FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907) – Written by Thomas William Lawson, a writer and stock manipulator who made a fortune from shady stock deals … in between advocating for cleaning up Wall Street to shut down those fleece jobs. The reforms Lawson campaigned for were taken up decades later when Franklin Roosevelt appointed future Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas to head the Securities Exchange Commission.
Coincidentally enough the overall feel of Friday the Thirteenth put me in mind of FDR’s cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. The novel did that with its New York setting, with the way the story takes place late in T.R.’s presidency and most especially with the way it dealt with ethics in the marketplace.
Jim Randolph, one of the novel’s main characters, is in the T.R. mold: he may be a bloated rich pig but at least he’s a bloated rich pig with a sense of noblesse oblige. Jim shares Teddy Roosevelt’s disdain for the Trusts and for con men who use the stock market to rip off their clients.
It’s not as if Jim Randolph is as fiery as Teddy Forstmann was in his opposition to Leveraged Buy Outs during the 1980s, but like Forstmann he has a sense of what makes for a healthy economy and frowns upon the fly-by-night operators who thrive on irresponsible “frenzied finance” as Randolph calls it. Continue reading
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FRITZ THE NITE OWL – Frederick C. Peerenboom aka Fritz the Nite Owl, lasted so long as a Movie Host that it would take a multi-volume set of books to truly do justice to his career. Consider this blog post a mere scratching of the surface. 
Double Chiller Theatre aired a Double Feature beginning at 11:30pm. Over time it became better known as Nite Owl Theatre.
DYNASTY (1976)
Despite this, the family stands united against slave-hunters when they come looking for fugitive slave Sam (Charles Weldon). They come to Sam’s aid and he stays with the Blackwoods from then on. 
STICKY REMINDER: In the midterm elections during Barack Obama, the Democrats were massively blown out and lost SIXTY-THREE seats in the House and NINE MORE in the Senate. Obama fans tell me that had nothing to do with Obama because he wasn’t on the ballot that year. WELL, NEITHER WAS TRUMP ON THE BALLOT THIS YEAR. More elections 
PROJECT U.F.O. (1978-1979) – Jack Webb’s Mark VII Ltd. produced this short-lived wonder which dramatized selected cases from the U.S. Air Force’s real-life Project Bluebook, which investigated reports of Unidentified Flying Objects. 
*** Originally called the Escadrille Americaine, the unit had to drop that name when Germany, the Ottoman Turks and other Central Powers nations complained to the U.S. stating such a name indicated a violation of its official neutrality at that point in the war. The new name was the Lafayette Escadrille in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who served in America’s Revolutionary War. 
*** Two lion cubs became the escadrille’s mascots. The pilots named them Whiskey and Soda.
It’s a Monday current events roundup from 
REMINDER: 2014 – In the midterm elections of Barack Obama’s second term, the Democrats were massively blown out and lost SIXTY-THREE seats in the House and NINE MORE in the Senate. Republicans claimed Obama had been “rebuked for all time” and would be remembered as the man whose presidency was the nail in the coffin for leftism in America. FOR MORE REMINDERS OF RIDICULOUS OVERREACTIONS LIKE WHAT WE’RE SEEING THIS YEAR CLICK 
