* Disclaimer - Typing Day is an international observance. The statement that January 8 is Typing Day is in no way intended to ignore, demean or diminish the significance of the fact that it is also the first day on which Lee-Jackson Day can fall in Virginia (US). The sad reality is that Lee-Jackson Day is the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr Day, and though it could fall on the 8th in some other year, today is, thank Eris, Wednesday.

I haven't really hit my stride or picked a Wednesday format for 2020 yet, and won't return from the coast until later today, so this is something of a pot pourri. There was simply too much fun to be had with today's history, so let's get started.

It has been alleged that on January 8, 1828, The Democratic Party of the US was organized. That was truly a momentous date, for it is arguably the only date upon which they ever were. They have been utterly disorganized for my entire life, and Will Rogers famously said

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

well before that. That isn't to say that there weren't organized pocket here and there throughout subsequent years, like Tammany Hall, but the party as a whole has been is disarray, as near as anybody can tell, since January 9, 1828.

On this day in 1835, the US National Debt was exactly zero. It appears to have remained zero on into 1836, for roughly a year, before growing again. (It was a positive number from 1789 up until 1835, when Andy Jackson paid it off.)

On January 8, 1867, African American men were granted the right to vote in Washington, D.C. OF course, they could only vote in local elections, because DC laked Senators and Representatives. The 15th Amendment, btw, wasn't ratified until 1870, and that didn't grant any right to vote, but merely prohibited discriminating on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.And, of course, women didn't get the right or vote until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. At any rate, I wrote a summary on the right to vote previously, and it was not at all straight forward. ( https://caucus99percent.com/content/voting-gotv-and-creating-voters ) Briefly recapitulated:

26th - THE presumed pre-existent right to vote shall not be abridged on account of AGE.
25th - THE presumed pre-existent right to vote shall not be abridged on account of failure to pay POLL TAX
19th - THE presumed pre-existent right to vote shall not be abridged on account of SEX (should be read as gender)
15th - THE presumed pre-existent right to vote shall not be abridged on account of RACE, COLOR, or PREVIOUS SERVITUDE

All of those provisions assume the existence of a right to vote and prohibit applying a specific constraint thereto. They also say "THE" right to vote as opposed to "A" or "ANY"; an important distinction, elevating the presumption from hypothetical to real.

The 17th Amendment differs in form and says that the Senate shall be composed of 2 Senators per state, "elected by the people thereof", and that "The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures." This does create a right to vote for US Senators and grants it to such persons as are allowed to vote for the most numerous branch of the State legislature." In essence, the states determine who may vote for senators (subject to Federal restrictions upon the restrictions which they may impose on such voting). The 14th Amendment, however, had already addressed the question of who would be permitted to vote for "the most numerous branch of the State legislature."

The 14th Amendment does a ton of stuff, including excluding "Indians not taxed" and should be read a couple of times. In general, except for Indians and certain criminals, male citizens over 21 years old shall be allowed to vote for "the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof" OR the state shall suffer a proportional reduction in its number of Representatives. So, not an absolute right as written.

On this day in 1889 Herman Hollerith received US patent #395,791 for his punched card calculator. They were still using them when I was an undergrad at Cal, at least '66-'67. In fact "real time" terminals were scarce and tucked away in odd places. And, of course, computers with their necessary peripherals filled whole rooms. Back then you laboriously punched up a card deck, turned it in, and got your output a day or two later. Nowadays the IT department can fuck up your data in mere seconds. This is known as progress

On January 8, 1964, LBJ declared a "War on Poverty". Now I was never a fan of the man at the time because of the war and the draft and the way he turned a blind eye to the war on civil liberties being waged by state and local cops, the FBI and all of the rest of the nation's police and security apparatus. Nonetheless, he did move the ball forward significantly with his "Great Society" programs, not the least of which was the "War on Poverty". Even Wikipedia is forced to describe his presidency as "the peak of modern liberalism". Can you imagine anybody declaring a war on poverty today? It is a virtual certainty that it would be some sort of scam embodied in some sort of "war on poverty and public services reform bill of 2020" or somesuch which would be a thinly disguised plan to take money from the poor and homeless and to gut all existing programs intended to assist them while transferring all of the funds thus garnered to Booz-Allen to do a study on how to "incentivize enhanced produtivity initiatives among the lazy and indigent" or some such fatuous twaddle. The war upon the War on Poverty began almost before the ink was dry, from both sides of the aisle, and has continued unabated to this day.

Those born this day having no involvement with music include Alfred Russel Wallace (1823), Fanny Bullock Workman (1854), Graham Chapman (1941), Stephen Hawking (1942) AAAND We must give a special shout out to Kim Jong-un, born 01-08-1984 who famously,correctly and hilariously described Sir Donald of Trumpenstein as the "mentally deranged U.S. dotard". Such unerring accuracy in political discourse is sadly lacking today and it was quite refreshing to see.

Those affiliated with music include:

Tampa Red (1904)

Bill Graham (1931)

Elvis Presley (1935)

Shirley Bassey (1937)

David Bowie (1947)

On this day in 1642 we lost Galileo Galilei, a polymath who had the misfortune to favor science, empiricism and reality at a time when the powerful thought police of the Church still controlled the fates of men and women throughout Europe with cant, dogma and superstitious orthodoxy (or orthodox superstitions, as the case may be).

I won't be here when this posts, so have fun and be nice to each other.

Title Image is Typewriter

It's an open thread, so have at it. The floor is yours
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