Category Archives: Campaigning

March 19, 2013 · 1:09 pm

Different Dominos

Last night, I was really tired and wanted to go to bed early.  But then I heard the start of a story by Rachel Maddow on Nixon, treason, and five years of needless war.  How the Vietnam war was on the verge of settlement at the end of October, 1968, and Richard Nixon scuttled those talks to get himself elected.  How he committed treason.  How he got away with it and set the precedent for Cheney and Bush to get away with lying about Iraq.  How it set the precedence for so many terrible things that have faced our country since 1968.

I wish I was making this up.  I wish Richard Nixon had stayed in California.  Because the world would be a very different place if there had never been a President Nixon.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/#51234332

This is incredibly disturbing.

Here’s the transcript (Sorry, it’s rough.)

>> Thank you at home for joining us. we start with some jaw-dropping information about American politics that has been reported out by a British news source. it’s the BBC. they have just aired a new documentary based on oval office tapes, which proves something about the American presidency and modern history that even the most conspiratorial among us would not be able to believe. it’s about the 1968 election. the democratic electorate was split. they were not unified behind their candidate. on the right, southern white democrats who were against civil rights, they were being peeled off to vote for George Wallace, the symbol of proud segregation. also, different problem for the democrats. people hated the Vietnam war. and the president at the time was a democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson. so if you were against the war, as most Americans at that point were — this is the gallop polling on the war — the number of people who thought it was a mistake — if you were against the war as increasingly everybody was, you were so the psyched to vote for LBJ’s successor. so the democrats were losing their appeal in the south because of racism, and they were losing the anti-war vote. the republican candidate tried to take advantage of that split, and was this handsome devil. Nixon in 1968 was running against a democratic party that he knew was split. he was, in response, pledging to get rid of the draft. and he claimed to have a plan to end the war. he argued that if you wanted the war to end, you needed to elect him. you needed to vote the democrats out of office because clearly LBJ and his party, the democrats and the democratic party, Hubert Humphrey had no idea how to end the war. when you needed was total change at the white house. the democrats had to go to Nixon could come in and end Vietnam. but then less than a week before the election, it all went horribly wrong for Richard Nixon, because less than a week before election, on halloween night, 1968, the democratic president, LBJ, went on TV in a surprise nationally televised address. he made a surprise announcement that peace was at hand. the communist side, the Vietnamese side was going to be make concessions at peace talks. the south Vietnamese were going to agree to a deal. peace was at hand. the terms were all set. peace was at hand. in recognition of the fact that peace was about to be declared, the united states would step back right away and stop all military operations in vehement. LBJ said that on Thursday night. the election was going to be Tuesday. turns out the democrats know how to end this war. that was bad news for Richard Nixon, but good news for the country who wanted the war to be over. good news for the people fighting the war. this was good news, right? almost. Thursday night LBJ made that announcement, that peace was about to be agreed to, by all sides in Vietnam.

That was Thursday night. by Saturday morning, never mind, deal was off. peace was not at hand because the south Vietnamese side has decided actually it didn’t want the deal. in fact, they didn’t want to talk about it deal. they pulled out of the peace talks. and so the war was back on. what happened? what happened between Thursday and Saturday? now we know.

>> good morning. how are you, my friend?

>> fine.

>> I’ve got one that’s pretty rough for you. we have found that our friend, the republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he’s been doing it through rather subterranean sources here, and he has been saying to the allies that you’re going to get sold out. you better not give away your liberty just a few hours before i can preserve it for you. Mrs. Chennault is contacting their ambassador. this is not guess work. she’s young and attractive. she’s a pretty good-looking girl. she’s around town, and she is warning them to not get pulled in on this Johnson move.

>> president Lyndon Johnson, 1968, Saturday morning, November 1st, explaining to senator Richard Russell what had gone wrong with this peace deal that everybody thought was going to end the war. LBJ was so sure this was going to end the war that he went on TV Thursday night. the reason peace did not happen, what he was explaining on the phone, is that the republican nominee for president that year, Richard Nixon, had intervened in the peace talks to blow them up. he used an intermediary who was involved in the talks to approach the south Vietnamese Vietnamese side and told them don’t do it. these peace talks in Paris was not going to be a good deal for them. they should not participate. they should just wait until after the election when he, Richard Nixon, would be president and he’d give them a much better deal. Johnson was going to sell them out. he, Richard Nixon, of the one he should deal with. Nixon’s intermediary was caught on tape telling the ambassador, just hang on. we need the war to keep going through the election. it’s outrageous, right? the war could have ended. it was on the verge of ending, except a candidate for office in our country thought that the war ending would help his opponent in the election. he thought he’d have a better chance of getting elected if the war kept going. so instead of getting the war to end, he did what he did. it was astonishing. and president Johnson thought so too.

>> and they oughtn’t to be doing this. i think it would shock America if a principal candidate was playing with a source like this on a matter this important.

>> yeah.

>> president Lyndon Johnson there on the same day as that earlier tape remark be thatter as far as he could tell, this is treason. he says it repeatedly on the tapes. he thinks that is a hanging offense. he thinks that was treason. this was four days before the election that year. having thought that the war was going to be over, now the president finds out the peace deal fell through because a candidate who wanted there not to be peace before the election intervened to make one sidewalk away. now, why didn’t LBJ say anything publicly? this is right before the election. can you imagine how the country would have reacted to that? this is a war the whole country was against. it was going to be over except candidate Nixon intervened to undo the peace deal and keep the war going? can you imagine how angry the American public would have been. but LBJ did not say anything publicly at the time because he thought he couldn’t. the reason he thought he couldn’t is the way he found out what Nixon had done. the FBI illegally wire-tapped the phones of the south Vietnamese ambassador. we couldn’t let anybody know that we were illegally listening into the ambassador’s phone lines so they couldn’t let anybody know what they had heard. so Nixon got away with it. and the October surprise. the Halloween night surprise that the war was ending right before the election, that October surprises ended up getting undone. anybody who was anti-war in the country had no reason to vote for a democrat. the racist right wing voted peeled off the the vote on the other side. and yes, Nixon won. he got by barely. squeaked by on the basis that he was the guy who knew how to end the war, not those dumb democrats. and of course Nixon did not know how to end the war. he didn’t have a plan. and instead of the war ending on Halloween in 1968, the war went on five more years, in which time 15,000 Americans were killed as were untold numbers of Vietnamese. so that happened. that actually happened, and now in 2013, what are we supposed to do with that information? LBJ is dead, Nixon is dead, George Wallace is dead. 15,000 Americans are dead who otherwise would not have been. how does this get made right? it cannot get made right because the people of this decision cannot be brought back from the dead. you also can’t get revenge. you can’t indict Nixon’s ghost. but you can refuse to let him get away with it again. we can make sure it is a way we tell his history and the history of modern politics. you have to include it in the history, both so nobody gets away with it in the long run, but also so we don’t do it again. so we at least don’t dismiss this kind of possibility as some conspiracy theory of nonsense. so we know there is precedent for this particular kind of evil.

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January 3, 2013 · 9:04 pm

For Cryin’ Out Loud!

In the spring and summer of 1986 random parts of my face started growing for no apparent reason.  I would be at home, on the subway, or off working somewhere around DC.

First it was a swollen eyebrow.  Then that would go away and a day or two later, my cheek would grow so that I couldn’t see well out of one eye.

Mostly it was my lips, though.  They would grow, sometimes individually, sometimes  together.  I looked like a duck.

Did I mention I was also getting married in September?  That September?  And while John and I had a fairly small and simple wedding, I was unenthusiastic about going to the altar looking like a daisy.  Especially this one.

Daisy Duck

Of course, John’s lips would have been normal.
Mine? Not so much.

But work was so completely crazy that I ignored it.  I was a lobbyist/flunky at the time, and was spending long days up on Capitol Hill working on the Tax Reform Act of 1986.  (And it was the perfect assignment for me; I did my own taxes – on the U.S. Government 1040-EZ form.  Tax Returns for Poor Dummies.)  I was in over my head, didn’t have a clue what was going on, what was important, or which way was up.  I was a wee bit stressed.

Plus that summer we decided to buy our first house just so we could send my stress level through the roof of my brand new adorable little house.

But back to my problem.  My ever changing facial features.

People were looking at me strangely which I understood – I often and suddenly looked really odd.  But even stranger, they stopped talking whenever I would approach.  These were people I’d worked with for more than six years.  Something weird was going on.

And I found out what that was early one morning as I stood talking in the front lobby to my boss, also (irritatingly) named John.  He was giving me instructions on that day’s most important issues, when to pay especially close attention, when to call him immediately with an update.

At the beginning of the chat, my face was normal. But as we talked, my lips spontaneously grew larger and larger.  More duck-like.

“Elyse,” my boss said, “what’s happening to your lips?”

“They’re growing.  Spontaneously.  I don’t know why.  But you’ve seen me with a swollen face off and on for the last couple of months.  Haven’t you noticed?  And it keep on happening.  Luckily, John has promised to marry me even if I look like Daisy Duck when I arrive at the church.”

The look of relief on his face was instantaneous – he joked with me about the fat lips, about stress, about what I might be allergic to.  He’s a really nice guy, and he cared about me.  But it wasn’t until much later when I realized just why he had looked so relieved.

He thought I was being abused by my husband-to-be.  And he, a very powerful Washington DC lawyer, who knew/knows everybody in town, had no idea what to do.  He didn’t ask me if anybody was hurting me.  He didn’t threaten to report John, or try to find out discretely whether folks in John’s office thought John might be abusive.  No, my boss talked to other folks who also cared about me and who also didn’t know what to do to save me from what, had it been true, would have been a huge mistake.

(In fairness, they didn’t know my John at all – it wasn’t a very social office.)

And once I made the connection, I remembered feeling similarly helpless once.  I thought about a secretary named Kelly who had worked with us briefly a few years earlier.  She and I had become a bit friendly, even though we worked on different floors and in totally different departments.  We both loved to play softball.  One day I saw Kelly with an enormous black eye.

“I was playing softball with my husband’s team,” she said, shaking her head.   “I should have caught the damn ball.”

“I once caught one with my left thigh,” I responded to her, truthfully, but naively.  “You could see the stitch marks on the bruise.”

The next day she was gone.  Obviously to everyone else her husband had been beating her, and she got help and got away.

The image of her face has haunted me.  What would I have done – would I have been able/willing to help her?  Would I have ever figured out what was happening to her?

My story ended well.  I hadn’t had time to eat properly and subsisted pretty much on a diet of Milky Ways for two months.  Woman cannot live on Milky Ways alone. Maybe ducks can.  I stopped eating chocolate and looked OK at my wedding.  Or at least, I didn’t look like a duck.

I don’t know how Kelly’s story ended.  I never will.

*     *     *

Yesterday, the GOP in the U.S. House of Representatives allowed the Violence Against Women Act, which had been law since 1994, to expire.  And they let it happen because it would have expanded coverage of the law to more women including immigrants and Native Americans.

Perhaps you don’t know what the Violence Against Women law does.

My bible, Wikipedia, says that it provide programs and services, including:

  • Community violence prevention programs
  • Protections for female victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
  • Funding for female victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
  • Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
  • Programs and services for female victims with disabilities
  • Legal aid for female survivors of violence

But what it really does is help abused women.  To let them know that they can get help.  That they are not alone.  And it can also give their families, friends and co-workers vital, life saving information about how to help.  How to act.  What to do besides wonder amongst everyone else but the person most impacted.  Literally.

Now tell me, what’s not to like about this law?  It gives vital assistance to vulnerable women – those who most need it.  A place to go where they can take their kids, get help.

It gives folks who don’t know what to do or what to say a clue as to how to help women in need.

Where they don’t have to give up that last little bit of their heart.

I have stated this more often than I can stand, but the men in the GOP are not on the side of women, or on the side of men who respect women.

GET THEM OUT OF OUR LIVES

Then, Damn them to Hell where they belong

***

What you and I can do:

Contact your representatives in Congress and demand they pass the Violence Against Women Act as it stands today with expanded services: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Other sources:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/vawa_factsheet.pdf

http://denisedv.org/what-is-the-violence-against-women-act-and-why-is-congress-playing-politics/

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December 13, 2012 · 12:58 pm

Babes in Toyland – Angie and Me

Angie and I came up to the knees of these guys

Angie and I came up to the knees of these guys

We did it!  Angie of Childhood Relived and I met for lunch!  It was memorable.  Sadly, though, we did stay in this decade, the 2010s (which sounds really weird).  We simply couldn’t work in time travel back to the 1980s.  Traffic congestion, you see.

We had wonderful plans, Angie and I.  Tours.  Nostalgia.  Archie Bunker and the Smithsonian’s American Museum that contains just the right tidbits of crap from TV Land as brilliantly suggested by Darla of She’s a Maineiac.

But there was one thing that we didn’t factor in ahead of time.  Now, what do you suppose that might be.

If you’re guessing that it’s the fact that neither Angie nor I knows how to shut up, “Come On Down.”  Yup, we spent a 2 hour lunch fighting for air time.  I had my stories; Angie had hers.  It was close, but I think Angie won.  I want a re-match.

Still, we did do a tour of DC.  Sort of.

First of all, none of the restaurants I’d suggested in my earlier post um, worked out.  Still, the restaurant we went to is a Washington landmark:  The Old Ebbitt Grill.  The restaurant has been there for centuries!  Famous people have eaten there – Lincoln!  Grant!  Wilson!  FDR!  Checkers!  It is a piece of Washington history that is seriously cool.  Except that it didn’t happen at the place where we had lunch.  Yup, we had lunch at the new Old Ebbitt Grill.  The OLD Old Ebbitt Grill was torn down not long after I got to DC in 1979.  I’m sure there is no connection.  And I did tell Angie that we were having an expensive lunch in a fraudulent facility.  That’s our nation’s capital for you.

Still, we had a great lunch.  Of course, neither of us would stop talking.  As a result, the food wasn’t as hot as it might have been.  Perhaps we should have sent it back.  A good restaurant should factor conversation in.

Anyway after our long lunch, we realized that we really didn’t have time for much else, so we decided to walk around the White House and gloat about Obama’s re-election.  Of course, we didn’t know that that night Barack, Michelle and the girls were going to light the White House Christmas Tree.  In public.  With thousands of folks in attendance.  Apparently, everybody in DC, VA and MD was there.  So Angie and I, still never pausing our conversation, swam upstream against thousands of folks determined to see the festivities.

Here are the pictures.  Angie did her best Angie-1980s in front of some of Washington’s most impressive tourist destinations.

OK, I can’t be that mean.  Here she is — and really, she doesn’t often let her mouth hang open like that.  It was done only by request.

Angie 6

And here is the picture she took of me!

Angie 4 with me

But the single best moment was when I drove Angie in my car out of a Washington, DC parking lot where we had left my car for 3 hours.

“Twenty Dollars?” she said.  “It cost $20 to park for three hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Angie, you’re not in Kansas any more.  Or one of those other fly-over states, either.  Whichever one you come from.

Come back soon!

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November 7, 2012 · 8:21 pm

I’ll shut up now

You might have noticed, but I’ve been a bit, ummmm, opinionated lately.  OK, so I’m always opinionated, but lately I’ve been opinionated about politics and I pretty much stopped writing about anything else.  My bad.

In case you didn’t notice, I have reason to celebrate.  So do you.  Here in the US we re-elected President Obama and Vice President Biden.  We elected intelligent folks to the US Senate over the “Rape Rappers.”  Women had great success except for the one who made money off of scantily clad women rolling around in mud while wrestling in an undoubtedly dignified manner.  Three of the stupidest Congressmen were defeated (Alan West, Todd Akin and Joe Walsh).  And we still get to laugh at Michelle Bachmann.

My blog has reason to celebrate, too.  Every Republican I made fun of, with the exception of my BFF Michelle, lost.  Damn I’m good.


But I’m going to do you, and especially my international readers, a favor.  I’m going to shut up about politics for a while.

Well, at least I will after I tell you that Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has already let President Obama and the new Senate know that he won’t cooperate.

Portrait of an ASS

Now remember, Mitch is the guy who stated in 2008 that the Republican’s primary job was to make sure that President Obama was a one-term president.

How’d that work for you, Mitch?
But did Mitch learn his lesson?  Nope.  Here’s what he said today:

The American people did two things: they gave President Obama a second chance to fix the problems that even he admits he failed to solve during his first four years in office, and they preserved Republican control of the House of Representatives. The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the President’s first term, they have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together with a Congress that restored balance to Washington after two years of one-party control. Now it’s time for the President to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely-divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office. To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we’ll be there to meet him half way.

Ummm, excuse me Senator McConnell?  You lost your chance of gaining control of the U.S. Senate in an election year when there were tons of vulnerable Democratic seats.  You blew it.  So shut up and learn how to get along.  Stop stamping your feet.  Cooperate.  That’s what’s in the best interest of our country.

 

*     *     *

OK.  I’ll shut up now.

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November 4, 2012 · 12:39 pm

Don’t Take It Just From Me

I’ll be busy for the next few days.  So I will let one of my idols remind you of what you’re sick of hearing me say:

Elections matter. 

VOTE on November 6 if you haven’t already!  If Obama wins, which I hope he will, I will be able to get off my soapbox and re-establish myself as a humor blogger instead of a political one.  You can thank me later!

VOTE!

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