tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post226707402908299732..comments2024-02-29T02:10:56.878-08:00Comments on J O S H U A P U N D I T: Forum - Do You Consider America's Political Climate Dysfunctional? What Changes Would You Make?Freedom Fighterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13649470110087808596noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-20114700246212652262013-12-29T04:34:43.534-08:002013-12-29T04:34:43.534-08:00Dec 2013 up-date : meant to include Sir Mick Jagg...Dec 2013 up-date : meant to include Sir Mick Jagger amongst the idols of the Baby Boomers, of course ! ( he was a business student at the London School Of Economics before going professional ! He probably realised that he wasn't going to pick up a lot of girls there. Wasn't Rod Stewart a grave-digger before turning pro ? He probably realised that he wasn't going to pick up ANY girls in that profession ... well, not live ones, anyway ! )<br /><br />I stand by my other comments, as well. Kerry, it should be noted, several months after our original exchange here, would later be promoted to Sec Of State & would be a terrible one, though that is the fault of a truly terrible, dreadful President, of whom he can only act as a reflexion. ( I voted for the Libertarian candidate in 2004, as noted, supra. )<br /><br />--dragon/dinosaur Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-55865634784456969122012-08-28T00:46:37.915-07:002012-08-28T00:46:37.915-07:00Ah, so you were a tres chic Johnny Halliday type! ...Ah, so you were a tres chic Johnny Halliday type! ; ) allors! Quelle Zazou!I can just picture it...<br /><br />I don't want to be argumentative with such a nice fella, but you're mistaken in a couple of places IMO.<br /><br />First, it wasn't the 'American people' who ended the Vietnam war. <br /><br />I forget unfortunately whom it was (Virgil? Pliny? Thucydides?) who said that wars start when you wish but do not end when you will. That was the situation we were in when Nixon took over in 1969.<br /><br />LBJ had totally mismanaged the war and missed a golden opportunity to end it after the Tet Offensive, which brought NVA and VC forces up against American firepower for the first time and devastated their forces. General Giap,the NVA commander has said publicly a number of times that their losses in men and material were so great that had th4e American forces pressed the issue after Tet they would have had nothing to stop them with and the war would have been over. <br /><br />When Nixon took over, he had two major problems to deal with vis a vis Vietnam - Russia, whose client state North Vietnam was and China, who have a history of going to war whenever there's military action on their borders, as they did in Korea.<br /><br />While pursuing the diplomatic track (which went nowhere) Nixon and Kissinger laid the grounds for detente with the Soviets and for opening up relations with China. As this came to fruition, they thus split the communist powers apart and neutralized North Vietnam's sponsors.It was brilliant.<br /><br />They were then free to fight the war the way it should have been fought from Day One - mining the harbors, bombing NV's infrastructure, and interdicting the NVA's and the Viet Cong's supply routes in Laos and Cambodia ( look at a map sometime to see how important this was). That's when they sued for peace. <br /><br /><b>I might also add that the vaunted 'anti-war' movement you give such high marks to essentially ended in 1972.All it took was Nixon ending the draft and these supposedly high minded, principled people melted away. </b><br /><br />The settlement Nixon and Kissinger worked out provided a peace with honor, and Lon Nol and Thieu signed off on it because they were promised U.S. military aid if the commies attacked them again.<br /><br />The commies did attack, and the post-Watergate Democrats who came in with the 1974 midterms refused to fund any military aid, repudiated our pledged word and left the people of Vietnam to the mercies of the NVA, Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge.<br /><br />I would dispute that the Khmer Rouge were 'Chinese stooges' although they received some arms from them.They were an indigenous commie movement the Chinese merely gave some encouragement to as part of worldwide 'revolution' and as part of control on their borders. They actually got far more aid from the Soviets.<br /><br />Best Regards as Always,<br />Rob<br /><br />Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13332213651195340500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-61342803080525641492012-08-27T16:10:03.710-07:002012-08-27T16:10:03.710-07:00[Before I forget : your Monday, December 14, 2009...[Before I forget : your Monday, December 14, 2009 column ' How Nixon Saved Israel ', qv, has in its comments section an argument betwixt us re this ! ] Obviously, though amicably, we shall never agree about some historical matters. Just 1 or 2 points :<br /><br /> 1) It was in the partisan 1972 Spring Primaries' sifting process, PRE-Watergate, that the American people finally winnowed out the hawks from the true doves in the congressional primaries in BOTH parties, thereby bringing the war to a guaranteed end by Jan 1973. ( The perfectly idiotic McGovern campaigned almost purely on domestic issues, eg, calls for additional domestic spending & thereby permitted Nixon to highlight that issue : there was a Nixon commercial of a construction worker sitting on a girder reflecting on the sums of additional moneys McGovern wished to spend. The Congressional voting record books -- do they still print them in book form ? -- were a great way to meet members of the opposite sex in that era & undertake useful research simultaneously : you could separate the true doves from those fakes which would notify the party whips that they would vote to release a bill from committee, but then they would vote against it on the floor in order to create the false impression for voters that they were against the war. ) Once the new members were seated, there were only the ? Satanic Six ? or ? Satanic Seven ? in the Senate which would obey Nixon's orders : it was over for the hawks. I credit the American people, not Nixon, for the war's end. <br /><br />2) It was Red China's stooges, the Khmer Rouge, which murdered 2 million people. Vietnam had just lost 2 million people in her war for independence & could not intervene till late 1978 & early 1979. Red China / Mainland China / Peking subsequently invaded Vietnam in early 1979. I was pro Lon Nol.<br /><br />[ Before it slips my mind, I have just uncovered an exchange between us re these matters, viz, ' How Nixon Saved Israel ' : Monday, December 14, 2009 : Comments Section, qv. Lon Nal & Joan Baez are discussed by me there. Additionally, I have uncovered some fascinating exchanges betwixt you & someone named ' nazar ', from circa 2006 & 2007 discussing these matters ; you might say that I'm much closer to nazar's positions on these issues. ] <br /><br />Paenultimately, of all the figures cited in the 1st list, supra, Nixon & Kissinger are the 2 which I ( & probably most Americans ) hate the least, which is admittedly a left-handed compliment, but it also demonstrates the startling gap which existed between the vast majority of the America public & the political class of that era.<br /><br />Finally, my original point was that you were creating the eerie impression that you are heading off into some sort of, & kind of, ( correct English ? ) Patrick Buchanan style culture war gambit. You need to gather as many disparate groups together into an anti-Owebwma coalition. A successful bloc or alliance for November will necessarily embrace & encompass a marriage of convenience amongst strange bed-fellows. Fortunately, what might be termed the so-called hippies ( naturally independent or libertarian or apolitical ) greatly out-number the truly socialistic student activist types of the 1960s & 1970s. There is a lot of potential there. ( I can't pretend to represent the hippies, not having been one myself ; just was not the tie-dye type nor drugs type myself, ( some old people then did call me one occasionally, & not necessarily as a compliment ! -- purely mod & rocker, Les Parisiennes here, ) but they are convertible to libertarian-style GOP candidates. Wasn't Dr Timothy Leary an upper-case L Libertarian ? Wasn't Jimi Hendrix publicly very anti-Communist ? Well, there you are, Republicans, some rich mining veins for you to explore & exploit. )Thank you.<br /> <br />Ciao ! -dragon/dinosaurAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-37569444937838682192012-08-27T10:21:01.091-07:002012-08-27T10:21:01.091-07:00Hello DD,
Always a pleasure to have you on board.
...Hello DD,<br />Always a pleasure to have you on board.<br /><br />I disagree, of course, with your comments on Nixon and Kissinger but I see little point in going over the matter with you. Suffice it to say that to my way of thinking, Nixon was an accomplished president who was victimized by what was then a monolithic media, and he and Henry Kissinger were the possibly the most effective foreign policy team we ever had in the White House.<br /><br />We possibly have some disagreements on Vietnam as well, but we might agree on the inadvisability of undeclared wars and the slipshod way in which that particular undeclared war was fought. I am one person who thinks, however, that Nixon and Kissinger got us out of that morass with an effective and honorable settlement, something that was thought to be impossible at the time.<br /><br />It ended up as it did because a radical post-Watergate congress made up of Democrats repudiated our pledged word to Theiu and Cambodia's Lon Nol as part of the final settlement with the communists and refused to allow President Ford to send them military aid when they were attacked by North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge.<br /><br />The results were the hideous death of over a million Asians, boatloads of desperate refugees and the condemnation of millions of others to communist slavery and the gulag. It was a shameful episode in U.S. history.<br /><br />I also disagree with your assessment of Senator Kerry. Aside from lying to Congress during the Winter Soldiers testimony, he also arguably committed treason in spirit if not according to the letter of the law ( that pesky undeclared war thing again) by meeting with North Vietnamese diplomats and cadres in Paris in order to plot 'political strategy' to undermine America's war effort.<br /><br />It is emblematic of the items I mentioned and the effect they've had on our politics that such a man would be a sitting U.S. Senator.<br /><br />Regards,<br />Rob<br /><br />Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13332213651195340500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-80328725802076093132012-08-27T08:55:06.755-07:002012-08-27T08:55:06.755-07:00In re-reading your commentary, Mr Pundit, I was s...In re-reading your commentary, Mr Pundit, I was struck & saddened ( but, alas, not startled ) by the appearance of another of your frankly condescending attacks on the Baby Boomers. You have no chance whatsoever of wooing any voters to the GOP if you should persist in tacking to that course for your Autumn / Fall rhetoric, a la 1992.<br /><br />At New Year's Day, 2006, I wondered aloud if the appearance of the 1st sexagenarian ( ie, age 60 + ) Baby Boomer person would result in a swift shift to the Left & the Dems. For most people born after not just 1945, but even 1932, the name Republican evokes the memory of a generation of evil people, eg, the war criminal Lyndon Johnson, the war criminal MacNamara, the war criminal Nixon, the war criminal Kissinger, George Wallace, the repugnant J Edgar Hoover & whatever his ' buddy ' was named, & al. There is no point complaining that the war criminal Johnson was at the time a ' Democrat ' , for the big-government Southern Democrats subsequently simply jumped to the Republican ship & hijacked her. ( I recall that you despise the politically incorrect term Dixiecrat, but some of them were still employing the term SELF-referentially as late as the 1970s. ) I'm sorry to disillusion you, but all of these people were from a different generation to the modern old people.<br /><br />In 2006, both houses were controlled by the GOP & both passed immigration bills ; however, the foolish GOP House leadership decided that they were not content to merely have a vote on the Senate bill. No, they created an on-the-road, public spectacle of themselves for months with orchestrated symposia with inflammatory rhetoric about the dangers inherent in the Senate REPUBLICAN bill. They were practically begging the Spanish to vote against them ! & they were attacking their own party members & throwing away the 2006 mid-terms. Since the House were opposed to the Senate bill, they always had the option of a quick, swift debate & vote for rejection : a week's work !<br /><br />In 2010, many of us exhausted ourselves getting good, independent, up-start, Tea-Drinking Republicans elected to the House ( the margin was only 200 to 300 in my riding ) . The new GOP House leadership subsequently agreed a WEEK's worth of cuts to the fed budget : even Charles Krauthammer, normally sensible, applauded this !? <br /> <br />The current generation of independent Baby Boomers & slightly older people idolise great people such as, eg, Jack Kennedy, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin ( a lot of Js ) , Bob Dylan, Donovan ( a lot of Ds ), John Kerry, ( he still bears shrapnel in his body ; don't get me wrong : I voted for the Libertarian candidates in 2004, but I admire his courage & his willingness to side with the American people upon his return to the US, ) Sylvie Vartan, Rev Martin Luther King, Jr, Neil Armstrong, Mohammed Ali, Joan Baez, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Petula Clark, Francoise Hardy, Edie Sedgwick, Sheila, Cathy McGowan, Lou Reed, Buzz Aldrin, & al.<br /><br />Compare & contrast those 2 lists : do you see the problem ? You have to start luring people away from non-voting & independent & Dem positions. But you keep insulting people & their beliefs with some of your comments & attempts at historical revisionism. I love the American people, & I stand at their side. <br /> <br />The questions are simple : do you want Nixon re-elected ? do you wish to reverse the current etatisme ? Yes ? Then you have to change tack, for this is 2012 - not 1982 ...<br /><br />Apologies, quite sincerely, if I have been rough with you, but too much is at stake. Thank you.<br /><br />--dragon/dinosaur <br /> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-69492136834378069382012-08-27T07:48:45.290-07:002012-08-27T07:48:45.290-07:00I do disagree about the money in politics. The mo...I do disagree about the money in politics. The money that people give to a politician is their constitutionally protected political right. A better solution is to allow anyone (any person) to give as much as they want without limit. But it must be after tax money and not bundled, i.e. given by the individual directly to the politician they support. And all donations must be made fully public within 24 hours. That would shine the light on the money in politics and eliminate the unions and illegal donations. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16816866.post-38044822781455482872012-08-27T07:10:10.399-07:002012-08-27T07:10:10.399-07:00The proliferation of special-interest PAC committe...The proliferation of special-interest PAC committees since the 1970s has been particularly & especially baneful & woeful in its effects. Once, when I was working in Europe as a VERY young newspaper-intern for school credit, I acted as their unofficial American expert, explaining to them, eg, the intricacies of the Electoral College, the American-Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island during the Nixon years, & c. I had noted the American media's obsession, circa 1968, with a colourful character named Bebe Rebozo, a Presbyterian Cuban friend of, & contributor to, Richard Nixon. The media were willing to expend bizarre amounts of their resources to investigating him. What did he want ?, they asked. Why was he contributing so much money to Nixon ?, they asked. What was he to receive as the quid pro quo ? & why was he Presbyterian ? ( The press thought all Cubans were 1 of 2 RCs, viz, Roman Catholic or pro-Russian Communist : the notion of a Protestant Cuban flabbergasted them ! ) & what sort of mother would name her kid ' Rebozo ' ?<br /><br />To cut a long story short ( too late ), they found nothing illegal : Rebozo simply agreed with Nixon's policies. But the fascination with this character had crossed the Pond & ' little ' Michelle ( not to be confused with the tall 1 ) interrupted my quick sandwich lunch to ask several questions about the US & her politics, including ' Who is this Rebozo the American newspapers refer to ? ' I laughed so hard that I nearly choked on my sandwich, but I then responded with the info which I have already detailed, supra. <br />There were serious consequences to this obsession : the 1974 electoral so-called ' reforms ' , which limited individual contributions to fed campaigns, lest some contributor be a Svengali, or eminence grise, operating the levers of government in the background. This paved the way for the explosion of the tainted, base PACs to whom the candidates were forced to turn for the extravagant telly-era funds required.<br />As mentioned, Rebozo had been no Svengali, &, truth to tell, he had been a Fidus Achates, a good adviser & friend. ( Apparently, Nixon had been swimming in Rebozo's swimming pool when 1st informed of the Watergate break-in & grumbled, ' What the h--- were they doing in there ? ) The media maelstrom, though, had created the Frankenstein monster of the PAC culture ; the Congress had effected the creation of the precisely the reverse of what they should have effected. In lieu of limiting individual contributions, they should have banned all non-individual contributions & insisted that all contributions & contributors be named. If they wished the ultimate transparency, they could have limited the number of contributors, eg, 25 contributors for a presidential race ; 25 contributors for each House riding race ; 25 contributors to each Senate race ; &c. Each contributor would be limited to contributing to 1 Prez race candidate, only ; 1 Senate race candidate, only ; & 1 House riding race, only. This would allow the press to investigate, vet, &, yes, criticise each of the candidates & their contributors thoroughly, for, you see, the press were right to ask questions a propos of, & re Rebozo.<br />Apologies for the length of this letter. ( Had I the time, I should abridge it. ) <br /><br />--dragon/dinosaur Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com