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Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Apologies to Slick Willie



Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show, starring me and Brian O'Neil, includes some terrific commentary, if I do say so myself.  We cover the bewildering developments in the race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and the failure of both the "progressive" and "moderate" lanes in the party to coalesce into a single candidate.  Above all, I relish the Democrats' predicament.  They look like they will be sniping at each other, instead of Republicans, for months to come!

In addition, Brian and I get into some fascinating historical questions.  We look at the Yugoslav Civil War in 1991-95 and Slobodan Milosevic's role in causing it; we analyze Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's spectacular career in World War II, as well as his fall from grace and the predicament of German conservatives in 1944-45; and we remember the freeing of U.S. POWs by North Vietnam in 1973, as well as the tragedy that unfolded in Cambodia as a consequence of the instability unleashed by the Vietnam War and the ravages of communism.  Lastly, Brian and I discuss the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1999 for perjury and obstruction of justice.  Even though Clinton clearly broke the law, I argue that Republicans (like me) were wrong to try to remove him from office -- an expedient that ought to be pursued only in the most extreme instances of misconduct, in deference to the power of the people to choose our leaders. 

It's all food for thought and well worth a listen, so tune your YouTube dials to the Newsmaker Show and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnljLpLULvg&feature=youtu.be

11 comments:

  1. Dr. Waddy: I haven't yet read your interview but here are my reactions to the photo , which is in my memory condemned. Red faced libertine voluptuary Slick Willy bade us dismiss accounts of his adolescent excesses as undeserving of doubt as to his Presidential stature. And Hillary: her expression says it all; "this is purely political, I'll ride to the rescue someday but meantime you must support this CAD.". What lowlifes these Dems have empowered! Why? Because they see them as the path to complete totalitarian power. Hillary and her supporters saw it as such in 2016 and we have seen, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, their reflexive reaction since.

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  2. Dr.Waddy: So much of pith and consequence in this broadcast, as is to be expected, but this - even more so.

    I may just go "stream of consciousness" here since I lived through much of it: The P.O.W.s: It is unreasonable to expect a country which was subjected to heavy bombing to be inclined to treat captured bombers with consideration.It is also reasonable that they were gangsterously denied any proof of their country's murderous onslaught on a South Vietnam which did not wish to be communized (why did 400,000 Vietnamese flee the North in 1954?). But: rejection of widely (not universally accepted)standards for POWs was in the savage treatment of captured U.S. pilots proof of Marxist presumption of release from heretofore assumed standards of human conduct. Those who would enthusiastically consign entire classes of people under their tyrannically exacted control to slavery or annihilation could not be expected to adhere to standards established, by, frankly, superior and better tried civilizations.

    The returning Vietnam POWs (those allowed return that is) gave witness to the subhuman savagery they had experienced.Such as Jane Fonda, of course, celebrated it. Their efforts, as were those of all who fought in Vietnam, were directed to the material result of denying the subhuman left conquest of South Vietnam.

    As Dr. Waddy has supported in his comments: the peace negotiated by President Nixon was reasonable. I have no doubt that President Nixon fully expected the 1975 NVA onslaught but his removal from office by American commies in full sympathy with the North Vietnamese sociopaths, prevented what would have been his consummate airborne reaction to their 1975 offensive. He knew it was coming! He was far to wise to trust commies.

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  3. Dr. Waddy: Cambodia 1970.Pastoral , peaceful, without an aggressive history; a country content, not congruent with Marxist perfectionism, but content. North Vietnam: a country captured by murderous Marxism and its socipathic aims." Ok, we are under attack by the Americans, lets route our supply lines through Cambodia; the politically condemned capitalists will not dare to interfere, we know! Besides, we've never liked those Cambodians. Oh, OK, so we have to invade and take one of their historically revered sights, Angkor Wat. So what, they have no guts! Besides, we know by now that those American leftist fools in the U.S. will support us, no matter the harm they do their troops (oh, what we would do to such traitors in our country). And those loony Khmer Rouge? They are crazy but we'll deal with them later. Meanwhile, let them bustle!

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  4. Dr. Waddy: The 2020 election may well, as you have asserted, provide a face to face test between thinly disguised but resolutely, presumptuous and ultimately murderous American Marxism (socialism) in the person of Bernie, and the real America.

    The Vietnamese boat people: Oh Marxists are so very JUST don't we know? But the boat people were largely from the Cholon section of Saigon; they were mainly ethnic Chinese and their expulsion was a settling of old scores dating from the Chinese diaspora of the 19th century. Racial hostility! Oh no! The harbingers of the perfect future could hardly have indulged in such atavistic injustice! But they did, yes they did.

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  5. Jack, I don't hold the Clintons in any higher regard than you do, BUT we must recognize that, while they were personally repugnant, they also represented a far different Democratic Party than the one that threatens our democracy today. In the Clinton era, borders were still borders, abortion was a debatable subject, and balancing the budget and reforming welfare were more important than eviscerating capitalism. Slick Willie got as far as he did by "triangulating" and copying Republicans in some ways -- not by going as far left as possible on every issue. In this respect, we might even feel nostalgia for the politics of yore -- thought not for the Clintons themselves, surely.

    Agreed, Jack, that the treatment of our POWs in North Vietnam was of a piece with their treatment of their fellow countrymen. Actually, our boys were treated far better than your typical Vietnamese villager! That's a strong indication that our cause was just -- not that any sneering leftist ever cared about the people of Vietnam to begin with.

    Interesting factoid about the Boat People being mostly of Chinese origin, Jack. Thanks for that context. Pretty instructive that more people fled the "peace" after the war than the war itself!

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  6. Dr. Waddy: The Clintons: First; Slick Willy ever seeks but one thing: to get HIGH, by adulation, by electoral victories, by public "Aves vehement", by accomplishment in theretofore private settings,by indulgence in gluttony, by convenient mirrors, by all avenues of luxury available to him. The vulnerability in his personality to such dysfunction may well be obvious. But his consort in their grotesque "marriage" is of a whole different cast. Imagine if he had had to endure the public humiliation he forced on her? She does have backbone, as much an enemy to our way of life as I think she is.

    Why then, did she endure it? Because she saw it as the path to totalitarian control over the the contemptible real America!

    You are right, the Clintonian administration was not as nakedly far left as that promised us by the Dems in this campaign.But that was a tactic; the WILL was there in the person of Hillary. As for Bill? As long as he had his toys he was happy; and when his toys were temporarily denied him, he threw a tantrum. How's he doing today I wonder? I'm 72 like him; how is Slick doing now that"the thrill is gone" huh?

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  7. Dr. Waddy: Further in your broadcast: Why did the Germans think support
    ort of the hapless Italians to be vital in N. Africa? Because their object was the Suez Canal and beyond that the "Middle East" and beyond that South Asia. Certainly the Nazis, had they infested the India of that time, would have made short work of the Mahatma.

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  8. Dr. Waddy: The Clinton impeachment: That he was guilty of obstruction of justice and lying in his denial to a U.S. citizen ( no matter the "no 'count'"opinion he held of her)of her day in court for offenses he himself performed against her person in his lascivious dismissiveness of her perceived low class status is hardly deniable. So was an effort to remove him from an office the election to which was uninformed by revelations of these definitive abominations.

    But were the charges against President Trump as serious? No!They were contrived by a leftist faction determined to use "any means necessary" to disempower him. Any means!

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  9. Dr. Waddy: But your argument that the impeachment of Clinton was inadvisable has much merit. I would have awarded Paula Jones the highest civilian honor possible (I cannot remember the name of the decoration) and feted her at the White House, for her consummate courage in standing up to that disdainful creep and his consort.

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  10. Hmm. The fate of a character like Bill Clinton in old age is indeed fascinating -- and more than a little pathetic -- to contemplate. You're right that he's addicted to the limelight. I suppose even the limelight of "First Husband" would have been a high of a sort...

    I think you give the Germans too much credit. They stumbled into North Africa in reaction to the Italians' weakness. They realized too late that it could have been a theater of decisive importance. In retrospect, what strikes me most about the Nazis' "grand strategy" is the absence of it.

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  11. Dr. Waddy: That makes sense. To a WWI trench veteran like Hitler, the humiliation of France may have been all he could reasonably and sanely entertain.

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