David > Recent Status Updates

I hope everyone who reads Truman's life will be reminded of someone they know. He reminds me of Willard, a generation younger than Truman, but similarly plain-spoken, honest, and intelligent in a clear, practical way. Unpretentious. Brave in such a down-to-earth way. If only there were a formula for raising people to be that way.

Amazing. Truman proposed universal health insurance in the 1940s and it took more than half a century -- 70 years! -- to achieve that goal (assuming nothing goes off the rails now). LBJ signed the Medicare bill at the Truman library.

"You must remember our head of State is young, inexperienced and hopeful. Let's hope the hopeful works." Truman to Dean Acheson about JFK.

When Truman left office his only income was his $112.56/month Army pension. No Secret Service, no funds for a secretary or office. Nothing.

Wow. Americans were insanely unfair to Truman. The hard time he got for simply expressing himself bluntly and sincerely -- and certainly not witlessly -- is ridiculous. Now it's often a rare gift when a politician goes off script.

"Taft accused Truman of having libeled McCarthy. 'Do you think that's possible?' Truman responded...."

Amazing! Two committees advised against developing the H-bomb. Did they think other nations wouldn't develop it? Did they think the A-bomb was good enough?

It was not a small thing that Truman made sure that blacks were welcome to all the inaugural events in 1948 and could even stay in normally whites-only hotels.

"Dewey came on stage... 'like a man who has been mounted on casters and given a tremendous shove from behind.'"

"You have to know Mr. Dewey well in order to dislike him."

The more things change.... Truman called the Republican Congress back into session to prove that it "was the great roadblock to social progress for the country and to show the gulf between Republican promises and Republican performance." The GOP did not fail to disappoint.

"all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."

We're not to the Korean War yet but so far HST is taking a terrible amount of undeserved abuse and not getting nearly as much credit as he deserves. (That's probably a fair rundown for Obama as well.)

As someone sensitive to language, I sometimes wonder whether there's much value in nuanced diplomatic speech. In international relations actions probably trump rhetoric. Truman probably should have stuck to his natural plain speech with the USSR.

If only HST's health insurance proposal had been adopted!

It must really be something, to have your role and responsibilities change phenomenally and suddenly while you just feel like, for instance, the same Harry Truman you were a day before.

The controversies and scandals people try to gin up about Obama will one day be the trivia that almost don't even get mentioned in histories. Truman had his -- as every prominent politician does. In the long run they amount to nothing.

How ironic Truman was tainted by his Pendergast connection. He was extraordinarily honest! In fact, people probably wouldn't have begrudged him a few hundred thousand, given the high quality of the improvements he brought to Missouri. Instead, the honest man spent his political life just scraping by.

Truman had a pretty miserable presidency; that's mostly the perspective I've had on him. Seeing him from his origins and the beginnings of his political career, I can't help but like and admire the man.

Read any but a contemporary biography and you'll discover how much lower the odds were of a child's survival. HST miraculously survived diphtheria.

Two sentences in and I've already had to look up two words I didn't even know how to pronounce. This is going to be good!

What an indictment of the CIA. The CIA (and the NSA) seemed to think their job was to gather intelligence and then prevent anyone from using it -- even the FBI, when it made specific requests.

Something the Tsarnaev brothers had in common with the al-Qaeda and al-Jihad recruits: geographical displacement. "Most who joined the jihad did so in a country other than the one in which they were reared.... they defined themselves as radical Muslims while living in the West. The Pakistani in London found that he was neither authentically British nor authentically Pakistani...."

"On the existential plane, bin Laden was marginalized, out of play, but inside the chrysalis of myth that he had spun about himself he was becoming a representative of all persecuted and humiliated Muslims."

Jamal al-Fadal leaves al-Qaeda after stealing money from Bin Laden -- then wins the New Jersey lottery while in American protective custody. Amazing.

I wonder what it feels like to be one of 54 children of 22 wives. Probably about the same as it does to be one of 53 children of 21 wives.

"All this modern music . . . it's so old-fashioned."

"Sam Goldwyn didn't get ulcers. He gave them."

Very sad: Mabel Normand only 24 and already burned out on drugs.

In the South, "The Birth of a Nation" ran continuously for 12 years!