Month: July 2013

Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, And The Espionage Act of 1917!

Ronald 3 Comments

In 1917, after America had entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson pushed through Congress the infamous Espionage Act, designed to be used against actual spies, but manipulated instead to bring Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party leader and five time Presidential candidate to trial, and to sentence him to federal prison, with Debs only being pardoned in 1921 by President Warren G. Harding, as Wilson refused to consider such a pardon.

That was not a bright moment in our civil liberties history, and Wilson remains condemned for promoting legislation that was abused by him and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, not only the Espionage Act, but also the Sedition Act of 1918, the first such federal legislation of that name and type since the Sedition Act of 1798 under President John Adams, which was repealed under his successor, Thomas Jefferson! The Sedition Act of 1918 was repealed by Congress in late 1920, but never has that occurred for the Espionage Act!

The Espionage Act should have been repealed, but instead, it was used against Pfc, Bradley Manning, who used his position in the Army to give access to hundreds of thousands of documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan War to Wikileaks, and then, after being arrested, was horribly mistreated, including total isolation and being stripped naked, outrageous conditions he did not, and no one, deserves!

Manning has now been acquitted of “aiding the enemy” under the Espionage Act language, but still faces many years in prison, when to many, he was a “whistle blower”, who should not be prosecuted and convicted for exposing the secret actions of our government and military in both Iraq and Afghanistan, two highly unpopular wars created by the actions of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld!

The same controversy centers around Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency employee, who shocked the nation by exposing many secrets of the NSA and Central Intelligence Agency, and then fled, first to Hong Kong, and then Russia, and is trying to gain asylum in Latin America, if not Russia.

A majority of the American people see him as a “whistle blower” rather than a spy, and so the issue of how to deal with these two individuals, one military, and one civilian, divides the American people!

Two Political Giants Pass From The Scene: Lindy Boggs And William Scranton!

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In just the past couple of days, two Political Giants, one a Democrat and a woman, the other a man and a Republican, have passed from the scene, and their deaths remind us of the fact that there have been quality politicians in both parties, but the number who are such is rapidly declining!

Former Louisiana Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, the widow of former Congressman Hale Boggs, and the mother of ABC journalist Cokie Roberts, died at the age of 97. One of the greatest women ever to serve in Congress, she won her husband’s seat after he was tragically killed in a small plane over Alaska, with his body never being found, in 1972. Lindy Boggs served almost 18 years in her Louisiana House district, winning the last few times as the only white Representative in Congress to represent a majority black district. She served as the Chairwoman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention which nominated Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. She was outspoken on the subject of civil rights, and was the first woman to serve in Congress from her state. Boggs also served as Ambassador to the Vatican, the Holy See, in the second term of Bill Clinton’s Presidency from 1997-2001.

And her daughter, Cokie Roberts, became a well known, outstanding journalist on ABC for a few decades, adding much to the profession of television journalism!

Lindy Boggs was truly an elegant lady, and a woman who stands out as one of the best ever to serve in the halls of Congress!

Just today, news came of the death of former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton at age 96, who became very prominent as a one term Governor from 1963-1967, after serving one term in the House of Representatives. A progressive or liberal Republican, and proud of that appellation, Scranton ran a last ditch Presidential campaign against fellow Republican, Senator Barry Goldwater, attempting to stop his nomination for President in 1964.

Scranton came from a wealthy family which had founded Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was an inheritor of a fortune made in iron, coal, and railroads. He brought about education reform, including the community college system in his state. He also served as UN Ambassador in 1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford Presidency, and also headed a committee to investigate the Kent State University and Jackson State College tragedies which occurred after the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 under President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War! He also was asked by Nixon to be his Secretary of State, but declined, and was considered to be Gerald Ford’s Vice Presidential running mate in 1976, but passed by for Senator Bob Dole of Kansas!

The loss of two principled, decent politicians, such as Lindy Boggs and William Scranton, is a loss to American politics, and we can only hope for more people entering politics with the kind of stature and dignity that these two individuals personified!

Financial And Sexual Scandals Seem More Endemic Than Ever!

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Even for one who loves politics, it is becoming disillusioning how politicians seem unable to control their behavior, whether financial or sexual!

So just now, we see Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell facing the end of his political career, even as he is due to finish the one term limited office in his state, with the possibility of having to resign before the end of the term, facing possible prison time if put on trial for his willingness to accept massive gifts for himself and his family from corporate interests who do business with the state of Virginia, and dreams of being President going by the wayside!

And Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett seems to be facing similar accusations, and probable political destruction, proving once again that Republican officeholders are particularly obsessed with money, never having enough of it, and thinking that they are entitled to favors from their corporate friends!

But then Democrats have problems with sexual scandals, not unique to them, but right now the center of the political realities in San Diego and New York City!

San Diego Democratic Mayor Bob Filner, once a quite outstanding Congressman, hardly in his first term as Mayor, is obviously a male chauvinist, who is unable to control his behavior with women, is under fire to resign, refuses to do so, and instead is undergoing soon a two week course in how to behave, as if a 70 year old man with a major problem, can somehow resolve it almost overnight! To top it off, he is being sued for sexual harassment, and wants his legal fees paid by the city government of San Diego! What gall, and outrageous conduct, and Filner needs to be run out of town on a rail, so to speak!

And the biggest story in New York City is not the problems the city faces, but the inability of former Congressman Anthony Weiner to stop sexting, after having been caught at it two years, forcing him to resign, and claiming he had changed his behavior when he announced for Mayor, and then the discovery that he had continued to sext even recently, in an embarrassing charade for New York CIty, for his wife, and for his own reputation! And yet, he refused to quit the Mayoral race, leaving it to the voters in the primary in six weeks, to determine his fate! This man is eating up all the oxygen in the room, and the thought that he could be Mayor of the nation’s largest city is enough to make the whole concept of the importance of the Mayoralty a total joke! His wife needs to stop defending him, and push him out of the race, or else declare she is leaving him, divorcing him, and condemning him, as anything else only hurts the whole point of a suffering wife making clear she is not going to tolerate such public misbehavior any longer!

And ironically, this Weiner caper is undermining the Bill and Hillary Clinton reputation, reminding voters of the unfortunate willingness of Hillary to tolerate Bill’s sexual misbehavior, supposedly to promote her own political career, but demeaning the concept of what a wife’s reaction to her husband’s misdeeds should be!

Who can say that this Weiner disaster might not affect Hillary Clinton’s supposed status as frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination? Every day this goes on, it is as if it is dripping poison on the image of the Clintons, for those who believe in common decency in their politicians, something we are failing to see much too often at any point, but most notably right now!

Sniping Back And Forth Among Republicans: Wonderful To Witness!

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It is very clear that the Republican Party is bitterly divided on strategy toward President Obama, and on the issue of foreign policy and national security.

So we are witnessing sniping back and forth, and this is a hint of what is to come, as the Presidential rivalries heat up in the coming months!

Examples of the sniping are that between Arizona Senator John McCain and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, with it being clear that the two Senators have no love lost for each other.

At the same time, we see Governor Chris Christie supportive of the gathering of intelligence by the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, due to the reality that New Jersey suffered the second most losses on September 11, 2001, and being critical of those who are libertarian, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky!

Also, New York Congressman Peter King of Long Island has attacked the Tea Party Movement Republicans who were against aid to New York and New Jersey after Super Storm Sandy last fall!

And Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee of Utah, and Marco Rubio of Florida have been criticized for their threat to shut the government down if ObamaCare is not defunded, with major critics being John McCain, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Roy Blunt of Missouri, and Richard Burr of North Carolina!

And Establishment Republicans such as former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, former Utah Governor and Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, and George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove are shaking their heads at the splintering of the party, and the recklessness of many of the younger members of the party in the House of Representatives and Senate, as they well know that the future of the party is in tatters, if this extremist wing is allowed to become the face and image of the party! Finally,

Finally, Iowa Congressman Steve King’s ranting against immigrants has led to condemnation by Speaker of the House John Boehner and others in the Republican Party.

It looks more than ever as if the GOP is on the way to the worst Presidential defeat for their party since the demise of Barry Goldwater in 1964, nearly fifty years ago, and even Goldwater now looks “moderate” by comparison, and far less reckless!

Economic Reality Grim For Most Americans, Whether Based On Race Or Education Level!

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Growing evidence shows that the effects of the Great Recession, and really the policies of Republican Presidents and Congresses since 1980, have created a grim reality for a vast majority of Americans—likelihood of poverty, deprivation, and lack of opportunity, even for college graduates in large numbers for a long period of years! And where one lives does, and will have a dramatic effect on the long term futures of millions of citizens!

A study shows that four out of five adults in America will struggle with joblessness, near poverty, or reliance on welfare for part of their lives! 76 percent of whites will experience such a situation by the age of 60!

15 percent of the American people, nearly 47 million of the population, are in poverty, with higher percentages of African Americans and Hispanic-Latinos, but in absolute numbers, whites are 41 percent or 19 million of the poor, double what African Americans are in numbers. Most of these poor whites live in Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and the heartland of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Great Plains, areas of rural communities , and even in many suburbs, in areas where 60 percent of the poor are whites.

So working class whites, those without college degrees, are in a terrible state, unable to look forward to the accomplishment of the “American Dream”!

But the problem is that even those who have a college education are facing a horrible job market. Many are unemployed, while even more who are working, are underemployed, working part time, and also, many are working in jobs that do not require a college degree, so are wasting years trying to break in to the job market they planned for, but are unable to engage in, due to the Great Recession and its aftermath!

Additionally, it has been demonstrated that where one lives has a dramatic effect on climbing up the income ladder! Social mobility up the income ladder is MUCH harder in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, including such cities as Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis,. Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus!

At the same time, social mobility and rising up the income ladder is best in the Northeast and the West, including New York, Boston, large areas of California and Minnesota, and Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Salt Lake City.

It is extremely disturbing that earlier studies of social mobility demonstrate that a smaller percentage of people escape childhood poverty in America than in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan.

Affluent children tend to remain so, achieving a lot of success by as young as age 30, while children from poverty rarely see much improvement, and that is not just a race issue, as whites have the same results, based on how they were born, rich or poor!

The need to deal with social mobility and opportunity, for working class whites and minorities, are the agenda that Barack Obama is pursuing as he travels the nation, calling for an economic plan for the future, including improvements in education, infrastructure, new technologies, and environmental challenges to overcome climate change!

There is no more important agenda for the nation than the providing of economic opportunity, in a nation where the middle class has been decimated, from its high point, 40 years ago, in 1973!

Defunding ObamaCare Demonstrating Cracks In Republican Party And Its Final Demise!

Ronald 25 Comments

It looks more than ever that a full scale civil war is erupting in the Republican Party in Congress, with 60 Tea Party radicals in the House and 12 Senators joining together to create a new budget and financial crisis with President Obama and the Democrats, unless defunding of ObamaCare is accomplished, but facing vehement opposition from the majority of Republicans in the Senate, and leaving Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, trying to avoid the crossfire and save his own seat in next year’s midterm elections!

The Tea Party is a bunch of anarchistic lunatics, and prominent Senators, including Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Marco Rubio of Florida, by allowing themselves to associate with this extremist group, are setting up. not only a political donnybrook among their own competing desires to be the GOP Presidential nominee, but insuring a conflict of massive proportions with “Establishment” Republicans, and even, fellow conservatives, who see what they are attempting to do to destroy funding of ObamaCare as suicidal, giving the Democrats a fantastic platform which could help to wipe out the Republican majority House of Representatives, and any chance of the GOP to gain six seats and control of the US Senate!

Among the Republicans who have denounced any move on defunding ObamaCare, while not agreeing with the program, are:

Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin
John McCain of Arizona
Roy Blunt of Missouri
Richard Burr of North Carolina

Mitch McConnell is trying to stay out of the crossfire, and so is Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is facing pressure from Michele Bachmann and other Tea Party House members.

The more rational Republicans listed above, while certainly strong conservatives, see the GOP being portrayed as reckless and being run by the inmates of an insane asylum, if they were to create a new fiscal crisis, at a time when they desperately want to have the possibility of Republican control of both houses!

Can one just imagine now what it will be like when the ambitious Tea Party Presidential seekers compete against each other, and face the Establishment types in the caucuses, primaries, and national convention three years from now?

It will be great entertainment, great political theater, and we will all be able to watch and witness the disintegration, the dissolution, the crumbling, and the destruction of a once great political party, insuring what will happen anyway, due to the Electoral College math—the election of a Democratic President and a stronger Democratic Party in the future!

The Republican Party is fighting against demographic change and the tides of history, and they are insuring their vanishing from American politics if they continue their destructive path, which seems like an ongoing tornado that cannot be stopped! They MUST stop listening to FOX News Channel and conservative talk show hosts, who have no concern about the future, other than their own financial gains and notoriety!

Presidents Who Could Have Had Third Terms In Office

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Anyone who studies American history knows that our only President who had more than two terms (eight years) in office was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who actually was elected four times, and served a total of 12 years and 39 days before dying in office in 1945.

But there were others who could have had more than eight years in office, were it not because of their own decision not to seek another term, or due to constitutional limitations via the 22nd Amendment!

These potential cases of Presidents who could have had more than eight years in office include:

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), who would have won a third term had he chosen to run, but instead his Vice President, Martin Van Buren, ran and won the Presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), who served seven and a half years after succeeding William McKinley six months into his second term, and then chose not to run in 1908, backing William Howard Taft who won, and then challenging Taft in 1912, on a third party line (Progressive Party), but lost to him. Despite the loss, TR won six states and 88 electoral votes, the best third party performance in American history.

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), who served five and a half years in the Presidency, after succeeding Warren G. Harding after two and a half years in office, and decided not to run in 1928, and instead, we saw Herbert Hoover win the Presidency.

These three Presidents mentioned above were popular enough to have won another term, and in each case, would have ended up serving more than eight years in office, as FDR did!

And then there are four Presidents since the 22nd Amendment limitation of two terms or ten years in office if succeeding to the Presidency with less than two years left of the term when they became President, all of whom could have been elected to another term, had there been no such limit!

Dwight D. Eisenhower could have won and run a third term in 1960, as could Ronald Reagan in 1988, and Bill Clinton in 2000, while Lyndon B. Johnson, had he not dropped out in 1968, likely would have beaten Richard Nixon, since his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, came close to doing so, and did not have the fact of being President to help him win the election!

It is interesting that in all cases mentioned except three—Eisenhower, Johnson, and Clinton–the party of the President who did not run for reelection won the election. Eisenhower saw Richard Nixon lose a close election, despite much evidence of a fixed result for John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Johnson saw Humphrey lose to Nixon in another close election, where LBJ would likely have turned the tide! And Al Gore lost in 2000, despite a popular vote majority, due to the intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000, giving the Presidency to George W. Bush!

So instead of one President with 12 years and 39 days in the Presidency, we could have had, additionally, Andrew Jackson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton with 12 years in office; Theodore Roosevelt with 11 and a half years in office; and Calvin Coolidge with nine and a half years in office and Lyndon B. Johnson with nine years and two months in office!

And Martin Van Buren, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush might never have been President if the Presidents before had sought or been able to seek a third term in the Presidency!

PS Another thought that has come to me, belatedly, is that Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897), the only President with two nonconsecutive terms, actually won the popular vote in 1888, but lost in the Electoral College. Had the result been different, Cleveland, in theory, might have run in 1892, anyway, and could have been a three term President, and Benjamin Harrison would never have been President!

60th Anniversary Of Korean War Truce Ending “Forgotten War”!

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On luly 27, 1953, after three years and one month of a undeclared war, the Korean conflict, which killed 33,000 American soldiers, ended in a truce, and the establishment of a demilitarized zone, and an uneasy relationship between the Republic of South Korea and Communist North Korea, a tense atmosphere which has continued, and has come close to the beginning of a new conflict.

35,000 American troops remain in what has become the prosperous, democratic South Korea, expecting a major war at any time, and the United Nations, which led the war under American supervision and that of about 18 other nations, continues to have a role in the on-off negotiations to bring about a much hoped for, but unlikely, permanent peace treaty between the two Koreas.

Meanwhile, Communist North Korea remains the most closed society in the world, with the population being brutalized by three generations of a family that has brought the nation down to dire poverty and total fear, a true totalitarian society on the level of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Korea remains a war that most Americans do not have a clue about, and most could not find Korea on a map, due to ignorance of our history after World War II, and the much greater controversies that swirled around the later Vietnam War.

Korea remains even today the most likely place for another major American commitment of troops, if South Korea is ever attacked by North Korea, whether conventional war or nuclear attack, since North Korea has been testing nuclear weapons and defying the world community, under the leadership of grandson Kim Jong Un, successor to Kim Il Sung, and Kim Jong Il!

The Korean War Memorial in Washington DC is a reminder of the sacrifices of our troops and the other nations which fought for the South Korean survival, and South Korea recovered from massive loss of life and property, and is a proud example of democracy today!

Only four American veterans of the Korean War serve in Congress, and none from World War II, as we see Congress today with pompous members who talk about war, and yet, in most cases, have never experienced military service. It is easy to send others to war, while one sits and pontificates and is ready to send others to fight!

Let us hope that no more blood is shed in the Korean peninsula, and that rationality and common sense rules!

Harry Truman And Integration Of Armed Forces In 1948: True Beginning Of Modern Civil Rights Movement 65 Years Ago!

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On this day in 1948, 65 years ago, President Harry Truman, who had grown up in a traditional Southern Confederate home in Missouri, took a very courageous step, integrating the military by executive order, causing an uproar in the South and in the military itself, but standing by his decision that segregation and second class citizenship in the military must stop, particularly after the major contribution of African Americans during World War II.

This was the first Presidential action since Ulysses S. Grant promoted the Civil Rights Acts during his administration 75 years earlier.

It harmed Truman’s quest for a full term, spurring the creation of the States Rights party (Dixiecrats), and the candidacy of Strom Thurmond for President, and Thurmond won four Southern states and 39 electoral votes, the second best total ever until that time, but Truman pulled out a miraculous victory anyway!

Truman followed up the action on the military, by integrating Washington, DC, which had been ordered segregated by executive order of Woodrow Wilson in 1913!

What Truman did had an effect on the Supreme Court and future Presidents and Congresses, and the civil rights movement owes a lot to the courage and principle and decency of President Truman, who took a stand that could have defeated him, but that he knew was the right thing to do!

60th Anniversary Of Castro Revolution In Cuba: What Is The Future?

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60 years ago on this day, Fidel Castro led a failed attempt to seize an army barracks, which is marked as the beginning of his revolutionary uprising against Fulgencio Batista, leading after five and a half years of struggle to his seizure of power in Havana on January 1, 1959.

Fidel Castro gave up power due to medical problems in 2006, after 47 plus years of leadership, but his brother Raul succeeded him, and the Castro dynasty is still in power in Cuba after 54 and a half years, and Fidel Castro will be 87 years of age nest month, and is reported in good health.

Fidel Castro, as evil a man as he is, will go down as the most significant Latin American government leader of the past century of history, with only Juan Peron of Argentina a weak second behind him.

The effect of Cuba on the international scene has been massive, considering the fact that Cuba never made a dent in world affairs before Castro, and we nearly had nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union 51 years ago, a year and a half after a failed American attempt to use Cuban exiles to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco!

And our domestic politics has been profoundly affected by the loyalty of the few million Cuban Americans to the Republican Party, making them a distinct Hispanic group in their political behavior, particularly in Florida!

We have also seen three Cuban US Senators–Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ted Cruz of Texas–who have a great impact in the US Senate, as well as a few in the House of Representatives. Menendez is the lone Cuban Democrat who has made it to a prominent position, Chairman of The Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The question is what will happen when Fidel and Raul Castro leave the scene, at least officially in 2018, according to the plans of Raul Castro to retire. How will Cuba evolve, and how will the United States react to change in Cuba? Will democracy develop in Cuba or come about by a new revolution, or will the Castro influence and Communism persist in Cuba?

This island, just 90 miles from the Florida Keys, will become the center of world politics again very soon, and what happens there will affect America domestically and in foreign affairs for the long term future, just as it has for the past six decades!

The Castro brothers have managed to survive in power through the terms of 11 Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama! It is an amazing story just by that reality!