Tag: Republicans

W is for Watergate

The key lesson of Watergate seems to have been “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.”

 

Five burglars involved with the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972, were arrested; a couple more, involved in the operation, were also detained. The term used by President Richard Nixon’s Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, to describe the event was “a third rate burglary attempt.” The seven were tried and convicted, President Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide, and that was that. Except for the fact that two years later, the President was forced to resign in order to avoid almost certain impeachment.

I could not do justice to the story in such limited space – I recommend this Washington Post retrospective – but I do want to convey how important this story was to me personally, and how it played out provided an optimism about “the process” that I have seldom had since.

The burglars had a relationship with the Committee to Re-Elect the President, which many delighted in calling CREEP. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting knowledge of the break-in and attempts to cover it up, with help of secret informant Deep Throat to fill in the blanks, led deep into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House. Various men close to the President were forced to resign.

The US Senate had a select committee operate from May 17 to August 7, 1973, and shown in rotation by the three major networks. Riveting story and I watched it as often as possible, as did most of the country, though some soap opera fans were furious; this was better than the made-up stuff.

It got REALLY interesting when White House assistant Alexander Butterfield revealed that there were listening devices in the Oval Office of the President. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed the tapes, as did the Senate, but Nixon refused to release them, citing executive privilege and ordered Cox to drop his subpoena, which Cox refused. On October 20, 1973, Nixon demanded the resignations of Attorney General Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire the special prosecutor, finally getting the reluctant Solicitor General Robert Bork to do so; this was referred to as the “Saturday night massacre.” It was pretty much downhill from there, with each new revelation pointing closer to RMN himself.

I remember SO many of the characters in this drama. Chair of the Senate select committee Sam Ervin of North Carolina had a folksy demeanor, yet stayed on task. During the House committee hearings on impeachment, Republican House member William Cohen of Maine’s looked pained as he recognized his President’s failings. Charles Colson was convicted of obstruction of justice; he became involved in prison ministry, and he died only a couple of months ago (Arthur had a take on him).

It reminded me how checks and balances used to work, with even Republicans communicating to a GOP chief executive that an abuse of power had taken place. And it was also a time when a vigorous press was a true fourth estate, holding government accountable, but in turn, holding itself responsible for what is published in return. I do miss those days. Oh, here’s the trailer to the film All The President’s Men, which addresses the latter aspect.

The key lesson of Watergate seems to have been “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup,” a message politicians seem to have missed over and over. And over and over. One terrible outcome is the attachment of the suffix -gate to almost every subsequent scandal, no matter how trivial. Here’s an undoubtedly incomplete list.
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Legendary reporter Bob Woodward gets defensive about mild accusations that he sexed up his Watergate stories

Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought

Will Robert Redford’s new documentary explain whether Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in?

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

Our Viewing Tastes Are “Polls” Apart

“Interestingly, the majority of both parties conclude that movies have a liberal bias…”

I was, for a brief time, receiving, for free, this conservative magazine called Newsmax. The February 2012 issue has “How Grover [Norquist] Conquered Washington,” Norquist being the author of the “taxpayer Protection Pledge.” One of the features in that issue reported polls commissioned by the Hollywood Reporter about movies, and the other by Entertainment Weekly about television.

The reported premise is that Democrats like comedies, “at least today’s version of it,” while Republicans prefer reality TV which is, according to an Iowa professor, “the only genre that regularly includes Christian conservatives and treats them like they’re normal.” But Republicans do like the sitcom The Middle.

Conservatives like reality shows on History such as American Pickers (collectibles), Top Shot (shooting challenge), and Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy, while Democrats like the “raunchy” Jersey Shore. The Democrats also like the scripted HBO drama Treme, which shows “sympathy for the underdog.”

In the graphic box, the favorite TV shows of Republicans are Castle, The Biggest Loser, Hawaii Five-O, and The Mentalist, while Democrats prefer 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Glee, and Cougar Town.

As for movies, Republicans like Secretariat, Chariots of Fire, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music, while Democrats prefer Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Kramer vs. Kramer, American Beauty, and Crash (the 2005 version).

“Interestingly, the majority of both parties conclude that movies have a liberal bias…The movie that [both parties] say reflects that left-wing bias most happens to be the biggest blockbuster in history: Avatar.”

I found Chariots of Fire boring, but The Sound of Music has wonderful music. I know some Castle fans who probably aren’t Republicans. And I find it fascinating that the NBC shows that apparently, Dems like (30 Rock, Parks & Rec) haven’t translated to higher ratings.

WTF? Cavemen in America

It’s baffling that some folks seem to have gone all retrograde in America, with particular men deciding when women should get pregnant.

I try not to write about politics too much, I really do, mostly so that I don’t make myself crazy. But a series of related events, which I would not have imagined would be part of the public discourse in the USA in 2012, ARE front-page news.

First, the Republican-led Congress convened a panel of “experts”, most of whom railed against employer insurance plans covering birth control. Interestingly, they happened to be mostly a bunch of guys. The odd thing is that many of these same insurance plans with contraceptive coverage that the panel was railing against will cover Viagra and similar products that will be a sexual aid, even for (gasp!) unmarried men.

So some Democrats allowed Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke to testify from a different perspective, e.g., a woman’s, regarding women’s reproductive health care; LISTEN to her opening statement. Note that Fluke’s comments were primarily about the use of contraceptives for other purposes, such as to avoid ovarian cysts. A windbag named Rush Limbaugh slandered Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute,” then, in response to the outrage of his remarks, exclaimed that he would “buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want.” (It would be off-topic, I suppose, to note that Limbaugh has been married four times and has no children, suggesting at least the possibility of contraception use.) The talk radio guy eventually offered a limp apology after sponsors left his show.

Limbaugh’s comments echoed those of Foster Friess, Presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s billionaire supporter: “And this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s [so] inexpensive. Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Santorum, who apparently has distanced himself from Limbaugh’s “slut” comment in an “oh, but he’s an entertainer” remark, talks about “the dangers of contraception”: “Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘… contraception’s okay.’ It’s not okay… because…[things in the sexual realm are] supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal … but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.” I think Santorum has the perfect right to express his opinion, but my concern is that these issues would likely dominate his policies if he were elected.

If that weren’t enough, the Girl Scouts of America are under attack by some shady group because the GSA has “liberal progressive troop leaders [who] will indoctrinate the girls in their troop according to the principles of Planned Parenthood.” Oy.

It’s baffling that some folks seem to have gone all retrograde in America, with particular men deciding when women should get pregnant, while railing against the number of children born out of wedlock, and wanting to cut funds to them. Or maybe it’s just that these dudes want women to shut the hell up, particularly about issues that primarily impact women. I have to check my calendar. Nope, it’s not 1952. In fact, I don’t think the country was as backward 60 years ago as these folks are today.

The Pregnant Woman, La Donna Gravida by Raphael, 1507

Not Letting the Truth Get in the Way

You know that old cliche about you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts? I guess that depends on whether it’s politically expedient.

I’m an old political science major. I appreciate differing points of view on the issues. I even solicit varying positions by reading a mix of publications. But what’s been going on in US politics is not that anymore. Reading this article, originally from the Guardian (UK), called The Right’s Stupidity Spreads, Enabled by a Too-Polite Left, I was particularly fascinated by this section:

Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum, and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that “conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics”. The result is a “shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology” which has “ominous real-world consequences for American society”.

Lofgren complains that “the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today”. The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter”, or the “misinformation voter”. While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base”.

And, it’s not that I wasn’t already generally aware of this. But it does confirm that I’m not totally crazy.

I’m watching ABC News This Week a couple of Sundays ago. Someone, I think it was Austin Goolsby, President Obama’s former economic czar, who was talking about the economic recovery. He noted that it might be going even better if we hadn’t lost jobs in the public sector. And some conservative woman rolls her eyes and says, “Yeah, right.”

Well, yeah, right. In a Bureau of Labor Statistics report citing the drop in the unemployment rate from 8.5% to 8.3%, it read: Over the past 12 months, the [public] sector has lost 276,000 jobs, with declines in local government; state government, excluding education; and the U.S. Postal Service.

This is also an interesting read: “Among the people who saw this [economic] crisis coming was the conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, the supply-side champion who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan Revolution… Yet for all those credentials, he is today an outcast from the very conservative ranks where he was once so influential. That’s because Bruce Bartlett dared to write a book criticizing the second George Bush as a pretend conservative who slashed taxes but still spent with wild abandon.” Watch and/or read the interview about Where the Right Went Wrong.

Do you know that old cliche about you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts? I guess that depends on whether it’s politically expedient. And it does explain folks such as Donald Trump promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US or tweeting in October 2011 that the freak snowstorm was proof that man-made climate change is, in the words of the article, “an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy,” or that “the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.”

Worse, though, for this librarian is the egregious ignoring of factual evidence, by creating pseudoscience and ignoring facts (Obama DID provide his “long-form” birth certificate) for political gain.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

There will be a Presidential inauguration one year from tomorrow

What about a third party?

I remember reading in someone’s blog late last year, “Please give me someone else to vote for besides Barack Obama.” It was a plea to the US Republican party regarding the November 2012 Presidential election. So far, that wish has not come true. The Republican base’s fear of Mitt Romney, I believe, is well-founded; his positions seem to follow the wind. The flaws of the rest of the field are too numerous, too exhausting to mention, but certainly including their collective racial polarization, Rick Perry’s sheer ignorance of even his own position on issues, and Newt Gingrich’s hubris.

This is not that I’m that enamored by the incumbent. There are all of the campaign promises he made that not only did not fulfill, he went 180. The recently-signed legislation which would deny suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention are among the elements that are terrifying to me. But which of his opponents would have taken a different position?

Andrew Sullivan, of all people, does note some of Obama’s accomplishments. I am happy about some of the President’s positions, notably gay rights, and remain cautiously hopeful about the outcome of SOPA. Also like some fun innovations of his administration such as this one.

What about a third party? There’s this mysterious Americans Elect, which is getting on the ballot in a number of states. Since there is no candidate (yet), it’s really difficult for me to gauge what its impact will be. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the nominee is appealing to me, I would have to still weigh the notion of whether the candidate could win enough electoral votes nationally to win, or at least not give the race to someone worse. Since no third party has EVER won the US Presidency, because of the way the system is rigged, it would make it difficult to select that candidate, no matter how attractive.

Meanwhile, I Wish I Had a Super PAC of my own.

It’ll be an interesting year.
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Belated happy birthday to the FLOTUS, who turned 48 on Tuesday.

 

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