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(James Roosevelt - selling dad's plan in 1937)
When FDR suggested changes be made in the Supreme Court, appointing as many as six additional justices instead of the usual nine, it was a hard sell. In fact it went down to a stinging 70-20 Senate defeat by July. But FDR did a huge sales pitch for the plan, including enlisting his son James to stump for its passage.
James Roosevelt: “ I believe you will come to the conclusion that the President’s proposal if the most effective way to make constitutional democracy work. It confers no new powers. It takes away no previously existing authority. It is unquestionably constitutional. It will enable the Chief Executive to carry out with quickness and dispatch all those measures which meet the cry for repair and restoration. To you and to me and to millions of others throughout our country, it will bring comfort in the thought that those evil years of eight, yes of even twenty years ago will not come back.”
I'm sure at the time most Republicans had coronaries over the thought of six additional judges, all appointed by FDR setting the laws of the land. No doubt the wave of fear and calls of Dictatorship ran up and down the ranks of the right wing like a flu epidemic. But I can only imagine what it would have been like, had those fifteen judges been in place around the time of Bush, or even Nixon for that matter.
The mind fairly reels.
Perhaps some things were best not to have happened after all.
Andrew Breitbart sounds like a whiny ass titty baby when he joined David Shuster and tried to promote the idiotic notion that the publicity O'Keefe is getting from the media is tainting the jury against him....LOL. The idiotic plot that O'Keefe concocted to smear Mary Landrieu is now smearing Breitbart, and for good reason.
Notice how he tries to change the subject of his pal who is a student of Nixon's dirty-trick political ideology.
In the autumn election season of 1970, a cherubic, bespectacled teenager turned up at the Chicago campaign headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer in Illinois. No one paid the newcomer much attention when he arrived, or when he left soon afterwards. Nor did anyone in the office make the connection between the mystery volunteer and 1,000 invitations on campaign stationery that began circulating in Chicago's red-light district and soup kitchens, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" for all-comers at Dixon's headquarters.
Founded in 1979 by veteran Republican activist Morton Blackwell, the Leadership Institute has worked with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. The group raked in $6.6 million in 2008, according to its most recent publicly available IRS filings, which doesn’t list donors.
“What we teach is to use creative and imaginative ways to make your points, to reveal what we think is political correctness run amuck, liberal hypocrisy and double standards” on left-leaning college campuses, said Sutton, who supervised O’Keefe at the institute until O’Keefe was asked to leave because his investigative work could interfere with the Institute’s Internal Revenue Service standing...read on
James O'Keefe, the 25-year-old conservative filmmaker who was arrested this week in connection with a plot to tamper with phone lines in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office, is out of jail on $10,000 bond, Talking Points Memo reports. The judge ordered O'Keefe to live with his parents until a preliminary hearing set for Feb. 13.
Michael Madigan, O'Keefe's lawyer, said Wednesday that his client was not trying to wiretap or interfere with Landrieu's phones, but he would not explain why O'Keefe was there. He also would not say whether O'Keefe was working for someone or was on his own.
"The truth will come out," said Madigan, a Washington lawyer who represented Sen. Howard Baker, the Republican who famously asked during the Watergate investigation, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"
ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan said the arrest calls O'Keefe's credibility into question, and used the opportunity to point out that he "edited (ACORN videos) to make things look as bad as possible." He said, for instance, that O'Keefe actually wore a normal dress shirt when he was in the ACORN offices, but spliced in shots of him dressed as a pimp in the final videos.
These ratf*&kers are celebrated by FOX News and Andrew Breitbart, but this behavior is a core principle instilled in conservatives. And as for the Junior Watergaters, I don't believe their story, because as this story explains, they were trying to gain more access to Landrieu's phone system.
After being asked, the staffer gave Basel access to the main phone at the reception desk. The staffer told investigators that Basel manipulated the handset. He also tried to call the main office phone using his cell phone, and said the main line wasn't working. Flanagan did the same.
They then told the staffer they needed to perform repair work on the main phone system and asked where the telephone closet was located. The staffer showed the men to the main General Services Administration office on the 10th floor, and Flanagan and Basel went in. There, a GSA employee asked for the men's credentials. They said they left them in their vehicle.
The U.S. Marshal's Service apprehended all four men shortly thereafter.
If they had that type of access, I think they would have had a field day and committed many more crimes.
John Chancellor (NBC News): “The Supreme Court ruled six to three today that prosecutors may use illegally gathered evidence in Grand Jury presentations. The court said criminal suspects may not prevent the use of unlawfully gathered evidence, nor can suspects refuse to answer questions based on illegal evidence. This is the second such ruling by the Court this session. The first permits police to use any evidence turned up in a search connected with any lawful arrest, including a traffic violation. The dissenting Supreme Court Justices in both cases said the decisions threaten the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids unlawful search and seizure.”
And Comet Kohoutek which, only a year earlier had triggered dire predictions of earth shattering changes turned out to be 1974's answer to Y2K - a colossal dud.
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(Zbigniew Brzezinski - exploring the concept of Felt Interests)
I realize I haven't been doing enough of these of late - our Foreign Policy going back to Woodrow Wilson. I promise this year to catch up and make this a regular thing. Today it's Zbigniew Brzezinski on the sidelines in 1969, having left the State Department but still very much a presence in on-going East-West relations in 1969. This interview, via Meet The Press on April 6, 1969 comes at a time when the Paris talks with North Vietnam were at a standstill, Russia had invaded Czechoslovakia the previous August and the Middle East was on simmer. Europe was still under the influence of Charles DeGaulle and, with a few changes in players and circumstances, the same as it is today.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: “It seems to me that all major powers reach agreements on the basis of their felt interests at a given time. When that felt interest declines they move away from the agreement. All powers act that way. So do we, incidentally. And I think the point of an agreement is to find an area of common interest which the agreement then crystallizes and expresses. And I think it behooves us to search for these areas of agreement with the Soviet Union, but without exaggerated hopes. Without exaggerated expectations.”
Yes, exaggerated expectations. Something we're all a little too familiar with lately.
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( . . You'll Always Get What You Always Got.")
Drawing analogies between Vietnam and our current situation in Afghanistan has been difficult - they are two different wars under two different circumstances. The similarities go as far as our insistence on winning a war that we have no logical basis for being in are the same. The similarities are a Foreign Policy that has been a dismal failure since after World War One. Yet, as the definition of insanity goes - we continue to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. In Afghanistan, as with Vietnam we are stuck in a damnable situation where we are in fact, damned if we do and damned if we don't. It's what happens when you pay the price for arrogance and deceit.
In 1972, with all other seeming avenues failed, the Nixon administration resorted to mining Haiphong Harbor in an attempt to cut off supply lines to the North Vietnamese. Vietnamization was deemed a dismal failure.
Pres. Nixon: “All entrances to North Vietnamese ports will be mined to prevent access to these ports, and North Vietnamese navel operations from these ports. United States forces have been directed to take appropriate measures within the internal and claimed territorial waters of North Vietnam to interdict the delivery of any supplies. Rail, and all other communications will b cut off to the maximum extent possible. Air and navel strikes against military targets in North Vietnam will continue.”
Shortly after this announcement, NBC Radio ran a Special Report entitled "Vietnam: The War That Will Not End".
It echoed a sentiment that a weary nation was feeling. That war, like this one seems destined to have no happy ending.
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Gotta' love that GOP/Fox News echo chamber with this latest talking point. Lamar Alexander repeats his 'enemies list' accusation made earlier in the day on the Senate floor.
For the past couple of weeks, Fox News’ Sean Hannity has been aggressively pushing the talking point that the Obama White House is compiling an “enemies list.” That wild accusation came in response to Obama communications director Anita Dunn’s suggestion that Fox News operates as a “communications arm” of the GOP.
“I mean, is this an enemies list? Seems like it to me,” Hannity said on his program last Wednesday. “They want to come after the Fox News Channel,” the right-wing pundit complained. Almost every night in recent weeks, Hannity has badgered his guests, demanding that they take up his talking point. Last night, Liz Cheney took the bait:
HANNITY: It seems to me, it’s almost like an enemies list. Is that a fair description?
CHENEY: Well, uhh, yeah.
[...]
Yesterday, Hannity won his biggest convert yet. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) took to the Senate floor and read Sean Hannity’s talking points into the congressional record:
ALEXANDER: I want to make what I hope will be a friendly suggestion to President Obama and his White House, and it is this: don’t create an enemies list. […]
So in conclusion Mr. President, here’s my point. These are unusually difficult times with plenty of forces encouraging us to disagree. Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list.
Watch a compilation:
As Think Progress also noted, Karl Rove accused the White House of keeping an enemies list on Fox News Sunday last weekend. And now we have Alexander following suit. For someone complaining that the White House is being unfair in claiming that Fox News is a communications arm of the Republican party, Alexander is certainly doing a good job of proving it as he does it. My only question might be which one is leading and which is following? I would imagine it's Fox following since I'm pretty sure Hannity gets all of his talking points straight from the RNC.
While I don't doubt this will make for weeks of breathless speculation on Fox News, and give a wide variety of pundits endless entertainment, that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
The most obvious problem here is that Republicans are defining Nixonian tactics down. In effect, Alexander argued this morning that the White House's opponents and detractors will go after the president and his team, but if they respond in any way, they're necessarily acting in ways similar to the disgraced 37th president.
Look at Alexander's list. Is the White House pushing back against the Chamber of Commerce's efforts to derail the administration's agenda? Sure, what's wrong with that? Did the White House impose a "gag order" on Humana? Of course not, that's absurd. Is the White House pointing out that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party? Yep, as well it should. Has the president criticized financial institutions that brought the global economy to the brink of a depression? Yes, but I'm not sure what's wrong with that. Has the White House criticized an insurance industry that screwed over its customers and continues to fight against sensible reform efforts? You bet, but again, that's a good thing.
Alexander, Gregg, and assorted political reporters make it seem as if the White House should be a non-partisan, non-political, take-punches-but-don't-respond entity. In other words, Obama and his team are expected to just lose every fight, and take every criticism. To do anything else leads to Nixon comparisons.
It's possible the political world has a very short memory, but it's worth remembering, as Eric Boehlert does, that Nixon's White House "declared war on his enemies (including news outlets), and used the full power of the federal government to exact his bouts of revenge."
When Nixon didn't like a news outlet, he directed federal prosecutors to investigate journalists, including going through their taxes. Nixon assembled actual enemies lists, and used the power of his office to target and try to destroy his adversaries.
That any serious person would compare these tactics to routine political efforts at the White House is insane.
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(VP Spiro Agnew - ran around threatening revoked FCC licenses)
At the height of the war between the White House and the Media, The National Press Club ran a panel discussion featuring Bill Monroe of NBC News, Ben Bagdikian and Fred Friendly of CBS. Members of the White House Communications staff were invited; Herb Klein, Pat Buchanan and Dean Burch, but declined. The subject was The Media and The Administration and a few interesting myths were put to rest.
Ben Bagdikian: “The fact is, that the press of this country is overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. We are in danger of not enough criticism of government, not too much. Most of the new that leaves this town (D.C.) is pretty much what public officials say, with not enough time and energy put into testing the validity of what they say. It’s only human that a public official wants it that way, but it happens to be lousy journalism and bad for democracy. Now Democrats weren’t in love with the press either in their time. And we shouldn’t expect to be loved. We dish it out and we ought to be able to take it when it’s given back to us. But when it comes to the press, I think there’s a difference between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans have had a sympathetic press for so long and in so many places, that they now regard any departure from this as a theft of a natural right. Now it’s not really the Republicans fault either. It’s the fault of the majority of papers in this country who’ve conditioned their local conservative readers to believe that it is the natural born duty of every publication to support Republicans. Let me be specific: a paper’s endorsing a Presidential candidate in 1968, 80% endorsed Nixon, which is about what it’s been with one exception, for Republican candidates in every Presidential race in this generation. And its not just the small town papers. Endorsement by circulation size is about the same percentage. And if we’re talking about a press out of step, how about 80% for Nixon, while the readers vote 43 ½% for Nixon?”
Bagdikian says pretty much what most everyone felt, even as far back as 1972. The idea that mainstream media is a bastion of liberal thought is really a myth cooked up by the GOP. And it's plain to see this myth still holds true today, even more so.
It's interesting to note that the systematic dismantling of network news departments and FCC regulations being abandoned really started with the Nixon administration. It's only been the past 20 odd years we've actually witnessed the long-term effects of those massacres.
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(Need you ask?)
Every so often I will run across some talk show from the past that points out just how naive we all were as a country, many years ago.
On October 5, 1958 the Open Mind program hosted a discussion on the future of television in politics and how advertising could possibly be used to make or break a candidate or issue. Fifty years ago, remember?
Bear in mind, TV wasn't as all-encompassing as it is today. Stations routinely went off the air at midnight. Color was new. Video tape was new. Most homes had TV's that were, at the most 17" and usually encased in a massive console. There were virtually no live on-the-spot reports and there were lots and lots of talking heads.
Lloyd Whiteburke: “There’s no FTC, no Federal Trade Commission in political advertising. If a product is falsely advertised, as you all know, the Federal Trade Commission will seek an injunction against the advertiser and have that advertising changed and penalize the advertiser. The only person penalized for buying a candidate who is not what he represents himself for is the voter. And he’s got four years to wait to throw him out, throw out this candidate. So it imposes a tremendous sense of responsibility on the advertising fraternity to make darn sure that something isn’t done, that isn’t correct for which the FTC does not have call. And that’s why some of the practitioners do, in the course of their work, say things and do things that are perhaps not exactly right. And we have to watch that and we have to police our own . . . “
Television was still in its infancy. The 1952 Presidential campaign, being the first to utilize Television in a prominent way, was recent history. The Kennedy-Nixon debates were still two years off and cable was only an idea.
I don't think anyone could have imagined what it would all become.
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From The Ed Schultz Show, Jerrold Nadler says the appointment of a Special Prosecutor doesn't go far enough and that the law is that when torture occurs under American jurisdiction there must be an investigation of everyone who may have been involved and if warranted prosecutions. Nadler expressed concern that we aren't being aggressive enough and limiting the investigations too much. He also adds this:
Nadler: We are well into territory already, where because of the pardon of Nixon after Watergate and the people around him, because of in the Iran Contra, we're getting into territory where it becomes taken for granted that high officials can violate the law and get away with it.
Schultz: Yep.
Nadler: If high officials violated the law here, if Cheney did, if Rice did, etc., they've got to be prosecuted to show that no one is above the law.
I agree with his point that no one is above the law. I disagree that we're "getting into territory" where high officials take it for granted that they will never be held accountable for their law breaking. We're well past that point now.
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(Casper Weinberger - Long before Iran-Contra, but the spots are the same)
I almost forgot Casper Weinberger was a holdover from the Nixon administration. During the Ford period he was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, responsible for slashing budgets long before Reagan made him Secretary of Defense.
So, with the current state of Health Care reform going in full siege mode, I thought I would dig out an Issues And Answers episode from October 10, 1974 where Weinberger gives his two cents regarding a National Health Care package:
Edward P. Morgan (ABC News): “Let me quote to you from a speech you made a month ago when you said ‘since price controls were lifted, the cost of medical care has increased fifty percent faster than the economy as a whole. And this we must and will moderate.’ Are you talking about some kind of controls over medical costs?
Sec. Casper Weinberger: “Well I have said with considerable roughness, because I’m a free market man, I don’t like controls. But I do think there is not a free market in Health Care and I do think the increases have outstripped the cost of living , and the cost of living is obviously racing away at totally unacceptable levels now. And so I personally have felt for some time that cost controls are necessary in the health field. And as a matter of fact they’re contained in our bill of National Health Insurance. But meanwhile, before that bill was enacted there have been very high rises in healthcare costs, particularly in hospital rooms. Some of these can be justified as passing on additional costs that hospitals are incurring. But the fact that they are going faster than the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, is a matter of very grave worry to us because it erodes the ability of anybody to receive health care, and for another thing it’s costing the Government a billion dollars extra in our own health programs . . . .
Morgan: “ Mister Secretary, our time is running out . . . . .
Stop me if you've heard this, but I don't recall any Healthcare Bill that was enacted to bring down the cost of Healthcare - do you?
Oddly, Edward P. Morgan stops and shifts the conversation rather quickly over to Betty Ford's recent Cancer surgery and the subject of National Health Insurance is never brought up again.
Maybe it was the timeclock, but cynicism makes me wonder otherwise.
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(You have to ask?)
Yes, in 1974 there were grave doubts as to where we were heading as a cultural society. Although in comparison, 1974 may seem like a banner year for the arts, compared to where we are today.
But the writing was on the wall, even in 1974. If it wasn't just a case of funding, the world was changing in ways we couldn't predict, and art for its own sake was fading into the void.
This broadcast, part of NPR's National Town Meeting from August 21, 1974 features an interesting panel, consisting of Nancy Hanks (NEA)Daniel Boorstin (Library of Congress, though not as of this broadcast), Nora Ephron and Michael Sobran Jr.(I'm not sure if this is the same Michael Sobran who is also MJ Sobran from The National Review or not) - as well as questions from the audience and a nice outburst midway through.
Clearly, Hanks is something of an apparatchik. Chosen by Nixon and going back to the Eisenhower Administration as far as Arts programs were concerned. Boorstin has her back and even goes as far as chiming "what she meant to say was . . .". So when Ephron asks a few pointed questions, Hanks softballs and pretends they weren't there. One imagines, out of respect to her boss. Although the condescending tone leaves nothing to the imagination on either Hanks or Boorstin's parts.
Nora Ephron: “I wonder how you managed to raise 75 million dollars with a President whose views on culture came out a couple of weeks ago in the transcript of that tape as ‘a place for Jews and left-wingers’?”
Nancy Hanks: “President Nixon’s . . . actions, not only personally but professionally in his connection with the arts, his enjoyment of them personally, his actions in supporting this very small Federal agency which is totally opposed to a statement which appeared on the tape. I mean, here is a man who, one of his daughters is very much involved with the arts, the other one likes them very much. He enjoys music too. He’s very proud of his piano playing ability. He took an agency that say, if you want to talk in money terms, was 8 million dollars, and through his strong backing, we were able to increase it last year to some 60 plus and to 75 million this year.”
Ephron: “I’m not a historian, but it does seem to me there are a couple of trends that we might want to talk about. . . when you talk about the high cost of tickets you are also talking about the high cost of producing culture. And one of the effects of this, which has become much worse in recent years is that, what is produced has to be commercial to justify the huge amount of money that’s put into it. And this is affecting all fields, not just film where it’s at it’s most obvious at the moment. The book business is going through a very interesting phase where it’s really shifting from hard cover to mass market publication. And there are only, I think five distributors who handle mass market books. This is going to be a very difficult time for someone to . . it will be increasingly difficult for someone to write an un-commercial book and make a living as an artist. The magazine business, which I’m in is now going through a terrible problem, both with the cost of paper and with postal rates. And one of the results of that is you have some first rate magazines dying that were subscription magazines, and you see flourishing this bottomless pit of men’s magazines which seem to sell for a dollar and a dollar fifty a month, regularly five and six million copies. And these are very serious problems I think the government could be playing some role in.”
But clearly, Ephron points out some issues that would only grow in the years ahead, particularly with writing. The bottom line is, the publishing industry and magazines in particular have been given over almost exclusively to pandering in recent years. They bear virtually no resemblance to publishing in 1974.
I don't think even Nora Ephron could have anticipated how the arts would be viewed 35 years later.
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(Khruschev and Nixon in Moscow - the Revere Ware took backseat)
It was this day, fifty years ago that the Cold War became something of a pissing contest between Vice-President Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev.
It all started at the Moscow Fair on July 24, 1959 during a tour of a model kitchen, put together as an example of the typical American home by The State Department.
It quickly dissolved into a shouting match over who had the better advances in technology, even down to kitchen appliances.
It all pointed out how volatile our relationship was with the Soviet Union - how we could agree on literally nothing, and how adamant each side was portraying each other as backward and neanderthal.
Still, it made for good copy and every newspaper and magazine in the world had pictures of Nixon and Khruschev flailing arms around - all for the sake of a washer/dryer combination.
Typical of their exchange:
Nixon: "You won't conceded anything, will you?"
Kruschev: "We too, as you know, don't kill flies with our nostrils!"
Back when the Cold War became just a little bit funny.
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(Somewhere between delusional whack-Job and Cassandra stood Martha)
Martha Mitchell has faded into history's woodwork. Famous for her paranoid rants and haywire midnight phone calls, she had the dubious distinction of being associated (in a rather "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers" sort of way) with Watergate via her husband, then-Attorney General John Mitchell.
Largely dismissed at the time as a bonafide whack-job, Mitchell did gain some vindication when the scandal of Watergate broke and all fingers pointed to the White House. But it didn't dismiss the fact that she was delusional, ego-centric and had a little bit of a substance abuse problem.
In this hour long interview, part of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, Snyder asks her point blank if she thought she was an alcoholic. Mitchell blurts out "no" (of course - wouldn't you?), even though the answers borders on the slurred. What Snyder failed to ask was if she had a drug problem. I believe the answer would have been a resounding yes - even if she had flatly denied it. All you have to do is listen to her.
So it was the curious mixture of the insane person being privy to shocking actual events, who took the elements of truth and turned them into a persecution extravaganza with all consequences directed straight at her that probably made her seem like she was imagining it.
The more she ranted, the more people thought she lost it. Of course, the Nixon White House did little to dispel that portrait - it did take the heat off for a while.
The bottom line was, she was probably right - but since she insisted it was all about her, the credibility drew more than raised eyebrows.
Of course nowadays, drugged out paranoid egocentrics get their own TV shows and loyal followings. Something that wasn't in the cards in 1974.
