Friends, we found out today that there will indeed be a debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in September on ABC, and there may be other debates forthcoming. Good! It will be fascinating to see these two mega-geniuses clash rhetorically. Trump clearly feels good about his chances. Maybe he should. The degree to which Harris's handlers have been shielding her from scrutiny, and even human contact, doesn't inspire confidence!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy54l4x7d71o
I found this story most interesting: Tulsi Gabbard, dissident Democrat, has apparently been targeted by the TSA and federal air marshals as a potential terrorist. Is this pure political payback? Could be. I mean, this is the same administration that denied RFK, Jr. Secret Service protection until it became politically embarrassing to do so. Of course, they may have been doing him a favor!
https://www.racket.news/p/american-stasi-tulsi-gabbard-confirms
Finally, here's an intriguing retrospective on the Watergate affair, 50 years after the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency. In some ways, poor Dick Nixon was the first victim of the "Deep State" and "lawfare". In other ways, he was his own worst enemy. Be that as it may, I certainly agree that we should evaluate the legacy and meaning of Watergate in a balanced and objective way. We all know that the Dems and their media allies have been trying to relive the Watergate era, and bring down the president by following the same playbook, every single time a Republican has been elected to the office. Heck, in 2024, they may not even wait until Trump becomes president. They may do everything in their power to invalidate democracy before the fact. You think they already have? You ain't seen nothin' yet, trust me!
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteWhy is it, with a population over 300 million, do we end up with a presidential candidate as mediocre as Harris? She reminds me of what some writer once referred to as a person who has "reached their highest level of incompetence".
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The article about Tulsi being harried is appalling. It strongly supports not only the virtual certainty that the Obamas directed Federal police and regulatory agencies to intimidate conservatives but that determination to do so has penetrated deeply within those entities. Your warning that the far left may take extraordinary measures to prevent an elected Trump's empowerment takes on even more credibility in the light of this plausible possibility.
ReplyDeleteThe antiamerican left has endured excruciating frustration during its long, resentful, subversive sojourne in the despised establishment since 1972. It does want to risk wasting all that now by prematurely going for it all. If Kamala is elected they will have another factotum in the White House and can bide their time. After all, they have made massive gains at the southern border and would no doubt continue that winning strategy. But if DJT and JD win they may no longer be able to contain their terribly emotional drive for totalitarian power. The depth to which they have captured the deep state and even perhaps the military would be a critical factor. The astonishing, reprehensible dishonor they have worked on Tulsi is a very ominous development.
the antiamerican left ". . . does not want to risk . . . " Jack
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: That is an excellent article on Watergate and Nixon. I followed the event throughout, at first sparingly and then with intense almost daily interest.
ReplyDeleteWhen the burglars went on trial and Judge Sirica terrified some of them into spilling, a knowledgeable friend of mine said "This may even get to the Attorney General." I was a liberal then and had Nixon derangement syndrome and when the prospect of his very tenure in office being at hazard arose, both historical and partisan fascination motivated me.
Nixon was not unreasonably tormented by the prospect of another Kennedy swell casually and with a smug sense of entitlement ruining him yet again in the '72 election. He was a self made everyman, a "square" (genuinely so), he knew dang well Hiss was guilty as hell and he knew aristocratic JFK had snatched the '60 election from him. The wrongs done him were execrable.
In 1958, when Khruschev visited the U.S., he had dared to stand up to that monstrous thing and defend our way of life, face to face in the "KItchen Debate". They were almost nose to nose, But you can see in pictures of it NIxon's confident mien. When Khruschev met JFK in 1961 you may perceive his aggressive body language in response to JFK's diffident posture. The Cuban Missile Crisis arose in part because earthy Khruschev sized up JFK as a weakling. I believe he would not have done so with a President Nixon and we wouldn't have come close to being vaporized.
Watergate was a pretext for the fashionable leftists who sneered at his pedestrian middle class ways, for the radicals who had been made so when they flocked to the '60s campus, for the Bolsheviks who loathed him for helping to mete out richly deserved prosecution and suppression to them in the early '50s and to the first generation of journalistic antiamericans, fresh from their Vietnam crime.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The new left of the 60's was incensed beyond reason that the result of their transcendently idealistic crusade to "give America one more chance" in their first Presidential election was. . . well. . . Nixon ?! It was enough that they had had to settle for Humphrey and his comical "Politics of Joy" (honestly, that was what he called his doctrine) but NIXON!? Actually bubbly, imaginative and histrionic Humphrey would probably have done them fairly well, though they probably would not have deigned to admit it.
ReplyDeleteThen Nixon presumed to show them how very unwelcome they were in America by beating their man so badly in the '72 election that it drove them underground. By then they had developed an antipathy almost as insanely hostile to Nixon as that which we have witnessed toward DJT since he dared to oppose their darling's coronation and their guarantee of eventual totalitarian triumph, in 2016.
The big difference now is that the antiamerican left has disingenuously and counterintuitively suffused to a potentially catastrophic degree many of our most fundamental institutions and our democracy may consequently succumb to their unrelenting onslaught. After '72, Watergate kept that left afloat and girded it for the drawn out struggle to destroy America which could now be approaching an inexorable tipping point.
Ray from Jack : I will presume to add my 1.5954 cents on your question to Doc Waddy: Kamala is already way beyond her level of incompetence; she is the first to be in her present position due completely to arbitrary characteristics and identity politics.
ReplyDeleteBut we have also had very good fortune with some unlikely Presidential finds: Grant, a woodcutter in 1860, possible savior of the Union in 1864, President in 1869 ; Lincoln , rejected for the Senate in 1858, President in 1861; Truman, never theretofore thought of in those terms but more than capable when tested; Ford ;Reagan ,who, watching him laud 20 Mule Team Borax in the '50s woulda thunk he'd win the Cold War (with some help from 2 heroic Poles)?
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I see the closing ceremonies of the wokiad are nigh. I might watch; you know, things that are so bad they are fun to watch?Will the French have managed any restraint? They will have earned opprobrium either way.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I see much attention paid online to the 50th"anniversary" (a usually celebratory event, an anniversary, and ever the much more so by the notation of Nixon's resignation, in the lights of the surviving disdainful Nixon haters ).I watched the event and I knew I was witnessing history. To see the attention paid to the (to us who lived it) unfolding prolix process of arrest ( little noted), trial and Judge Sirica's politically motivated , forced revelations ( "oh I knew " said he " that Nixon valued money above all else and he assumed it motivated everyone"; ehh,subsequently honored G. Gordon Liddy?) in the process of determining the draconian prison terms he levelled , the consequent explosion of redeeming possibilities for an antiamerican left then recently devastated by Nixon's proven popularity, and their final triumph, in his disgrace, over middle America, is onerously fascinating. I think Nixon was a tragic figure, I think it may be an increasingly credited view and I hope his survivors perceive it.For wise who lived it from any perspective, it is engaging to have lived through history and to see it reconsidered as has been all the history which has been prelude to our experience.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Oh yes , the antiamerican left and its obsequious shills, the MSM , have always slavered after a reprised Watergate. They tried it with Reagan, a happy warrior who happily toyed with them and with Bush I, a WWII vet possessed of honor far beyond their pinched perceptions, who led an exemplary war effort in the Gulf War, and in paving the way for Slick Willy, a rollicking draft dodger, perjuror
ReplyDeleteand sexual ;predator, they disgraced themselves beyond measure.
Ray, politics is full of mediocrities. Sometimes a mediocrity is the best case scenario! Better a mediocrity than a skillful and persuasive demagogue/ideologue...
ReplyDeleteJack, I would say making their enemies wait longer and endure extra searches in airports is small potatoes, compared to lawfare, government-sponsored censorship, removing Trump from the ballot, yawning as wing nuts take shots at him, etc. No conservative or Republican has yet been totally silenced, let alone whacked, but give it time...
Jack, no doubt Watergate does reflect the blinding hatred that so many Americans had for Nixon. The radical leftists I can understand, but the establishment types? Why would they have viewed Nixon as an existential threat, when so many of his policies were moderate, even liberal, by modern standards? I still don't fully comprehend the plot against Nixon.
Ray makes a good point that good, even great, presidents can come from the most unexpected places. Kam-Kam, for her part, has never held ANY sort of executive position. One can only speculate, therefore, on the kind of leader she would be, and indeed on the policies and values that would animate her. We do know that a lot of "diversity hires" have come before her, and by and large they toe the leftist line in a big, big way and often undermine the institutions they've been hired to shore up.
Luckily, all attempts by the Left to reprise Watergate have failed miserably...unless, I suppose, one counts the multiple impeachments and judicial harassment of DJT as the modern iteration of the same strategy. That effort has already succeeded, in a very real sense, particularly in 2020, and it may work again in '24. Truth be told, the MSM probably controlled 80% of public opinion in the early 70s. Now, it may control only 50%...but that may still be enough.
RAY TO DR. WADDY
DeleteFirst of all, Nixon's people did not need to do Watergate, and when Nixon discovered what had been done (unless he knew it before it happened, which I doubt), his attempt to cover up for that bunch of scoundrels was (I believe) what caused even many former Nixon supporters to turn against him. That of course is just my opinion. But everyone has to do their own rethink on just how many beneficial things for the U.S. Nixon actually did. You already know I don't think making friends with the PRC was one of them. He did get us out of Vietnam, but look how long it took him, and many more of our military were killed, MIA, maimed, and wounded. So, what did Nixon do to MAGA? That is the main question, don't you think?
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Why did so many people harbor a negative view of Nixon? My childhood neighborhood could provide a test case. We lived on a blue collar street on the edge of a very affluent area. For the blue collar adults, because of the recentness of the Depression, I think Hoover and the GOP were loathed and FDR and his memory were revered. Eisenhower was deservedly well loved but Nixon appeared to people like my father as the heartless GOP reimpowered. The affluent people were almost always GOP. Other, less substantial reasons for disliking him came from his lack of glamour and his somewhat awkward manner, at which the Kennedy swells contemptuously sneered . The left and the academy of course hated him for scourging commies. "Tricky Dick" ? I don't know how he got that knock.He did take the gloves off in confronting domestic lefties like Helen Gahagan Douglas . Perhaps just cynical doubt of his middle class image?And of course vicious nasties like the lowlife cartoonist Herblock delighted in excoriating him. But then, I did not pay attention to politics until 1960 so I missed Nixon's early years.
ReplyDeleteRay, there's no question that, as far as Watergate is concerned, it was the "coverup" that undid Nixon -- not the crime itself. Now, Nixon made a convincing case in his memoirs that there was no coverup. He claims that he ordered the FBI to investigate the matter fully. Maybe so, but there were all sorts of shenanigans swirling around the Plumbers and other Nixon agents. Plenty of bad judgement calls were made, and plenty of laws were broken. None of that had ever mattered before, of course, but in 1972-74, all of a sudden the Dems and the media discovered they had a puritanical/moralistic streak. And the rest is history.
ReplyDeleteJack, many traditional, salt-of-the-earth Dems may have loathed Nixon, but few Republicans since 1945 have done more to undermine the base of the Democratic Party than Nixon, and to win over its adherents. A lot of those working class Dems you're talking about VOTED for Nixon the second time around. No, I don't think class antagonisms can explain Watergate. That was a question of ELITE hatred of Nixon, which is an entirely separate phenomenon.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Yeah but, have any "squad " members been officially scrutinized as has Tulsi? "Apostates" are often the object of especially intense vindictiveness from powers they have renounced and abjured.
ReplyDeleteI remember in the '60s or early '70s a frantic youthful SDS type declaring they would "go into the factories and show the working class how capitalists have wronged them". A prominent union guy replied "all those punks will get from us is a punch in the mouth". You are right: myriad everyday people had come to the realization that the country had experienced since the mid '60s an astonishing emergence of a powerful, reflexively counterintuitive political faction which manifested unimaginable contempt for America and that Nixon shared that perception and that consequent outrage with them. So they gave him a landslide in '72. As Watergate developed, they were alarmed by the progress of the phenomenon described in the MSM most of them still trusted. Nixon's downfall was guaranteed when the House Judiciary Committee voted, with the very reluctant support of representatives who had held out for NIxon until it became completely untenable, the articles of impeachment. And his replacement by Gerry Ford, a likeable decent guy with Nixonian political inclinations was something middle America could live with. I know, the uproar about the pardon might gainsay that view but I heard Prosecutor Leon Jaworski say, in a speech I attended, that the pardon was just. You are right though, the elite "hated " Nixon and danced attendance upon his disgrace. It was vicious and ugly beyond description and a now openly and very appallingly powerful radical left means to work similar destruction on DJT , using as their front a Kamala as much of an obsequious cipher as was Biden in 2020. History shows commies never capture the soul of a country, they enslave it.
Jack, one wonders whether the members of a president's own party would ever disavow and desert him nowadays as Republicans did to Nixon back in '74. Maybe. I mean, look what the Dems just did to Biden! One common thread is just how trivial the views of the voters are. We really are at the mercy of two parties that think they can do virtually anything to and with us. Until we prove them wrong, I guess they can.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: Good points!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddyb from Jack: But in a free polity where one vote usually consists of no more than one, organization and mobilization of similar views is inevitable. And better organization and appeal to popular sentiment usually results in better results. As Churchill said: "democracy is the worst system until you consider all the others".
ReplyDeleteBut: let me assure you: the GOP stuck with Nixon until it was untenable. I mean, to have otherwise abandoned a man who had commanded such a massive victory in '72 would have been unthinkable.
Hmm. I'm not sure I follow. It was the GOP's abandonment of Nixon that made his presidency "untenable". He LITERALLY could have survived anything but that. The bottom line is that his fellow Republicans did abandon him, because the "opinion leaders" told them to (and the voters went along, as they always did, in those innocent days).
ReplyDelete