Posts Tagged ‘2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 5, 2018 at 12:09 am
Fifty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King was shot to death as he stood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He had come there to lead a march of striking garbage workers.
New York United States Senator—and now Presidential candidate—Robert Francis Kennedy had been scheduled to give a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, before a black audience.
Just before he drove into the city to deliver his address, he learned of King’s assassination. There was a real danger that rioting would erupt. Police who had been assigned to protect him said they wouldn’t accompany him into the inner city.
Kennedy drove off anyway, leaving behind his police escort.
Standing on a podium mounted on a flatbed truck, Kennedy spoke for just four minutes and 57 seconds.
His waiting audience hadn’t yet learned of King’s death. Kennedy broke the news to gasps, and then gave an impromptu speech eulogizing the slain civil rights leader.
For the first time since the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, he spoke publicly of that killing. He noted that JFK—like King—had also been killed by a white man.
And he called upon the crowd to “dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
Riots erupted in 60 cities following King’s death—but not in Indianapolis.
Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort from those aroused by Donald Trump.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
In October, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his wise counsel helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. As a U.S Senator he championed civil rights and greater Federal efforts to fight poverty.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished—while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4—when he was shot in the back of the head.
His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6. He was 42.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime—and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia—and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 23, 2018 at 12:22 am
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields—a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative—came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about Donald Trump.
Eerily, their conclusions echo those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
Heinz Guderian
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941.
He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Moderator Judy Woodruff noted that “polls show Trump’s standing with women voters has worsened in recent months.”
A Washington Post/ABC News poll revealed that 64% of women said they had a strongly unfavorable reaction to Trump. That was 18 points higher than it was in August, 2015.
Judy Woddruff
This led David Brooks to declare that Trump has shown “a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent.”
Judy Woodruff noted that Fox News Correspondent Megyn Kelly “has asked him tough questions” in a recent debate.
MARK SHIELDS: “She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.
“But there is something really creepy about this that’s beyond locker room. It’s almost like a stalker, and I just—I thought this was—it actually did the impossible. It made Ted Cruz look like an honorable, tough guy on the right side of an issue.”
Donald Trump
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Once in power, Hitler quickly—and violently—eliminated his opposition.
He make no attempt to disguise this aspect of his character, because the opposition was weak and divided and soon collapsed after the first violent attack.
This allowed Hitler to pass laws which destroyed the safeguards enacted by the Weimar Republic against the the dangers of dictatorship.
MARK SHIELDS: “And I don’t know at what point it becomes…politically, he’s still leading. And I would have to say he’s the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler promised to “make Germany great again” both domestically and internationally. And this won him many followers. In time he controlled the largest party in the land and this allowed him, by democratic procedure, to assume power.
DAVID BROOKS: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: [Hitler] was isolated as a human being. He had no real friend. There was nobody who was really close to him.
Adolf Hitler
There was nobody he could talk to freely and openly. And just as he never found a true friend, he was denied the ability to deeply love a woman.
DAVID BROOKS: “And [Trump’s] relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Everything on this earth that casts a glow of warmth over our life as mortals—friendship with fine men, the pure love for a wife, affection for one’s own children—all this was and forever remained unknown to him.
DAVID BROOKS: “And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the aurhoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude toward women.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: He lived alone, cherishing his loneliness, with only his gigantic plans for company. His relationship with Eva Braun may seem to contradict what I have written. But it is obvious that she could not have had any influence over him. And this is unfortunate, for it could only have been a softening one.
* * * * *
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content.”
On November 8, 2016, 62,979,879 ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans catapulted Donald Trump—a man with an “odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity”—into the Presidency.
And thus this man—“who received no love, can give no love”—assumed all the awesome power that goes with that office.
Future historians—if there are any—will similarly condemn those Americans who stood by like “good Germans” and allowed their country to fall into the hands of a ruthless tyrant.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 22, 2018 at 12:30 am
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
—Lord Acton
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks appear every Friday on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
On March 25, 2016, Shields—a liberal, and Brooks, a conservative—came to some disturbingly similar conclusions about the character of Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump.
As the business magnate moved ever closer to winning the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, both columnists appeared increasingly dismayed.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
Eerily, their conclusions about Trump’s character echoed those reached by former Panzer General Heinz Guderian about German dictator Adolf Hitler.
Guderian created the concept of motorized blitzkrieg warfare, whereby masses of tanks and planes moved in coordination to strike at the vital nerve centers of an enemy.
As a result, Guderian enabled Hitler to conquer France in only six weeks in 1940, and to come to the brink of crushing the Soviet Union in 1941. He recounted his career as the foremost tank commander of the Third Reich in his 1950 autobiography, Panzer Leader.
Heinz Guderian
Moderator Judy Woodruff opened the discussion by alluding to the blood feud then raging between Trump and his fellow Republican, Texas U.S. Senator Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Both were seeking their party’s Presidential nomination—and both were ruthlessly determined to attain it.
Cruz accused Trump of being behind a recent National Enquirer story charging him with having a series of extramarital affairs.
An anti-Trump Super PAC posted on Facebook a photo of a scantily-clad Melania Trump—his wife. The photo had been taken 16 years ago when, as a model, she posed for British GQ. Its publication came just ahead of the primary caucuses in sexually conservative Utah, which Cruz won.
Trump quickly responded on Twitter, accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the photo, warning Cruz: “Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”
Cruz struck back, defending his wife, Heidi, and calling Trump a coward. The next day, Trump retweeted an unflattering image of Mrs. Cruz.
Heidi Cruz
By MaverickLittle (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This “war of the wives” had cost Trump dearly in his standing with American women. In March, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 64% of women felt highly unfavorably disposed toward him.
DAVID BROOKS: “The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat.
Donald Trump
“It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again.
“But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his–even his misogyny is a childish misogyny….
“He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: As Hitler’s self-confidence grew, and as his power became more firmly established both inside and outside Germany, he became overbearing and arrogant. Everyone appeared to him unimportant compared to himself.
Previously, Hitler had been open to practical considerations, and willing to discuss matters with others. But now he became increasingly autocratic.
Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields if the uproar over Donald Trump’s disdain for women could really hurt his candidacy.
MARK SHIELDS: The ad featuring a scantily-clad Melania Trump “elicited from Donald Trump the worst of his personality, the bullying, the misogyny, as David has said, brought it out.
“But I think it’s more than childish and juvenile and adolescent. There is something creepy about this, his attitude toward women.
“Take Megyn Kelly of FOX News, who he just has an absolute obsession about, and he’s constantly writing about, you know, how awful she is and no talent and this and that.
Megyn Kelly
“And I don’t know if he’s just never had women—strong, independent women in his life who have spoken to him. It doesn’t seem that way….”
Judy Woodruff noted that Kelly “has asked him tough questions” in a recent debate.
MARK SHIELDS: “She just asked him tough questions and was totally fair, by everybody else’s standards.”
HEINZ GUDERIAN: Hitler’s most outstanding quality was his will power. It was by this that he compelled men to follow him. When Hitler spoke to a small group he closely observed each person to determine how his words were affecting each man present.
If he noticed that some member of the group was not being swayed by his speech, he spoke directly to that person until he believed he had won him over. But if the target of his persuasive effort still remained obstinate, Hitler would exclaim: “I haven’t convinced that man!”
His immediate reaction was to get rid of such people. As he grew increasingly successful, he grew increasingly intolerant.
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In History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on March 8, 2018 at 12:06 am
On January 12, the Wall Street Journal announced in a front-page headline:
TRUMP LAWYER ARRANGED $130,000 PAYMENT
FOR ADULT FILM-STAR’S SILENCE
According to the story that followed, real estate mogul Donald Trump had his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016.
The payment was to ensure her silence about a tryst she had had with Trump in July, 2006.
The hush-money payment came while Trump was the Republican nominee for President—and the election was less than a month away.
At the time of the payoff, Daniels—whose real name is Stephanie Clifford—was reportedly in talks to be a guest on Good Morning America and be interviewed by Slate. She was also talking with The Daily Beast about an interview.
Then she backed out on November 3—five days before voters went to the polls.
Stormy Daniels in 2007 (Wikipedia)
Cohen initially said that Trump Trump “vehemently denies” they met.
But on February 13, Cohen said he paid $130,000 of his own money to Daniels: “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”
Cohen didn’t explain why, if there had been no affair between Trump and Daniels, he paid $130,000 of his own money to a woman making false claims.
On January 17, 2018, In Touch Weekly published excerpts of a 2011 interview it had obtained with Daniels, where she had bragged of having a 2006 extramarital affair with Trump.
According to her, she met him at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Trump asked for her number and she gave it to him. Then he asked if she would like to have dinner with him and she said yes. She went up to his hotel room where they ate dinner and talked. And then had sex.
Donald Trump
Trump had married his third wife, Melania, on January 22, 2005. At the time of his tryst with Daniels, Melania Trump was caring for their four-month-old son, Barron.
This was not Trump’s only encounter with Daniels.
Throughout 2007, Trump tried to persuade Daniels to land a her own TV show.
He gave her the phone numbers of his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, and his secretary, Rhona.
Whenever Daniels wanted to reach him, Trump immediately took her call or called back in 10 minutes. His number was always blocked.
Trump called her about every 10 days. He would start the conversation by asking, “How’s it going, honeybunch?”
For whatever reason, Daniels never landed a TV show of her own.
While in bed with Trump, Daniels told In Touch, she thought: “Please don’t try to pay me.” She thought of herself as a porn-star, not as a prostitute. But then she thought: “I bet if he did, it would be a lot.”
Apparently, Daniels has since decided that $130,000 wasn’t enough. In the months since the Wall Street Journal revealed the affair, she has made a grab for publicity, if not notoriety—and the monies that come with it.
After all, she will be 39 on March 17—long past her prime as a porn star in an industry that chews up women like raw meat.
As The Atlantic phrased it in a January 31 article, “The Upside Down Logic of Stormy Daniels”: “The adult-film actor and director is engaged in a promotional tour where she can’t discuss events she says never took place.”
On January 20, she began touring national strip clubs as part of her “Make America Horny Again” publicity campaign.
Ten days later—the same day as Trump’s first State of the Union address before Congress—she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
But Kimmel—-and his viewers—were seriously disappointed. Instead of spewing a lot of salacious details, she gave a series of giggled non-answers to questions about her encounter with Trump.
Only hours before the interview, Daniels had issued a statement, once again denying that she had ever had a sexual affair with Trump.
“Did you sign this letter that was released today?” asked Kimmel.
“I don’t know, did I?” Daniels coyly replied. “That doesn’t look like my signature …I do not know where it came from.”
Clearly, she was trying to have it both ways: To cash in on her newfound notoriety and avoid being sued for violating the hush-money’s non-disclosure clause.
Apparently she tired of being unable reap the publicity—and money—of sharing all the sordid details of the affair.
So, on March 6, she had her lawyer file a lawsuit on her behalf.
The filing, in Los Angeles Superior Court, states that Trump never signed the nondisclosure agreement presented to her in 2016, rendering it null and void.
Daniels claims she isn’t suing for money—but to ensure that she can tell her story without fear of being sued for violating the confidentiality agreement.
But if she can do so, the financial rewards will be considerable—such as a book deal and paid appearances at various clubs.
Whatever the outcome, for Trump, the episode marks yet another stain on his thoroughly scandal-stained reputation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 8, 2018 at 12:19 am
Since taking office as President, Donald Trump has openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
FBI headquarters
As a result, he has:
- Fired James Comey, the FBI director pursuing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential race to ensure Trump’s election.
- Threatened to fire Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, who continued that investigation after Trump fired Comey.
- Repeatedly attacked—verbally and on Twitter—his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
- (Sessions did so after the press revealed that, during the 2016 race, he twice met secretly with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.)
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for pursuing the Russia investigation.
- Pressured House Republicans to release a highly partisan memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.
But the FBI need not meekly accept such assaults.
A February 2 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offers a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.
A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.
Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.
Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.
MENDEZ: I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.
REAGAN: I do not.
MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.
REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.
MENDEZ: We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.
Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office. Later, he returns:
MENDEZ: We’ve got a serious problem.
REAGAN: Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.
MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.
REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.
MENDEZ: What are you going to do?
REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.
MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.
REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.
MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.
At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.
MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?
REAGAN: No.
MENDEZ: Bad news.
REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.
MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.
REAGAN: He was with a married woman.
MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.
REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.
MENDEZ: Sheesh!
REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.
MENDEZ: So what are we doing?
REAGAN: If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].
MENDEZ: Who else knows?
REAGAN: Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.
MENDEZ: Your judgment?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?
REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.
MENDEZ: I have your word on that?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.
Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Yet he hasn’t filed a single slander suit.
Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.
Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.
“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”
It’s time the FBI learned—and applied—that same lesson.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 30, 2018 at 12:15 am
On January 17, In Touch Weekly published excerpts of a 2011 interview it had obtained with porn star Stormy Daniels. In it, she had bragged of having a 2006 extramarital tryst with Donald Trump.
Since then, the story has provided fodder for magazine writers and comedians—such as late night Late Night TV host Stephen Colbert.
On the eve of President Trump’s attending an economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, Colbert joked: There was a good reason why First Lady Melania Trump wasn’t traveling with him:
“Yes, there were logistical issues. For instance, the weather. She was afraid it was going to be too Stormy.”
Trump and Stormy
Trump and Stormy
When his wife’s away, Trump thinks, “Why worry?
Sex with sluts is kinky.
And they don’t mind I’m really stinky.”
But for Melania, the scandal can’t be a laughing matter.
On January 26, her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, tweeted: “The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into ‘main stream media’ reporting. She is focused on her family & role as FLOTUS – not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news.”
While Trump was in Davos, Melania visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She then flew to West Palm Beach, Florida.
Notably, she didn’t post a photo of herself with Trump to mark his first year as President. Instead, she posted on Twitter a picture of herself grinning while standing next to an unsmiling Marine.
There has been much speculation on social media about whether Melania might divorce Trump—now or later—over his rampant infidelities.
(In his infamous 2005 Access Hollywood exchange with Billy Bush, Trump admitted: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful–I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.)
Donald Trump, Adrianne Zucker and Billy Bush
What would happen if Melania decided to file for divorce while they still occupied the White House?
The Presidency of Andrew Jackson provides a partial answer.
In 1829, his Secretary of War, John Eaton, married Margaret “Peggy” O’Neill, a former tavern maid with a supposedly lurid past.
In 1828, Margaret’s first husband, John B. Timberlake, a navy sailor, had died unexpectedly. Rumors circulated that he had committed suicide over his wife’s alleged affair with Eaton. (Medical examiners concluded that Timberlake died of pneumonia brought on by pulmonary disease.)
Both Eaton and Margaret denied the affair, claiming to be nothing more than friends. When they married shortly after Timberlake’s death, the ladies of Washington society ostracized the new couple.
Jackson sympathized with his friend, Eaton. Jackson’s late wife Rachel—whom he had unwittingly married before her divorce from her first husband was final—had also been the victim of social gossip when she first came to Washington.
Vice President John C. Calhoun’s wife, Floride, led Washington’s elite in snubbing the Eatons. They refused to pay courtesy calls on the Eatons at their home or receive them as visitors, and denied them invitations to parties and other social events.
Jackson sided with the Eatons. His late wife, Rachel—whom he had unwittingly married before she divorced her first husband—had been mercilessly attacked during Jackson’s 1828 Presidential campaign. Jackson believed these attacks caused Rachel’s death on December 22, 1828, after his election to the Presidency.
For the rest of Jackson’s first term, his opponents used the “Petticoat Affair,” as it was known, to attack the President’s moral judgment and his administration’s policies and appointees.
It finally ended in 1831. Eaton and Secretary of State Martin Van Buren resigned to allow Jackson to install new members to his cabinet and protect his Presidency from further scandal.
Now, fast forward to 2018:
Trump and Stormy
Trump and Stormy
What a couple—she’s got boobs; he’s horny.
Trumpy spanks his wanker
And says “It’s fun; it’s lots of fun.
It’s just like doing my Ivanka.”
If Melania divorced Trump while he is still President, the Peggy Eaton scandal would pale by comparison.
- Washington would divide into two camps—those supporting the President and those supporting the First Lady.
- Reporters would besiege the White House for separate interviews—with Trump and Melania.
- News media would be filled with stories recounting Trump’s extramarital affairs—not just during his current marriage but during his marriages to his ex-wives Ivana and Marla.
- Trump would vent his anger and frustrations on Twitter—as he does whenever he’s thwarted. These would fuel more controversy via sensational news stories.
- His legislative agenda would grind to a complete halt as Republicans were distracted and Democrats took advantage of it.
- Comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would find themselves in comic heaven, with Trump’s outrageous comments and tweets practically writing their joke routines.
- Trump’s diehard supporters among the Religious Right would be pressed to defend or condemn his multiple adulteries.
- These would distract Republicans from effectively pursuing Trump’s—and their—social and political agenda.
Stay tuned for possibly tumultuous developments.
Pay, pay, pay the porn star’s silence
There’s an election.
You don’t want the world to know that you
Can’t get erection.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 29, 2018 at 12:25 am
Trump and Stormy
Trump and Stormy
What a couple–they’re so dumb and wormy.
They are, I tell you, brother
A match that’s made for one another.
On January 12, the Wall Street Journal announced in a front-page headline:
TRUMP LAWYER ARRANGED $130,000 PAYMENT
FOR ADULT FILM-STAR’S SILENCE
According to the story that followed, real estate mogul Donald Trump had his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016.
The payment was to ensure her silence about a tryst she had had with Trump in 2006.
The timing of the hush-money payment came while Trump was the Republican nominee for President. And while the election was less than a month away.
At the time of the payoff, Daniels—whose real name is Stephanie Clifford—was reportedly in talks to be a guest on Good Morning America and be interviewed by Slate. She was also talking with The Daily Beast about an interview.
Then she backed out on November 3—five days before voters went to the polls.
Stormy Daniels in 2007 (Wikipedia)
Since then, Cohen has denied that Trump engaged in such an affair. He also produced a letter allegedly signed by Daniels, wherein she denies having an affair with Trump and receiving hush money.
This might appear convincing except….
On January 17, 2018, In Touch Weekly published excerpts of a 2011 interview it had obtained with Daniels, where she had bragged of having a 2006 extramarital affair with Trump.
After the interview, In Touch insisted that Daniels take and pass a polygraph test. She did so. So did one of her friends and her ex-husband—both of whom backed up her story.
According to her, she met him at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Trump asked for her number and she gave it to him. Then he asked if she would like to have dinner with him and she said yes. She went up to his hotel room where they ate dinner and talked.
Donald Trump
Trump asked her a lot of questions about the porn movie business—such as “how it works and how it functions. All like technical questions. He was very curious. Not necessarily about the sex or anything like that, but business questions.”
He spent a lot of time talking about himself, showing her a magazine whose cover he had recently graced.
At one point, Daniels asked: “Yeah, what about your wife?”
“Oh, don’t worry about her,” Trump replied. Daniels quickly changed the subject.
Trump and Stormy
Trump and Stormy
When his wife’s away; Trump thinks “Why worry?
Sex with sluts is kinky.
And they don’t mind I’m really stinky.”
Daniels excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she came out, Trump, sitting on the bed, said: “Come here.” They started kissing, and sex followed.
While in bed with Trump, Daniels said she thought: “Please don’t try to pay me.” She thought of herself as a porn-star, not as a prostitute. But then she thought: “I bet if he did, it would be a lot.”
As for the sex: “So anyway, the sex was nothing crazy. He wasn’t like, chain me to the bed or anything. It was one position. I can definitely describe his junk perfectly, if I ever have to. He definitely seemed smitten after that. He was like, ‘I wanna see you again, when can I see you again?’
“….It was textbook generic. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, I love you.’ He wasn’t like Fabio or anything. He wasn’t trying to have, like, porn sex.”
Trump had married his third wife, Melania, on January 22, 2005. At the time of his tryst with Daniels, Melania Trump was caring for their four-month-old son, Barron.
This was not Trump’s only encounter with Daniels.
During their night together, Trump had spent a lot of time assuring her that she should have her own TV show—and he could make this happen: “You would be perfect for it because you’re such a smart businesswoman. You write and you direct and you produce and obviously you’re hot and you’re beautiful.”
DANIELS: “Well, it’s never going to happen. NBC is never going to let a porn star on.”
TRUMP: “I can make it happen.”
(For the entire next year, Trump kept pushing the idea of helping Daniels land a TV show of her own: “We have to get together to talk about your appearance on.”)
He had already given her the phone number of his bodyguard, Keith Schiller. He also gave her the number to his secretary, Rhona. Whenever Daniels wanted to reach him, he immediately took her call or called back in 10 minutes. His number was always blocked.
Trump called her about every 10 days. He would start the conversation by asking, “How’s it going, honeybunch?”
Said Daniels: “I think it was always his excuse to call, ‘I just read about you in such and such or there’s a quote about you in magazine, I turned on my channel in my hotel room and guess whose face popped up?'”
Pay, pay, pay the porn star’s bill off
It’s a deduction.
Pay, pay, pay it off because for you
This is seduction.
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In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 26, 2018 at 12:05 am
May, 2015, was a cruel month for sexual perverts posing as “family values” patriots.
On May 21, Josh Duggar resigned as director of the Family Research Council, a Right-wing organization dedicated to fighting sexually-oriented issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and pornography.
Duggar, then 27, had owed his position to his status as the oldest son of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, of Tonitown, Arkansas.
Until his resignation, the Duggars were famous for popping out babies (20 at last count) and championing Right-wing “family values” causes.
Josh Duggar, the “all-American” child molester
Then came the bombshell: On May 21, 2015, Josh Duggar issued a statement to People magazine explaining why he had resigned from the Family Research Council. He later published the statement on his Facebook page.
It read, in part:
“Twelve years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends. I confessed this to my parents who took several steps to help me address the situation.
“We spoke with the authorities where I confessed my wrongdoing, and my parents arranged for me and those affected by my actions to receive counseling. I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life.”
What his statement didn’t say was this:
- In 2002-3, as a 14-15 year-old, Josh Duggar had fondled the breasts and vaginas of five underage girls—four of whom were his own sisters.
- Although his parents knew about his perverted activities, Jim Bob Duggar waited more than a year after Josh confessed before contacting the police.
- Police began investigating the abuse in 2006 when tipped by a family friend but concluded the statute of limitations had lifted.
- His father later took him to talk with a close family friend, an Arkansas state trooper. The trooper gave him a “stern talk,” but did not open a case. Nor was Duggar referred for criminal charges.
- The same state trooper was later arrested on child pornography charges—and is now in prison serving a 56-year sentence.
- His resignation wasn’t prompted by a guilty conscience but by two days of media reports on this story.
As a result of these revelations, on May 22, The Learning Channel (TLC) canceled its high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, which had showcased the Duggar family since 2008.
The scandalous revelations turned the reactionary, anti-abortion, anti-gay Duggars into comedic fodder for standup comedians, cartoonists and visitors to Twitter and Facebook.
One cartoon showed Josh Duggar saying, “I got a word named after me,” and holding a sign defining that word: “Duggar: To sexually abuse innocent victims while trumpeting your own moral superiority. Example: Hold my Bible while I Duggar you.”
And on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, Larry Whitmore made Josh Duggar a target for dark humor:
“So you mean to tell me the family that goes around saying gay and trans people are pedophiles preying on America’s young people actually has a pedophile that preys on America’s young people? I hate pedophiles, but I love irony.”
And on Twitter, the criticism continued:
- “Josh Duggar says no child should feel the pain of being aborted. I say no child should feel the pain of being molested.”
- “So daddy Duggar is ok with his son molesting his daughters, but not ok with his daughters leaving for college. Misogyny at its greatest.”
- “Hope no gay wedding cakes were baked while Duggar was molesting girls because that would go against his religious beliefs.”
- “In the Duggar family, you’re reprimanded for kissing before marriage but not for assaulting your siblings.”
The family had been a magnet for Right-wingers owing to its staunchly anti-abortion and anti-gay stance. Add to this the Duggars’ claims to religious devotion and their clear disregard for birth control—and their being stars in “reality TV.”
Josh Duggar had, in turn, shown his gratitude for the fawning attention lavished upon him by these Right-wingers.
That gratitude—captured in a series of Tweets on Twitter—proved highly embarrassing to the careers of many of these political figures.
Among those Tweets:
And still more embarrassment was to come: In August, 2015, news reports revealed that, in 2013, “happily married” Josh Duggar had maintained a secret account on Ashley Madison, a website catering to cheating spouses.
Duggar had paid $986.76 for two different monthly Ashley Madison subscriptions from February, 2013 until May, 2015.
His long-suffering wife, Anna, has apparently decided to stick with him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 10, 2018 at 12:02 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore not an American citizen.
For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity steadily fell among blacks—to 1%, compared to the 91% of black voters who backed Hillary Clinton.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16, 2016—10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words—after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement—and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
Nor did any Republican apologize for the eight-year campaign of slander and obstruction their party had waged against the Nation’s first black President.
President Barack Obama
Among its highlights:
- In September, 2009, Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled “You lie!” during Obama’s health care speech to Congress.
- In January, 2010, an effigy of President Barack Obama was found hanging from a building in Plains, Georgia.
- In December, 2011, Brent Bozell, who runs the right-wing Media Research Center, called Obama to “a skinny, ghetto crackhead.”
- In December, 2011, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), said of Michelle Obama: “She lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.”
- In January, 2012, Mitt Romney’s son, Matt, said his father might release his tax returns “as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things.”
- In February, 2012, right-wing columnist Ann Coulter offered: “Voters with forty years of politically correct education are ecstatic to have the first Black president. They just love the idea even if we did get Flavor Flav instead of Thomas Sowell.”
- In May, 2012, a flatbed truck drove through new York holding a trailer with eight mannequin-like bodies hanging on nooses. One of the figures resembled President Obama, with a sign on the truck reading: “Obama Is Onboard, Find Out Why. Visit YouTube.com And Search Keyword PatriotPhipps.”
- Throughout the 2012 Presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich repeatedly called Obama “the greatest food stamp President in American history.”
- Obama has been portrayed as a shoeshine man, an Islamic terrorist and a chimp. The image of his altered face has been shown on a product called Obama Waffles in the manner of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. He has been repeatedly depicted with a Hitler forelock and mustache.
- Among the protest signs they have brandished by Tea Party members: “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery,” “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Ovens,” and “Obama was Not Bowing [to the Saudi King] He was Sucking Saudi Jewels.”
- Other Tea Party posters: “Imam Obama Wants to Ban Pork” and “The Zoo Has An African Lion, and the White House Has a Lyin’ African.”
- Tea Partiers have chanted at Obama: “Bye, bye, Blackbird” and “Kenyan go home!”
- During the Republican-imposed government shutdown—October 1-17, 2013—Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) told Obama: “I cannot even stand to look at you,” The incident occurred when Obama met with lawmakers to try to find a resolution to the shutdown.
- On October 1, 2013, Congressional Republicans shut down the government in an attempt to force President Barack Obama to de-fund his signature achievement: The Affordable Care Act (ACA). President Obama refused, and 800,000 federal workers were furloughed.
- On October 14, while Republicans were threatening to drive the nation into bankruptcy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posted on Facebook her “secret plan” to impeach President Obama:
- “It’s time for the president to be honest with the American people for a change. Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.”
- In short: If the Republicans force the country into default, Obama should be impeached. And if the President finds a way to avoid default, he should be impeached.
* * * * *
When Republicans say, “We need to support our President,” they don’t mean every President.
They mean: Every Republican President. And only every Republican President.
For Republicans, Presidents of their party carry the status of Fuhrers: To be obeyed instantly and without question.
And for Republicans, Presidents elected by Democrats are usurpers: They must be obstructed as often as possible—and impeached whenever possible.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 9, 2018 at 10:31 pm
Reince Priebus, the incoming White House Chief of Staff for soon-to-be President Donald J. Trump, was furious.
There were three reasons for his outrage.
First, millions of Americans were questioning whether Trump was legitimately elected. Their suspicions were based on solid evidence, supplied by the American Intelligence community, that Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 Presidential election to help him defeat Hillary Clinton.
Second, among those Americans were members of the United States Congress—such as Georgia Democratic Representative John Lewis.
On the January 15, 2017 edition of “Meet the Press,” Lewis was asked by host Chuck Todd: “Do you plan on trying to forge a relationship with Donald Trump?”
“No,” said Lewis. “I believe [in] forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be very difficult. I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.”
John Lewis
“You do not consider him a legitimate president. Why is that?” asked Todd.
“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.”
And the third reason Priebus was outraged: He believed—or at least claimed to believe—that President Barack Obama should vouch for Trump’s legitimacy.
“I think President Obama should step up,” Priebus said on the January 15 edition of ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve had a great relationship with the White House….I think the administration can do a lot of good by telling folks that are on the Republican side of the aisle, look, we may have lost the election on the Democratic side, but it’s time to come together.”
Reince Priebus
“You didn’t have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008,” Priebus added.
“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos replied that Trump had questioned Obama’s legitimacy as an American citizen until almost the end of the 2016 Presidential race.
“But look, George, that’s not the point!” Priebus said, visibly agitated. “The point is not where Barack Obama was born! The point is that we’ve got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect Trump.”
In short: Let’s ignore Trump’s five-year slander campaign against the legitimacy of President Obama. What’s important is that people are questioning the legitimacy of a Republican elected with the help of Russian Communists.
In 2011, Trump, then-host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Obama.
Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya—and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
Trump responded with a series of tweets on Twitter–all of them attacking the legitimacy of the birth certificate that President Obama had released.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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A POIGNANT ANNIVERSARY FAST APPROACHING
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 5, 2018 at 12:09 amFifty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King was shot to death as he stood on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He had come there to lead a march of striking garbage workers.
New York United States Senator—and now Presidential candidate—Robert Francis Kennedy had been scheduled to give a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, before a black audience.
Just before he drove into the city to deliver his address, he learned of King’s assassination. There was a real danger that rioting would erupt. Police who had been assigned to protect him said they wouldn’t accompany him into the inner city.
Kennedy drove off anyway, leaving behind his police escort.
Standing on a podium mounted on a flatbed truck, Kennedy spoke for just four minutes and 57 seconds.
His waiting audience hadn’t yet learned of King’s death. Kennedy broke the news to gasps, and then gave an impromptu speech eulogizing the slain civil rights leader.
For the first time since the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963, he spoke publicly of that killing. He noted that JFK—like King—had also been killed by a white man.
And he called upon the crowd to “dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”
Riots erupted in 60 cities following King’s death—but not in Indianapolis.
Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort from those aroused by Donald Trump.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
In October, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his wise counsel helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. As a U.S Senator he championed civil rights and greater Federal efforts to fight poverty.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished—while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4—when he was shot in the back of the head.
His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6. He was 42.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime—and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia—and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
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