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NinthMusketeer wrote: You are right, my tone was not at all exaggerated, it was serious and had no reason not to be taken at exactly face value. I messed up previously, which completely excuses you doing the same.
Actually, I could have chosen my words more carefully. Pals?
Fair enough, I have certainly made my fair share of poorly worded statements in the past.
Richard M. Nixon always denied it: to David Frost, to historians and to Lyndon B. Johnson, who had the strongest suspicions and the most cause for outrage at his successor’s rumored treachery. To them all, Nixon insisted that he had not sabotaged Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage” South Vietnam “not to come to the table,” Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.
Now we know Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign’s efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to “monkey wrench” the initiative.
The 37th president has been enjoying a bit of a revival recently, as his achievements in foreign policy and the landmark domestic legislation he signed into law draw favorable comparisons to the presidents (and president-elect) that followed. A new, $15 million face-lift at the Nixon presidential library, while not burying the Watergate scandals, spotlights his considerable record of accomplishments.
Haldeman’s notes return us to the dark side. Amid the reappraisals, we must now weigh apparently criminal behavior that, given the human lives at stake and the decade of carnage that followed in Southeast Asia, may be more reprehensible than anything Nixon did in Watergate.
Nixon had entered the fall campaign with a lead over Humphrey, but the gap was closing that October. Henry A. Kissinger, then an outside Republican adviser, had called, alerting Nixon that a deal was in the works: If Johnson would halt all bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviets pledged to have Hanoi engage in constructive talks to end a war that had already claimed 30,000 American lives.
But Nixon had a pipeline to Saigon, where the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson’s actions as a cheap political trick. The conduit was Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.
“! Keep Anna Chennault working on” South Vietnam, Haldeman scrawled, recording Nixon’s orders. “Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN can do.”
Nixon told Haldeman to have Rose Mary Woods, the candidate’s personal secretary, contact another nationalist Chinese figure — the businessman Louis Kung — and have him press Thieu as well. “Tell him hold firm,” Nixon said.
Nixon also sought help from Chiang Kai-shek, the president of Taiwan. And he ordered Haldeman to have his vice-presidential candidate, Spiro T. Agnew, threaten the C.I.A. director, Richard Helms. Helms’s hopes of keeping his job under Nixon depended on his pliancy, Agnew was to say. “Tell him we want the truth — or he hasn’t got the job,” Nixon said.
Throughout his life, Nixon feared disclosure of this skulduggery. “I did nothing to undercut them,” he told Frost in their 1977 interviews. “As far as Madame Chennault or any number of other people,” he added, “I did not authorize them and I had no knowledge of any contact with the South Vietnamese at that point, urging them not to.” Even after Watergate, he made it a point of character. “I couldn’t have done that in conscience.”
Nixon had cause to lie. His actions appear to violate federal law, which prohibits private citizens from trying to “defeat the measures of the United States.” His lawyers fought throughout Nixon’s life to keep the records of the 1968 campaign private. The broad outline of “the Chennault affair” would dribble out over the years. But the lack of evidence of Nixon’s direct involvement gave pause to historians and afforded his loyalists a defense.
Time has yielded Nixon’s secrets. Haldeman’s notes were opened quietly at the presidential library in 2007, where I came upon them in my research for a biography of the former president. They contain other gems, like Haldeman’s notations of a promise, made by Nixon to Southern Republicans, that he would retreat on civil rights and “lay off pro-Negro crap” if elected president. There are notes from Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, in which he and his aides discuss the need to wiretap political foes.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that, absent Nixon, talks would have proceeded, let alone ended the war. But Johnson and his advisers, at least, believed in their mission and its prospects for success.
When Johnson got word of Nixon’s meddling, he ordered the F.B.I. to track Chennault’s movements. She “contacted Vietnam Ambassador Bui Diem,” one report from the surveillance noted, “and advised him that she had received a message from her boss … to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was … ‘Hold on. We are gonna win. … Please tell your boss to hold on.’ ”
In a conversation with the Republican senator Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, Johnson lashed out at Nixon. “I’m reading their hand, Everett,” Johnson told his old friend. “This is treason.”
“I know,” Dirksen said mournfully.
Johnson’s closest aides urged him to unmask Nixon’s actions. But on a Nov. 4 conference call, they concluded that they could not go public because, among other factors, they lacked the “absolute proof,” as Defense Secretary Clark Clifford put it, of Nixon’s direct involvement.
Nixon was elected president the next day.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
The passage of a “bathroom bill” last March sparked a maelstrom with severe political, economic and cultural consequences for North Carolina that continued through the end of 2016. Yet Texas is poised to propose a similar law in 2017.
In November, one of the state’s most senior politicians published his top 10 priorities for the next legislative session. A “Women’s Privacy Act” was at number six, right after banning immigration “sanctuary cities” and insisting on photo ID at the ballot box.
The act, said lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, is necessary so that “women and girls” can have “privacy and safety in their restrooms, showers and locker rooms”.
When filed, the bill is likely to turn national attention to Texas in the wake of North Carolina legislators’ failure to repeal their bill during a special session on 21 December. Patrick issued a statement the following day congratulating them.
The so-called bathroom bill in North Carolina includes a provision that requires people to use public bathrooms that match the gender on their birth certificate. Critics have described it as a thinly veiled attack on the transgender community under the guise of protecting public safety.
Patrick hasn’t released his own proposed bill, but has said it would allow businesses to create their own bathroom policies.
Despite the demonstrable negative consequences in states that have passed laws that undermine LGBTQ equality, the coming months will indicate whether the ascent of Donald Trump to the White House is emboldening religious conservatives to press for more such bills after a series of gains for gay and transgender people at the federal level under the Obama administration.
A federal court ruling Saturday may further embolden these efforts. A Texas judge temporarily halted Obama administration rules that are intended to ban discrimination by doctors and hospitals against transgender persons. Joining Texas in the suit were Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska and Kansas.
In August, the same judge sided with 13 Republican-controlled states to block transgender protections in public schools sought by the Obama administration.
‘Something that should be avoided’
So-called “religious freedom” provisions similar to those that caused controversy in Indiana in 2015 are also set to be aired in the Texas statehouse next year.
“I certainly believe that logically thinking people would look to North Carolina and look to Indiana,” said Chuck Smith, chief executive of Equality Texas, an LGBTQ advocacy group.
Such people would see, he said, “the economic consequences that were experienced in those states as a result of filing discriminatory legislation, and a logically thinking person would come to the conclusion that that is something that should be avoided in the state of Texas.”
The state’s chamber of commerce, the Texas Association of Business (TAB), reached that view. It has produced a 23-page report warning of dire economic consequences if the state follows North Carolina’s path by pursuing a policy that would harm tourism, alienate employers and dissuade talented millennials from staying in or moving to Texas.
“If you just look at North Carolina and Indiana and put that over a Texas-sized footprint of our economy, it could be up to $8.5bn and 185,000 jobs lost, it is very dramatic,” said Chris Wallace, the association’s president.
“We want to remain one of the top states in which to do business, so why would we want to do anything to risk any of that, by legislation that’s really unnecessary and unenforceable?
“The question of how you would enforce people going into the right bathroom…What, so you have to take your birth certificate? It gets really tricky.
“We’ve got too many core issues that we need to be worried about in this state – education, transportation, water, many more. Economic development, keeping us strong. We don’t need these types of issues to overshadow our core agenda items.”
Att a Texas Tribune event in November, Joe Straus, the speaker of the Texas house of representatives, said he had other, more urgent concerns than the bathroom bill.
Patrick, though, appears unmoved. In a statement earlier this month his office called the TAB report “misinformation and fear-mongering regarding a bill they haven’t even seen”. It also defended the proposal as a way to “assure that sexual predators, like those who exploit the internet, will not be able to freely enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms or showers, and that businesses are not forced by local ordinances to allow men in women’s restrooms and locker rooms”.
Patrick’s spokesperson did not return a Guardian request for comment.
‘We have a friend in the White House’
Sexual assault in any location is, of course, already illegal, while there is no evidence that non-discrimination laws have resulted in increased rates of sexual assault. By contrast, LGBTQ advocates argue that violence and bias against transgender people is a very real problem exacerbated by prejudicial laws.
North Carolina’s HB2 was signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican who lost his bid for re-election in November. The backlash saw sports events and concerts cancelled and businesses scrapping investment plans.
Patrick, 66, was a radio talkshow host perhaps best-known for getting an on-air vasectomy until he was elected as lieutenant governor in 2014 on a platform of stopping the “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. He was the Texas state chairman for the Trump presidential campaign.
“Starting in 2017, we will have a friend in the White House who was clearly elected because the people of this country believe in the conservative principles that have guided the way we govern in Texas,” Patrick said in November.
Smith, of Equality Texas, said that Texas’s conservative politicians telegraphed their intentions to introduce more anti-equality legislation long before Trump’s victory.
“I believe we have seen a heightened sense of concern about the possibility of favourable policies being rolled back on a federal level,” he said. “At the state level we already saw the threats that were lying ahead and those haven’t really changed.”
The US supreme court legalised same-sex marriage nationwide in June 2015. That major victory for gay rights appears to have inspired a pushback by conservative Republicans in states.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than 200 “anti-LGBTQ bills” were introduced across the country in 2016 sessions – most failing to pass – and more than 111 million people live in states without clear state-level protections against LGBTQ workplace discrimination.
Smith is also concerned that 2017 will see Texas legislators press for “religious freedom” laws that would, for example, exempt Christian retailers who believe homosexuality is a sin from providing services for gay weddings.
So far there are a handful of Texas bills which advocates consider anti-LGBTQ that have been filed amid the usual slew of pro-gun, pro-God, anti-undocumented immigrant, anti-abortion and anti-federal government proposals up for discussion when the legislative session starts in January.
One would eliminate local non-discrimination ordinances if they have protections that go beyond state law – reminiscent of HB2. Another calls on the state not to enforce federal laws that the Texas legislature deems to violate the state constitution – which since 2005 has defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
A high-profile revision of the law on a parent’s right to know information about their child has raised fears that it could force teachers to out students.
Peregrine - If you like the army buy it, and don't worry about what one random person on the internet thinks.
Which is worse, 18 days to President Trump, or 19 days to President Pence?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/01/02 17:28:33
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
So, I was thinking, to keep the thread positive, we should all name something we will miss after Obama steps down.
I for one will miss his voice. For all the disagreements you can have with the content, he is an excellent orator, and superb debater. And that's not something we'll get from Donald Trump. (I doubt he'll even bother to do the weekly radio address.)
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Co'tor Shas wrote: So, I was thinking, to keep the thread positive, we should all name something we will miss after Obama steps down.
I'll miss having a president with his heart in the right place. Obama did not become President to show how great he was, he didn't become President because it was his 'turn', and he didn't become President just out of some inane desire to 'win'. He was there to help the American people and while that didn't always work out at the end of the day he did a decent job of it. Despite the doom-and-gloom coming from the right the US has not collapsed into anarchy, we still have all of our rights (some groups have made gains, even), and the economy is better than when he took office. If every POTUS could manage that much I'd be pretty happy.
Verviedi wrote: Patrick, 66, was a radio talkshow host perhaps best-known for getting an on-air vasectomy until he was elected as lieutenant governor in 2014 on a platform of stopping the “invasion” of undocumented immigrants. He was the Texas state chairman for the Trump presidential campaign.
Oh, Texas...
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Ustrello wrote: Unless we will have a Cheney/Bush situation where we know where the power really lays
Do you honestly believe that Pence is the power behind the throne?
Possibly, trump is an idiot who is more apt to throw angry tweets at people than actually govern. Cue the leaks when he won the nomination that the VP would be doing most of the work.
Associated Press wrote:Puerto Rico's new gov promises immediate push for statehood
Gov. Ricardo Rossello is sworn in at the seaside Capitol in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Monday, Jan. 2, 2017. The U.S. territory is preparing for what many believe will be new austerity measures and a renewed push for statehood to haul the island out of a deep economic crisis. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's new governor was sworn in Monday, promising an immediate push for statehood in a territory facing a deep economic crisis.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello, 37, proposed several measures aimed at alleviating the crisis shortly after he was sworn in at midnight. Among them is a proposal to hold a referendum that would ask voters whether they prefer statehood or independence. Many have argued that Puerto Rico's political status has contributed to its decade-long crisis that has prompted more than 200,000 people to flee to the U.S. mainland in recent years.
"The United States cannot pretend to be a model of democracy for the world while it discriminates against 3.5 million of its citizens in Puerto Rico, depriving them of their right to political, social and economic equality under the U.S. flag," Rossello said in his inaugural speech, delivered in Spanish. "There is no way to overcome Puerto Rico's crisis given its colonial condition."
The crowd rose to its feet and cheered as Rossello announced that he would fly to Washington, D.C., Monday to back a bill to admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state.
He also said he would soon hold elections to choose two senators and five representatives to Congress and send them to Washington to demand statehood, a strategy used by Tennessee to join the union in the 18th century. The U.S. government has final say on whether Puerto Rico can become a state.
Rossello said he also aims to boost public-private partnerships and use that revenue to save a retirement system that faces a $40 billion deficit and is expected to collapse in less than a year. He pledged to work closely with a federal control board that U.S. Congress created last year to oversee Puerto Rico's finances, and he has said he supports negotiations with creditors to help restructure a public debt of nearly $70 billion.
"Puerto Rico's recovery begins today," said Rossello, a scientist with no political experience and the son of a former governor who also sought statehood for Puerto Rico.
Rossello announced that he has already signed six executive orders, including one to promote bilingual education, another to provide female government employees with the same pay as their male counterparts, and a third ordering agencies to reduce their budgets and contracts for professional services by 10 percent.
He also seeks to privatize services such as the generation of energy, establish an office to oversee and distribute federal funds to cut down on corruption, and to create financial incentives for doctors to boost the number of dwindling specialists.
Thousands of supporters cheered as they clutched umbrellas to protect themselves from a searing sun.
"This is a historic moment for Puerto Rico," said 50-year-old Jose Davila as he waved a large flag from Rossello's pro-statehood New Progressive Party. "He's the hope of our island, he's the hope for statehood, he's the hope for a people that have suffered."
Puerto Ricans have been hit with dozens of new taxes in the past four years and increases in utility bills as former Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla aimed to generate more revenue for a government he said was running out of money. Despite those and other measures, the island's government has defaulted on millions of dollars' worth of bond payments and declared a state of emergency at several agencies.
The federal control board has requested a revised fiscal plan that has to be approved by end of January, saying that the one Garcia submitted last year was in part unrealistic and relied too heavily on federal funds. Garcia had refused to submit a revised plan to include austerity measures. Rossello has said he would request an extension of that deadline as well as an extension of a moratorium that expires in February and currently protects Puerto Rico from lawsuits filed by angered creditors.
As supporters streamed early on Monday toward the Capitol building, one yelled out, "Today, a new Puerto Rico begins!" to the cheers of others, including those holding U.S. flags.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/01/02 23:00:49
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
It isn't non-partisan because it basically adds 2 D senators and a few D representatives. That turns partisan quickly.
Every time a terrorist dies a Paratrooper gets his wings.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
It isn't non-partisan because it basically adds 2 D senators and a few D representatives. That turns partisan quickly.
Somehow, I don't see "Oh no, people will get representation, we have to stop it!!!" going over too well with the American people... It's not like Puerto Rican's couldn't vote if they just moved to Florida or something either.
Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
kronk wrote: Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
sebster wrote: Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
BaronIveagh wrote: Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
It isn't non-partisan because it basically adds 2 D senators and a few D representatives. That turns partisan quickly.
Seems like a States Rights issue to pick their own representation, so GOP should be okay with it.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
It isn't non-partisan because it basically adds 2 D senators and a few D representatives. That turns partisan quickly.
I suppose a bargain could be reached to split those seats 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans for the first term. The problem for Democrats is that PR currently enjoys some pretty sweet benefits as a US Territory which would go away as soon as Statehood becomes official. The change in economy coupled with the fact that it isn't the tourist Mecca that Hawaii is could push PR down a very different path.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
It isn't non-partisan because it basically adds 2 D senators and a few D representatives. That turns partisan quickly.
I suppose a bargain could be reached to split those seats 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans for the first term. The problem for Democrats is that PR currently enjoys some pretty sweet benefits as a US Territory which would go away as soon as Statehood becomes official. The change in economy coupled with the fact that it isn't the tourist Mecca that Hawaii is could push PR down a very different path.
Why should there be a deal? If it becomes a state it should be able to elect their own senators and representatives to be sworn in on the day statehood becomes effective.
Well, at least one of those stories isn't everything it seemed to be. The Washington Post also ran the story about the Burlington electric grid being hacked and is now walking it back.
“Authorities say there is no indication of that so far [that Russians had penetrated the US electric grid],” according to an editor’s note attached to a corrected version of the story on the paper’s Web site.
So, while the laptop had a virus it never touched the electric grid. Sort of like when you bring your personal laptop to work but don't connect to the corporate network.
Let's be clear here, malware has been around since the internet became a thing back in the 90s. What we have in this case is some dumb schmuck going to a website he/she probably shouldn't have (porn, poker, who knows) and wound up clicking on something and downloading a trojan. Trojans =/= hacking.
It's a bit more than that. The code found on the computer was a match to APT28's malware code. What they likely found was pieces of an exploit snuck unto the computers last year.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Will Congress OK Puerto Rican statehood I wonder. It would seem to be a pretty non-partisan issue, but this is the US congress we are talking about.
Those statehood elections down there get pretty ugly.
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