London...circa 1949

Shaftesbury Avenue from Piccadilly Circus, in the West End of London, c. 1949. The Circus, a famous traffic intersection and public area in the City of Westminster, was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street to the major shopping street of Piccadilly. It's status as a major traffic intersection has made it busy meeting place and tourist attraction in it's own right. (Photo credit: Chalmers Butterfield).

New York City ...circa 1900

A photochrome of Mulberry Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, from the year 1900. Mulberry Street is the center of New York's Little Italy and goes into Chinatown. (Detroit Photographic Co.)

Picture of the Day

A lithograph of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, which took place on April 15, 1896, when the President was attending a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. From left to right: Major Henry Rathbone, Rathbone's fiancee, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, President Lincoln, and the assassin John Wilkes Booth. (Currier and Ives)

Curiously Embracing Big Government When We Need It....Trashing It Otherwise

As my friend Rick Lippin said recently, "our relationship with big government is like that of a teenager with their parents....we hate them until we need them." For the past couple of years we have heard Republicans and Tea Party-types allege of how government is destroying American freedom and liberty. We've heard talk of how the Recovery Act, for example, which appears to be having very positive affect on the American economy, is unconstitutional and attacks states rights and individual liberty.

It has always been curious to watch "the Right" run down big government.....except for those times and those programs from which they may benefit. Farmers don't generally have a problem with farm price supports, nor the small business person with the SBA subsidized loan, nor the age 65+ with medicare, nor the business which benefits from the tax credit, nor the parent who needs the college loan, on and on.

It seems we have the ultimate embrace of big government this week as the Governors of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, all run by small government Republicans, demand full support of the federal government as they deal with the BP oil spill tragedy. Bobby Jidal, who once joked about federal spending for volcano monitoring and tried to stop any Recovery Act money from entering Louisiana, issued a statement demanding "critical" federal government resources.

In his commencement address at the University of Michigan in front of 92,000 people last week, President Obama said, "there are some things we can only do together, as one nation....so what we should be asking is not whether we need a 'big federal government,' but how we can create a smarter, better government."

Perhaps big government naysayers will begin to realize that we live in a time of unprecedented national crises..... natural disasters, terrorist threats, soaring health care costs, immigration challenges, etc., and that such problems require a greater sense of national "community" accompanied by federal government resources and coordination.

Ronald Reagan had some great attributes, but the greatest damage he did was to demonize government, a hypocritical attitude many on "the Right" continue to embrace. Let's hope for better. I see signs.

Picture of the Day

An African American child at a "Colored" water fountain on a courthouse lawn in North Carolina in 1938. Segregated water fountains were commonplace in the days of "Jim Crow".

Teddy Roosevelt

For a political memorabilia collector, Teddy Roosevelt is an attractive and ideal subject. I certainly do not specialize in TR collecting, but I am pleased to have a quite few nice TR pieces in my collection.

Teddy was a great progressive Republican. He served as New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President under William McKinley, he helped found the "Bull Moose" party in 1912, and he became President upon the assassination of President McKinley.

One of his more colorful roles was that of head of the "Rough Riders" during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The "Rough Riders" were the 1st U.S. Voluntary Calvary unit. They were raised in 1898 to fight in the Spanish-American War. Their most famous battle was the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba.

The Spanish-American war was a conflict between Spain and the United States fought in Cuba. In 1898, Americans grew angry at the reports of Spanish atrocities in Cuba, and after the mysterious sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, President McKinley intervened. Unfortunately, the war began a policy of American foreign intervention which has lasted to the present.

Above is a great photo of TR in his "Rough Rider" attire.

Picture of the Day

Mandarin Ducks - National Geographic