Year: 2011

Romney
Mitt Romney (Image: AP)
A Romney Churchill Gaffe: A Small But Not a Large Clang

A Romney Churchill Gaffe: A Small But Not a Large Clang

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Romney redux

2011— Writ­ing for Busi­ness Insid­er on Sep­tem­ber 29th, Grace Wyler cor­rect­ly report­ed a Churchill mis­quote by pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Romney.

Defend­ing him­self from charges that he is a “flip-flop­per,” Rom­ney con­fused “the Brit every Repub­li­can loves with the Brit every Repub­li­can loves to hate.” Here accord­ing to NBC is what Gov­er­nor Rom­ney said:

In the pri­vate sec­tor, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, well you’ll get fired for being stub­born and stu­pid. Win­ston Churchill said, “When facts change, I change too, madam.”

Wyler accu­rate­ly notes that this was said by John May­nard Keynes, “the British econ­o­mist whose the­o­ries about gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion in the econ­o­my [are] reviled by con­ser­v­a­tives every­where.”…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 3

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 3

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con­tin­ued from part 2…

 Jesse Jones, Franklin Roosevelt’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce, was a rugged Ten­nessean who was hard to meet and hard­er to know. Joseph Wash­ing­ton “Jeeps” Fraz­er was Pres­i­dent of Willys-Over­land, a scion of the Vir­ginia Wash­ing­tons and Nashville Fraz­ers; but this and more wouldn’t get him in to see Jesse Jones at Com­merce. See­ing Jones required more pow­er­ful strategy.

On an urgent mis­sion to Wash­ing­ton for his Jeep-build­ing com­pa­ny, Joe Fraz­er had arrived one morn­ing in 1943 and parked him­self in Jones’s out­er office, despite repeat­ed warn­ings that the Sec­re­tary wasn’t like­ly to arrive until evening—if at all.…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 2

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 2

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con­tin­ued from part 1…

See­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to run his own com­pa­ny, Fraz­er took con­trol of mori­bund Gra­ham-Paige in 1944, and two years lat­er merged its auto­mo­tive inter­ests with a new cor­po­ra­tion he and Hen­ry Kaiser had formed, leas­ing and then buy­ing the gigan­tic ex-bomber fac­to­ry at Wil­low Run, Michi­gan. Dur­ing Frazer’s 1946-48 pres­i­den­cy, Kaiser-Fraz­er was the fourth largest car pro­duc­er in the world, and ranked eighth in pro­duc­tion by make, ahead of all oth­er inde­pen­dents. He stepped down as an active offi­cer in 1949. The com­pa­ny nev­er again record­ed a profit.…

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Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 1

Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep, Part 1

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In 2011, Joseph Wash­ing­ton Fraz­er (1892-1971) was induct­ed, belat­ed­ly, into the Auto­mo­tive Hall of Fame, with his erst­while part­ner, Hen­ry J. Kaiser, co-founders of the world’s fourth-largest auto man­u­fac­tur­er dur­ing 1946-48. This arti­cle is updat­ed from the remem­brance I wrote of JWF, cre­ator of the Jeep. For more on Fraz­er, see my book, Kaiser-Fraz­er: Last Onslaught on Detroit.

✷✷✷✷✷

On August 7th, 1971,  the auto indus­try lost a cher­ished son. Joe Frazer—mechanic, instruc­tor, financier, sales­man, pres­i­dent and board chair­man in a half dozen com­pa­nies, one of the few remain­ing giants of the clas­sic era of Amer­i­can car-build­ing, passed away from can­cer at his home, “High Tide,” in New­port, Rhode Island, aged 79.…

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Lady Soames Diaries

Lady Soames Diaries

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The diaries of Churchill’s youngest and only liv­ing daugh­ter, Mary Soames, are to be pub­lished on her 89th birth­day, Sep­tem­ber 15th, by Dou­ble­day UK, and is avail­able for ship­ment world­wide from Ama­zon UK. An e-book will also be avail­able. Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tion will be in May 2012 by Ran­dom House in New York. The Ama­zon UK price is £16.50 ($26.50) and air­mail ship­ment to the USA costs about £7 ($11).

Much younger than her sib­lings, Mary had an idyl­lic youth, grow­ing up at Chartwell, her father’s beloved Ken­tish home, but always in the back­ground was his pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the grow­ing threat of Hitler, and in 1939 the war arrived, and with it Mary’s life was dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered.…

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Rusher
“W.A.R.” (PBS)
“The Truth is Great, and Shall Prevail”: Bill Rusher 1923-2011

“The Truth is Great, and Shall Prevail”: Bill Rusher 1923-2011

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I" know we have a tendency to be discouraged about how things are going—although in our time, you know, they haven't gone all that badly. Free market economics, which I wouldn't have given you a plugged nickel for at the end of World War II, is now so popular that even Red China calls its policy "Market Socialism," whatever that is. Still there is much that is worrisome. I'm sure Churchill, if he were here, would encourage us: Never Despair and Never Give In." —Bill Rusher

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Murder (“The West”) Incorporated

Murder (“The West”) Incorporated

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“Is World War II Still ‘the Good War’?” by Adam Kirsch. The New York Times Sun­day Book Review, 27 May 2011. Adam Kirsch, a senior edi­tor at The New Repub­lic, offers a thought­ful piece of decon­struc­tion which dredges up every major Churchill crit­ic of the past five years, all in one handy if ver­bose arti­cle. As a sam­pling of the Churchill fever swamps, it is unsurpassed.

The ques­tion we are asked to con­sid­er is whether World War II was real­ly a “good war.” War is hell, which is why west­ern democ­ra­cies like Britain and France spent six years try­ing to avoid it.…

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Naked
FDR and Churchill at the White House. (AP)
“Nothing to Hide”: The Truth about Churchill’s Naked Encounter

“Nothing to Hide”: The Truth about Churchill’s Naked Encounter

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Stark naked

Churchill (step­ping naked from his bath): “The Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain has noth­ing to hide from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.” **

[Also quot­ed as: “You see, Mr. Pres­i­dent, I have noth­ing to hide.”]

Churchill alleged­ly said this dur­ing his vis­it to the White House in Decem­ber-Jan­u­ary 1941.  The Japan­ese had attacked Pearl Har­bor and Amer­i­ca was in the war.  The encounter was con­firmed by Churchill’s body­guard, Wal­ter Thomp­son, and one of his sec­re­taries, Patrick Kin­na. On the strength of their com­ments I includ­ed it as “like­ly” in Churchill By Himself.…

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Morrison
RMS Lusitania
Comparisons: American Thinker’s Robert Morrison was Not Thinking

Comparisons: American Thinker’s Robert Morrison was Not Thinking

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In a May 10th piece on the Amer­i­can Thinker web­site, author Robert Mor­ri­son asserts that a) Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is no Churchill; b) Hitler, who in 1940 was ready “to para­chute 10,000 com­man­dos on Lon­don,” was rather scari­er than Osama bin Laden; c) Oba­ma, who dis­likes Churchill for the tor­ture of his grand­fa­ther in Kenya, “tossed” the bust of Churchill from the Oval Office; and d) “spilt his guts” to the media about the OBL operation.

Quot­ing Churchill’s famous remark that when he became Prime Min­is­ter he felt as if he “were walk­ing with des­tiny,” Mor­ri­son writes: “I want my pres­i­dent to have con­cerns, but not fears.…

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“Alles sal reg kom”: Churchill on the Royal Wedding

“Alles sal reg kom”: Churchill on the Royal Wedding

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HOUSE OF COMMONS, 22 OCTOBER 1947— “I am in entire accord with what the Prime Min­is­ter has said about Princess Eliz­a­beth and about the qual­i­ties which she has already shown, to use his words, ‘of unerr­ing gra­cious­ness and under­stand­ing and of human sim­plic­i­ty.’ He is indeed right in declar­ing that these are among the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Roy­al House. I trust that every­thing that is appro­pri­ate will be done by His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment to mark this occa­sion of nation­al rejoic­ing.  ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,’ and mil­lions will wel­come this joy­ous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to trav­el.…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

Triumph Cars - The Complete Story
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