Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

January 25, 2013 · 5:05 AM

MSNBC: Senator Kerry’s most important Senate appearance was in 1971

MSNBC – The Last Word

The next chapter in Sen. John Kerry’s story began Thursday during his confirmation hearings for his nomination to be Secretary of State. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell took a look back at John Kerry’s place in history when he testified on Capitol Hill before a panel nearly 40 years ago as a Vietnam War veteran and protester.

In his opening statement on Thursday, Kerry reminded himself of his own journey that began in 1971 when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971 and spoke about his  experience in war and as the leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

“Nearly 42 years ago, Chairman Fulbright first gave me the opportunity to testify before this committee during a difficult and divided time for our country,” Kerry said. “Today I can’t help but recognize that the world itself then was in many ways simpler, divided as it was along bi-polar, Cold War antagonism. Today’s world is more complicated than anything we have experienced.”

Speaking to the complex challenges the country is now facing, Kerry remained humble about the first time he set foot on Capitol Hill. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Chairman, when I first came to Washington to testify it was as a member of group who came to have their voices heard. That is what this place is all about.” Kerry was a former navy lieutenant in Vietnam, was wounded three times and awarded the silver star for heroism.

His well-received testimony received a standing ovation from peace demonstrators in the gallery; his speech also resonated with President Richard Nixon who ended the draft a year later.

O’Donnell praised Kerry as the ultimate war hero, saving countless of lives with his powerful testimony against the war.

“More than 2,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam after John Kerry’s testimony. That number was going to be higher, much higher. 5,000? 10,000? We’ll never know, but it was going to be higher if John Kerry hadn’t become the most “extremely effective” war protester in American history. The only war protester who the war President, Richard Nixon, thought was, in his words, ‘extremely effective.’”

O’Donnell thanked Kerry for his most valuable contribution to the country and the world.

“There are men who are alive today in this country thanks to John Kerry. I have brothers who I believe are alive today, thanks to John Kerry. Some of you have brothers, fathers, uncles, who are alive today because of John Kerry. John Kerry didn’t play it safe when he testified against the war. He personally attacked by name President Johnson’s Defense Secretary–along with the other Democrats in the Johnson Administration who were the architects of that war… the so-called best and the brightest who failed the country and the world so miserably. On April 22, 1971, at the age of 27, John Kerry assured his position in American history, and that position is war hero…the most valuable kind of war hero, the hero who helps end the war.”

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November 26, 2012 · 5:56 PM

Obama’s Margin of Victory is Now Bigger than Both of George W. Bush’s Wins

Good news for the POTUS historically and contextually…

PoliticusUSA

As of now, President Obama’s popular margin of victory is bigger than both of George W. Bush’s election wins in 2000 and 2004.

According to the numbers compiled by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report,President Obama now leads Mitt Romney 50.81%-47.48% in the popular vote. President Obama’s popular vote margin is now bigger than both of the last two successful Republican presidential elections. In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, 48.38%-47.87%. In 2004, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in the popular vote, 50.73%-48.27%. Obama is currently posting the biggest margin of victory since Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole, 49.24%-40.71% in 1996.

What was supposed to be a nail biter of an election turned out to be only the 13th closest election in US history. Obama’s margin of victory was bigger than four other modern era (since 1952) winning candidates. George W. Bush (2000 & 2004), Jimmy Carter (1976), and Richard Nixon (1968) all had smaller margins of victory than Obama did.

This means that the bluster coming from the right about President Obama not having a mandate is nothing more than political hot air. Due to the fact that many of the yet to be counted ballots are in New York and California, President Obama’s margin of victory is expected to grow.

While Mitt Romney’s 47% popular vote percentage is a juicy bit of political karma, the real story here is the political staying power and popularity of Barack Obama.

This president won reelection by a sizable margin despite a still recovering economy and an opposition party that was determined to obstruct his agenda. One can only imagine the size and scope of Obama’s reelection victory if the economy had been a bit better, or Republicans had put “country first.”

If you really want an answer to the question of President Obama’s potential mandate, pay attention to the deeds — not the words — of his political opponents. Judging from their post-election behavior, Congressional Republicans have been knocked back on their heels by Obama’s victory. They now find themselves trapped between two very different and opposing strategies. Republicans are trying to sound a moderate tone by backing away from the Norquist tax pledge, while at the same time opposing raising any new taxes.

As the nation draws closer to the fiscal cliff, this will be an impossible position to maintain. Republicans are posturing on no new tax hikes because they have to, or their base will go into full rebellion. The reality is that taxes will go up whether Republicans agree to it or not. Either they will send a deal to the president that includes a tax hike on the wealthy, or taxes will go up when the nation tumbles off the fiscal cliff.

Obama not only achieved a larger political victory than expected, but he is parlaying that momentum into a potential series of victories that could define the course of the country and his presidential legacy.

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August 30, 2012 · 12:55 AM

Mitt Romney tells 533 lies in 30 weeks, Steve Benen documents them

It’s so much easier to be truthful…One would think that an allegedly devout Christian, regardless of denomination, would never prefer power above truth.

H/t: Don Babets

Patheos - Fred Clark

I’ve written about or linked to a great deal here “chronicling Mitt’s mendacity” — to borrow Steven Benen’s phrase.

Mitt Romney says many, many things that are not true. He says this despite being in possession of the correct facts of the matter.

Which is to say that Mitt Romney lies. A lot. He lies more than any other national candidate for office in my lifetime. And I was born before the Nixon administration.

This is documented. Proven. Validated, verified, demonstrated, catalogued and quantified. Mitt Romney lies.

Here are 30 — 30! — of Benen’s weekly “chronicling” posts. These are all backed up and sourced. These are not assertions, interpretations or allegations. These are facts, actual instances.

Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI,VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII,XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Click those links. Read the lists. List after list of lie after lie. Hundreds of them — 533, to be exact, although Benen does not make any claim to providing a comprehensive chronicle.

This is unprecedented. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, said.

This has produced what James Fallows calls the “post-truth” age — a relentlessly dishonest onslaught of brazen falsehoods with which the media and the political system are struggling to cope. What do you do when every article, every “fact-check,” every arbiter denounces a lie and corrects it, but then a politician just keeps repeating it?

It’s remarkable to behold.

One of the weirder aspects of this for me is watching this unfold in the politically conservative culture of my evangelical world. The most partisan evangelical conservatives are also those most likely to rant against “relativism” and to trumpet their status as defenders of “absolute truth.” Those same folks will dismiss this post — and all 30 of Benen’s posts above — as mere partisan attacks without ever bothering to examine the 533 factual instances of Mitt’s mendacity, chronicled.

That’s the only cognitive defense they have, I guess. Jam fingers in ears and shout la-la-la-you’re-being-partisan!

Because, you see, the fact that Mitt Romney said something he knew to be false is apartisan fact. And the fact that he has done this at least 533 times in the past 30 weeks is also partisan.

I suppose the other approach for Romney defenders who cannot bear to face the fact of those 533 facts will be to angrily pore over all of Benen’s lists, reading each one with a lawyerly eye.

Have at it. Please. Cherry-pick. Spin. Split hairs. Hand-wave away whichever lies you wish as mere misdemeanors and not full-fledged felonies against honesty.

But how many of those charges do you think you can get dismissed? 10 percent? 20 percent? Maybe, if you’re that sort of person and you work really hard at it — if you’re willing to get even more pedantic and semantic and technical than even you are usually comfortable with — maybe you could half convince yourself that 50 percent of those lies somehow shouldn’t really count against Romney.

That still leaves more than 260 lies. That still leaves Mitt Romney as a convicted liar, 260 times over. And at that point you’ll have to join your friends with their fingers in their ears.

But you’ll still know.

Because everyone knows. Mitt Romney lies. A lot. That is what he does. That is who he is.

And friend or foe, he does not care if you know it.

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February 9, 2012 · 8:53 AM

Why Won’t The GOP Honor An American Victory?

E.J. Dionne, Jr. – Washington Post

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...

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Clint, Rick and the limits of pessimism

What do Rick Santorum and Clint Eastwood have in common?

Sorry, Rick, you haven’t made it yet as an Eastwood-style make-my-day cultural icon. But in different ways, Santorum and Eastwood have demonstrated the limits of both an entirely negative slant on politics and a pessimistic take on America’s future.

Santorum’s Tuesday sweep of Republican presidential contests in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado was a sharp rebuke to Mitt Romney, the on-again, off-again “inevitable” GOP nominee, who has built his campaign almost entirely on attacks. His primary target has been President Obama, but Romney has also been relentless in his assaults on former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who admittedly gives him a lot of material to work with.

What Romney has failed to do is give voters strong reasons to be for him. He’s missing what Richard Nixon (yes, that Nixon) called “the lift of a driving dream.” Signs of economic improvement are making Romney’s critiques of the Obama economy more problematic by the week. In the meantime, Santorum keeps getting more appealing simply by staying out of the Romney-Gingrich slugfest.

English: Clint Eastwood at the 2008 Cannes Fil...

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As for Eastwood, his Super Bowl ad for Chrysler led many conservatives to reveal themselves as whiny complainers incapable of celebrating the achievements of American enterprise and public policy. To paraphrase the lateJeane Kirkpatrick’s effective 1984 jab at Democrats, Republicans always blame American government first. If government (and, God forbid, Obama) had anything to do with the revival of the U.S. auto industry, let’s not dare be happy about its comeback.

Never mind that Eastwood was right to offer his lovely tribute to American resilience. “It seems that we’ve lost our heart at times,” Eastwood said. “The fog of division, discord and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead. But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.”

Continue reading…

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December 14, 2011 · 12:10 AM

Timeline: The Best Government Money Can Buy

Mother Jones

By Aaron Ross | January/February 2012 Issue

A short, shady history of how American elections are bought and paid for.

1758 George Washington’s successful campaign for the Virginia House of Burgesses spends £39 on booze to “treat” voters on Election Day ($8,130 in 2011 dollars).
1800 Thomas Jefferson hires a writer to smear President John Adams as “mentally deranged” and a “hideous hermaphroditical character.” Propagandist is imprisoned under the Sedition Act; Jefferson wins the election.
1829 President Andrew Jackson advocates rewarding loyalists with political office. Sen. William Marcy later notes approvingly, “To the victor belong the the spoils of the enemy.”

Thomas Nast/Harpers Weekly/Wikimedia
1867 In America’s first federal campaign finance reform law, Congress makes it illegal to pressure workers at naval yards for political contributions.
1872 Railroad financier Jay Cooke gives $50,000 to the Republican Party—25 percent of its budget. A historian writes of President Ulysses S. Grant, “Never before was a candidate placed under such great obligation to men of wealth.”
1875 Mark Twain: “I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.”
1883 Congress prohibits soliciting civil servants for political contributions.
1896 President William McKinley’s campaign manager hits up corporations for donations sized “according to [their] stake in the general prosperity of the country.”
1906 Accused of fundraising improprieties, President Theodore Roosevelt calls for a ban on all corporate contributions “for any political purpose,” leading to passage of the Tillman Act (named after white supremacist Sen. “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman).
1911 Congress introduces individual spending limits for federal campaigns.
1943 After Congress bans political giving by unions, the Congress of Industrial Organizations forms the first PAC, skirting the restrictions by collecting campaign money outside of regular dues.
1952 VP candidate Richard Nixon delivers his “Checkers” speech, defending more than $18,000 in secret donations: “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers.”

billypalooza/Flickrbillypalooza/Flickr
1971 President Nixon tells his chief of staff to tell donors, “Anybody who wants to be an ambassador must at least give $250,000.” Dwayne Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, later delivers $100,000 to Nixon’s secretary and helps fund the Watergate break-in.
1974 Congress imposes stricter limits on individual contributions and outside expenditures and sets up the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
1976 Buckley v. Valeo strikes down some of the new restrictions, finding that election spending is constitutionally protected speech.
1979 Newfound loopholes permit corporations and unions to give unlimited “soft money” to the Republican and Democratic national committees for “party-building activities.”
1991 Five senators, including Sen. John McCain, are found to have advocated on behalf of Charles Keating’s failing S&L after receiving a combined $1.3 million in campaign money.
1996 A California Buddhist temple illegally gives at least $65,000 to the Democratic National Committee on behalf of wealthy donors. The scandal prompts the DNC to return $3 million in donations.
1997 The Clinton administration releases a list of 938 overnight guests at the White House, many of whom slumbered in the Lincoln Bedroom. Others received coffee, golf outings, or morning jogs with the president. All told, these donors gave some $10 million to Democrats in the 1996 election.
2002 The McCain-Feingold Act bans soft money in federal elections and bans the use of corporate or union funds to make ads about candidates in the weeks before an election.

Aaron Webb/FlickrAaron Webb/Flickr
2005 GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay is indicted for funneling corporate money through the RNC to Texas Republicans. More than five years later, he isconvicted of money laundering and sentenced to three years in prison. He’s out on bail while appealing.
2006 Lobbyist Jack Abramoff admits trading golf junkets, meals at his DC restaurant, and campaign contributions for political favors. President George W. Bush and GOP leaders rush to dump donations linked to him.
2007 The Supreme Court sides with lawyer James Bopp (who will later bring theCitizens United case) and eases limits on corporate and union-backed ads close to an election, so long as they’re not for or against candidates (wink, wink).
2010 Citizens United ruling allows corporations and unions to advocate for or against candidates at any time. Two months later, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, an appeals court strikes down limits on contributions to independent-expenditure shops. The super-PAC is born.
2011 As super-PACs proliferate, the FEC approves Stephen Colbert’s Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. Colbert exalts, “Today, we put liberty on lay away.”

Brian Hogg/FlickrBrian Hogg/Flickr
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November 29, 2011 · 12:01 AM

Newt Gingrich’s Latest Assault On The Constitution: Drug Test Americans Before They Get ‘Any Kind Of Federal Aid’

Herr Newt Gingrich is at it again.

While he’s at it, I’d like to see Congressmen and Senators drug tested as well…

Think Progress

Across the country, Republican governors are pushing policies that mandate drug-testing for all welfare recipients and marginalize low-income Americans in the process. Now, the latest GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich is trying that idea on the national stage. When asked by Yahoo News’ Chris Moody for his thoughts on how to reform the U.S.’s failed war on drugs, Gingrich declared that “we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user.” His first and foremost step? Drug test Americans “before you get any kind of federal aid“:

[MOODY:] Speaking of Ron Paul, at the last debate, he said that the war on drugs has been an utter failure. We’ve spent billions of dollars since President Nixon and we still have rising levels of drug use. Should we continue down the same path given the amount of money we’ve spent? How can we reform our approach?

[GINGRICH:] I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.

It has always struck me that if you’re serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting–I don’t think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.

Gingrich’s first step would likely run headlong into the Constitution. As UCLA Professor Adam Winkler noted, random drug testing is a “suspicion-less search” and “the Supreme Court has upheld the ability of government to mandate random drug tests in a few limited circumstances,” most often in “high-risk public safety environments.” In fact, courts have struck down such policies again and again.

The fact that Gingrich’s first thought regarding drug users points to federal aid recipients should not be surprising given his low opinion of Americans who are struggling to make ends meet. He once insisted that an unemployed mechanic receiving jobless benefits was made lazy by that “welfare.” Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have been unable to find work for a year or more. And yet, to Gingrich, “it is fundamentally wrong” to give these people jobless aid “for doing nothing.” Unless, of course, we drug test them first.

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July 18, 2011 · 6:36 AM

Murdoch Under Seige

 

Undoubtedly the devil is in the details…

Huffington Post

To his many enemies, Rupert Murdoch is getting his comeuppance.

Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers long have reveled in the misdeeds of others with salacious photos and pun-packed headlines. Now, one of the world’s most powerful media executives is learning what it’s like to be enveloped in his own scandal.

“There is a feeling that Murdoch has been king of the world for too long and it’s about time that somebody brought him back to Earth,” says Mungo MacCallum, a political journalist and commentator who once worked for a Murdoch-owned newspaper, The Australian.

But no one is calling press conferences to gloat about Murdoch’s troubles. Even his bitterest media rivals are keeping quiet.

Liberty Media chief John Malone, who engaged in media-mogul head butting with Murdoch over his stake in Murdoch’s News Corp and other issues, did not return a message seeking comment that was left with a spokeswoman.

CNN founder Ted Turner, who once challenged Murdoch to a boxing match in Las Vegas, was unavailable, according to a spokesman.

New York Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman, whose newspaper fights every day for front page dominance with the Post for New York’s tabloid audience also did not return a message seeking comment.

It’s hardly surprising, of course. Despite a scandal that has claimed two of his top executives and led him to close one of his British tabloids, Murdoch still runs News Corp., one of the world’s most imposing media empires. There’s no percentage in gloating publicly about the scandal if you still have to compete – and perhaps do business – with the 80-year-old Murdoch.

But others aren’t as charitable. In recent days, Murdoch has drawn comparisons to a cruel monarch, Richard Nixon, even the devil.

Continue reading here…

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June 1, 2011 · 12:10 AM

Rolling Stone: Distort, Attack, Repeat – Fox News Stratergy

Rolling Stone

Fox may look like a news broadcast, but it’s really the advance guard of the GOP distortion machine. An hour-by-hour look at how Fox turns Obama into the second coming of V.I. Lenin

In a new Rolling Stone story, Tim Dickinson tells how onetime Nixon henchman Roger Ailes built Fox News into the most profitable propaganda machine in history. A master of dirty tricks, Ailes has amassed enormous power in the Republican Party – and the country – by pioneering a new form of political campaign, one in which Fox functions as a “giant soundstage created to mimic the look of a news operation,” disguising GOP talking points as journalism.

On the day after the president gave his State of the Union address in January, Fox News swung into full campaign mode, hammering Obama with five GOP talking points that have come to define the budget debate. The baldfaced distortions came not just from a parade of Republican politicians – who outnumbered Democrats by 3 to 1 – but from the network’s own anchors.

Click through for an hour-by-hour rundown of the day’s relentless Obama-bashing.

 

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November 1, 2010 · 4:29 AM

Beware the GOP Coronation

Clockwise from top left: Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Meg Whitman and Rick Perry (Photos: Getty Images)
 

As Walter Cronkite would say at the end of his CBS Evening News program…“and so it goes…”

The Daily Beast

Republicans will win big, and the press coverage will be glowing. But don’t forget: At the 100-days mark in his presidency, Obama walked on water. Howard Kurtz on the media’s mood swings.

Less than two years after taking office on a wave of hope, Barack Obama is on the verge of being slapped down by the electorate.

The president is so battered, politically speaking, that some members of his own party are sprinting away from him while Republicans whack him like a piñata.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The media assured us that the guy was headed for greatness. The nation’s journalists watched him in action, and in the last days of April 2009, delivered their collective verdict.

MSNBC’s Howard Fineman said Obama was “born” to live “calmly and confidently on a global stage with the hottest lights and biggest audience…. He doesn’t seem needy, aloof or afraid. We used to call that ‘cool.’ ”

Carl Cannon, writing at Politics Daily, said this: “He is as velvety smooth as a cold glass of Guinness, this new president of ours… not to mention the good looks of a Kennedy, the even keel of a Roosevelt, the understated swagger of an Eisenhower.”  Continue reading…

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October 25, 2010 · 2:47 AM

Speculation: 2012 – How Sarah Barracuda Becomes President

New York Magazine

Why do you think Barack Obama is being so nice to Michael Bloomberg?

On a pale-gold mid-October afternoon, Sarah Palin takes the stage at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, and the faithful are ready for her. The crowd, 1,500 strong, is mostly white, on the older side, and casually dressed—though in my row there’s a hulking young Samoan in full Revolutionary War regalia. For the past hour, the audience has been treated to a series of warm-up acts that aren’t your typical Northern California fare: a choir called Celestial City; the head of the outfit sponsoring the event, the Liberty & Freedom Foundation, who speaks of a conservative “reawakening”; and a local talk-radio host whose shtick is that of a bargain-basement Glenn Beck, replete with attacks on Karl Marx, Richard Nixon (for creating the EPA), Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, “Barack Hussein Obama.”

Palin’s own brand of performance art is no less barbed and no more subtle, but still infinitely fascinating. In a deep-blue jacket and tight black skirt, she uncorks a 40-minute soliloquy that is equal parts populism, moralism, stand-up comedy, and free association, all rendered in a syntax as fractured as Joe Theismann’s tibia after Lawrence Taylor got through with him. She doles out personal, if possibly fictitious, anecdotes that position her, despite the millions she has pocketed in the past two years, as a defiantly downscale girl: that she and Todd drove their motor home from Wasilla to Los Angeles (distance: 3,375 miles) to watch Bristol on Dancing With the Stars. She winks (metaphorically) at her pop-culture image, snapping off a “you betcha” and later declaring, “November 2 is right around the corner—I can see it from my house!” She rails against union bosses who are “thugs” and “elitist billionaires who are funding the leftist agenda,” while gaily mocking Obama, Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Jerry Brown: “They act like they’re permanent residents of some unicorn ranch in fantasyland.” She invokes the California of old as a paradise lost and declares that it must be regained: “I want you all to get to yell ‘Eureka’ in this Golden State of opportunity.” And she cites Ronald Reagan in promising the same for the country: “If we do our part, as President Reagan said … the great confident roar of American progress, growth, and optimism will resound again!”      Continue reading…

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