In my lifetime I can recall nine U.S. Presidents, back to JFK. After years of political mice, it is so great to feel what it is like to be under a great president again. Up until yesterday, I feared for America's decline. As someone who has studied history a lifetime, I wondered if I would live to see America's final fall.

Now I feel hopeful and proud. I am proud of everyone who voted. I am proud that the land of my birth, the North East U.S. put Barack on the road to victory, and my second home on the West Coast gave him the victory.

I am especially proud of all the young people who rejected old arguments and prejudices. Pundits said the young would rather text than bother to vote. They made the difference. I know the next few years will be tough on a national level. President Obama is being left a mess almost as vast as that which faced Franklin Roosevelt. But like FDR, I think we at last have a leader.

Doris Kearns Goodwin said that she was jealous of all the young people, to be living in such exciting times. Congratulations!

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Question: Why is strict discipline sometimes called Prussian?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Was any U.S. president ever elected unanimously?
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History for 11/5/2008
Birthdays: Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh, Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard is 65, Bill Walton, John Berger, Sean Puffy- Combs, Tilda Swinton

In Jolly Old England it is
HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY! in -1605 Sir Guy Fawkes, a Catholic nobleman, was caught digging a tunnel under the English Parliament and filling it with gunpowder. His goal was no less than blowing up the King and the entire blinkin' government! Sir Roger Catesby was actually the mastermind of the plot, but Sir Guy gets the fame.
Modern day Brits commemorate this as a kind of April Fools Day with bonfires and merrymaking. Children go from door to door asking : "A penny for Sir Guy, please." But in olden times it was also a let's have a good laugh on the Roman Catholics day.
This is why George Washington was against transplanting the holiday in America. Pope Day was celebrated in some American colonies but it died out after the Revolution. In 1775 Washington called it : A ridiculous and childish festival, burning effigies of the Pope." Many English folks I know told me they celebrate the day they tried to blow up the government because wouldn't things have been lovely if he had succeeded!

1805- The Royal Spanish Governor of New Mexico, Joaquin del Real Alencaster, dispatches a cavalry troop under Don Pedro Vial on a secret mission. On this day Vial's force is attacked by hostile Indians on the Arkansas River. Vial drives off the Indians but his command is too battered by the fight to continue and has to return, their mission aborted. What was their mission? To kill or capture the American explorers Lewis and Clark. The Spanish government in Madrid knew full well the object in the American President Jefferson’s mind in sending this "scientific" expedition to find a land route to the Pacific, over territory Spain still claimed, despite the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark, at this point in the Columbia River Gorge, were unaware of the drama around them.

1830- The day after leading a protest march in Rochester Woman’s Rights advocate Susan B. Anthony defied the law by casting a vote in a New York election.

1940- President Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term. His defeated Republican opponent- Wendell Wilkie, became the butt of jokes in many Looney Tunes.

1946- Two punk kids fresh out of the Navy were elected to the US House of Representatives- John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

1954- THE WRONG DOOR RAID- Baseball great Joe DiMaggio was stewing over the collapse of his marriage to sexy movie star Marilyn Monroe. He was especially sensitive to the rumors that she was seeing other men. This night Joltin Joe was having dinner with Frank Sinatra and a few friends when a detective brought him a report that Monroe’s car was spotted parked in front of an apartment complex on Kilkea Dr.. Enraged, he drove out to the building and kicked in the back door hoping to catch her en-flagrante. But Marilyn was staying in a girlfriend’s apartment upstairs. This was the home of a terrified old lady named Mrs Florence Klotz. We don’t know what she thought about her door suddenly kicked in by Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack but the tabloids had a field day.

1975- Logger Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his Snowflake Arizona home. Walsh published a bestseller Fire in the Sky.

1977- George W. Bush married Laura Welsh. Laura was once a Democrat who campaigned for lefty George McGovern in 1972.

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started.

1990- In New York City the founder of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated by a Moslem fundamentalist. The JDL was an extremist organization that advocated tough responses to Arab extremism. Even though he was elected to the Israeli Knesset Meir Kahane was refused a seat because of his racist views. So no one was too surprised that he was a target. But what was surprising was that the assassin, El Sayyid Nossair, was a member of a terrorist cell operating in the US. His apartment was a "treasure-trove of information" according to NYPD detectives. They found terrorist manuals written in Afghanistan, bomb making instructions and plans to NY city landmarks. The NYPD turned over all this intelligence to the FBI, who filed it and promptly forgot about it.

1994- Retired President Ronald Reagan gave his last public speech. He confirmed he had Alzheimers Disease.

1995- YTSCHAK RABIN ASSASSINATED- At a peace rally after making a speech where he declared "Violence will undermine Israeli Democracy" Israeli Prime Minister Ytschak Rabin was shot and killed by a young Yeshiva student Ygail Amir. Amir was mad at Rabin for daring to make peace with the Palestinians. The night before Amir attended a Likud political rally where people waved pictures of Ytschak Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Ironically Rabin as chief of staff of the Israeli army was one of the strategists of the conquest of the West Bank. President Clinton was shocked by the act and said goodbye in Hebrew "Shalom, Haver" –Peace Brother. Despite this slogan becoming a popular bumper sticker, in the next election Likud won anyway.

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.
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Yesterday’s Question: Was any U.S. president ever elected unanimously?

Answer: George Washington in his second term. In 1818 the election was so boring, President James Monroe ran for his second term unopposed. Yet he voted against himself. “So no one could claim to have been elected unanimously, except George Washington.” He declared.