“a small field of usefulness*” 
Who’s Firemens Field’s friend?
The question is posed by dueling Oyster Bay Long Island web sites.
www.savefiremensfield.org was formed by opponents of a proposed Teddy Roosevelt Museum to be located on Firemens Field near the town center. A mischievous proponent of the project then launched www.savefiremansfield.org, apparently to snare the unwary.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association wants to build the museum, and claims no relationship with either site. But the pro-museum site uses a TR photo with the Association’s permission on it’s banner:
What was Roosevelt saying and to whom in this endlessly quoted “Man In The Arena” speech?
Roosevelt’s speech was in part a mash note to the French from America, “the only two republics among the great powers of the world.” Roosevelt swooned for France, how “the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership narms and statecraft*.”
The French were certainly up to their necks in the “rough work of the world*” as they stumbled into a century of slaughter and surrender at home, and then massacre and withdrawal from their colonies.
The speech and most of Roosevelt’s public persona today are a relic, a fetish for nostalgists pining for the days of manly, unapologetic imperialism over the lesser races. And some spectacularly wordy tough talk.
*Who’s the Man?
Seen at the Crime 
Rehab efforts continue at the Nixon Library.
Hundreds gathered to mark Nixon’s 95th birthday, the Navy sent a wreath, and Admiral Raymond Berube identified the Disgracedformerpresident
as that fail-safe superlative, a difference maker. 
“He inherited a country weighed down with war and political instability,” the Orange County Register quotes Berube, implying Nixon in some way moderated these phenomena.
One Register reader ain’t buying it:
“He woul dhave been 95 and if there was justice in this country he would just now be eligible for parole.”
Ronnie Goes to Russia? 
“Spengler” sees disaster ahead:
“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in American policy, but not as wrong as it will go now. As in 1980, a lame-duck administration will confront economic and strategic reverses. But it is worse than 1980, for no Ronald Reagan is waiting in the wings to set things right. “
And sends forth the call for the smack of firm government:
“Vladimir Putin, the most talented political leader of our time: what might he have done at the helm of the world’s only superpower, instead of salvaging the hulk of the defeated Soviet Empire? Why not give him the chance? Watching the last round of American political debates, it occurred to me that it’s time to think out of the box…Putin will finish his second term of office as Russian president early in 2008, just when the next American president takes office. There is plenty of time to naturalize him as an American citizenand amend the constitution to permit a foreign-born president. The alternative is to elect another incarnation of the political type that got America into trouble in the first place. “
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose*.” 
Just in time for the Lyndon Johnson Centenary, a new version of proof that the launch of his great crusade to bring the Great Society to Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War’s causa bella, the basis of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, never happened.
“Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish: The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964” is the National Security Agency’s once classified review of the non-events. An earlier version was released in 2005, following reports declassification had been delayed lest haunting parallels be found to Iraq intelligence troubles.
Read Time & Understand 
…And condolences to your unacknowledged son on his New Hampshire showing.
Nixon’s 95th birthday is the occasion for free admission to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. They’ve cleaned up their act,
Before 
After 
and killed the old Watergate exhibit. 
