#President Theodore Roosevelt

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Out Representative-elect Robert Garcia (D-CA) may not have been able to get sworn in yesterday due to Republicans’ inability to elect a Speaker of the House, but he has plans for when he finally can be sworn in.

When he takes his oath of office, he’ll swear on a copy of the Constitution, and, beneath that, an original Superman #1 comic from 1939, a photo of his parents, and a copy of his citizenship certificate.

Garcia came to the U.S. from Peru with his family when he was five-years-old and has said that naturalization was “his proudest moment” and the reason he started a career in politics. His parents died in 2020 of COVID-19.

He was the youngest and first out LGBTQ+ person elected as mayor of Long Beach, California (a position he served in from 2014 to 2022). During his time as mayor, he worked with businesses to reduce their environmental impacts, filled vacancies on citizen commissions with diverse and female members, and worked to improve local infrastructure as well as financial opportunities for local artists and home-based business owners.

He’s also an avid comic book fan.

In November, he tweeted a photo of the Superman #1 comic along with Amazing Fantasy #15, in which Spider-Man first appeared, saying he didn’t know which one he would first check out from the Library of Congress.

While many members of Congress will be sworn in on Bibles, they are not legally required to do so. Former Rep. – and current Minnesota attorney general – Keith Ellison (D-MN), who was the first Muslim person elected to Congress in 2007, was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Theodore Roosevelt wasn’t sworn in with any object after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. And in 2014 Suzi LeVine was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein on a Kindle with a copy of the Constitution open.

“I wanted to use a copy that is from the twenty-first century and that reflects my passion for technology and my hope for the future,” she said at the time.

New members of the House can’t be sworn in until a speaker is elected. Yesterday, after three votes, no candidate for Speaker was able to get a majority of votes because of a faction of Republicans voting against Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The Democrats’ candidate – Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) – got the most votes in each round of voting, and around 20 Republicans – including anti-LGBTQ+ Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Bob Good (R-VA), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) – voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Jordan himself nominated and voted for McCarthy.

The House adjourned without a new Speaker elected.

#us politics #news #2023 #twitter #tweet #Democrats #lgbtq nation #robert garcia #us house of representatives #118th congress #detective comics #us constitution #library of congress #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqia+ representation #lgbtqia+ pride #us history #President Theodore Roosevelt #Suzi LeVine #Keith Ellison #superman #California

[thatsbelievable]

#Science Tonight! #science #experiments #gravity #piano #Teddy Roosevelt #U.S. Presidents #President Theodore Roosevelt #unreality

[never-was-has-been]

#president Theodore Roosevelt #quote #Pay Attention Insurrectionists

[sitting-on-me-bum]

All about the stripes: Somehow photographer Carl E. Akeley managed to show a zebra that is alert but also seems to be relaxing, says Nat Geo’s senior photo archivist, Sara Manco. This image was taken in the Athi Plains of Kenya and published in Nat Geo’s March 1909 edition, ahead of a hunt by outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt. “This is one of my favorite examples of early wildlife photography,” Manco says. She adds that Akeley had another distinction beyond photography—he’s considered the grandfather of modern taxidermy.

#carl e akeley #photographer #taxidermy #zebra #black & white photography #animal #mammal #wildlife #national geographic #athi plains #kenya #president theodore roosevelt

[johnjankovic1]

Macaroons versus Monster Trucks

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

Other than the divergence from the myopia of prying apart the isthmus with a sea-level canal Washington also bested its fleur-de-lys counterpart with superior technology. The suite of machinery in America’s inventory had a material effect on the alacrity with which regolith and rock was removed from the bed of the waterway. Mythologized as a Goliath of steam and steel the Bucyrus dragline weighing ninety-five tons weathered the wear and tear of construction for a decade as it bent nature to its will. Sporting a bucket to accommodate five cubic meters of spoil with each bite into the ground and whose efficacy boasted a fivefold increase in productivity versus any French copy the machine expedited work by orders of magnitude (Parker 2009: 464). An army of these giants sitting atop rail tracks led the mechanized assault on the 50-mile trench together with a phalanx of trains in the vicinity of 160 each day which hauled the muck out to build the Gatun Dam. This grist sourced from the dig impounded an artificial lake that would later feed the lock system with a steady supply of water to make the Canal’s passage uninhibited. The bespoke Bucyrus made uniquely for this project pared down labour-intensity when the behemoth manipulated 4,800 cubic yards of material each day bereft of protracted downtime (Ryckman 2018).

Seven shovels of earth filled a rail car in under ninety seconds or forty-five minutes for a whole train whereby locomotives were kept in perpetual motion when each outbound trip greeted an inbound one (Rogers and Magura 2018). Such continuous kinetic energy militated against any gridlock which might cripple the venture’s lead time. This cavalcade of twenty buckets on four wheels that vacated ground zero took two hours to complete a circuit between the dumpsite and worksite (Giroux 2014). As the railroad expanded piecemeal into the inhospitable terrain a slight gradient always exploited gravity to help the departure of trains laden with rock and rubble. This innovation equally allowed for drainage to keep the roadbed dry for the maze of tracks crisscrossing the Panamanian jungle. Where the French most acutely erred was in their logistics which saw a mismatch between the mounds of earth removed and their disposal. By contrast Chief Engineer John Stevens devised 450 miles of railway akin to a Jackson Pollock painting of lines zigzagging the geography to move dirt apace with the brisk clip at which it was dug (Keller 1983). Automobiles were alien to this world as man and material moved exclusively by the monopoly of rail. A robust network for egressing detritus from the Canal was not an afterthought this time around.

Over the life of the project seventy-seven Bucyrus and twenty-four Marion shovels laboured tirelessly on cleaving a path through the wilds of Panama. In tow with these metal workhorses were track-shifters that exhumed old rail and plopped it down anew as the ensemble of men and machines invaded deeper into the thicket of jungle. The genius of plying trains this way to scaffold the Panama Canal lay in the relentless momentum when a dozen men partook in the migration of track with haste versus the six hundred under past French fiat. Such innovation crimped labour and time to maximize productivity as idleness was anathema to progress. The systematic use of rail in the supply chain equally gave vent to a nocturnal character where by day the drums of industry boomed and by night a bouquet of workers commuted onsite and tended to the machines for repair and restock of coal. Things were always astir and never asleep. The lion’s share of controlled demolition also coincided the evening hours or midday breaks when the flight of personnel transformed worksites into a tabula rasa for Dupont dynamite. Thirty-six years after Alfred Nobel unlocked the power of nitroglycerine this substance evolved into the sine quo non of operations insofar as sixty-one million pounds of it blasted asunder the isthmus (McCullough 1977).

The Canal emblematized the jewel of empire when the might of industry descended upon this barren strip of land. As America rode the crest of the Industrial Revolution amidst the heyday of the Gilded Age with mechanical juggernauts of great calibre the project hurried along in earnest. The Cartesian method of excavation proceeding in lockstep with disposal across a constellation of fixed capital was the single most salient innovation. Pneumatic drills amongst this lot further guaranteed time was a commodity well spent which the economies of $22 million below final budget estimates evidenced (Rogers 2014). Compressed air plants of vast dimensions attended to these rigs whose boreholes at a maximum depth of fifty feet accommodated strings of dynamite. Over 725 of these contraptions perforated the landscape to fracture stubborn rock. Both churn and well drills powered by coal counted themselves amongst the company of tools used along the route as well (Giroux 2014). A choreography of diggers, blasters and haulers thereby manifested into the mainstay of this gorge linking the Atlantic and Pacific. For a measure of perspective more explosives found use in the throes of this project than the sum from America’s wars hitherto. The efficiency wrought by dynamite was made famous in the Culebra Cut.

For the Americans just as it was for the French this nine-mile stretch of dirt hung the Sword of Damocles over the Canal’s prospects. A quarter of expenses or $90m financed this chapter of excavation alone (Rogers 2014). Heavy rains waterlogged the site which landslides compounded by engulfing the lowest-hanging fruit of equipment too ponderous to escape. What made this tranche of work most daunting was the heterogeneity of soil. The unstable geology of soft shale coupled with sandstone at the Canal’s highest elevation wrought havoc on the exigency to remove 96 million cubic yards of material from the Continental Divide. In fact this very conundrum which defeated the French a decade prior would spur the creation of the Bucyrus steam shovel in its 95-ton and 105-ton incarnations as a sui generis remedy to the spectre of failure. Bref the Americans simply engineered the problem away. Whereas Paris sought to cross the isthmus with a minimal amount of digging the buccaneers in Washington set upon doing the most. The former being partial to minimalism and the latter plumping for maximalism evokes the popular stereotype of the disparity in preferences for either country: a dichotomy of macaroons and monster trucks. Facts do countenance this bon mot since France cleared 78 million cubic yards versus the 246 million by the Yankees (Herndon 1977).

#Industrial Policy #Panama Canal #President Theodore Roosevelt

[seagull-astrology]

#J804 Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian Visionary

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884 to Elliott Bulloch Roosevelt and Anna  Rebecca Livingston Ludlow Hall Roosevelt.  Her parents were New York City’s elite families because of both their political connections and wealth. Her mother’s ancestors, the Livingstons,  signed the Declaration of Independence and another administered the oath of office to George Washington.  Her father…

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#Eleanor Roosevelt #FDR #First Lady Of The Usa #New York #President Theodore Roosevelt

[dejahisashmom]

Devils Tower: Born From the Earth After a Bear Mated with a Woman | Ancient Origins

https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/devils-tower-born-earth-after-bear-mated-woman-009691

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#1875 #24 September 1906 #Antiquities Act #Bear Lodge Mountains #Devil&039;s Tower #Great Spirit #Lakota #Native Americans #President Theodore Roosevelt #United States #woman #Wyoming

[xtruss]

It Was A Popular National Monument, Until It Was Robbed To Extinction

— Saturday July 08, 2023

NEXSTAR — For decades, National Parks have served to protect sites with some sort of natural or cultural significance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go smoothly. That’s especially true for one former site.

In the late 1800s, ranchers in South Dakota’s Black Hills, near Minnekahta, stumbled upon fossilized prehistoric plants from the Cretaceous period — and lots of them. It wasn’t long before scientists from institutions nationwide caught wind of the discoveries and came to the area to buy up the fossils, Atlas Obscura explains.

Among the Scientists was Yale University Paleontology Student George Reber Wieland, who had already gained recognition for discovering the largest marine turtle ever documented, the Achelon Ischyros.

He also had a special admiration for fossilized cycads, even placing some among his backyard plants at his Connecticut home. Wieland was so interested in the fossilized cycads found in the Black Hills that in 1920, he filed for 320 acres of the land under the Homestead Act — after trying to convince federal lawmakers to designate the area as a national monument.

Yale paleobotanist George Wieland and NPS officials oversee a CCC field crew in a test excavation at Fossil Cycad National Monument, South Dakota, 1935. NPS photo

It wasn’t until the fall of 1922 that the land became known as Fossil Cycad National Monument, thanks to a designation from President Warren G. Harding. In his Presidential Proclamation, Harding said the monument deserved protection in order to preserve “rich Mesozoic deposits of fossil cycads and other examples of paleobotany.”

At the time, it was the third federally-protected site dedicated to fossils, according to the National Park Service. The first was Petrified Forest, declared a monument in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt, followed by Dinosaur National Monument, established in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson.

Unlike Petrified Forest and Dinosaur, the situation wasn’t promising at Fossil Cycad by the time it received its designation.

Part of the problem was the environment. The focal points of Fossil Cycad National Monument — the fossils — were being eroded before more could be exposed, the NPS explains.

Those that were exposed faced another predator: humans.

“Fossil cycadeoids were being taken by the thousands for research purposes and to display in museums,” a report on the agency’s website explains. “The loss of the exposed petrified plant remains eventually left the site devoid of fossils and ultimately without a purpose to justify its existence as a unit of the National Park Service.”

Among the most egregious fossil collectors was the monument’s biggest advocate: Wieland himself.

“He had a scientific interest in the collection, but he almost seemed to become obsessed with the resource,” Vincent Santucci, a geologist and paleontologist with the National Park Service told the Capital Journal in 2014. Wieland is believed to have taken thousands of the fossil cycads from his beloved plot of land.

It wasn’t just Wieland. Despite small signs at Fossil Cycad warning tourists not to prospect, they would come and collect the fossils exposed, even though the monument never officially opened to the public. The more exposed fossils became, the more visitors the monument attracted, and the fewer fossils were left protected at the site.

Original sign for Fossil Cycad National Monument. NPS History Collection, HFCA-01244

To Wieland’s credit, historians say he did want to create a visitor center at Fossil Cycad, even if it was mainly to house his favorite collections from the site. And he often pushed for funding for the monument.

But, four years after Wieland’s 1953 death, and after the site had lost its most crucial resource, Congress de-authorized Fossil Cycad National Monument.

In 1955, Representative E. Y. Berry of South Dakota introduced legislation to abolish the monument, a report from the NPS explains. It was the NPS itself that requested the legislation be introduced. (At the time, visitors to Fossil Cycad probably would not have seen any fossilized cycad.) The legislation would later pass, and Fossil Cycad lost its national monument status, instead becoming part of the Bureau of Land Management.

The NPS released a statement amidst the abolishment, saying it “was requested by the NPS in line with its policy to eliminate from the National Park Service those areas considered to be of less than national significance.”

The legislation did stipulate that should fossils be found during construction or excavation, they would become the property of the federal government. That happened in the 1980s, according to NPS. In 2015, the BLM designated the 320 acres of the former monument as an ACEC, or area of critical environmental concern, protecting it from future mineral leasing, fossil gathering, development, and more.

Still, there are no signs or other indications of where the national monument even was anymore, instead serving as a reminder to “leave no trace and take only memories and pictures.” Meanwhile, the prospected cycads are now part of collections at Yale, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and other museums — and likely some private collections.

#Extinction #National Monument #National #Fossil Cycad National Monument #South Dakota #President Theodore Roosevelt #Dinosaur National Monument #President Woodrow Wilson #National Park Service #President Warren G. Harding #Yale University #George Reber Wieland #Achelon Ischyros #Representative E. Y. Berry of South Dakota #Bureau of Land Management #South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

[polyvinylfilms]

From Wikipedia today, September 2.

#president theodore roosevelt #today in history #speak softly #theodore roosevelt #wikipedia

[alwaysbewoke]

#history #us presidents #george washington #thomas jefferson #theodore roosevelt #abraham lincoln

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Theodore Roosevelt hired a milf to advise him on all his important decisions while he was president.

#dream #theodore roosevelt #potus #poltiics #president

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Let's take a trip back to the distant past, the olden days of 2004. George W. Bush was president, The Lord of the Rings had recently won best picture and in D.C. a descendant of Theodore Roosevelt was born.

At just 18 years old, Quentin Colón Roosevelt is the youngest ANC Commissioner in all of D.C.

After being sworn in this week, Roosevelt now represents the Spring Valley neighborhood of Ward 3.

Roosevelt ran unopposed in his election. Now, he balances his responsibilities while also currently in his senior year of high school.

“I’m definitely still having fun. I go to parties. I have friends. I do stuff like that. But I also have a real commitment to where I live," Roosevelt said. "I love DC. I’ve lived here my entire life. And I thought if I want to get involved and make a difference, this is the easiest way to do it.”

Quentin says Theodore Roosevelt is his great, great, great grandfather. He hopes to get into Georgetown University so he can continue serving in D.C.

#us politics #2023 #Advisory Neighborhood Commission #washington dc #Quentin Colón Roosevelt #wusa9 #youtube #videos #President Theodore Roosevelt #spring valley #district of columbia

[coolthingsguyslike]

#Theodore Roosevelt #Rough Riders #President

[deadpresidents]

Gerald Ford vs. Teddy Roosevelt, no holds barred MMA fight. Who wins?

Despite his portrayal as a clumsy oaf, Gerald Ford was almost certainly the best athlete to ever serve in the White House. He was a legendary college football player who won two national championships at the University of Michigan, and was MVP of the team in his senior year. Ford turned down contract offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but turned down a career in the NFL in order to attend law school. Ford was a avid skier until his 80s and continued swimming regularly for exercise into his 90s, and he would have had a notable size advantage over Theodore Roosevelt.

However, if someone genuinely knows what they are doing during a mixed martial arts fight, they are going to be very difficult to defeat -- even against an opponent who might be a superior athlete in every other sense. That has been a lesson learned throughout the growth of MMA as a mainstream sport dating back to Royce Gracie easily handling much bigger opponents in the early UFC with his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Or Rickson Gracie calmly controlling and systematically dominating literally everyone he fought in Japan, no matter who Pride FC threw at him.

Theodore Roosevelt would be giving up quite a bit of size and athletic ability against Gerald Ford, but TR was an early student of martial arts. As President -- in the White House itself -- Roosevelt kept active with wrestling (always the best foundation for a mixed martial artist) and boxing. And he was among the first Americans to actually train in jiu jitsu and judo, receiving lessons directly from the legendary Yamashita Yoshiaki. Because of that experience, I think Theodore Roosevelt probably would have given any of his fellow Presidents a rough day at the office if they had an MMA fight, no matter how big or strong or athletic his opponent might be.

#What if? #Great questions #Theodore Roosevelt #President Roosevelt #Gerald Ford #President Ford #Presidents #Presidential Brawls #Martial Arts #Jiu jitsu #judo #Wrestling #Boxing #MMA #Mixed Martial Arts #Gracie Jiu Jitsu #Royce Gracie #Rickson Gracie #UFC #Pride FC #University of Michigsn #Presidential Athletes #History

[theciderinsideme]

shoot me

#dwight eisenhower #harry s truman #richard nixon #john f kennedy #abraham lincoln #theodore roosevelt #us presidents #u.s presidents #jfk

[thepresidentsblog]

#Poll #President #Presidents #President of the United States #US President #Presidential Poll #America #Tumblr Poll #Tournament Poll #Ronald Reagan #Theodore Roosevelt #Note: we do NOT own this artwork