The Hard Driving Type

Added on by C. Maoxian.

From Robert Byrd's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:

"[Senator Mansfield had] kind of a laid back style. I served under both Mr. Johnson when he was Majority Leader and Mr. Mansfield. Mr. Johnson -- the hard driving type. The type who would twist arms, cajole, threaten, plead and drive. Mr. Mansfield was just the opposite. He believed in letting every Senator go his own way, make up his own mind. He didn't attempt to twist arms. I did the floor work. Mr. Mansfield was back in his office reading the press, papers, and books and so on. So they had their different styles. Both were good leaders."

Funny how Byrd ducks the question of what he thought about Joseph McCarthy. 

Unintended Fruits of the G.I. Bill

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Funny bit from the transcript of Robert Christopher's appearance on Booknotes in 1989: he lives in "Old Lawn, Connecticut" (not Old Lyme). He has a great smoker's voice ... and died three years later of emphysema. 

On the issue of "Jewish dominance of the American media" he had this to say:

"That's one of the oldest lines in the book. Henry Ford was convinced of that and so was Henry Adams. It simply isn't true. There are some of the powerful media that are owned by Jewish families. The New York Times and the Newhouse chain. But there are a number of others that are owned by WASPs. The whole Los Angeles Times company -- the controlling family there is WASP. Dow Jones which owns the Wall Street Journal is owned by a WASP family. First of all, you can't honestly state that any particular ethnic [or religious] group ... controls the bulk of the nation's most important publications. But more importantly you can't demonstrate that there's any real connection between the ethnicity [or religion] of publishers and the way their papers handle the news. In many cases it's interesting -- Dow Jones is a good case, and the Wall Street Journal is an interesting case in point. The owners are WASP. As it happens right now the Chairman of the Board and the Editor of the Journal are both Jewish."

Tweets for April 16, 2016

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Sally Beauty Could Get Ugly

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Weekly squiggle review, Idiot Wave set-up in Sally Beauty (SBH) ... looks like a minimum move to $20.50 if I scattered the chicken entrails right ... I could have featured this last week instead of the telecom sector (IYZ), but for some reason chose that one instead, probably because it will fail quicker, ha!

Again, this is a weekly chart so the trade could take months to work out.  

Click to enlarge

Tweets for April 13, 2016

Added on by C. Maoxian.

No Such Thing as an Expert on Asia

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Some selected bits I liked from Stanley Karnow's appearance on Booknotes in 1989: 

"... [a writer is] a bit like a sculptor with this enormous piece of granite ... you've got to chip away at that granite in order to mold that sculpture, and that is a very hard process. 

I don't know any writer who thinks that writing is fun. It's hard work, and the way I do it is just as if I'm doing any other job. I get up in the morning and I have breakfast and read the newspapers and shave and shower and get dressed, but I go down in my cellar, where I have my study, and work. I try to get to my machine by 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes I'll run out of steam in the afternoon, but sometimes I'll go until midnight. But you have to treat it as a job; you have to be disciplined. You don't sit around waiting for inspiration. If you do, you're never going to get anything done because it's much more fun taking the dog out for a walk along the canal than sitting down there and writing."
"[MacArthur and Eisenhower] hated each other. They had terrible fights. Eisenhower was later asked, Did you ever know Gen. MacArthur? He said, 'Yes, I studied dramatics under him for seven years.' 

Years later when Eisenhower was president, somebody asked MacArthur if he had known Eisenhower, to which MacArthur replied, 'Best clerk I ever had.' There was something incompatible about their characters. MacArthur was a monumental egotist, a talented man, a skilled man in many ways. Eisenhower was essentially a rather modest man, and they disagreed over policy. "
"The interesting thing about the Asians -- the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, Indians, Pakistanis -- coming to the United States is they're coming in with all the old American virtues -- family, hard work, risks and endurance, stamina. I think they're making a positive contribution to this country."