, delivering newspapers every morning in my neighborhood. When the baseball season started, the first news item I looked for after finishing my route was the baseball scores. On June 11, I was thrilled to see Rocky Colavito, who had become one of my heroes, had hit his four home runs against Baltimore. I’ll never forget the photo in the News of Rocky kissing his bat.
To experience real live baseball in the rest of the country, fans had to settle for the local minor league team. There were plenty of them, rated as AAA to class D, depending mostly on the size of the franchise location. Their drawback was they were mostly farm teams for the big leagues. The really good players didn’t stay long before they were called up. Still, a lot of good ball was played in the minors. Locally, we had Dallas Eagles of the Texas League who became the Dallas Rangers in 1958 as a franchise of the American Association. In 1960, the Rangers merged with the Fort Worth Cats, and became the Dallas-Forth Worth Rangers.
An interesting aside is that the Dallas Cowboys football team was originally to be called the Dallas Rangers. That was changed in March 1960 because of the perceived confusion. I recall hearing at the time that mail addressed to the football Rangers was often delivered to the baseball team.
Before the team moved to Arlington in the mid-sixties, the local team played at Burnett Field, now a grassy but otherwise empty field between Colorado Blvd and the levee where I-35 crosses the Trinity River into Oak Cliff. Another memory of the summer of ‘59, was winning tickets in a newspaper sales contest and treating a couple of my friends to a Dallas Rangers game. Don’t remember who the opposing team was, or even who won, but it went into extra innings. By the time it was over and we had dawdled around, the last city bus had run. We decided to walk home to our neighborhood near Love Field. Sounds crazy now, but we really thought nothing of it. About halfway there, the Dallas Police, alerted by the parents of one of my buds who had immigrated from a northeastern city, picked us up and took us home. It was my first ride in a Dallas Police car; the next one was 13 years later – as a newly hired police officer.
During that year, I borrowed books of every sort about baseball from the library, biographies of players, news articles, baseball fiction, and absorbed all manner of baseball lore. I recall one story in a magazine where the author was reminiscing about his great and pleasant experiences of baseball. The story ended with the line, as I remember it, that “Baseball was wonderful; it still is.” Fifty or some years later, is it still? I really can’t answer. While I can still enjoy a game, particularly if the home boys are playing – I watched a World Series game start to finish when the Texas Rangers were playing the Giants last year, or was it the year before? I really lost interest about the time Willie Mays retired. Not sure why.
Postscript:
Only sixteen players have hit four home runs in one game in the major leagues. Of those, only Willie Mays and Lou Gehrig qualify as all-time greats who have become household names to fans and non-fans alike. That jury may still be out.
Despite his feats in 1959, and his unmatched popularity among the fans, the next year Rocky Colavito inexplicably was traded to the Detroit Tigers. He returned to Cleveland several years later. He was inducted into the Indians’ hall of fame in 2006. Hasn’t made it to Cooperstown –yet.
Proof that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has redeeming qualities is manifested by Scott Brown, Cape Cod potato chips, and Samuel Adams beer. The latter has been brewed since 1984 by Boston Beer Company, stated and still operated by Jim Koch (don’t know if he is related to David and Charles, current betes-noir for the left, and don’t much care, but he was a Harvard classmate of Mitt Romney). In an interview with William Bostwick about the success and direction of his craft-beer brewing company, Mr. Koch has this to say:
Bostwick: The names Boston Beer and Samuel Adams imply a specific story, or at least a history. How’d you settle on them?
Koch: We’re in Boston, so that wasn’t hard. And you don’t have to be a genius to know that you don’t put the name Koch on a product 26-year-old men put in their mouth.
Those who have paid attention know the story. Longtime U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009. The governor called a special election for January 19, 2010 for a replacement to serve until the expiration of Kennedy’s term. Against expectations, Republican candidate Scott Brown, who campaigned as a fiscal conservative and opposed to the proposed legislation that has become to be known as Obamacare, defeated Democrat Martha Coakley. Now Senator Brown is seeking re-election to a full term. His Democratic opponent will probably be Harvard Law school professor Elizabeth Warren, supposedly a consumer affairs expert and darling of the left-wing.
On April 27, 2012, the Boston Herald reported that Warren had listed her ethnicity as Native American and Harvard’s law school had been touting that in a effort to answer a charge that its faculty was “too male” and “too white.” (See Boston Herald)
On April 30, 2012, the Boston Globe reported that Warren had listed her ethnicity as an Native American in Harvard’s faculty directory and the American Association of Law Schools desk book. “In a 1996 article, the Harvard Crimson quoted a Harvard Law School spokesman saying that the faculty of 71 included one Native American – Warren – in addition to a few black and Hispanic professors and 11 women. The claim was repeated in a later Crimson story that called Warren the first woman with a minority background to receive tenure.” (See Boston Globe)
It was later reported that Warren had one great great great grandpaent who was a member of a Cherokee tribe.
Warren’s candidacy is worthy of opposition for many reasons which are not subjects of the instant discussion. I could not care less about who her biological ancestors happen to have been, and it does not appear that she personally sought any benefit from that self-identification. That is not the point. Well then what is?
Well, she is indeed a native American – she was born in Oklahoma, which, I believe is a State in the United States of America. Of course, what was intended by the ethnic classification was that she was American Indian, or the more concise term Amerindian. One-thirty second? Really?
At the outset I have to say that of all the ethic classifications dreamed up by bureaucrats who have nothing better to do, “Native American” in reference to those persons who have some traceable ancestry to a pre-Columbian indigenous person is the most offensive. “Native” comes from the Latin root that means to be born, ans is commonly understood to means one who was born in a particular place. “American” means a citizen of the United States of America. The Constitution provides that any person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to their jurisdiction is a citizen. If one is born here, he or she is a native American; if one immigrates and is approved after going through the process, one is a naturalized American. There is no difference in status, nor should there be.
“Native” does have a connotation in some instances of being more desirable, or having a superior right to be in the location. That is why to officially term a person who has one, several, or all biological ancestors indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, who by definition must be distant, a “native American” is vaguely insulting to those who do not but were nevertheless born here.
In another respect, ethnic or racial classifications are also rather insulting to those of us who do have such ancestors, as well as members of any group that is thus identified. The concept of hypo-descent is the manner in which persons of different ancestry are classified here in the U.S. This means that the children of a mixed race or mixed ethnicity are given the racial identity of the lower status parent. This was extended to the “one drop rule” which defined a person with any discernible sub-Saharan African ancestry as “Negro” or “colored” or “black” for obviously invidious purposes. The rather tawdry origin of the concept to begin with is that the offspring of a dalliance between the lord’s sons (or the lord himself) and the scullery maid (or in the pre-Civil War U.S. master and slave) could not have the higher status without upsetting the social and economic order. The compromise written into the original Constitution (mooted by the 14th Amendment) that counted three-fifths of the number of slaves for legislative apportionment purposes appears to have presumed that any black person was a slave unless shown to be otherwise and created the census classification for that purpose. All of this suggests that classifying Ms. Warren, for example, as an Amerindian implies that her supposedly higher status “white blood” is tainted, a concept with which a Nazi would doubtless agree.
As for the continuation of racial classifications, that was necessary for the enforcement of Jim Crow segregation laws until they were declared unconstitutional. One would have thought that in America during the past half-century we could have moved beyond classification. Perhaps we could have, had not those who had good intentions, but were steeped in notions of collectivism, and deep down, real racism, managed to make national policy, together with those who saw ways to parlay race and ethnic baiting into a lucrative industry. The excuse most often made for continuing classification of people by race or ethnicity is that it is necessary to enforce equal protection laws. That is nonsense. If anything, it encourages discrimination via unofficial quotas, and the kind of perfidy some accuse Ms. Warren of for claiming to be an ethnic minority.
What is really disturbing about the left-wing (and some factions far to the right) of the political spectrum here in America is their continued insistence on identity politics. It is fundamentally wrong and insulting to individuals to ascribe qualities and attitudes to someone based on their ancestry, skin color, et cetera. It is the antithesis that all are created with the same unalienable rights, not some with special privileges. It is doubly insulting to assume that because one has certain physical characteristics characteristic to their biological ancestry, he or she is in need of help – that they can’t make it without that assistance. All families, clans, tribes, ethnic groups, and the human family have their share of saints and sinners, geniuses and ne’er-do wells.
Berkely Breathed, Outland
Of all those who were historically forced into a disfavored minority status in Western Civilization, the European Jews of the Diaspora were probably the most ill treated over the longest period of time. They survived and, when many came to the United States where legal and economic barriers were removed, and social constraints were minor, they thrived. That was because they had developed a superior culture that valued learning and accomplishment. There is no inherent reason why members of every so-called ethnic group cannot do the same – and individuals born into all such groups have. In some instances it is necessary to repudiate their culture, but, since cultures are value systems, they are not entitled to equal respect. That is why this multi-cultural movement is such utter nonsense. That is not to say that we cannot learn from other cultures; cross-fertilization between and among different civilizations has value. The point is to be critical and judgmental about what one accepts and rejects. Some cultures are pathological.
In his dissent in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1996, Justice John Marshall Harlan observed that, in America, “There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.” More recently Chief Justice John Roberts in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 in a majority opinion, stated “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Harlan were correct. The failure of the court and the nation to recognize a color-blind Constitution in 1896 resulted in over a century of legal discrimination against black people in the country, and provided the mechanism for continuing that discrimination and adding new groups based upon their ancestry and supposed physical appearance. The civil rights laws of the 1960s and their progeny did not end racial/ethnic discrimination, they merely changed the manner in which such discrimination can be legal — mostly to benefit the political agenda of the left wing. Our government, through the Census and other ways, classifies its citizens into various racial groups on the assumption that everyone in each group has advantage/disadvantages, benefits/burdens, and interests, similar to every other member. This is racism – the basest and most vile species of collectivism pure and simple. The original reason for classifying persons in this manner was to facilitate the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise. As I previously stated, It should have been done away with after the 13th & 14th Amendments were passed. It should be done away with now, otherwise the fate of our state and nation will be Balkanization and the strife attendant to that.
Fill a glass with water, and dip your finger into it. Except among our loved ones and close friends, the void that most of us would leave in this world is similar to that left in the water when the finger is withdrawn. For some, it might be akin to the space the finger would leave when withdrawn from more viscous substances. Then there is the rare person who, for a time anyway, is indispensable. The day World War II ended in Europe, May 8, 1945 confirmed such a man.
Here is C. L. Sulzberger’s tribute to him (excerpted from The American Heritage History of World War II, p. 97):
Remember him, for he saved all of you: pudgy and not very large but somehow massive and indomitable; baby-faced, with snub nose, square chin, rheumy eyes on occasion given to tears; a thwarted actor’s taste for clothes that would have looked ridiculous on a less splendid man. He wore the quaintest hats of anyone: tinted square bowlers; great flat sombreros squashed down on his head, naval officer’s caps rendered just slightly comic by the huge cigar protruding beneath the peak. On grave and critical occasions he sported highly practical Teddy-bear suits few grown man would dare to wear in public. He fancied oil painting, at which he was good, writing, at which he was excellent, and oratory, at which he was magnificent. His habits were somewhat owlish (a bird he faintly resembled), and he stayed up late at night, often working mornings in bed with a lap tray for his desk.
This was the man, blooded at Omdurman and Cuba, among the Pathans and the Boers, long before most of those he led were even born, who guided Britain to victory in World War II – and, one might add, who was the guiding spirit for the whole free world. For had Britain succumbed, as it had every logical reason to do in 1940, probably no successful coalition could have been formed.
Winston Churchill
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”
Or to one.
I recently watched the films The Gathering Storm, with Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave, and its sequel Into the Storm, with different actors. They are respectable accounts of Churchill’s career in the decade prior to and during the War, and well worth the the $4 (each) to rent.
The city of Paris abounds with sights to see. One of the more interesting for me is the Musee d’Armee located in the Hotel d’Invalides. There, two audio-visual and interactive exhibits depict and describe the Battle of Waterloo that ended Napoleon’s reign for good in 1815, and the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which ended that of his nephew Napoleon III. What is remarkable is that the French lost both of these engagements along with the wars in which they were fought, yet the museum does not seem at all defensive about them. They are presented to the visitor as matters of fact.
Another battle in with the French Army did not fare well is celebrated in our neighbor to the south and arrives each year with some degree of recognition in the United States, mostly in Texas and the other three border states. This event is commemoration of the Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862, the Cinco de Mayo. Today is the sesquicentennial of that engagement.
In 1862, Mexico had defaulted on foreign debts, a result of the civil war between what loosely can be described as conservative and liberal factions, as those terms were understood at the time, that had only nominally ended the year before. Its principal creditors were Spain, which had never completely reconciled to losing Mexico as a colony in the first place, and France. Britain also had a claim for property stolen by various generals on both sides of the civil conflict. In the Nineteenth Century, being a debtor was a sufficient casus belli for a creditor nation.
Spain had an army in Cuba and prepared to invade Mexico to collect its debts unilaterally. France, then under the Second Empire of Napoleon III had grander ideas. Napoleon was anxious to expand France’s overseas empire much as the British had done with their’s, and looked upon Latin America as plum ripe for the picking. The pesky American Monroe Doctrine made European re-colonization attempts in the Western Hemisphere a diplomatic and possibly a military risk for any foreign power so inclined. The United States, however, being embroiled in its own Civil War, was not in a position to enforce that doctrine.
France, together with Britain and Spain, agreed to send a tripartite military expedition to Veracruz as show of force to prod the Mexicans to pay up. Napoleon, however, had ulterior motives. His idea was to use this foray, conceived as limited, as cover for an invasion to seize the capital, provoke a revolution against the shaky government of Benito Juarez, and install a client as Emperor of Mexico. Napoleon had already persuaded Austrian Archduke Maximilian to take the throne.
The British and Spanish, who only wanted their money, made a deal with Juarez’s government to withdraw and make no further military incursions while Mexico made arrangements to pay. General the Comte de Lorencez, the French commander, whose intent was all along to conquer Mexico and enthrone Maximilian, pressed on toward Mexico City. Ignacio Zaragoza, a Texas born officer who had demonstrated his military prowess in the internal conflicts, established a redoubt in two forts guarding the passage to the city of Puebla with only a small, poorly armed force. Lorencez made the mistake of not using the tactics of the first Napoleon (and those of the U.S. Army General Winfield Scott who had successfully invaded Mexico only 15 years prior) by using artillery to reduce the forts. He sent his battalions in a frontal assault believing his supposedly superior soldiers could overwhelm the Mexicans. Lorencez was wrong. The French attackers marched into a crossfire in which more than a thousand out of six thousand men in his force were killed, while the Mexicans stood their ground. What was essentially a ragtag army carried the day. That Cinco de Mayo, the French were forced to withdraw to Veracruz.
It would seem that the victory was short lived because another, larger French force under a much abler commander, again invaded the next year. On May 31, 1863, the Juarez government was forced to flee, and Maximilian was enthroned as Emperor in Mexico City. Nevertheless, Mexico was never completely, or even mostly conquered. Even though he had the support of Mexican royalists, clericals, and various conservative elements, Maximilian only ruled in the areas under French Army control. The most energized political forces in the nation were still the backers of Juarez, and were biding their time. Napoleon’s grandiose scheme was becoming financially ruinous, and he ordered his troops withdrawn in 1866, leaving Maximilian in an untenable position. He was deposed and executed by firing squad June 19, 1867. The full story of Maximilian is worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy. He was not a despot, and was revered by many in Mexico, then and even now. His story, of course, is too long to tell here.
Maximilian
The Battle
The significance of the Battle of Puebla is twofold. First, whether the victory was really the result of the Lorencez’s bungling or the steadfast courage of Zaragoza’s men, the fact remains that the Mexicans bested the army of one of the premier world military powers. The Cinco de Mayo became a focus of national pride, much like the Alamo is for Texas, and Lexington and Concord are for the United States as a whole. Second, and really more significant, similar to the Texan stand at the Alamo that gave Sam Houston time to marshal his forces, the Cinco de Mayo victory delayed the French installation of Napoleon’s client Maximilian in Mexico by a full year. Recall that the American Civil War was going on at this time, and in 1862 a Confederate victory seemed a good bet. The Confederacy had been actively seeking the recognition and assistance of Britain and France, both of whose economic interests were aligned with the South. Neither, however, was inclined to intervene on the losing side. If Napoleon had established a foothold in Mexico as early as May 1862, he well might have decided that the Cotton Kingdom could serve him and his plans in a number of ways. This, of course, might be dismissed as contra factual speculation, but seems logical in view of the known historical facts.
For sources, see T. R. Fehrenbach, Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico (Da Capo Press Edition 1995), Chapter 29; Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juarez (Phoenix Press London, 2001). Most primary sources are in Spanish or French.
The Friday, May 4, 2012 Dallas Morning News features columnist Steve Blow recounting of the family history of Mary Stewart. Ms. Stewart is an 82 year old local resident whose grandfather Eugene Carrier, was a medical officer in the French army at Puebla. Dr. Carrier settled on Mexico, and married some local women. This couple’s son, who emigrated to Texas, went into the grocery business, and married here was Ms. Stewart’s father.
Norwegian painter Edvard Munch became the most expensive artist at auction Wednesday when his 1895 pastel of a terrified man clutching his cheeks along an Oslo fjord, “The Scream,” sold for $119.9 million at Sotheby’s—the most ever paid for a work of art at auction.
See full story here for the Homer Simpson version. That really is a scream.
French National Front leader Marine Le Pen on Tuesday said she would cast a blank ballot in Sunday’s runoff election for President of France, meaning she will not endorse either incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy or Socialist challenger François Hollande. Most observers believe Hollande is the probable victor. While Sarkozy is probably the closest to Le Pen’s party’s political ideology, she may be biding her time until the next election hoping the Socialist will make a mess of the economy.
