Feels like a Friday, doesn’t it?
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Will Lionel Rivera win re-election?
But then again, one Colorado Springs wingnut would just be replaced with another wingnut.
Maybe we could get Ted Haggard to run. I hear he’s looking for a job these days.
You’re so funny.
their campaign kickoff event can be a meth orgy fundraiser.
Today is the 43rd anniversary of his assasination.
For me, then, it meant a canceled homecoming and no date with hottie Marcia Vahlberg!
We can now, with the advantage of hindsight, look at JFK with fair objectivity. We can see the errors of some of his decisions, hard core anti-communist that any successful presidental candidate had to be. The Bay of Pigs invasion, the brinksmanship of the Russian ship embargo, the still in effect Cuban embargo. We can see that the Warren Commission was just as honest and thorough as the 9-11 investigation.
The Russian ship episode also effected me very indirectly. I remember sitting in class on the second or third floor of the school watching the army convoys heading for Homestead and Key West on US 41 as the world watched the Kremlin and the White House.
(The story goes that JFK called Pierre Salinger into his office and told him to buy all the such and such Cuban cigars in Washington, his favorites. Salinger came back, JFK pulled the embargo order out of his desk, and signed it. Asshole.)
I would rate JFK, overall, a fairly good president. Not great, better than average. His greatest skill was as a motivator, a bringer of hope, optimism, and a belief in America that was without swagger, but instead a roll up the shirt sleeves type. It was RR’s “Morning in America” for the common good, not the selfish model that became our norm.
Remember the 50 mile hikes? We laugh now, but what a great idea, letting people discover that, yes, I CAN do the difficult. I think it was RFK that came up with this, but it was all part of the “Camelot” mentality.
Two links. This is a pseudo speech by JFK today:
http://www.buzzflash…
My current signature comes from an acceptance speech in 1960. The whole speech may be found at:
http://www.pbs.org/w…
I belong to the minute demographic sliver who entered college when Eisenhower was President and graduated when Kennedy was. It was really a brief, shinning moment. What I remember is not the “Ask not” but the “long twilight struggle” and the “bear any burden.” He spoke to my generation here and around the world. There was a whole lot going on and most of it was good. I remember a lot of jokes about Kennedy..we used to say “a little less profile and a little more courage.”
Planning for the Bay of Bigs was begun during the Eisenhower Administration and Kennedy inherited it. The invasion took place within three months of his term. He took full responsibility for the fiasco and then fired the men who planned it and never trusted the CIA again. Contrast that with the Bush response….his administration whines that 9/11, nine months into the Bush administration, was still Clinton’s fault. What a sniveling spoiled brat this country has been cursed with.
I think that Kennedy’s biggest achievement was the Test Ban Treaty; probably saved a lot of lives. His biggest mistake was, no doubt, authorizing the assassination in Vietnam of the then president in November of 1963. He was an early and consistent supporter of Medicare, which was not put into law until after he died. And, he sent federal marshalls to protect the freedom riders in the South. It was risky business in the early 60s. Only cowards were on the sidelines. The country was moving and the world was moving and all in a good direction and he was an integral part of all that.
I count myself lucky to have been a young adult during the Kennedy years. I thought of him today. For my generation, to even see the digital time turn to 11:22 causes a pause and a pang for so much which was lost.
as a part of the Methodist Student Movement and you are right about Kennedy. Not only that, but at that time a big part of the Democratic base was still in the south. For a Democratic President to go against the objections of powerful southern Democratic Senators and Congressmen, was remarkable.
Johnny, we hardly knew ye.
Selma in “65. You have guts
climbed aboard a Continental Trailways bus in Salina Kansas and headed south. I will tell you the farther south we went, the less brave I felt. It was a scary time, even for a just turned 18 year old college student.
Thom Hartmann says that the BOP invasion was to be what we would now call an October Surprise. It was not done because of weather or some such. So, twenty years before the Iranian hostage “surprise”, the Repubs were at it. Why is it “dirty tricks” is ALWAYS associated with that party? Oh, that’s right, it’s because righties think themselves above the law!
The Kennedy family lost three sons in public service seeking a better America, often working against their own class. Hello Bushes! Working for a better Haliburton, always working for their own class.
Roadside finger print checks coming to a road block near you: http://www.breitbart…
Yikes!
Traffic cams feeding police monitors, bobbies with 360-degree head cams, now this.
Well, at least we know what to look forward to. The U.K. has been ahead of us in citizen surveillance for some time now.
A recent article in The Guardian, I think, showed how a family returning to the UK, stopping at the mall, etc. is being watched. Hypothetical but real. How many cameras, databses, etc.
How prescient. The UK is the unnamed home of Winston Smith (hey, Winston) in 1984.
as you don’t move quickly through the underground you should be okay.
As in, not lead-enhanced?
the fascist police in New York, and the good socialists in merry olde England seem to arrive at the same results. Although the Brits do seem to prefer moving targets.
I love England but I’m with you.
Scary! Generally, all of this nanny state stuff probably only gives over a false feeling of security. You don’t fight terror with stuff like this. YOu have to assimilate those Muslims if you ultimately want to win the WOT.
With that said, I don’t blame MI5. British Muslims are some of the most whacky in the West (40% favor an Islamic Republic of Britain) and it’s a growing demographic. What’s more, Al Qaeda recently identified the UK as their primary target (over the US!). MI5, a couple of weeks ago, noted that they are monitoring over 30 plots to the homeland.
In America the threat is mostly from outside the US–from Europe and the Middle East. The British threat is homegrown and therefore a whole lot scarier.
Plus they have a nasty hooligan problem. British society is going nuts and devolving into chaos. Most of it stems from the wild-eyed Welfare statism you saw after the second World War. That made the UK reliant upon immigration which is readily available from Muslim countries. Muslims are radicalized in Europe and WA-LA!, become an immediate and direct threat. Of course you could try assimilating Muslims but then you’d be going against your multicultural dogma.
Being an anglophile I really hope the UK can pull it out in the end. But they need to return to British values and get away from the godless principles of New Labour. It looks like the Tories are on track to win the next elections but with new leader David Cameron, I’m not sure how much will change.
And I mostly do, until I got to the fifth paragraph. The Muslim immigration has much more to do with colonialization and its after effects. The door was open to colonial nations, it had little or nothing to do with cheap high birth rate labor.
And don’t forget, in America it is the righties who have stripped civil liberties.