The Daily Hatch

The Palace of Westminster more commonly known as the Houses of Parliament is situated on the banks of the Thames in Westminster London. It is the home of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It began life as a royal residence in 1042 under Edward the Confessor. The current mock gothic building design was result of a national competition. The plan of the building was the work of Charles Barry, with the gothic details designed by Augustus Pugin. The building has approximately 1,000 rooms, 100 staircases, and 3 km of passageways.

I heard Peyton Hillis will be giving autographs on Sunday from 1pm to 3pm at Dillards at Park Plaze in Little Rock. Peyton was on 103.7 the buzz today and he said he hopes to go another 4 or 5 years in the NFL. He always gives 100% on every play and he hates to go out of bounds when he can still get another yard.  That is tough on a body. I wish him well. I remember seeing him play against Bryant. Also a friend in Conway told me that Peyton used to be in his Sunday School class in the 7th grade and Peyton beat him arm wrestling even then.

In a prophetic speech concerning the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.” I am posting in the coming days excerpts from one of Reagan best speeches ever.  He addressed the members of the British Parliament on June 8, 1982.

Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, “I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.”
Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.
The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare 3 percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.
The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies — West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam — it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we’ve seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.

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Little known presidential facts:

1. The term “O.K.” derives from President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) who was known as “Old Kinderhook” because he was raised in Kinderhook, New York. “O.K.” clubs were created to support Van Buren’s campaigns.^k
2. President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) is the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. He was the 22nd and 24th president.^j