Friends, the media always had nothing but contempt for poor Lindsey Graham, and death didn't ameliorate their disdain in the least, as you can see from the cartoon above. To the Left, Graham was a warmonger and a toady, and his close alliance with Trump sealed the deal, as far as they were concerned, on his odiousness. Well, on this week's Newsmakers show, Brian and I take a more magnanimous tack. Graham was a patriot, and he befriended DJT not because he was intrinsically inclined to support his brash populism (we all know he wasn't), but because he felt it was in the best interests of these United States, and that's a pretty good reason, when you get right down to it. Also on this week's show, Brian and I discuss the migrant invasion of Spain's outpost of Ceuta, the developing civil war within the Democratic Party, the fiasco of Dr. Fauci's appearance before the Senate, and more!
https://wysl.podbean.com/e/newsmakers-8-1-26/
In other news, it's possible that the gloves may come off in our conflict with Iran, i.e. Israel will rejoin the assault, and new energy infrastructure targets will be hit, in a bid to increase the pressure on the mullahs. I say: blast 'em with both barrels!!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-israel-iran-war-energy-related-targets-trump/
Dr. Waddy : Just for "fun" lets do some speculating on what prospects conceivably may be in store in this year's extraordinary rise of Marxism in our country.
ReplyDeleteBy this time next week we may have much perceived acceleration in this ominous trend. By next year at this time these possibilities are not forbiddingly fantastic: a DSA controlled nominal Dem majority House with either a DSA factotum or an out and out DSA member two steps away from the Presidency AND/OR Senate Majority Leader Sanders and a DSA member third in line to the Presidency OR an irreparable formal split in a Dem caucus which puts both remnants in minority status but capable of coalition on some issues. Just sayin'. . . .
Dr. Waddy: Re: the Newsmaker broadcast: Its interesting to compare and contrast the disdain and castigation visited on Presidents Reagan and Trump but also on President Nixon and Clinton.
ReplyDeletePresident Reagan was dismissed by the left as an interloper presuming on a mediocre acting career to toy with the closed blood sport of politics. Had he embraced their tutelage he might have made a useful shill but he was as insolent as to have convictions opposite to theirs.He defeated Carter and Mondale but neither of them inspired much of the dominating emotional attachment the Dems so often invest in their "Dear Leaders". As I remember he was resented and regarded with reflexively bemused contempt , except by the electorate and those for whom he played a major role in freeing them from the Marxist jackboot. This once apparently unprepossessing man had greatness in him which he manifested in the Presidency and which places him far above his kneejerk detractors in history's regard.
President Nixon was a WWII vet and apparently a chamber of commerce kind of guy lacking in prestigious university connections who might yet have parlayed this into a comfortable Congressional career. But he was presumptuous enough to take on aristocratic Alger Hiss for what he knew and for what time confirmed as Hiss's pro Soviet disloyalty. That earned him the vicious antipathy of an American left smarting from its deserved comeuppance for its admiration of Marxists.
But equally significant in the raw reflexive hatred directed against him by a print media already incipiently traveling the road of liberal and then far left obsequiousness, was this: he was unapologetically and genuinely a middle class , self made man and he was unforgivably unfashionable. He might well have received some of the resentment which might have been directed at staid 'ol Ike but for Ike's heroism and the reverence it manifested. Up until the advent in the national polity of DJT I think the cruel personal onslaught on Nixon and the delight shown by so many when he fell, was of a kind with the worst visited upon President Lincoln . (more . . . .)
Dr. Waddy: The detestable injustice of the personal , political and legal hazards visited upon President Trump by an American left which embraces a bad will toward which a defining term exceeding the superlative of hatred is needed, is familiar to us all. We need not reprise it here ; we have all experienced its shameful viciousness. Its worse, I think, than the total of what President Nixon had to endure and I never thought I'd see that again.
ReplyDeleteThe mostly now "far" "American" left saw DJT also as a ludicrous interloper who then had the temerity and the irreverence to deny their darling Hillary a tenure in the White House which was" of RIGHT, hers for the taking." That was quite enough for him to earn their close to murderous hostility but then he went and actually led in the most heretic and effective opposition ever faced by the unrelenting , imperious and grimly vindictive radical left. His empowerment has brought them to a white heat of frustration and outrage unseen in reaction to the tenure of any President I think. One of its consequences may well be the rise of an astonishing viability of the historically condemned doctrine of Marxism. His selfless resolve and perseverance in countering them may have manifested what may prove to have been an inevitable showdown between American democracy and an intensely counterintuitive totalitarian domestic impulse.
Clinton was the most amoral and obscene person ever to disgrace the White House. He was the archetype of the insouciantly presumptuous far left faction of the enormous baby boom generation. In a generation so massive , any faction had an inordinate effect on American civilization and Clinton's shameful rise was exemplary in this.
He was deservedly impeached and the Dem party disgraced itself beyond measure by defending him, especially when they had a VP who would have floated their radical boat with enthusiasm . Though the far left factoti in the Dem leadership, the then nearly dominant MSM and those major cultural institutions like the American academy and the debauched entertainment amoeba, did their best best to damp it down, many retained a profound disdain for this rollicking smirking and leering con man.
Dr. Waddy: the prolific political cartoonist Herblock published an infamous one depicting NIxon rising from a gutter, dripping with dark effluent and buttonholing John Q. Citizen " oh, but I'll be different if you elect me!"
ReplyDeleteNIxon did not deserve such castigation but a latter day Herblock on our side could depict these DSA thugs as they are . That is, spuming from the Marxist hell holes they so admire, covered with the congealed blood of 100 million killed by their own unimpeachably "just" regimes and bidding America trust them!
One of their spokespersons was interviewed by a Fox news representative and she freely acknowledged that the DSA platform advocates the abolishment of the police, of prisons , of the U.S. Senate, the expansion of the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp for a no doubt DSA Chief Executive and their "legislature" and of the hastening of the inevitable death of free enterprise and private property.
What gives? They can't possibly believe they can be elected by promising such insanity can they? Already some of them are backing off on it: "well, my views are 'evolving' " Maybe that's the ticket all along: "why those dreamers are just our fringe and we are a 'democratic' big tent! We are working class, beer and a shot yuh know!"
Dr. Waddy: I never did pay much attention to Senator Graham but I can see now how valuable he was to America. These far leftists are cold, cold fish they are( "oh but we'll be different once we are in charge"). They have brought a level of ferocious antipathy to our polity maybe unseen since the 1850s. Yes the '60s whelp America condemners brought a still astonishing degree of ingracious presumptive naivete to bear on our national life but they were unable to achieve electoral power for a long time. When they did , they gave us a President whose only conviction was getting high from myriad stimulants like power, adulation, attention retribution and "le laisons dangereuse ". The Obamas came in with "revolution" on their minds but quickly "submitted " to the comfortable perks of office.
ReplyDeleteBut today's radicals have gotten an intoxicating whiff of the marble and are unapologetically demonstrating their true character. They are fanatic partisans who bring a grim determination and a conviction that their cause justifies any ad hominem means to our national dialectic. And that includes affording but faint praise to a good American like Senator Graham.
Well, the DSA might rack up some wins this fall, for sure, but they won't command a majority in either house by themselves. They'll need to form a coalition with moderates to do anything approaching "governing". Of course, one can say the same thing about the MAGA crowd...
ReplyDeleteJack, it's worth remembering that the lefties were thrilled when Reagan was nominated in 1980, because they believed that cinched the election for Carter, i.e. Reagan was an unelectable buffoon. Come to think of it, the Dems usually dismiss their conservative adversaries out of hand... It's one of their most charming foibles, i.e. one of the most important reasons why they underperform in so many elections.
Jack, I'm sure you're right about why many lefties detested Nixon's STYLE, but his ideology and policies seem mostly very centrist to me. I wonder how much Vietnam explains the antipathy that the leftist establishment felt for Nixon? Sure, the Dems started the war, but most of them came to see it as Nixon's war, by the end.
Can the DSA win while being honest about its views and its goals? In much of the nation, it can, but to win in the critical swing districts and states it will need to find frontmen with more than a little subtlety and self-discipline. Talarico comes to mind...
Dr. Waddy: When I was in the Navy in '68 I voted absentee by mail and at that time I believe unavoidable absenteeism was the only standard for a mail in ballot. Since the rationales for mail in voting have multiplied, naturally an"American" far left which is devoted to using "any means necessary" to achieve its totalitarian goals has futzed with it. Its as sure as that which cows do every few minutes.
ReplyDeleteSo let's return it to its original purpose, which was to enable those completely unable to get to their polling place to exercise their right to vote. The conveniences purposed by today's standards have been most convenient for radicals for whom elections are cynical power plays alone.
Dr. Waddy: It might depend on how much influence a probably still numerical minority of DSA stalwarts may gain in this midterm election. A "moderate" majority of Dems , if only consisting mainly of those who fear that the DSA is now too openly and assertively radical to achieve ends most Dems actually endorse would probably block the election of a DSA Speaker. But if the DSA makes a big splash in the midterms and especially if it is seen as having assured nominal Dem seizure of the House, it will have its price, will it ever. The DSA will hasten to ride the highest wave it can catch. It may even think it has a chance to win the Presidency in '28. It does have a steadily more dominant demagogue in AOC and it may succeed in flim flamming a dissident and maybe massive younger voting bloc. For now, lets see the primary results from yesterday. . . .
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Talarico? Woe for Texas and America if he is elected. He's playing the same disingenuous game Comrade Governor of VA. did to get in.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: As I remember: Nixon campaigned in '68 promising that he had a plan for resolving our Vietnam commitment with honor. Gradual "Vietnamization " was the strategy he followed in his first term and he sharply reduced the number of troops we had there. The careful pace at which he pursued this strategy coupled with far left stoked outrage at our necessary incursion in Cambodia did generate impatience even among some Americans of good will.
ReplyDeleteBut long before Vietnam was a factor, the American left had manifested a viciously bigoted intolerance of Nixon analogous to Trump derangement syndrome. Nixon, in just being Nixon, was an affront to them because he personified the mainstream of American civilization: reasonably satisfied with the staid status quo and unwilling to consider the sweeping change the left thought America deserved for its myriad "injustices". Their minds were reflexively closed before Vietnam to any possibility of accepting him . To the counter culture which arose during our involvement in Vietnam and with the debut of the boomers in our national life, he was already scornfully dismissed and his shattering of their smoky dreams in "Aquarian" '68 simply reiterated the left's hatred of him for standing against Marxist American "progressives"in the late '40s and the '50s.
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Jack, I don't discount the possibility of a DSA Speaker, or a DSA President, for the simple reason that, whomever the Dems nominate for either post, the media will slavishly support them, and it will demonize the Republican and characterize him (or her) as literally demonic, if needs be (and needs be!)... The further left the Dems go, the greater the political risks they take on, but I believe they would have to go AWFULLY far left to become unviable politically, given the even division of the country.
ReplyDeleteJack, I have no difficulty wrapping my head around the hatred that flower children and the revolutionary cadres had for Nixon, but the Democratic and media establishment is a whole other kettle of fish, surely. Or maybe the center-left and the left-left have more in common than I think! At the very least, they may despise the same people.
Dr. Waddy: In '73 the Dems gleefully seized on Watergate as the remedy for their mortification that Nixon had ever been elected. It took Congressional Dems to impeach him and they did so with an enthusiasm which probably cannot be fully attributed to President Nixon's wrongs in the Watergate scandal. No, I think the majority of Dems had what they had wanted ever since '52. They wanted despised and presumptuous Nixon finally put "in his place."
ReplyDeleteAll true, except technically Nixon wasn't impeached. The Dems reserved that (dis)honor for DJT.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: You are right: the House Judiciary Committee passed 3 Articles of Impeachment but President Nixon resigned before they could get to the full House. One could say his fitness to continue in office was impeached but formal Impeachment never manifested.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: It took amoral Slick Willie's insouciant boomer intransigence to manifest the first Impeachment trial since that of Andrew Johnson. That he was suffered to retain his office / house of ill repute disgraced the Dem party beyond measure. President Nixon had the good grace to resign but such rectitude was far beyond Clinton.
ReplyDelete