Tuesday, May 15, 2012 — This is a 1:23 scene from Keeper of the Flame, a George Cukor film made in 1942, from a screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart. Katherine Hepburn plays the widow of Robert Forrest; Spencer Tracy is a former war correspondent who had planned to write Forrest’s biography.

Seventy years later things still work the same way.

In case of technical difficulties, here is a transcript; Hepburn is speaking:

The morning of the accident I stole his keys, came here, and opened this.

[Opens the door to a large cupboard.] This is what I found: the key to Robert Forrest’s fascist organization. Of course they didn’t call it fascism. They painted it red, white, and blue and called it Americanism.

[Opens an inner door to a safe.] In here are the funds to see it through; fantastic amounts subscribed by a few private individuals to whom money didn’t mean anything anymore but who wanted political power … knew they could never get it by democratic means. There’s a list of their names.

[Pulls out a thick file folder.] This was the essence of their plan. Here are some articles ready for release to stir up all the little hatreds of the whole nation against each other. This was an article to be published in an anti-Semitic paper attacking the Jews. This was to be used in the Farmer’s Gazette to stir them up against the city-dwellers. Here’s one attacking the Catholics … anti-Negro … anti-labor … anti-trade union … subtle appeal to the Ku Klux Klan.

Here’s a list of newspaper editors who either sought to occupy public office, or sought to dictate who should occupy public office, and, when they failed, felt that that the public was a great, stupid beast.

Here’s a list of men who served their country in the last war and were failures in business and again longed for the power of rank and the prestige of a uniform.

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012 — Jack Williams, of Effingham, New Hampshire, demonstrating his wooden common press at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Friday, October 24, 2008. The demonstration was part of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s Portsmouth Literary Festival.

Jack built the press himself, from plans drawn by Clinton Sisson, of the Smithsonian Institute. Sisson’s plans were drawn up from careful measurements taken from a press in the Smithsonian’s collection which was once used by Benjamin Franklin.

The gentleman wearing a black baseball hat at the start of the clip is Harold Whitehouse, a former linotype operator for the Portsmouth Herald.

[We could have sworn we posted this back in '08, but can't find it now. So, here's a rerun.]

“1945 — The RAF bombs the German ship Cap Arcona in the mistaken belief it’s carrying SS officers. Of 4,500 concentration camp inmates aboard, only 350 survive.”

For some reason this debacle, like 1944′s Exercise Tiger, is rarely recalled by armchair generals and talk show chickenhawks.

“1985 — E.F. Hutton, the brokerage company, pleads guilty to 2,000 federal charges; agrees to cough up $10 million.”

In the early 1980s, federal prosecutors nailed E.F. Hutton & Co. on a massive, company-wide check-kiting scheme. Twenty-five senior officers were implicated, and three could have gone to the slammer, but the Justice Department let them off with a fine that William Safire — no socialist he — said was the equivalent of “putting a parking ticket on the Brink’s getaway car.”

At right: the original Edward Francis Hutton himself.

“1999 — The New Hampshire Gazette resumes regular (fortnightly) publication in Portsmouth.”

“1989 — New Hampshire Secretary of State for Life William Gardner assigns legal ownership of The New Hampshire Gazette to the current editor.”

The Occupy Movement has issued this call for a General Strike today: “We ask you to do one of two things to commemorate this day: Don’t like what you do? Don’t do it. Take one day to do something you love, instead. Love what you do? Do it for free. Take it to the next level, and bring it to the public.”

We are fortunate: we get to do something we love. And we were for the 99 percent even before we snatched the Gazette away from the world’s ninth richest man. So, in solidarity with the 99%, we’re working today.

“1894 — Five hundred unemployed workers led by Jacob Coxey arrive in Washington, D.C. from Massilon, OH, demanding work.”

The collapse of the publicly-subsidized, Congressional-bribe dispensing U.S. railroad industry in 1893 knocked the rest of the national economy into the worst depression to date, with unemployment rising to 18 percent.

Hundreds of scruffy-looking individuals took this unfortunate circumstance as an excuse to sully the Capitol. Authorities arrested them the next day for walking on the grass.

“1975 — In Vietnam, the last Americans leave.”

Among other losses: the opportunity to learn from a mistake.

“2004 — The Securities and Exchange Commission votes unanimously to let investment banks risk far more money and keep far less in reserve.

What could possibly go wrong?”

At right: William H. Donaldson, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission 2003 – 2005, who said on April 28, 2004, in reference to the above decision:

“If we do this wisely, and we and our fellow regulators listen to and learn from each other, we will help the investing public by using the best available tools to manage risks to the health of our markets wherever they arise, and by allowing the market for financial services to continue to evolve. At the same time, we will help the financial services industry by removing regulatory obstacles that tilt the playing field or impose needless costs.”

“1974 — Ten thousand people march in Washington, D.C. for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.”

While Richard Nixon hid at Camp David, poring over transcribed records of his misdeeds, the Youth International Party and the National Campaign to Impeach Nixon marched — or, more likely strolled — up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol.

Leading the parade was an Edsel “with a vice presidential seal on its side and drawing a cage with a figure representing Nixon behind the bars.”

Unable to locate a photo of the 4/27/1974 march, we have substituted one from 10/22/1973; no Edsel, no cage, but the aim is the same.