“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Kate Steinle suspect found not guilty, acquitted of murder and manslaughter
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) --
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Francisco Sanchez has been charged with the murder of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14 in San Francisco, July 3, 2015. (KGO-TV)
In a surprising verdict, the jury of six men and six women deliberated and came back with a not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. The defendant was facing second degree murder charges for killing 32-year-old Pleasanton resident Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015, at Pier 14 in San Francisco.
The jury found Garcia Zarate guilty of possession of a firearm by a felon.
While Garcia Zarate can technically walk out of the courtroom, it's expected that he will be taken into custody by Immigration officials and eventually deported back to his native Mexico.
The case gained notoriety because Garcia Zarate is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported several times and had a number of felony convictions. Steinle's death became part of the immigration debate in this country. During his campaign, President Trump criticized San Francisco for its sanctuary city status.
The Steinle family has been waiting more than two years for this day. Kate Steinle was shot and killed when she was walking with her father and a friend on the pier.
Garcia Zarate, who was homless at the time, claimed he found the gun wrapped in a piece of cloth under a swivel chair at the pier. He says he picked it up and it accidentally fired, hitting Steinle in the back. But first, the bullet ricocheted and then traveled 78 feet before striking Steinle in the back.
The prosecution has always maintained that Garcia Zarate had the gun all along, aimed it at Steinle and fired. But because he had little experience with guns, the bullet ricocheted first, a common mistake made by amateurs. The gun used to shoot Steinle was stolen in San Francisco from the personal vehicle of a federal park ranger four day before. The agent works for the Bureau of Land Management. The Steinle family is suing them. EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Man accused in San Francisco Pier 14 shooting admits to crime
A number of witnesses testified in the trial, including police officers and several people who saw Garcia Zarate at the scene along with several CSI investigators and forensic experts. The trial began on Oct. 23, 2017.
The jury had a number of choices to make. They could have gone with a second degree verdict, involuntary manslaughter or consider a first degree murder verdict.
Click here to look back at the events of the Kate Steinle murder trial.
Matt Lauer was fired from NBC News on Wednesday after an employee filed a complaint about "inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace," the network announced.
Savannah Guthrie made the announcement at the top of the "Today" show. Lauer has been the cornerstone of the program, one of the most profitable franchises on television, for two decades.
NBC News chairman Andrew Lack said in a memo to staff that it was the first complaint lodged against Lauer in his career at the network. But he said "we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident."
Lauer was not immediately reachable for comment. An NBC News spokeswoman declined to comment about the details of the allegation against him.
Reporters for The New York Times had been investigating Lauer for several weeks, according to sources who had been contacted by the Times.
The firing removes one of the most recognizable personalities on television, and at a time when morning news programs are increasingly important to network news divisions.
EU warned it is ill-prepared for African migration rush
European Parliament chief calls for Marshall plan to give people reasons to stay at home
Population growth in Africa threatens to push millions of people to an ill-prepared Europe in the next decades, the European Parliament president has warned, in a sign of wider fears over the EU’s migration strategy.
Antonio Tajani called for a “Marshall plan” for Africa to supersede scattergun EU and national government initiatives in an effort to give people more reasons to stay in their home countries.
Mr Tajani’s remarks ahead of a biennial EU-Africa summit in Ivory Coast this week echo wider concerns that Europe still lacks a viable long-term plan on migration should a recent sharp fall in numbers start to reverse.
Poverty, climate change and conflict in some African states would exacerbate the impact of sharp population growth in driving people from the continent. “Altogether these problems are a bomb,” he said. “The problems will push, without a solution, millions of people from Africa to Europe.”
Improved EU co-ordination and a €40bn Marshall plan to invest in long-term initiatives were needed to help stem the flow of people, he said. EU countries should look for imaginative ways to generate funds, such as levies on internet companies and tax havens, rather than tap European citizens.
“Without a strategy we will have terrorism, illegal immigration, instability,” said Mr Tajani, a close ally of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister who signed a contentious 2008 deal on migration with Col Muammer Gaddafi’s Libya. “There are too many voices on Libya, on Africa.”
Migration has slipped down the European agenda after sharp falls over the past two years in the numbers of people taking the eastern Mediterranean route to Turkey and the central Mediterranean route to Italy. The EU has invested in measures ranging from a crackdown on people smuggling in the west African state of Niger to a 2016 accord for Turkey to take back migrants who cross to Greek islands.
The EU-Africa summit in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, is focused on youth but EU diplomats say migration will also inevitably be discussed.
“We don’t want this to be a summit on migration but it is, of course, a part of our relationship,” said one senior EU official. Libya was a “major crisis” on which the EU, UN and intergovernmental African Union all needed to “step up”.
The EU aims to address “root causes” of migration by investments ranging from vocational training to support for the development of companies to work in the ethical fashion supply chain. EU member states also have myriad bilateral projects with African counterparts.
Many EU diplomats acknowledge the likelihood of another migration surge, amplified over time by the demographic trends in some big African countries. But the matter’s scale, complexity and geographic spread have made it hard to address at an EU level, they add.
“The awareness is there, but launching this kind of grand strategy is probably not feasible now,” one EU diplomat said of Mr Tajani’s plan. “But there is a feeling that we should be able to develop some elements that would enable us to be more up to the task.”
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As Negev detention centre closes, Israel prepares to deport African migrants
Government preparing to send migrants to Rwanda, which will accept them for $5000 per head
Israel’s government has decided to close the Holot migrant detention facility in the Negev desert as part of a crackdown on the country’s illegal migrants originating from Africa.
Instead of being kept in open detention, those without a legal residence permit will be given the choice of going to prison indefinitely or being deported to Rwanda.
The government claimed the new policy, which attracted support from sections of opposition parties Labour and Yesh Atid, was moral and confirmed to international law.
There is no certainty in Israel on how many foreign citizens are currently living without a legal permit.
An estimated 40 thousand refugees from Sudan and Eritrea are claiming to be political asylum seekers, but the government insists they are work migrants.
The African migrants have been in the country for at least five years, arriving on foot through the Sinai Desert before a new border fence was completed in early 2013.
Most live packed into apartment blocks in the working-class neighbourhoods in South Tel Aviv, where they find support only from a few left-wing MPs and a handful of charities.
Israel has an agreement with Rwanda, which will accept migrants at $5,000 (£3,760) a head, concluded after an earlier agreement with Uganda fell through.
The few thousand migrants who have so far voluntarily agreed to go to Rwanda have each been given $2,000 each, but it is still unclear whether this arrangement will hold for the tens of thousands still remaining.
Even if the Africans are all deported at a cost of a quarter of a billion US dollars, unknown numbers of migrants from the former Soviet Union will remain.
Immigration experts believe there are much larger numbers of Russian, Ukrainian and Georgian citizens living illegally in Israel, but critics say they are less obtrusive because they are white and live among the Russian-speaking communities around the country.
The closure of Holot comes as Israel confronts some of the most sweeping demographic changes in its history. With over eight million citizens, a relatively high birth-rate and an attractive quality of life, it is rapidly becoming comparable to many countries in Europe.
This has attracted migrants from poorer parts of the world looking for a new life, but Israel remains a special case because it is locked in a complex demographic balance with the Palestinian population. There is no standard naturalisation process in the country either, apart from the Law of Return that allows Jews and their family members to emigrate.
With unemployment at an all-time low and Israeli business already employing over fifty thousand Palestinian workers with daily work-permits, supporters believe the Israeli economy could easily absorb the African migrants.
But allowing the Africans to work legally in Israel would mean changing the country’s immigration laws and opening an avenue for large numbers of non-Jews to move to Israel. For the moment, that remains a political taboo.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s top lawyer wrote in a legal opinion on Saturday that President Donald Trump had the authority to name the interim director for the bureau upon the resignation of Richard Cordray, Politico reported Sunday night.
“It is my legal opinion that the president possesses the authority to designate an acting director for the bureau,” McLeod wrote in the Nov. 25 memo to top CFPB officials obtained by Politico. “I advise all bureau personnel to act consistently with the understanding that Director Mulvaney is the acting director of the CFPB.”
Despite the legal opinion issued in favor of Trump, the CFPB’s deputy director, who was named by outgoing director Richard Cordray as the interim bureau chief, sued the Trump administration on Sunday.
Upon Cordray’s resignation, Trump named Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the interim director of the bureau. However, Cordray chose the bureau’s deputy director, Leandra English, to serve as director until the Senate approves a permanent bureau chief.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Sunday, English argued that the Dodd-Frank Act allows her to take over as interim director.
In a statement to Politico, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that McLeod’s legal opinion shows Trump has the authority to name an interim director.
“Now that the CFPB’s own General Counsel – who was hired under Richard Cordray – has notified the Bureau’s leadership that she agrees with the Administration’s and DOJ’s reading of the law, there should be no question that Director Mulvaney is the Acting Director,” Sanders said. “It is unfortunate that Mr. Cordray decided to put his political ambition above the interests of consumers with this stunt.”
Who Is Richard Cordray? (An Obama Hack)
Cordray was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1990. After redistricting, Cordray decided to run for the United States House of Representatives in 1992 but was defeated.
The following year he was appointed by the Ohio Attorney General as the first Solicitor General of Ohio. His experience as Solicitor led to his appearance before the United States Supreme Court to argue six cases, where he had previously clerked. Following Republican victories in Ohio statewide elections in 1994, Cordray left his appointed position and entered the private practice of law.
While in private practice he unsuccessfully ran for Ohio Attorney General in 1998 and the United States Senate in 2000. He was elected Franklin County treasurer in 2002 and re-elected in 2004 before being elected Ohio State Treasurer in 2006.
Cordray was elected Ohio Attorney General in November 2008 to fill the remainder of the unexpired term ending January 2011. In 2010, Cordray lost his bid for re-election to former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine.
On July 17, 2011, President Barack Obama announced he would nominate Cordray to lead the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On January 4, 2012, the White House announced that it would make a recess appointment of Cordray to the post.
Nigel Farage has issued a stinging “told you so” message to Britain’s former deputy prime minister days before a number of EU states look set to sign a new defence pact.
In 2014 during an LBC head-to-head debate, Nick Clegg told Nigel the idea of an EU army was a “dangerous fantasy” which “simply was not true”.
Picture: LBC/PA
Then, in September the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said by 2025 the EU needed “a functioning European defence union”.
And on Monday, at least 20 countries in the bloc will agree on a new defence collaboration pact covering troops and weapons - known as the Permanent Structured Cooperation.
Reacting to this latest revelation on his nightly LBC show, Nigel was absolutely seething as he tore in to the former Lib Dem leader.
He fumed: “It's very interesting isn't it?
"When you're told by people that the Leave camp lied in the referendum because of some numbers on the side of a bus that may have been slightly over inflated, compare that with the lies we've had for half a century from Nick Clegg and the others - a European army is happening.”
German Coalition Talks against Backdrop of History - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Sometimes we in the West forget that our view of the world is just one among many that are possible. And that neither our understanding of human rights nor our adherence to liberal democracy are attractive across the globe. Is the Western way of life morally superior? And even if it were, is it the most constructive or effective way of organizing human societies?
We in the West also tend to interpret history to reflect positively on ourselves. Were the many centuries during which Europe or the United States were at the center of global events not inevitable? Were they not based on the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, on our engineering prowess, on our technological preeminence? Was it not based on our overall brilliance? After the collapse of communism in 1989, Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History," by which he meant the triumph of Western values. Soon the entire world would be democratized, the victorious political order seemed clear.
How absurd that worldview seems now, in November 2017.
Since September 2001, the West has made a number of missteps. There were the aimless interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There was the self-inflicted economic crisis of 2008, which was actually not a global disaster but a trans-Atlantic one, as China, Indonesia and India all continued to grow. For too many years we have clearly demonstrated to non-democratic states that democracy may no longer be reliable and is far too fragile: It installs incompetent leaders like Donald Trump in power and leads to blunders like Brexit. It has long been clear that democracy is slow, but now it's obvious that it also makes terrible mistakes. What country would look to today's United States as an example?
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It must first be said that the government crisis, which has arisen out of the failed coalition talks, is not a crisis of state - at least not yet. A caretaker government is in office, the federal president is exhibiting prudence, the country's economy is robust, and the system is working as it should. Even the chancellor - whose enthusiasm for political communication is limited at best and whose 12 years of leadership have brought the country to where it finds itself today - is proceeding carefully and maturely.
The Social Democrats, meanwhile, twice hastily - indeed, childishly - rejected the idea of joining Merkel in a coalition. There is now no safe way back. Joining a grand coalition would marginalize the party; in four years, it could plunge to just 15 percent. Therefore, rapid new elections are the only thing that makes sense. Hopefully they will result in a clear governing mandate and to a greater sense of urgency and responsibility in the ensuing coalition talks.
Complacent Prosperity
That, in fact, is the most disturbing thing about the way Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats backed out of the talks, about the constant complaining from the Bavarian conservatives, about the weeks of haggling over details without any sense of the bigger picture. This irreverence. The prioritization of the individual over the common good. This desolate narcissism born of complacent prosperity.
In truth, the domination of the world by Europe and the United States has only lasted two centuries. Before that, China was already an economic leader. And the history of the rise of the West cannot really be attributed to but a single cause. This ascent was helped along by genocide and slavery; colonialism allowed Europe to plunder ideas. It was in China that the technologies for iron and steel production were first invented, as well as paper currency, gun powder and the compass.
In human history, there has hardly ever been such a rapid rise - which really is just a return to form - as that of China over the past 30 years. The country has long since begun financing other states without paying attention to issues like democracy and human rights: The old "Washington Consensus," is being replaced by the "Beijing Consensus." The Chinese model fascinates those that wish to replicate it because the party appears so resolute and closed while the society is so young, vibrant and hungry for start-ups. Western societies on the other hand are aging. Many citizens see their wages stagnating, while education, homes and healthcare are becoming unaffordable. The old maxim that rising GDP translates into prosperity for all is being exposed as a fallacy.
The idea that democracy was somehow the endpoint of development was megalomaniac. As long as there is something to redistribute, every system has it easy. But in the past 11 years, freedom around the world has receded. Of 195 states only 87 are still free, 59 are partially free and 49 are not free at all according to the NGO Freedom House. Turkey and Russia have turned their backs on the group of democracies while Poland and Hungary look to be not far behind. Meanwhile, the United States is foundering. One would hope that should be enough to focus minds in Berlin. There is, after all, a lot at stake.
Klaus Brinkbäumer was born on January 27, 1967 in Münster / Westphalia.
After graduation he did an internship at Weltbild. After studying at the University of California at Santa Barbara / USA he worked for the "Abendzeitung" in Munich and the "Berliner Kurier".
In 1993, Brinkbäumer moved from the "Focus" development editorial office to the SPIEGEL, where he initially worked as an editor and then as a reporter for the sports, Germany, foreign and society departments. He won u. a. the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize, the Henri Nannen Prize and the German Reporter Award and wrote books such as "The Dream of Life - An African Odyssey" or "The Last Journey - The Case of Christopher Columbus" (with Clemens Höges).
After reporting for four years as a New York correspondent, Brinkbäumer joined the editorial board of SPIEGEL in January 2011 as editor-in-chief and from 1st September 2011 deputy editor-in-chief of SPIEGEL.
In January 2015, Klaus Brinkbäumer was appointed Editor-in-Chief of SPIEGEL. In this function, he also performs the tasks of the publisher at SPIEGEL ONLINE.
Watch Chris Farrell, an American Patriot, explain the incredible dirty dealings of the Clinton Criminal Cartel and their enablers from Obama to Jeff Sessions and the incompetent Republican Senators on the Judicial Committee
In this episode of "Inside Judicial Watch," Carter Clews sits down with JW Director of Investigations & Research Chris Farrell to discuss Judicial Watch's findings about the Uranium One scandal as well as the infamous FBI memo leaked by James Comey to the public.
Chris was a Distinguished Military Graduate from Fordham University with a B.A. in History, whereupon he accepted a Regular Army Commission and served as a Military Intelligence Officer – specializing in Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence. Chris is a graduate of the Military Intelligence Officers Basic and Advanced Courses, the U.S. Army Advanced Counterintelligence Training Course, the Combined Arms Services Staff School of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Military Operations Training Course, and the Haus Rissen Institut für Politik und Wirtschaft in Hamburg, Germany. He is a specialist in national security matters, specializing in unconventional warfare and terrorism.
“CBS This Morning” co-host and longtime PBS star Charlie Rose has been accused by eight women of making unwanted sexual advances toward them and admitted to some of the misconduct in a statement, according to the Washington Post. Both PBS and CBS suspended him.
Rose’s alleged misconduct includes making lewd phone calls, walking around naked and groping the womens breasts, buttocks or genital areas, according to the Post. Rose’s accusers were employees or “aspired to work for Rose at The Charlie Rose show’ on PBS from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011.”
“CBS This Morning” has been growing rapidly since it launched in 2012, but still struggles to match the viewership of rivals “Today” and “Good Morning America,” while Rose’s show on PBS has aired regularly since 1991. Rose’s PBS show is filmed at the Bloomberg LP headquarters, making three major media organizations tied up in the latest harassment scandal.
"PBS was shocked to learn today of these deeply disturbing allegations. We are immediately suspending distribution of 'Charlie Rose,'" PBS said in a statement.
Look at the smug smiling faces on these corrupt EU drones:
'List of Soros' Names 226 MEPs in Europe Who Are Under the Complete Control of George Soros
The “list of Soros” exposes the EU as nothing more than a mechanism for the elitist billionaire to promote his neo-liberal policies consisting of border-less mass migration, same-sex marriage, integration of Ukraine into the EU, and war with Russia. There are 751 members of the European Parliament and George Soros controls more than one third of those European Parliament seats.
“European democracy is a façade to hide the activities of power structure close to feudal system with local lord holding the reins.”
It’s an open secret that the “Soros network” has an extensive sphere of influence in the European Parliament and in other European Union institutions. The list of Soroshas been made public recently.
The document lists 226 MEPs from all sides of political spectrum, including former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, seven vice-presidents, and a number of committee heads, coordinators, and quaestors.
These people promote the ideas of Soros, such as bringing in more migrants, same-sex marriages, integration of Ukraine into the EU, and countering Russia. There are 751 members of the European Parliament. It means that the Soros friends have more than one third of seats.
George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and the founder and owner of Open Society Foundations NGO, was able to meet with President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker with “no transparent agenda for their closed-door meeting”, and pointed out how EU proposals to redistribute quotas of migrants across the EU are eerily familiar to Soros’s own self-published plan for dealing with the crisis.
The billionaire financier believes that the European Union should receive millions of immigrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa, provide each one with an annual 15,000 EUR in aid, and resettle these migrants in member-states where they do not wish to go and are not necessarily welcome.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused the EU of “eating out of the hand” of Soros. He believes that the billionaire open borders campaigner is behind the attacks on Hungary.
The reason is the government’s attempts to take legal action over a new law which requires foreign-supported ‘civil society’ organizations — many funded by Soros — to list their big overseas donors in a public register and be transparent about their funding sources in their publications. The Hungarian government is applying efforts to close the Budapest-based Central European University founded by Soros.
“The whole of the European Union is in trouble because its leaders and bureaucrats adopt decisions like this,” said Orbán. “The people support the ideal of the European Union. At the same time, they can’t stand the leadership of the EU, because it insults the Member-States with things like this, and it abuses its power. Everyone in Europe can see that. This is why the European leadership is not respected.”
The Visegrad group is trying to stand tall under the EU pressure on migrants’ policy. The European Commission of Migration and Home Affairs is pushing a new bill to make migrants quotas obligatory. At least 30 Soros supporters work for the commission.
Many people listed in the document are known for attacks on Russia. For instance, Rebecca Harms, a MEP from German Green Party, regularly calls the European Parliament to toughen the sanctions regime against Moscow. Guy Verhofstadt blames Russia for almost each and every thing going wrong in Europe.
His article Putting Putin in his Place made a lot of noise last year. In 2012, former Croatian Primer Tonino Picula, who was the head of an observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), slammed the Russian presidential election of 2012 as unfair, saying it was “skewed” in Vladimir Putin’s favor.
The Soros list sheds light on the question of what makes the EU leadership implement policies, which run counter to the interests of Europeans. The answer is corruption. The politicians bribed by Soros dance to his tune. They fight against the attempts of national leaders to protect the interests of their peoples.
Quite often those who oppose such policies have to face the resistance of political elites of their own countries. The standoff between Hungarian PM Orbán and the Soros network is a good example to illustrate how it works. The European Parliament under the influence of Soros friends is pushing Europe to suicide by letting millions of migrants in.
It shows that the much-vaunted European democracy is a façade to hide the activities of power structure close to feudal system with local lord holding the reins. It can hardly be called the power of people. The publication of Soros list provides a clue to understanding who rules the EU and who instigates anti-Russia sentiments in Europe.
Actually, this is the case when EU member countries like Hungary happen to be in the same boat with Russia opposing the very same US-based forces, while protecting their sovereignty and independence. This is the time for Europeans to think about transforming the system to do away with outside pressure.
At the start of the twentieth century, elevated public speaking in the United States focused on song-like intonation, lengthily and tremulously uttered vowels, and a booming resonance, rather than the details of a given word's phonetic qualities.[9] It is clear, however, that such speaking styles still sought to imitate the phonetics of educated, non-rhotic (sometimes called "r-less") British accents. Sociolinguist William Labov describes that such "r-less pronunciation, following Received Pronunciation", the standard English of Southern England, "was taught as a model of correct, international English by schools of speech, acting and elocution in the United States up to the end of World War II".[7]
Early recordings of prominent Americans born in the middle of the nineteenth century provide some insight into their adoption or not of a cultivated non-rhotic speaking style. PresidentWilliam Howard Taft, who came from an Ohio family of modest means, and inventor Thomas Edison, who grew up in Ohio and Michigan, both used natural rhotic accents. Presidents William McKinley of Ohio and Grover Cleveland of Central New York, however, clearly employed a non-rhotic, upper-class, Mid-Atlantic quality in their speeches; both even use the distinctive and archaic oratory affectation of a "trilled" or "flapped r" at times whenever r is pronounced.[10] This trill is less consistently heard in recordings of Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's successor from an affluent district of New York City, who also used a cultivated non-rhotic accent but with the addition of the New York accent's once-notable coil–curl merger.[10]
World English was a speech pattern that very specifically did not derive from any regional dialect pattern in England or America, although it clearly bears some resemblance to the speech patterns that were spoken in a few areas of New England, and a very considerable resemblance... to the pattern in England which was becoming defined in the 1920s as "RP" or "Received Pronunciation." World English, then, was a creation of speech teachers, and boldly labeled as a class-based accent: the speech of persons variously described as "educated," "cultivated," or "cultured"; the speech of persons who moved in rarified social or intellectual circles and of those who might aspire to do so.[13]
Recordings of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came from a privileged New York City family and was educated at Groton, a private Massachusettspreparatory school, had a number of characteristic patterns. His speech is non-rhotic; one of Roosevelt's most frequently heard speeches has a falling diphthong in the word fear, which distinguishes it from other forms of surviving non-rhotic speech in the United States.[38] "Linking r" appears in Roosevelt's delivery of the words "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; this pronunciation of r is also famously recorded in his Pearl Harbor speech, for example, in the phrase "naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan".[39]
After the accent's decline following the end of World War II, this American version of a "posh" accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. The clipped, non-rhotic English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.[5]
When the twentieth century began, classical actors in the United States were in the habit of explicitly imitating British accents onstage.[40] From the 1920s to 1940s, the "World English" of Wiliam Tilly, and his followers' slight variations of it taught in classes of theater and oratory, became popular affectations onstage and in other forms of high culture in North America. The codification of a Mid-Atlantic accent in writing, particularly for theatrical training, is often credited to Edith Warman Skinner in the 1930s,[4][41] a student of Tilly best known for her 1942 instructional text Speak with Distinction.[3][42] Skinner, who referred to this accent as "Good American Speech" or "Eastern Standard" (both names now dated), described it as the appropriate American pronunciation for "classics and elevated texts".[43] She vigorously drilled her students in learning the accent at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and, later, the Juilliard School.[4]
It is also possible that the clipped, nasal, "all-treble" quality associated with the Mid-Atlantic accent partly arose out of technological necessity in the earliest days of radio and sound film, which ineffectively reproduced normal human bass tones.[44] As used by actors, the Mid-Atlantic accent is also known by various other names, including American theater standard or American stage speech.[41]American cinema began in the early 1900s in New York City and Philadelphia before becoming largely transplanted to Los Angeles beginning in the mid-1910s. With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, a voice was first heard in motion pictures. It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in the elevated stage pronunciation of the Mid-Atlantic accent.[citation needed]Many adopted it starting out in the theatre, and others simply affected it to help their careers on and off in films.
