Firing Line With William F. Buckley: The Hippie Generation (1968)

Source:The New Democrat

I find this whole show very interesting if for no other reason and there might not be any other reason why I find this episode of Firing Line interesting, but the contrast on it. You have Bill Buckley who was as Anglo-Saxon and preppie and perhaps even square as an American can get, interviewing hippies and an expert I guess on Hippies. Why Buckley would let Jack Kerouac go out on his show drunk, I have no idea other than maybe to make fun of the man and make him look like a joke.

The hippie movement was a reaction to the 1950s and every other conservative establishment decades before it. What the Hippies said was that there were multiple ways for Americans to live their lives and be productive people and good Americans. That they didn’t have to live the lives of the parents and grandparents. The Baby Boomers who probably made up most of the Hippies were giving this message and living their life differently. That they didn’t have to live the lives of their parents and could live the way that they wanted to and still be good productive people.

Sony Pictures: Love Has Many Faces (1965)

Source:The New Democrat

I just love Lana Turner and Stefanie Powers. Two of the cutest hottest sexiest actress’s that Hollywood has ever produced. They both have the cutest facial expressions and mannerism’s you’ll ever see and put them together in a movie together and have them in the same scene and what else would you want to see. By the way, Ruth Roman is very beautiful and cute in this movie and I believe a very underrated actress and babe in Hollywood. And by the way, Love Has Many Faces is a very good movie. I saw it twice this week in preparation for this blog. And I’ll get into what I saw and nor just Lana, Stef and Ruth.

Love Has Many Faces is essentially about the American gigolo. Three men now working in Acapulco, Mexico which is absolutely gorgeous looking for their next meal tickets. Pete Jordan played by Cliff Robertson already has his meal ticket Kit Jordan his wife. Who should’ve been called Kitty or Kitten because she was so adorable in this movie. One of Pete’s old friends, a fellow gigolo washes up dead on an Acapulco beach. This guy also has a connection with Kit and was wearing a bracelet that she gave him. So now Pete and Kit are suspects for the Acapulco police in this murder investigation.

Carol Lambert played by Stefanie Powers is the girlfriend of the dead gigolo and comes down to Acapulco from America to find out what happened to her boyfriend. Pete not only has to worry about he and his wife as murder suspects in this investigation, but also has a rival who wants his wife. Hank Walker and old friend of his wife. And during this whole investigation and scene you have a married couple Pete and Kit Jordan who’ve been married for about a year and yet they’ve argued like they’ve been married for thirty-years. And have two or three kids together who are all in or out of college. And thinking about divorcing each other.

During this whole movie I’m wondering if Pete actually loves his rich wife or not, or did her marry her because she’s rich. They are clearly attracted to each other and share a mutual respect. But they socialize with other people and have other potential love interests. Pete has his old friend’s girlfriend Carol and Kit has Hank. Or are Pete and Kit using each other and trying to make each other jealous to perhaps try to bring them closer to each other. All this going on during a murder investigation where they are both suspects in it. And then throw in the clever writing and humor and you have a very good movie.

Crash Course: John Green- The Reagan Revolution

Source: Crash Course-

Source:The New Democrat

The Reagan Revolution was all possible because of what Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon were able to build in the 1960s and 70s. Moving right-wing Democrats from the Midwest and South over to the Republican Party. It was sort of the final nail in the coffin to the FDR/LBJ Coalition that included Southern right-wing Democrats, to go along with Northeastern Progressives and organized labor being part of both groups. The Reagan Revolution dominated the South and Midwest, but also did well in the Northeast with people who are called Northeastern Republicans today. People who are economic Conservatives and socially moderate to classically conservative, but do not go along with the Religious-Right on social issues.

That is how a right-winger wins 40 and then forty-nine states in America. You convince the Northeast that you don’t want big government into the private lives of Americans. You convince everyone else that you truly believe in economic freedom. And that appoint people who your Far-Right loves and pretend you are with them on the issues, while actually not really doing anything for them.
Source:Crash Course

The American Mind: Charles Kesler- Interviewing William Voegeli: 'Liberal Bullshit'

Source:The American Mind- Hoover Institution Fellow William Voegeli.

Source:The New Democrat 

"What's the foundation of liberalism? William Voegeli joins Charles R. Kesler to discuss the origins of bad liberal ideas. Watch more of 'The American Mind' on our website:The American Mind." 

From The American Mind 

It took nine minutes into this interview to figure out exactly what these two guys were getting at. And I’m not sure I have, but this is the best idea that I have at what they are getting at. And after I explain that I’m going to call bullshit on Bill Voegeli. 

They (Bill and Chuck) seem to be arguing that so-called Liberals believe that it doesn’t matter if problems are being solved through public assistance and wealth redistribution or not. What matters is that they care and come off as caring. And if what they are doing doesn’t work, just throw more money at poverty or whatever the problem is and that will make it seem that Liberals care even more.

To sort of paraphrase and take Chuck’s and Bill’s point that if anyone should care about whether public programs are working or not, it should be the Liberal. I would amend that and say the Socialist should care even more because they are the people who believe in public social programs the most. And you might say: “Well aren’t Liberals, Progressives and Socialists all the same people?” And if you are familiar with this blog, you know I say no. Those three labels are all different, because they are three different groups of people.

The Socialist, the tax and spender from the 1960s and 70s and even till the 1980s to a certain extent even though Ronald Reagan was successful in ending a lot of that, was the person who would argue if a social program is not working, it must be because we aren’t spending enough on that. Not because conditions have changed to make the program seem no longer adequate to addressing the concerns it was designed for. Or it was simply not designed with very well to begin with. 

Remember, it was Liberal Democrats President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gores who established the reinventing government program of the 1990s. Actually it was Vice President Gore who presided over that effort. Not Conservative Republicans.

Now here is where I call bullshit on Bill and Chuck: that is how right-wingers especially hyper-partisan right-wingers want Liberals to be seen as. As people who don’t give a damn about people’s tax dollars and the money that they worked for and earn. Because supposedly Liberals believe that is the government’s especially the Federal Government’s money that they are allowing the people to have some of. That Liberals are more interested in looking like they are care about social problems and want to help people. But aren’t so much interested in actually solving the problems, but looking like they care and spending public money on them. That view of Liberals is bullshit.

One of the genius’ of President Bill Clinton is that he almost completely changed how the Democratic Party was received. When he came to office the Democratic Party was perceived as a big government tax and spend social democratic party. That was more interested in spending people’s money than actually solving problems. 

Thanks to little things like deficit reduction, reinventing government, Welfare to Work and the only two balanced Federal budgets since 1969, millions of Americans moving out of poverty and the poverty rate actually coming down, Democrats and Liberals have almost completely shedded that stereotype. And only the Far-Left of the party still carries it

Henry Higgins: Who Was Richard Nixon?

Source:The New Democrat

With all due respect to BBC, I don’t think you can explain who was Richard Nixon in under an hour. To explain someone as the narrator in this film said is one of if not the most fascinating American politicians whose ever lived, you probably need a mini-series. A three or four-hour film. If you try to cover Nixon and just focus on Watergate or the criminal conspiracies inside of the Nixon White House, or the checkers speech, the House Un-American Activities Committee, you’ll only get part of his life story and not even half of that. And to cover those things alone, you would probably need three hours to do that.

And for the admirers of Dick Nixon and people from the outside looking in who are simply interested in learning about the man, focusing on his rags to riches story and being born in the valley and rising to the top of the mountain, to paraphrase President Nixon, again you would need probably weeks of reading and watching films about the man. Nixon’s public service career goes from World War II in the early 1940s serving in that war, all the way up to leaving the White House in 1974. With Congress, the Vice Presidency, his role of the GOP comeback of 1966 and 68 and even winning the Presidency in 1968 in between.

You could read series of books and watch series of documentaries about the man’s foreign policy accomplishments including ending the Vietnam War alone. Or his push to move America off of foreign oil with a national energy policy in 1973. His push to reform Welfare in 1969 that became Welfare to Work in 1996. His push to reform American health care and health insurance in 1974, that became the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even if you watch this entire film about Dick Nixon, again you may get part of his story, but ending it with so much more to learn about the man

Caerdsp Roabano: Dick Cavett's Watergate - Secrets of The Dead

Source:The New Democrat

At best I can gather, God that sounds lame, but as best as I know it, President Richard Nixon made the decision to coverup the Watergate investigation the day his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman gave him his first intelligence briefing about it. The day after the story broke or something close to that. The decision might have been made by President Nixon to coverup the investigation the day the President found out that people from his reelection campaign were involved in the break in. But the Nixon White House made the decision to coverup the story fairly early on in this story. So Dick Nixon sealed his fate and presidency early on in this story because he’s on tape officially deciding to coverup the story. Without the taping system we wouldn’t have known that.

Mark Pfister: Secrets of War, Documentary

Source:The New Democrat

Assuming that this is true that Richard Nixon was negotiating with North Vietnam, the Communist Republic of Vietnam back then, as a private citizen without the permission of the Lyndon Johnson Administration, then you can add that to the long list of charges and real felonies that any other American would’ve done at least twenty-years on in prison for. Assuming the prosecution decided to prosecute Dick Nixon on all of those charges. And if this is true, then Nixon became a criminal before he became President of the United States.

And this is two or three years before Watergate and a couple of years before the plumbers unit was installed in the Nixon White House. The plumbers and the criminal operations inside of the Nixon White House was the real crimes of the Nixon White House. What Watergate did, well actually what the Nixon coverup of Watergate did, was to blow open all the illegal operations of the Nixon White House. That would’ve gotten President Nixon impeached by the U.S. House in 1974 and most likely convicted by the U.S. Senate in the same year as well.

What the Nixon campaign did in 1968 and then of course the plumbers unit in the White House in the early 1970s, there’s no way they would’ve gotten way with that today. And probably not in the 1990s and perhaps not the 1980s as well. Because they were holding so many secrets and trying to plug so many holes. And those holes would’ve broken in the information revolution of cable news and the internet. And people in the White House quite frankly, trying to save their asses.