How Two Elections Changed America

[Octafish]

From ConsortiumNews:

How Two Elections Changed America

By Robert Parry
March 9, 2011 (Originally published November 4, 2009)

Two clandestine operations during hard-fought presidential elections of the past half century shaped the modern American political era, but they remain little known to the general public and mostly ignored by historians. One unfolded in the weeks before Election 1968 and the other over a full year before Election 1980.

Besides putting into power iconic Republican leaders, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, those two elections altered the nation’s course and went a long way toward defining the current personalities of America’s national parties, the anything-goes Republicans versus the ever-accommodating Democrats.

The two cases also demonstrated how Official Washington, including the national press corps, could be convinced to avert its eyes from strong evidence of these two historical crimes, Republican sabotage of both President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks in 1968 and President Jimmy Carter’s hostage negotiations with Iran in 1980.

It was easier for all involved to pretend that nothing happened, with the dirty secrets kept from the public for “the good of the country.”

Yet those two elections had monumental consequences. In 1968, by thwarting Johnson’s nearly completed peace deal, Nixon condemned the country to four bloody and divisive years, with more than 20,000 additional U.S. soldiers dying in Vietnam – along with millions of Indochinese – and a generational divide opening between parents and their children.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/030911b.html

DUers may remember Kissinger's crowd continued to hold sway over other elections and to drag America into even more unnecessary wars.

[Initech]

1. Is this why they want to enter Libya so badly?

[Octafish]

2. Libya has the black gold -- Texas Tea.

Lots and lots. And that's something Henry and the Texans think highly of.

Plus, war means the government has to buy stuff, the "Racket" Gen. Smedley Butler wrote about.

[Initech]

3. All the more reason to buy a hybrid or electric vehicle.

I'd love to get a Ford Focus electric, but I'll wind up settling for a Fusion hybrid. The day we no longer have to support these fuckers, the better.

[Johnny_dollar]

5. An electric automobile makes sense if you generate your own power

But, if you are going to charge up from the grid, chances are that power was generated by burning fossil fuels. Plus, since power plant efficiencies are less than 100%, you probable end up burning more fossil fuel than if you used it directly.

Lets say that a particular kilowatt was generated by wind, solar or hydro. Electricity is fungible, you are still using power that would have gone to someone that used fossil-generated power instead.

There is also problems with coal-generated power. Electrical cars may make the air cleaner in Denver and Los Angeles, but at a price of destroying the lakes of Southern Ontario, Quebec and western NY state due to acidification.

[Atypical Liberal]

6. Small price to pay.

The bottom line is we have an urgent, desperate need to get off of oil. I don't care if an electric car turns out to be worse for the environment, we need to get off of the monopoly of oil.

The other nice thing about electricity is it is not easily transportable over long distances, so generation and usage tends to be local.

As soon as one is available, I will be buying a Nissan Leaf.

This is not an environmental decision. It is a geopolitical decision.

[Johnny_dollar]

8. Help me out--I'm confused here...

You say that you want to "go off oil" by causing more oil, natural gas, or coal to be burned. Teabagger logic.

[Atypical Liberal]

9. What I mean.

You say that you want to "go off oil" by causing more oil, natural gas, or coal to be burned. Teabagger logic.

What I mean is I want to stop directly subsidizing imported oil by driving a car that runs on it.

Right now nearly half our our electricity comes from coal. Most of that is domestically produced. I'm fine with that.

20% comes from nuclear power, and I'm fine with that.

23% comes from from natural gas. As long as it's not imported from outside the country, giving cause to our imperialistic efforts to secure access to it, I'm fine with that, too.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:2008_US_electricity_generation_by_source_v2.png

The most desperate goal right now is to get us off of foreign energy sources, and for cars, that means foreign oil.

Once you have the nation's personal transportation needs satisfied with electricity, you can tackle the power generation problem separately. And it will need to be addressed anyway - non-renewable sources of energy won't last forever. Nuclear, solar, and wind power will no doubt supplant them in time.

My main point is that this is not primarily an environmental issue. Saving the environment is nice, but the primary goal as I see it is to stop the world from desperately trying to squeeze the last drops of oil out of the planet and waging wars to do so.

[Poboy]

4. recommend

[Octafish]

7. Kissinger is a most interesting person. Would that the FBI made him a ''person of interest.''

Sen. Prescott S Bush tilts the chapeau of his protege, Sen. Richard M Nixon, just right.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks