Dumbass Independent Award

Dumbass Independent Award

Saturday, October 20, 2012

MEMORY OF POLITICS...WHY IT SHOULD NOT BE SHORT-TERM

Lies...I know both parties pile them on like they are appetisers before the main event...all out deceit...but I have lived long and have yet to succumb to the delusions of short-term memory waffling.

Looking back to the years I have walked this earth my memory, is, unfortunately, too much intact.

My eldest brother was born in 1942, during the meteoric advances of Hitler across Europe and less than a full year after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bob came into this world during the presidency of FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT...FDR...who served as president from March 4, 1933 through April 12, 1945 when he died. Roosevelt was a DEMOCRAT and the only politician ever elected to the office of the presidency more than twice. In fact his stellar and consistent return to office is WHY the laws changed limiting all future presidents to JUST two terms.

How pathetically terrified the opposition must have been to create a law about something the Founding Fathers did not feel important when shaping the government...and yet most of them were the equivalent of today's Republicans.

Moving on...I was born in 1951, The Korean War was devastating America's military and Truman, another Democrat was in power. I know we had to fight the Korean Police Action because of the communist stain spreading across the planet after our Russian allies at the end of WW II became our number one enemy...but a police action NOT a war? What is that about? You can call it anything you want, but it WAS WAR!

Truman assumed power upon the death of FDR but he remained in power until January 20, 1953 when Dwight David Eisenhower, the first Republican in nearly TWENTY YEARS claimed the highest office in the land.

So what else did Dwight D. Eisenhower do for us? He gave us Richard Milhouse Nixon as his Vice-President.

In the years to come Democrats will be vilified for their behind their zippers conduct, but let us not forget Eisenhower, a GENERAL serving under his DEMOCRATIC Commander in Chief, Roosevelt, brought along HIS mistress from that engagement, to service HIM during his Presidency. I may have been a child during his terms but I know I would have remembered if word about Eisenhower's adultery had made the news. My parents would have argued over it with the same rapid viciousness they argued over EVERYTHING political.

What DID make the news is Eisenhower telling his party it would be political SUICIDE to tamper with Social Security...a program Roosevelt, a very rich man, put in place to help the American people because he learned during the DEPRESSION the importance of caring for ALL his people.

Eisenhower...a die-hard Republican WARNED all politicians, current and future to LEAVE Social Security alone! Eisenhower  served TWO terms...now the limit thanks to the new law enacted after FDR died shortly after he was elected to his FOURTH term in office.

I was just beginning Middle School when John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Milhouse Nixon. I remember watching his inauguration on television. He looked so handsome and Jackie so beautiful. Camelot...but as with any smoke screen Camelot had its dragons, snakes and vultures.

Kennedy could not keep his zipper up any more than FDR or Eisenhower could. Our politicians were MEN and as such HU-MEN. Do I care if they let their zippers dip below half-mast? ONLY if it interferes with them performing their duties AS my president. My religious beliefs and relationship with MY GOD are my own and have no business in politics...a point the framers of the Constitution were adamant about!

Kennedy established the PEACE CORP, he confronted and successfully dealt with Castro and the build-up of Russian arms in Cuba JUST off the Florida coast. He gave his complete support to the US making it to the MOON. He launched the Presidential Youth Fitness Program. He also instituted one of the largest tax cuts in history.

Yes, he also agreed to send our military into Viet Nam. History would prove that not to be one of his better decisions.

President Kennedy took on the issue of racial discrimination and Civil Rights. Yes he dropped his drawers a LOT, but his sexual prowess or lack of marital commitment had nothing to do with his job as President of the United States. He may have been cut down early in his Presidency, he, a super rich man, still managed to put many things in place to aide and comfort ALL of Americans...and isn't THAT what being President is supposed to be about?

November 22, 1963...I was not yet twelve...and technically in Middle School...my middle school happened to share the same building as our high school. (I grew up out in the Country...not backwards, just spread out with not a great need for TWO buildings...at least not yet...that WOULD come.)...and know exactly where I was when news of Kennedy's assassination brought many of us to our knees, and Lyndon Baines Johnson into the Presidential position. (I was threading a movie projector in the AV Center for Mr. Elvin the Social Studies teacher....Bleieve it or not, back then I was NOT technology challenged...I was ahead of my time.)

I did not like Johnson. I cannot say why...except something I saw in his eyes made me dislike him intensely, and I always trust my gut feelings. They rarely let me down.

Johnson came across as a hard man...cruel...and devious. He empowered the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. To this day there are many who do not believe the Warren Commission really DID a thorough job. Yes...I'm one of them.

As a Texan, he showed great courage signing the Civil Rights Act, and in signing the Economic Opportunity Act to fight the war on poverty. Johnson...a rich man...SIGNS a law to FIGHT poverty!

He signs the Food Stamp Act making it possible for the impoverished to EAT.

He initiated PROJECT HEAD START to give ALL children the opportunity to learn from the early stages of development, before our learning patterns are locked into place. He escalated our commitment in Viet Nam..not a war...another frigging POLICE ACTION. Why is it two Deomcratinc Presidents declare not a war , but a frigging POLICE ATION? It doesn't really matter what you call it...war is war!

He brings HUD into being, and endorses laws to aid with Higher Education for ALL.

He dealt with riots in Watts, Chicago and Detroit during his term in office...racial unrest was feverish...he also funds Public Broadcasting giving us such programs as Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theater.

He also signed the Gun Control Act of 1968. GUN CONTROL and HE, a Democrat FROM the South, got it done! Admirable, but I still didn't like or fully trust him!

Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated during his administration.

On November 3, 1964 Johnson wass OFFICIALLY elected to his FIRST term as President making Hubert Humphrey...another man I could not like...he seemed like an over inflated BLOW-HARD...our Vice President.

Again, I reiterate...I did NOT like Lyndon Johnson...my opinion DESPITE his accomplishments has NOT changed. I believe he was a CRUEL man, and nothing he ever did proved my belief wrong...except he DID get a lot done for the Americdan people and I cannot deny him that.

He too had extra-marital relationships. (Is it being in politics that makes it hard to keep the zipper zipped? So much temptation, much like Hollywood?)

Richard Milhouse Nixon...other than being a crook what I most remember about him, other than his "I AM GOD" Syndrome, is the number of corrupt men he made his vice president during his two terms...oh and Of course WATERGATE, but on the positive side he DID do good...he created the first EARTH DAY. He also started the EPA, signing the Clean Air Act into law, and established the NOAA, and DEA.

And boy howdy do I remember all the badges and/or other perks he gave BIG Stars...like Duke Ellington who was awarded THE MEDAL OF FREEDOM...I'm not sure for what...maybe you who are reading this can tell me? He also awarded the astronauts that returned safely from their failed mission the same Medal of Freedom. I could see praising them for their courage in the face of what looked like a nasty end to their lives, but every soldier sent to fight the Police Action in Viet Nam faced the same chance to die in a nasty way...How many of them received such medals?  

The massacre at Kent State University happened on HIS watch with HIS National Guard opening fire upon the students because they were protesting the Viet Nam Conflict, as is our right under the Constitution all presidents are elected to enforce...NOT interpret.

On December 21, 1970 Nixon meets Elvis Presley in the Oval Office and bestows upon him powers and a badge making him a law enforcement agent...a man known to be a few flakes short of a full loaf. Why?

Right before his resignation, Nixon replaces the very corrupt Spiro T. Agnew, (under investigation for tax invasion) and his latest embattled VP, with Gerald Ford.

August 9, 1974 Gerald Ford is sworn in as President and says "OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER." The WAR..err I mean CONFLICT? No!

One of his very first acts as president is to FULLY PARDON Richard Milhouse Nixon. Unlike the rest of the crooked coterie involved in the break-in and then cover-up of the Watergate break-in, Richard Nixon can never be brought to justice. Cannot be impeached...cannot have his rights and privileges as a former president revoked. In other words, the tax payers would continue to support this corrupt felon for the rest of his life. Let me repeat The US Taxpayers would PAY for Nixon, guilty of condoning felonious acts and then covering up HIS part in breaking the very laws he was elected to execute is never going to be brought to justice.

The American people were NOT given the right to watch the system work because HE, Richard the First was above the law?

THAT was Gerald Ford's first action upon becoming President. After that there was little he could do to convince me and many others he cared about honor and/or justice, and or what really is best for this Country.

Other than pardoning Nixon, the only thing about him my memory can recall with ease is his inability to golf without beaning someone!

Did he accomplish anything? He did try to regulate campaign fund raising and spending. I wish he'd succeeded.

He signed the Privacy Act, and in his State of the Union Address, he claimed the State of the Union is not good...because...MILLIONS of Americans are out of work...Hmmmm Does any of this resonate with what has taken place in the last two decades? Millions of people being out of work?

Perhaps because of Ford robbing the American people of their right to seek legal action against Nixon, Ford was NOT elected to his own presidential term. On November 3, 1976 Ford concedes to Democratic Presidential Nominee Jimmy Carter.

In 1976 I had just given birth to my daughter, the second of my children. I held onto so much hope for her future and her brother's. Surely we'd learned our lessons and Americans would never forget the hard won battles and equally hard fought losses. Wouldn't we?

Short Term memory is a really disgusting ailment...and one mankind has been plagued with since the dawn of any kind of civilization. Just look at the corruption and eventual fall of all the major empires throughout history.

1977...Jimmy Carter is sworn is as America's thirty-ninth president. Although Ford played with the idea Jimmy Carter is the president who actually pardoned those who evaded the draft during the Viet Nam Conflict. Morally I look at that decision this way...Ford pardoned a president that committed multiple felonies because he was trying to rig the elections in his favor. The draft evaders objected to dying for a non-declared police action because they objected to killing without honorable cause. I'd rather pardon those who objected to killing than those who knowingly, and with delusions of self importance committed crimes against the very Constitution they were elected and/or sworn to uphold. 

Carter, another Southerner and also a well heeled man, signs the Covenant on Human Rights. The Three Mile Island disaster happened during Carter's administration, the biggest nuclear disaster at that point. But regulating the energy industry was no more popular nthen than it was recently during the Gulf Coast debacle. Rather than hide from it he he still faced it head on denting his popularity tremendously.

Okay he also had to deal with having a cartoonish brother and his Billy Beer, but who doesn't have family members we might not always want trailing behind us with their peculiarities hanging out for the world to see?

Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election because of the long battle over the Iran Hostage situation. Did he do the right thing? I have no idea. I wasn't there in the War room...nor had I moced to Washington, D.C. yet where I would REALLY get a lesson in politics...but I do know once out of office he and his wife founded Habitat for Humanity stepping into the fray to help build homes for the poor.

If nothing else, that tells me what kind of a man he is at his core. Making the world better for the less fortunate was NEVER just a bit of campaign rhetoric for him. I think the Country lost an opportunity to create a richer future by making Jimmy Carter the scapegoat for the Iran Hostage Crisis.

January 20, 1981 Ronald Reagan in sworn is as our fortieth president. At this point, I have now lived through the drama created by seven presidents.

Many have touted Reagan as the best president in the twentieth century...which I fail to understand. How convenient it was for Ronald Reagan that people fail to remember a person's moral fiber JUST because it happened years ago.

Ronald Reagan made Nancy, his SECOND wife...a woman he blatantly cheated on his first wife with...our first lady. Let me see if I have this right...Ronald and Nancy commit adultery, but he's of the right moral fiber to be the PRESIDENT? The same moral fiber future President Clinton is NOT possessing?

Okay I suppose I can accept this...after all I've repeatedly said a man's ability or lack thereof in keeping his zipper zipped should not be the measuring stick we use to judge his successes and/or failures leading our Country...so lets look at what he accomplished...or failed at.

First he named George Herbert Walker Bush, a former head of the CIA, as his Vice President. 

I knew little about the string bean who stood behind Reagan as the man in direct line for the presidency. I guess being CIA meant secrecy or at least not popping up on too many radars...(until his son George W. Bush became president...but that's another issue for further  discussion in this recitation.)

I cannot help but wonder why the hostages were finally released on the very day Reagan is sworn into office. Having lived for two years up close and personal with Washington, D.C. perhaps I am looking back with too much suspicion of such a coincidence\, BUT, they do say hindsight is 20/20...so maybe not.

Reagan created a LOT of commissions to review things. He also delivered a LOT of speeches.

The US Embassy in Beirut is bombed during Reagan's watch and 32 people are killed. (I want you to read this again! The Iran Hostages are returned, but The US Embassy is bombed and 32 people killed...I know I have always been considered JUST A DUMB BLONDE...but I see a correlation...maybe the Middle East is becoming a cauldron?)

Assassination attempt...yes Reagan was shot...others surrounding him KILLED, but the Brady Bill is not allowed to have the kind of teeth needed to finally control who needs guns and what kinds of guns can be purchased...indeed it fails. Why? Our President nearly dies, but we don't need to have better gun controls?

Strange though while guns here in this country were not allowed regulation to secure the safety of Americans, under the cloak of subterfuge and yes, treason, the Reagan/Bush administration illegally began arming the Iran Contras...and got caught.

Once more I am forced to weigh the issues of a man not keeping his boxer shorts covered or committing overt illegalities in the name of the US people. Which is more offensive? Which should be prosecuted and NOT whitewashed by claiming EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE?

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams must be spinning in their graves.

Oddly, and I've never been able to figure this one out...Reagan is credited with bringing the Berlin Wall down. All those years we were sitting here in terror of the Red Menace...who'd have thought all it would take was Reagan in his actor trained voice demanding the Soviet government "...tear down this wall." to convince them to do so. Guess we were wrong to worry about Russia all those years and spend those gazillions building up our arsenal of deadly weaponry against them. 

Before we move on, let's do a recount...

FDR...launches Social Security.
Truman...starts and thankfully ends the Korean Conflict
Eisenhower brings us Nixon.
Kennedy...launches Peace Corp...calms the threat of nuclear war being launched from Cuba...and yes, begins sending the military into Viet Nam.
Johnson...escalates the Viet Nam War.
Nixon...escalates the war then ratchets it down...but also gives us WATERGATE.
Carter works on human rights, but fails to bring the Iran Hostages home.
Reagan sells arms illegally to the Iran Contras and makes Oliver North his scapegoat.

Onward to George Herbert Walker Bush. He gave us Dan Quayle for Vice President.

Bush ANNOUNCED a lot of things during his administration. He also did a lot of things making him a FIRST...such as the first president to speak live on Chinese TV...Bush begins negotiations with Mexico for NAFTA. He is also the one who announced his initiative to implement free trade covering the entire Western Hemisphere.

He DID sign the Americans With Disabilities Act...a revolutionary step forward in honoriing the rights of the disabled and a law I wholeheartedly applaud...just wish it had more teeth.

On August 2, 1990 the Iraqi forces invade Kuwait. Six days later Bush deploys American forces, and after receiving approval for the United Nations on January 16, 1991 the First Gulf War begins,..and is called Operation Desert Storm.

Let us not forget the Savings and Loan failure that took place during George H.W. Bush's watch...and even involved one of his many sons. This is the beginning of the break down of the banking industry.

Bush failed his bid for re-election losing to the charismatic, and forever wrapped up in a scandal involving his fluctuating zipper, President William Jefferson Clinton.

A Willie with an active willie, Bill Clinton came into office amid scandal concerning his extra-marital dilly-dallying, but did any of that prevent him from executing his duties to me as MY president?

Did it deter FDR? Now THERE was an amazing man...locked in a wheel chair and braces he guided this country through the Depression, the Second World War, and still managed to dangle his parsnip outside his marital bedroom.

No wonder they elected him to FOUR terms.

That man deserves some kind of a posthumous award...probably NOT the Medal of Honor...but if we could bottle his energy and sell it today we'd ALL be ga-zillionaires.

Truman...I was a little kid...barely out of my mother's womb...did he dip his stick in a crank case not attached to his wife? If he did, obviously he was far more discreet.

Eisenhower had his little driver whose tank he oiled quite regularly.

Kennedy...the man's extra curricular activities are probably not totally known yet...he DID get around and with loads of help...but none of us will forget Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr. President in that gown she had to be spray painted into.

Johnson...the idea of any woman sharing that curmudgeon's dalliances makes my skin crawl...but power will blind the most discerning woman to the man's toxicity.

Nixon...When a woman drinks as much as Pat Nixon...still...ewww but he believed he was our new King Richard so why not have them worship at the throne of his little Dickie Bird?

Ford...I really don't know. Was he too busy beaning people with golf balls to let his more vulnerable balls out for air?

Carter...he admitted lusting in his heart but there has never been an actual scandal involving his little Jimmy that I know of.

Reagan...we know he cheated on his first wife with Nancy.

George H.W. Bush...I don't know. There isn't much about him I would have to admire, but I really Do think he loves Barbara...and probably enough to be faithful.

Alas Bill Clinton...I liked him as a president...didn't admire the man, but I didn't need his morale center working for me as my President.

The Republicans set out from day one to bring him down. I'm surprised they didn't send little nanobots in to check the consistency of his and Hillary's feces...they attacked just about everything else...only to come up with him lying in a deposition for a lawsuit Paula Jones should not have been allowed to bring against him while we was a sitting president.

IMPEACHMENT because he lied about getting a really BAD blow job? I mean come on, if it had been any good there would never have been a tell-tale stain to catch him in his lie. I personally felt bad for him...if you're going to cheat and do so while under such scrutiny to get drawn to someone who cannot perform a simple act with better aplomb is sad...and hello...what mother makes her daughter KEEP such a dress?

Clinton gets Impeached for a lousy blow-job but Nixon was pardoned for the illegal break-in and then cover up of the Watergate mess? AND while the hearings are going on Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, a staunch Republican has his wife sitting behind him on one side and HIS mistress sitting behind him on the other side?

Yes Clinton DID act inappropriately, but hell, the Republicans had been hounding him since he first tossed his hat in the ring. Whether you approve of his morals is irrelevant...he delivered as our President...even leaving the LARGEST surplus in the history of this Country in his wake...and that is what I, as an American needed him to do.

Clinton has been accused of being the force behind NAFTA...but it was George H.W. Bush that started that ball rolling. Clinton inherited it.

Yes the first attack on the twin towers happened less than two months after he was sworn into office...and yes the Branch Davidian attack in Waco happened soon after.

I have a question for all those of you wagging your fingers over the events that unfolded at Waco, at Clinton... let me ask YOU something?

If you are dealing with a mad man what should you do?

Until you've walked in the shoes of someone who MUST make such a decision...just like arm-chair athletes THINK they have the wisdom to berate the pitcher for not tossing the ball and preventing that steal on time...you are nothing more than a side-line mouthpiece wanting just to hear your own voice.

Clinton signed into law a bill creating 1.5 billion dollars to help college students repay federal student money...NOT by writing it off...but by having them WORK at community service positions.

NOT a free ride!

Clinton SIGNED the Brady Act into law...remember Brady...Reagan's former Press Secretary who was paralyzed during that assassination attempt all those years ago...you know...back BEFORE George H.W. Bush's presidency? Finally we have a law monitoring the sale of guns.

Getting back to Paula Jones...how many people do you know who are allowed to file A FEDERAL lawsuit for a civil lawsuit against a sitting president?

Could you or I file a federal case against our boss if his suggestive innuendos made US uncomfortable ALL those years ago? She was just the only way the faltering investigations into Clinton's non-existent criminal behaviors surrounding Whitewater could be ratcheted up to the point they could FORCE a sitting president to testify under oath for anything!

Newt Gingrich flexing his muscles institutes a partial shut down of the government, but Clinton STILL wins a second term in office.

Ironically, although the House wants to Impeach, the Senate acquits. Unlike Nixon, Clinton stayed the course and faced his accusers.

November 2000, George Walker Bush becomes president ONLY after the Supreme Court steps in and makes the decision, beating Al Gore by a questionable margin inheriting the biggest surplus of funds ever.

Clinton DID what we needed him to do as Americans. What happened between him and the women he strayed from his marriage with, that concerns Hillary, Chelsea, and the women...not me...not you.

I don't want to talk about Bush's administration. We were repeatedly lied to. He used a national attack to employ an agenda he had long before he took office, and he gutted the rights of Americans under the Constitution.

His VP shot a man in the face and never had to pay for that assault...He called it an accident? If you or I had committed such an ACCIDENT we'd be in jail faster than we could say our own names.

They outed an active CIA agent...the agency Bush's father directed, because her husband would not perpetuate the lies coming out of the Bush/Cheney administration...and the debt? Where the hell did that huge surplus go? It was already gone BEFORE the attacks of 9/11, so whose got it?

WMD's? They're still MIA because they did not exist except as a smoke screen.

Osama Bin Laden would NEVER have shared power with Saddam any more than Saddam would've shared power with Osama. They HATED each other, as meglomaniacs do!

I loathed the tactics used by Bush against honorable war vets during his second campaign to win that election. He demeaned those who served during the Viet Nam war...and although he served back then, in Texas, I have no recollection of the Viet Cong INVADING Texas...and trust me they WOULD have stood out...so Bush evaded the war as effectively as those who crossed into Canada. but "honorably" because he avoided the draft.

My brother avoided being drafted into the Army...by enlisting for six years in the Navy. Bob's ship suffered one of the biggest losses while in the Viet Nam theater, but he DID avoid the Army too.

Some say history will show Bush to be the best president we've ever had...All I can say to that is...

NO WAY!

History will say Bush got away with not being Impeached because the Country was tired of the false investigations that cost the American people billions against Clinton...Bush and Cheney raped the Constitution...if that is honorable, George Washington, John  Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams aren't just spinning in their graves, they're arming a revolution to greet these traitors when they cross over.

Just as I know where I was when Kennedy was assisinated I know where I was when two planes flew into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. I lived in NJ...my son worked close enough to the border between NJ and NY that day was not just devastating to me because our Country suffered a crucial blow to our arrogant belief we were safe all the way across the oceans from the fear the rest of the world has lived with since the rise and fall of Hitler, but because I could not make contact EITHER of my children.

The Middle East has been a powder keg since long before the birth of Christ, but prior to 9/11 America felt as safe as we did prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We're a continent away from all the unrest over there...but it came here then and it's here now.

So given our new reality, where is the sense in the Bush Administration wanting to sell our ports and harbors to Dubai?

This is the son of a former Head of the CIA and a former President...and selling our ports and harbors to Dubai makes sense to his administration after we are attacked on 9/11?

Bush jogs and rides his bicycle into trees, much the way Ford beaned people when he swung his gulf clubs. Ford escalated the Viet Nam Confict...Bush initiates a PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE against Iraq because they have WMD's that still have not materialized? And as a respopnse to Osama Bin Laden's attack on 9/11? 

The Banking Industry splinters, cracks, and needs the government to bail it out...Bush makes it so.

Bush inherited the biggest surplus in the history of this Country, but he leaves the biggest deficit also in the history of this Country when he leaves and the debacles from his handling of Katrina, The Gulf Coast Spill, the War in Iraq, losing sight of why Osama Bin Laden should have been the focus of our war efforts, devastating unemployment, and more headaches than any one man should be expected to fix as quickly as the current president was expected to fix.

I'm an Independent. When Minnesota elected Jesse Ventura, an INDEPENDENT to be their governor back in 1999, I had hopes that maybe his election would make the parties take notice and realize we need change to how things are done. I'm still hoping.