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Alternate Brain (Free subscription) | 3 hours ago
The Nation talks about a show I watched last Friday evening of LBJ's taped phone conversations and Bill Moyers' commentary. Highly recommended as a history lesson. One point of the program, he explained, was to offer viewers "an insight into the mind of one president facing the choice of whether or not to send more and more American soldiers to fight in a far-away and strange place." But...
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14theditch (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
Our most important current governmental concern is not the health care reform bill. That will be whatever the grubby, sausage machine of Congress passes, with the approval of their real constituents-The Corporate Lobbyists. No, the big one is that just after Thanksgiving, Obama will announce his "plans" for Afghanistan. Two nights ago I listened to Bill Moyer's program. It brought us the...
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It's My Mind (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
I was watching this 10 year old C-Span video of a call-in segment where callers who discuss who they believed was the most effective President. This was sort of a conclusion to a series where C-Span explores the lives and careers of the 41 Presidents of the United States. In fact you can visit their website @ http://www.americanpresidents.org/ . There you can see most of the segments and this series...
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Philadelphia Freedom Blog (Free subscription) | 9 hours ago
The U.S. Senate acted relatively responsibly this past weekend and worked through the day and evening on Saturday to comment on, and then vote on, whether to bring its health care reform bill to the full Senate floor for debate. The measure passed on Saturday night by a margin of 60-39. (Those 39 votes were all by Republicans who apparently don't care if you're sick and uninsured.) I watched some of...
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Chippshots (Free subscription) | 15 hours ago
End of semester crunch (and looming book deadline) leave me little time for blogging, but I might recommend this piece from Dan Balz in Sunday's WaPo . Obama has no good options, at least among the ones evidently up for serious consideration. He's going to get hammered politically, no matter what he decides on the size of his "surge." But I'm afraid that once he boosts troop numbers - unless...
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Hullabaloo (Free subscription) | 17 hours ago
Vietnam/Afghanistan by tristero I'd like to revisit both the topic and links for two recent posts of Digby's, on Afghanistan. Those of us who lived through the multiple horrors of the Vietnam war - like Digby, like myself - need to make it crystal clear to those of you who didn't that the decisions Obama is about to make about Afghanistan will have the most far-reaching consequences imaginable, both...
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The Blue Voice (Free subscription) | 13 hours ago
Reasoning by historical analogy is dangerous. But the American approach to counterinsurgency wars didn't spring full-grown from the brow of David Petraeus. It is heavily conditioned, if not completely dominated, by the experience of the Vietnam War. I've seen a couple of good analyses lately of the Vietnam War that provide useful critical perspective on Obama's current decision on how much to escalate...
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The Political Game (Free subscription) | 17 hours ago
With every passing year, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy becomes a distant memory. For those who were in Dallas that November day, it remains a memory they cannot escape. New generations of Americans have been introduced to the myth of Camelot and the political legacy of young John Kennedy, but their understanding of what the assassination meant to this nation comes from history books...
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DeRosaWorld (Free subscription) | 15 hours ago
In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was faced with passing sweeping legislation that tackled the nations problems in education, medical care, poverty, jobs and civil rights. He was also faced with an escalation of our military efforts in Vietnam and South East...
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Hollywood Elsewhere (Free subscription) | yesterday
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. It's that simple and that clean. It's all here in this Bill Moyers review of how Lyndon Johnson destroyed his presidency and himself and ended the lives of tens of thousands of young men by being too afraid of the right-wing barking crowd to step up and do the wise and strong thing, which was to say screw it -- there's no way to win,...
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Freedom Writing (Free subscription) | yesterday
Today, of course, is the anniversary of one of the most significant events of the 20th century — the assassination of President Kennedy here in Dallas in 1963. For 46 years, one of the things that has bothered conspiracy theorists is the behavior of Vice President Lyndon Johnson on that day. In a recent documentary on the History Channel , it was suggested that Johnson hastily arranged to take...
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Brilliant at Breakfast (Free subscription) | yesterday
If you've been an American for more than 60 seconds, then you don't need me or anyone else to tell you what happened on November 22, 1963. It wasn't just the day Aldous Huxley died. Many, many Americans who were alive when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas have also since passed. Fewer and fewer Americans remain alive, people who were around and felt the jarring, world-shaking impact of however...
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Welcome Back to Pottersville (Free subscription) | yesterday
If you've been an American for more than 60 seconds, then you don't need me or anyone else to tell you what happened on November 22, 1963. It wasn't just the day Aldous Huxley died. Many, many Americans who were alive when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas have also since passed. Fewer and fewer Americans remain alive, people who were around and felt the jarring, world-shaking impact of however...
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The Sir Robert Bond Papers (Free subscription) | yesterday
From Friday’s New York Times , four views on the art of persuasion as practiced in the United States Capitol using the health reform bill as the centrepiece. There’s reference in the article to the Johnson Treatment. To get the full effect, you can find the famous 1957 series of four photographs of then-senator Lyndon Johnson at work, by NYT photographer George Tames. -srbp-
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- Are You Riled Up? - (Free subscription) | yesterday
The ill-starred John Kennedy issued numerous orders and had federal troops invade Mississippi. Lyndon Johnson pushed presidential power well beyond Kennedy, and Nixon stalwartly asserted yet more executive powers. … Popular wars or those too ancient to stir controversy may be mentioned, mostly as an arena for presidential heroics. The Mexican War squeaks by [...]
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