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freshwest

freshwest's Journal
freshwest's Journal
June 26, 2014

So much trauma. LBJ was sworn into office with Jackie Kennedy in her bloody dress by his side:



Just hours after her husband's assassination, widow Jackie Kennedy stands next to Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One as he is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States. Although her personal assistant laid out a fresh change of clothes on her bed aboard the plane, Jackie refused to change out of her blood-spattered clothing. Also aboard Air Force One was the casket carrying the body of President John F. Kennedy, age 46.

In her bedroom on board the plane, Jackie’s personal assistant had laid out a fresh outfit for the First Lady. Despite urging from staffers and handlers to “clean up her appearance,” Jackie refused to get out of her bloodied clothes. She shook her head hard:


"No, let them see what they’ve done.”

Somehow, that was one of the most poignant sights,” Mrs. Johnson later wrote, “that immaculate woman exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood.”


https://lisawallerrogers.wordpress.com/tag/lyndon-johnsons-swearing-in-as-president/

The GOP tried to unseat Johnson less than a year later by running:

Barry Goldwater (January 2, 1909[1] – May 29, 1998) was a businessman and five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–65, 1969–87) and the Republican Party's nominee for president in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr. Conservative".

Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.[2]

Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought through the conservative coalition against the New Deal coalition. He mobilized a large conservative constituency to win the hard-fought Republican primaries. Goldwater's conservative campaign platform ultimately failed to gain the support of the electorate[3] and he lost the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, bringing down many Republican candidates as well. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the Soviet Union, labor unions, and the welfare state.

His defeat allowed Johnson and the Democrats in Congress to pass the Great Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize.
Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his supporters mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became governor of California in 1967 and the 40th President of the United States in 1981.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater

About the same time was Curtis LeMay saying we could bomb North Vietnam to the Stone Age. The slogan of 'Nuke 'em' or 'Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age' was popular with conservatives.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

Curtis LeMay was a friend of Goldwater, and he also ran for public office:

Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

Those of us against Goldwater in 1964 countered their campaign slogan of 'In your heart, you know he's right' with 'In your heart, you know he's nuts.'

We know who walked into Goldwater's seat in the Senate. 'Bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran' John Mc Cain. It just goes on and on. There were millions who wanted the Cold War and the Vietnam war to keep on going.

We'd already lost both Kennedys and MLK by that time. If Goldwater had won, the New Deal would have been gone before Carter. LBJ was aware of political reality and just how far these guys would go and I don't know how much of this was about his own ideas.

These guys were not about to give up, big money never does, it can wait out activists, in fact they count on our growing old and getting out of their way.

There is a solid line connecting the groups then, and those now. The Tea Party and Libertarians are closer to achieving their goals, but the agenda has never changed.

JMHO.

June 26, 2014

It's in the David Koch Libertarian platform since 1980. Sanders put the whole thing online.

They have gotten just about every thing they have on their list, playing the CT, Tea, GOP and the public who don't understand what the world the Koch brothers are forcing on us to accept this.

BERNIE SANDERS Uncovers 1980 Koch Agenda- "What Do the Koch Brothers Want?"

What else do the Koch brothers want?

In 1980, David Koch ran as the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980.

Let's take a look at the 1980 Libertarian Party platform.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:


We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.

We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.

We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.

We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.

We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.

We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.

We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.
We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.

As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.

We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.

We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.

We condemn compulsory education laws and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.

We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.

We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.

We support abolition of the Department of Energy.

We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.

We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.

We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.

We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.

We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.

We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.

We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and aid to the poorprograms. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.

We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.

We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

We support the repeal of all state usury laws.


In other words, the agenda of the Koch brothers is not only to defund Obamacare. The agenda of the Koch brothers is to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years that has protected the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable in this country...

Tomorrow it will be Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, repealing the minimum wage. It seems to me that the Koch brothers will not be content until they get everything they believe they are entitled to.

Our great nation can no longer be hijacked by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers.

For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, for the sake of our economy, we have got to let democracy prevail.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/koch-brothers

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a7980koch

to kpete:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

We've heard these memes for years, Americans have come to believe this is how it has to be.

June 25, 2014

It's in keeping with Boehner's motto: 'We're not here to make laws, we're here to repeal them.'

Because... FREEDOM and all of that!

How Freedom Became Tyranny

Rightwing libertarians have turned “freedom” into an excuse for greed and exploitation.

George Monbiot - December 19, 2011

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Right-wing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange. Their conception of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterised as a clash between negative and positive freedoms.


More at the link about the meaning of positive and negative freedoms and how the word is being used against us:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/

This is what the Republicans have been about for a long time. The Tea Party just serves as their shock troops to implement their real policy faster.

June 25, 2014

VIDEO: She's been at it for a long time, went to support WI workers in 2011:



Jeana Brown Throws Down on Scott Walker

Uploaded on Oct 25, 2011


Redneck Party's Co-founder Jeana Brown pickets as GOP Gov Scott Walker comes South to raise money for his recall election.

"We might be Right to Work States in the old South but We Know Right from Wrong. Taking away Collective Bargaining Rights away from everyone across this Nation is Dead Wrong.Get the FOX out of our Southern Hen House. Cheap Labor Conservatives have fed too long on suffering folk. Walker go home and take your kind back with you....We don't want you here no more!"

Her channel on youtube is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RedneckPartyInc?feature=watch

And the organization is:

http://www.redneckparty.org/

to PeaceNikki:

"Wisconsin lit a fire that I saw clear down in the swamplands of Georgia"


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10174316#op

And a good discussion on the term redneck here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1102&pid=4353

June 24, 2014

That's exactly the way I heard it. Thanks for the personal note and posting the video.

Regarding the communications she is explaining, here is a video that discusses time, GPS and satellites:

#t=69

When I was going for my FCC radio license, we learned about crystal recievers which were replaced by vacuum tubes. It was a brief history part of the course, before we went into the digital part.

It was suggested that moths got into the old vacuum tube radio sets. I do know from experiene that bugs love the heat older electronics generated.

I had an old style cabinet radio and 78 RPM phonograph player (to play those old slate records) given to me by my father. It had tubes and the dial was backlit, perfect for summer nights as teen in my bedroom. It looked very much like this picture:



It was built in the thirties with a square antenna enclosed within it. I had to reach behind it to turn it for reception and was able to listen to programs from Europe and Latin America late at night in the sixties.

But the operation of the original crystal sets always fascinated me. I don't know if there are really any of them around or if they'd be able to pick up anything with the changes in transmitters. Later I had one of the wooden box style radio inwhich I could see the crystals, and they were not artificial ones.

Anyway, your description reminded me of all of that. Although I hadn't thought about it in years and my memory may be off a bit. No one seems to know about this anymore.

June 24, 2014

Thom describes the demise of liberal media. I never trusted MSNBC after the rise of their pundits

during the Clinton impeachment fiasco.

Tweety and many others became household names stoking the media feeding frenzy for the GOP, and made their pay daily by giving validity to a string of sleazy Scaife-funded crooks.

I guess a lot of people don't remember those days. It was the result of Rush and others going after Hillary's attempt to expand healthcare. The daily mantra was Death Panels, Nazi eugenics with a national health service to kill off the elderly and disabled. It was very effective in scaring people to vote GOP to stop Hillary killing their loved ones.

Because the groundwork had already been done to set up the atmosphere by media through Whitewater, Travel Office Gate, Trooper Gate, anything to destroy the charismatic POTUS and his wife, to make it easier to mock all progressive ideas.

Thus the Gingrich majority was voted in. Then the GOP, with full media support, kept his administration in hot water to distract from his agenda with a government shut down. They put to work the Death Panels on the elderly and disabled themselves in closed sessions where they gutted Medicare, which had been as good as the best of the private insurers. And went after Medicaid and every other thing that had been accomplished since the New Deal. The process has been gradual, destroying those ideas and not wanting to get rid of everything after the Tenth Amendment. But I digress.

The Donahue censorship was like a knife to the heart, but we'd already seen Dan Rather gone after for telling the truth - not just about the Shrub, but simply the fact of the change in who the owners were. It was a warning of the end. Now such information is scrubbed from the net, edited out or distorted or only spoken of from the complete opposite POV without any attempt at balance by the networks having created an alternate reality.

And it's gotten geometrically worse since Obama got in office. There is a reason Thom and others who believe as we do are shut out of mainstream media.

KO was shut out because he was giving Democrats support and hope and expounding on the morality of our causes very well. He was becoming dangerous so they needled him until he blew up and then they did a complete character assassination on him as they have done so many times before (Rather) to silence us.

We are being driven over the cliff by the big money. Thom sees it and endorses the move to amend to let the people get out of the back seat and only allowed to vent and not change the big things that effect us, at least, not with media's help.

He made an excellent apology and analysis here. Thanks for posting it.

June 24, 2014

They ran off to join the Patriot circus and thought they'd shoot long enough to win prizes:



If you look at it that way, their provisioning for a longer time makes perfect sense.

June 24, 2014

Masterful stroke, EarlG! Still love this one you made last September:



The DERP is still out there!

Keep on telling it!

June 24, 2014

Excellent. And it's not just the rich. There is a reason this verse has always stood out to me:

Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam, the seasons' difference, the icy fang, and churlish chiding of the winter's wind, which, when it bites and blows upon my body, even till I shrink with cold, i smile and say, "this is no flattery; these are counselors that feelingly persuade me what i am..."

A person with no family learns very quickly that nature can be much kinder than some people marginally better or worse off.

Nature holds no grudge, makes no judgement or profit, does not mock or play games with one's heart and mind and pride.

It is what it is and reliably so, no more or less.

I am glad you have the means to give him some help, and more than that, you listened to him and treated him as a brother.

That was the real gift. You have a good mind and heart.

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