Tuesday, June 21, 2016

North-South Freeway Circa 1956

I thought I'd check out the Dec 18, 1956 issue of the Spokane Daily Chronicle and see what the news was on the day I was born. Along with my birth announcement, a perfunctory "To Mr. and Mrs Henry W. Greer, E504 Tenth, boy" there was this. The more things change the more they stay the same, eh?


I really enjoyed how the publisher made use of every square inch of newspaper. And things were placed where they fit. Obituary notices, farm reports, news from anywhere, officers elected to various civic organizations, etc.

And then there's the advertisements.


And some bowling advice for the ladies. Apparently men were all perfect bowlers back then.



14 comments:

The J is for Quintana said...

Hank, that's really great. You're great. Big fan, really great fan. We will make America great again. We will bring back a great time when bicycles came with gas tanks, great manly gas tanks. A time when bicycles stayed on the sidewalk. A great time when bicycles knew their place, like Mexicans contained by a great, fat wall.

We will bring back the great age of bowling, and no man will bowl alone. Men and women, bowling together, mixed leagues. Take that, ISIS, right? I love women. No one loves women more than Donald J. Trump. In a Donald J. Trump administration, we will teach women to bowl correctly. To not drop the ball, unlike Hillary, Hillary the ball-dropper! We will teach women to bring the ball in a wide arc around their womanly hips.

Ivanka has great hips. My lovely daughter, Ivanka. You should see her bowling.

I just gave Ivanka a raise for her lovely campaign work. Great footwork. That pushaway and backswing I taught her...Lewandoski never saw it coming. You're fired, Corey! I keep saying it, with proper instruction, women can compete with men. No one is more feminist than Donald J. Trump. But no one instructed Hillary. Hillary is still trying to ride a bicycle with a manly gas tank. Like a fish needs a gas tank! Gloria Steinem said that, lovely woman. I taught Gloria to bowl, taught her feminism, Gloria loves me. It's true. Calls me her doll. No one loves women more than Donald J. Trump, and women love Donald J. Trump. Feminists love me.

I just feel sorry for Hillary, I really do. She refuses instruction. Hillary refuses to learn.

Hillary wants to raise your taxes to build the Spokane highway. Great? No, not great. Ball-dropper! Hillary doesn't understand finance, a common female fault.

Donald J. Trump will make the Mexicans pay for that great, fat North-South freeway. Another 300 score for Donald J. Trump. More like 310! I accept your congratulations. I will as carefully plan and fund government projects as as I do all Donald J. Trump productions. Great? Really great. Let's make Spokane and America great again, Hank!

Oh, and thanks in advance for paying for my lanes, shoes, campaign, and beer.

Donald J. Trump

Hilaerys Stormborn said...

I gave my speech and everybody loved it and I'm like can I finally have a shot of bourbon and watch Battle of the Bastards because I finally learned how to use tape delay on the Betamax thingy and at first I'm all like DRACARYS BITCHES and whom runs the world and girlpower.

But then Theon kinda reminded me of Bill cuz Bill looks so beat these days when they prop him up at the campaign events and I never can even say hi before they bundle him off with the latest Moletown minx. Anyway the mansion was all echoey and spooky like the tomb at Winterfell and you can't say I drunk dialed Bill cuz phones don't even have dials anymore.

And Bill's all like are you watching the Trump speech, which isn't nice to say, and I'm all like, no cuz I roasted his ships and the New York Tmes said so and I got superdelegates.

And Bill is like, get a grip, nobody reads the Times, they read the Spokesman, and you can't win the general with elites. Better watch.

So I unplug the betamax thingy and Seven Hells if it isn't Little Finger himself on the TV sending in the rhetorical army and suddenly I'm not Sansa with a sadistic husband, everything is mixed up and somehow I'm Ramsay flipping Bolton instead, and a hundred million dollars in speech fees are chewing off my face on live TV and everbody is cheering.

I yell at Bill cuz he started the speech fee thingy and I only took the money because they offered it, or they offered it because I'd take it, or whatever the Times said I said, I don't read it, I read the Spokesman. Little Finger Trump makes it sound like I'm not a hero like Hodor but some sort of shady accomplice named Hobag.

Bill's all like, are you drinking again, and I'm all like, did I ruin your love life by dropping the dime on Epstein, and Bill's like wut, and I'm like, you know nuthin' Bill Clinton.

Jillisandera in IT said...

The election is dark and full of terrors.

Hillary just lost my vote. I just read the story in Ars Technica about how the Secretary of State's emails to State Department addresses were getting sorted to spam (quarantined), so State Department IT shut off the spam filters (and the anti-virus) for the whole f'n State Department.

All because Hillary wouldn't use an official account for official business or at least give her addresses to the State IT people so they could whitelist clintonemail accounts.

So, all State Department employees were wasting time sorting out Viagra ads and crap, not to mention risk phishing attacks and Russian or Chinese or Iranian hackers, just in case Hillary and her clique decide to send an email from their vanity server.

And then Clinton and gang bitch about how badly the government email works and how prone to hacking. Well, yeah, if you demand to run your own secret setup, there isn't much your IT can do, idiots.

Trump may be arrogant and stupid, but so is Hillary. BOTH Clinton and Trump are too dumb to have the nuclear codes. We're in real danger here. Trump and Clinton are both fully rotten onions.

I want Sanders to take Jill Stein's offer to run as a Green. Already Greens and Libertarians are combining in the double digits. A Sanders-Stein ticket would easily surpass 20% and get Greens in the debates, and we could have a more realistic talk about security.

But really,I want somebody with bigger gravitas and half a brain to step in, and soon. The party system is dead anyway, so why are parties deciding who gets to run for President? Bring on an independent.

Night's Watch said...

Yeah, but Trump is "Hitler" so the Times can leave actual investigative reporting on Clinton to Judicial Watch. And Wikileaks, apparently.

The Times is right back to the credulous Judith Mller days.

Huma Abedin comes across as the level-headed aid working for a dingbat boss. Abedin should have been the SoS, Hillary could have assistant manager of the State cafeteria. Abedin for President! Though, you gotta question her judgment working for Clinton in multiple conflicting capacities, and for marrying the Weiner. Still, would be kind of sweet to run a half-Pakistani against Little Fingers.

Meanwhile, Hitler Fingers himself is off on his presciently planned Brentrance! Better to be lucky than a smarty pantsuit, as they say in Britain. He's manning the wall, against...France! He's farting in their general direction!

Maybe he'll rename his American wall Mexit.

Maester Godwin said...

Luck? Perhaps. But the elite media has failed to prove the arguments essential to it's master election narrative...

...Clinton is smarter than Trump. Rather, it appears that Clinton appeals to the intellectualized prejudices of the elites.

...Trump's fundamental appeal is an embrace of racial, ethnic, sexual, religious etc prejudices. Rather, it appears that the media does not want to discuss his radical rejection of class prejudice, privilege, and corruption. Whatever the validity in charging Trump with bigotry, it's obvious that the elites decry non-class prejudices cynically, in order to avoid examining the appeal of anti-elitism. Even more absurdly, the media questions Trump's sincerity while defending Clinton's rather obvious pay-to-play career. Trump certainly can't be accused of creating the economic structure of class bigotry in exchange for payoffs, but the Clinton family certainly looks guilty of just that. Clinton's accusations that Trump was an insignificant failure at business, true or not, only highlight how she came by her own staggering wealth while working public sector jobs.

Red Wedding said...

Isn't anyone surprised that Bernie has betrayed his followers? He wants us to vote against our economic interests for Hillary, a total contradiction of his campaign.

Yeah, no one wants the racist bigot Trump to be president. So we're supposed to vote for the class bigot Hillary?

Sander's stalking horse act makes him the Walter Frey of the election. Elites win again.

Septon Brother Ray said...

Feel the burn, eh.


The US needs a Brexit-style public referendums on WTO and NAFTA.

The elites need to be challenged to come up with fair trading schemes.

Wildfire said...

The elites have many tools to slap down uppity voters, Brother Ray. As their reaction to Brexit shows, they would happily risk economic destruction over an orderly transition to an equitable system. They bet that upheaval favors them more than workers. Workers have little margin to wait it out.

Yes, Brexit raised a middle finger to the Blairs, Clintons, Blankfeins and Krugman types who profit through structural discrimination against workers in the name of Holy Free Trade. Yes, a moment of democracy scares neo-liberals, but they know the vote was not an existential threat to their power in the long run.

Neo-liberal globalization is effectively a peonage scheme. The elites just need to remotely manipulate either wage value or credit/liquidity access to keep workers in line. And the elites don't have to blow up the market sept because our High Sparrow Sanders is "with her" rather than with us.

National referendums will always be dismissed as xenophic because they structurally cannot respond to a problem that is inherently international: trade. The institutions that control trade, and which determine the topics excluded or included from trade agreements, are international and anti-democratic by design. The very structure of the current model of globalization is to create an internationalized ruling elite while retaining a fractured world work force which competes against itself and its own shared interests.

Of course, the elite media will never admit that their class actually created anti-immigration sentiment by forbidding cross-border democratization or labor organizing. People like Paul Krugman see no hypocrisy in supporting anti-labor trade deals while condemning Trump's wall. Of the two walls, Krugman-Clinton's WTO/NAFTA/TPP legal wall separating workers in different nations is really the most bigoted, and provides the foundation for Trump's puny wall built on top.

Although we Sparrows on the left are fatalists, and no longer take comfort in an inevitable dialectic, it does seem the neo-liberal wall has started to show vulnerabilities, and was never fully repaired after the meltdown in 2008. There may be a fundamental instability in a modern market economy built on an anti-democratic peonage system.

Winter is coming, elites.

Missandei said...

The greater the margin of Clinton's polling lead over Trump, the greater number of voters defecting to Green-Progressive and Libertarian Parties.

It is known.

The Imp said...

It falls to me to state unpleasant truths. Trump just delivered the speech on trade that Clinton should make, but cannot, would not, and must now oppose.

The Democratic response, which accuses Trump himself of profiting from engaging cheap labor abroad, is patheticly self-defeating. Trump is a businesman following the rules of the market. Certainly the Clintons, who made those rules, cannot condemn him for following their rules to his competitive disadvantage. If the rules themselves are unjust to workers, which workers believe them to be, then the rule-makers are most to blame, not the rule-followers.

Especially so when the Clintons themselves profited from their role as rule-makers, and in the crassest and most flagrant ways possible. Trump refuses to release his taxes, which causes him some small damage. The Clintons, however, boastfully reveal the full extent of their kickbacks and bribes, and I'm afraid their's is the weaker position with voters on this most basic election issue.

More wine please. The margin will lessen and I for one plan to be drunk as it squeezes us all into positions we do not wish to take.

Make it an imported Dornish fortified [sigh] red.

Podrick said...

Begging your pardon m'Lord. Was your meaning perhaps "to his competitive advantage."


I draw also your attention to Ser Sanders, who attempts to re-enter the Game.

The Imp said...

Thank you, Pod. I was deep in my cups, and sloppily dangling more than just participles. But "in vino veritas," as we lords were taught to say in High Valerian. The margin already narrows overnight. The elite media is all in a twitter to explain. They have decided to go with the "uneducated white savages" line now.

I have had dealings with too many slaves, peons, commoners, and Wildings to underestimate their understanding of their own self-interest. Shall we call the schooling of the elites "education," or indoctrination? Do we have a higher educational system of free thought, or just a way for elites to keep young people in line with the ball gags and chains of massive debt? Are workers who avoid this "peonage" (thanks Wildfire) really the stupid ones, or rather choosing as rationally as possible in a rigged economic/political/educational system?

The elites now openly plot to further limit the effective franchise, doubling-down on their anti-democracy campaign. Republicans would suppress the minority vote; Democrats would seek to shame, ridicule and bully the white working class. Both parties would move the locus of real power to unelected bodies like Wall Street and the WTO. So much for referendums and direct democracy, or even "elections have consequences."

No matter his sincerity and complicity, Trump's rhetoric suggests an alternative.

Podcast said...

Yes m'Lord. Moreover, Democrats today agreed with you. They pivoted a full 180 degrees from dismissing Trump's speech as "garbage" in the morning, to saying all his ideas were courtesy of Lady Clinton. Apparently Trump's ideas are good ones after all! House Clinton now claims credit for both constructing the trade regime and deconstructing it.

And too, the Demorats have revived Sanders. He is no longer the forgotten candidate who pledged his vote for Clinton, but has retuned from the dead to his former role of unendorsing challenger. The manner of his re-animation seems less autonomous than that of Jon Snow, and perhaps more like a (small) Mountain. A Green Mountain Boy, so to speak, but loyal to House Clinton and Hillary, the first of her name. Both sides see advantage in denying the obvious. Kinda creepy.

As one man with big hands to another, if Trump were my lord I would advise that he should un-quemar las naves, at least a few of them. There are issues, like water rights, that would speak, say, to New Mexican norteƱos. He could also just apologize to that judge.

But here I differ from your forcast. Trump can still win, but he cannot win the electoral college on the backs of the white working class alone.

Peon Greyjoy said...

I supported King Obama because he said would renegotiate NAFTA.

Would that he had only lied about NAFTA, and left it at that.

But no, he took my wages, my union contract, my pension, and my house. He gave them to the House Goldman Sachs. He whipped me with TPP. He named the Lords of Goldman Sachs as Masters of Coin.

He left me with nary a sausage.

Now the First of Her Name asks for our support and she will renogiate NAFTA. As if, m'Lady. As if.

Meanwhile Lady Hillary does nothing even as King Obama blocks criticism of TPP in the platform, and this though both Democrats left in the Game claim to be opposed to TPP. King Obama visits the King of the North and side-by-side they warn citizens not to involve ourselves in issues of trade. Lady Hillary says nothing.

The lord elites brandish charts to show how the poor across the Narrow Sea benefit from globalization. They never show charts with the greater sums elites in Westeros and Easteros took for their own benefit. They never show the chart plotting the payments to the members of the Small Council. They show not charts that portray how that coin came from the labor of peons in Westeros.

If citizens cannot by any fair method influence these affairs of Kings and Queens, if the Lords block all attempts at parlay, if they choose to let the pressure of discontent increase, I fear they one and all may be charged the Iron Price.

Let us pray to the Drowned God they instead choose a path of wisdom and democracy.