C-SPAN: Booknotes With Brian Lamb- Irving Kristol: 'What is Neoconservatism's Writings On Politics, Economics & Culture'

Source: C-SPAN- Brian Lamb, interviewing Neoconservative Irving Kristol in 1995 

Source:The New Democrat

"Neoconservatism (commonly shortened to neocon when labelling its adherents) is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party, and the growing New Left and counterculture, in particular the Vietnam protests." 

From CSPAN 

"Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (1983)" 

Source:Amazon- Neoconservative Irving Kristol 

From Contemporary Thinkers 

"Neoconservatism is a political movement that was born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society. Neoconservatives typically advocate the promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, including peace through strength, and are known for espousing disdain for communism and political radicalism.[1][2]

Prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer. While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East. Many of its adherents became politically influential during the Republican presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[3]

Critics of neoconservatism have used the term to describe foreign policy and war hawks who support aggressive militarism or neo-imperialism. Historically speaking, the term neoconservative refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s.[4] The movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz.[5] They spoke out against the New Left and in that way helped define the movement." 

From Wikipedia

I agree with the Wikipedia definition as far as where neoconservatism and Neoconservatives come from which was in the 1960s as a response to the growing New-Left ( Socialists ) inside the Democratic Party, who opposed the Cold War and the United States opposition to the communism and also disagreed with Progressive Democrats on the New Deal and Great Society and believed that those progressive programs didn't go far enough. And wanted to move the Democratic Party and the American economy in a socialist direction. So back in the 1960s and 70s, Neoconservatives were essentially Progressive Democrats who moved away from the Democratic Party because of the emerging McGovernite Far-Left in the Democratic Party.

But what I would add to this is that Neoconservatives aren't just hawks on foreign policy who oppose communism and other authoritarian ideologies around the world. They are very hawkish on foreign policy and national security, but tend to be more progressive at least compared with Goldwater Conservative-Libertarians in the Republican Party on economic policy, as well as civil rights and other social issues. Instead of calling for the elimination of the safety net like the New Deal and Great Society, Neoconservatives believes in reforming those programs with private market principles and making those programs better.

Welfare to Work from the 1990s, is a Neoconservative idea and you could also argue that it's Progressive as well.

Supply side economics where you cut taxes deeply, but don't pay for them with either budget cuts or raising tax revenue, is another Neoconservative idea.

The George W. Bush Administration was made up of primarily economic and foreign policy Neoconservatives. The 2003 Iraq War, the 2002 No Child Left Behind education reform, Medicare Part D which was an expansion not cut in Medicare that gave is the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, these are all Neoconservative ideas and proposals.

Not arguing that Neoconservatives are Progressive Democrats, they are former Progressive Democrats who are still in sync with Progressives when it comes to foreign policy and national security, but tend to be more hawkish than Progressive Democrats and believe that liberal democracy is such a great thing that it needs to be promoted around the world even though military force. The 2003 Iraq War is a perfect example of that.

But Neoconservatives are not Conservatives at least in the constitutional and Conservative-Libertarian sense as people who want to eliminate the safety net and regulatory state. Neoconservatives believe in a public safety net, but that it should be run with private market principles and used to move people to economic independency and even believe in the regulatory state and having commonsense regulations when it comes to the environment, worker and consumer safety, and tend to support civil rights laws.

Neoconservatives aren't Conservative-Libertarians on social issues or economic issues, and't aren't fiscal Conservatives either. But people who want a strong, functioning, but limited government that is used to just do the basics and help people improve their own lives. And tend to be Federalists when it comes to social and economic government programs. Perhaps Progressive Republicans, would be the best label for Neoconservatives in America.

Harley Davidson: 'Alexa- Brand New Sexy Riding Boots For Ladies'

Source:Harley Davidson Dallas- Alexa's new Harley Davidson riding boot.

Source:The Action Blog 

"Brand New Sexy Riding Boot for Sexy Ladies! Check out the Harley-Davidson Alexa Riding Boot! A great new riding boot for women!! The hard to find, finally at H-D of Dallas, Alexa riding boot! Lightweight, multi-functional, adjustable, stylish and sexy! Come get your new pair at Harley-Davidson of Dallas -- Allen, Texas"

From Harley Davidson Dallas

Source: Hot Biker Planet- Gorgeous, sexy, baby face biker on her bike 

Even with the glasses you still have a beautiful, adorable biker chick here who is proud to be a biker chick and who looks great on her bike.

As the people at Harley Davidson will tell you boots and jeans when it comes to motorbiking have practical purpose to them. I would add they have a stylish reason as well and I'm sure they would agree with that. When you're on a motorcycle it sort of like being on car but on the outside of it with the motor running as the car is moving. You your body picks up the heat that goes from the engine of that car and that obviously affects you. The point of skin-tight jeans and boots, is to protect your body from the heat from the engine from the biker.

Denim, leather, and boots, are very popular and common with bikers both women and men for stylish reasons of course. Biker chicks love being seen on their bikes and around bikes like at clubs and bars, and other places in their boots and jeans, but denim and leather also serves to help the biker's body from the motor on the bike, but also if they were to have accident on the biker and you would get more protection from tight jeans and boots, then you would if you went biking wearing slacks or sweatpants, or some other type of pant that would look out of place on a motorcycle, shorts would be another example.

Biker women, I don't believe are any better or worst when it comes to motorcycles than men, they just look a lot better. Seeing a beautiful, sexy woman on or around her motorcycle and other motorcycles, perhaps especially a Harley is just something real special.

Good looking men look great on bikes as well, but you put a beautiful, sexy, very feminine, even a very adorable woman on biker similar to the woman in the video and they look like supermodels to me in the best and real sense of the term. As beautiful, sexy, and accomplished women who look like they have a substance and use that to make their livings.

Ultimate History: Documentary of Sophia Loren- The Italian Goddess

Source:Ultimate History- The Italian Goddess Sophia Loren. She looks like Jennifer Lopez in this photo.

Source:The Daily Review 

"Sophia loren has often voiced her thanks for her impoverished beginnings. "The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty," she once said. And perhaps that's the reason that this 'genuine treasure of world cinema' is not just still standing in her seventies, but is positively thriving... Long after the majority of her contemporaries have faded from the spotlight." 

From Ultimate History

If I had to pick one woman who stands out more than anyone else who has ever worked in Hollywood either as an actress or any other type of entertainer and I had to pick that woman just based on physical appearance, it would be The Italian Goddess Sophia Loren. 

I believe Elizabeth Taylor or Lauren Bacall is the best Hollywood actress ever and Liz was beautiful and insanely adorable, even cuter than Sophia. And Lauren was gorgeous and adorable in her own right as well. But if I had to just pick one Hollywood Goddess based on physical appearance, it would be Sophia Loren.

You're not going to find another woman at least in Hollywood, who is more beautiful, sexier, and cuter than Sophia Loren. There are women who are even more adorable than Sophia, but good luck finding another woman who is prettier and sexier than Sophia. Good luck finding another woman at least in Hollywood and the history of Hollywood that's either prettier or sexier than Sophia. 

Sophia is 5'9, with perfect body looking like she's a professional tennis player with those legs and everything else. Very similar to Steffi Graf ( if you're familiar with pro tennis ) as far as body. With long powerful legs, beautiful right and tight butt, and this face that makes you feel like you're in Paradise every time you see it.

Sophia is just absolutely adorable, you almost have to be with a name like Sophia. Looking for an ugly Sophia who is not cute at all, would be like looking for ocean beachfront property in Wyoming. The name Sophia similar to Michelle or Raquel, just scream beauty and sweetness.  With her gorgeous baby face, smile, laugh, beautiful Italian accent, facial expressions, sort of like a little girl, but she's absolutely gorgeous and with thew intelligence and personality of a great woman and not just any woman. And that she's also one of the best actresses not just of her generation, but who has ever acted and you got a world champion when it comes to women and what it means to be a great woman and person in general.

I love Sophia's line that the two big advantages that she ever had in life was that she was born wise and was born into poverty. What I take from that is that she learn the true meaning of hard work every early in life and what it meant to work hard and earn everything that you get, because no one is going to give it to you. Unlike kids who are born to wealth and never even have to worry about being poor when they grow up, because they're going to start off their adulthood as a millionaire or have even more money than that because their father ( let's say ) setup a trust fund for their kids when they were young. 

In Sophia's case she never had the insurance of her father's trust fund or any other trust fund that she could rely on and instead work hard for everything that she accomplished in life, because that was going to be the only way that should was going to be successful.

ABC: Barbara Walters Special- Burt Reynolds: 12/02/1980

Source:ABC- Actor/comedian Burt Reynolds. 

Source:The Daily Review

"ABC Barbara Walters Special - Dec.2,1980 - Burt Reynolds Interview."

Source:ABC- ABC News anchor and correspondent Barbara Walters 

From ABC

Burt Reynolds, sharing a great story about fame and what the movie executive he was talking to about the kind of money that he could make for his movies. And this meeting must have happened in the 1970s perhaps even before Smokey and The Bandit which came out in 1977. With the movie executive telling Burt that he could make a million dollars for each movie that he does.

If you go back to 1970 and what million dollars was then it would be 6.5 million dollars today. Today a million dollars for a movie would be a great living for most people who aren't shopaholics, or alcoholics, addicted to illegal narcotics, don't have multiple wives and families, aren't gambling or adrenaline junkies, and are fairly responsible with their income. But back then that would be an insane amount of money. It would mean you would only have to do one movie a year and not even have to do any work for the rest of the year and maybe just appear on TV shows and do interviews with the rest of your time.

And this guy telling Burt that he could make all of this money simply for acting in movies and Burt reacting like he just won a 100 million dollar lottery or something, perhaps without even playing the lottery and has all of this money that's now coming to him and he simply can't believe it and doesn't know how to respond to it. So he does what any other normal person would or perhaps just Burt Reynolds and he hyperventilates over it. As crazy as this may sound, actors are also humans and not everything they do is acting. They have the same emotions and reactions that everyone else does and perhaps they just hide them better or in Burt Reynolds case perhaps not as well. Telling someone who came from a humble beginning that Burt came from and that they could make so much money simply from acting, would catch a lot of people off guard even the best actors like Burt Reynolds.

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In: 'Martha Mitchell- Isn't Overstepping Cocktail Party'

Source:Rowan & Martin's Laugh In- Actress portrayal of Martha Mitchell on LaughIn. 

Source:The New Democrat 

“Hosted by Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, this ground-breaking variety show was a fast moving barrage of jokes, one-liners, running skits, musical numbers and made fun of the social and political issues of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A group of regulars, Gary Owens, Lily Tomlin, Judy Carne, Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Alan Sues, Goldie Hawn, Chelsea Brown, Henry Gibson and JoAnne Worley left a lasting impression on America.”

From Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In 

“I’m so damned mad!” fumed Martha Mitchell to a United Press International reporter at the other end of the line. It was 3 a.m., Sunday the 26th of August 1973, and once again she was bouncing off the walls of her Fifth Ave. apartment. “I asked them to let me speak to the President. They told me, Tell it to UPI.”

White House operators knew Martha Mitchell all too well. And in the summer of 1973, amid the nation’s long national Watergate nightmare, so did most other Americans. “Outspoken wife of Attorney General John Mitchell,” the papers usually called her. They could say that again. There was practically no getting away from the woman.” 

Source:World News- Watergate motormouth Martha Mitchell 

From the New York Daily News

I said this on my Google+ and Twitter pages last night, but could you imagine Martha Mitchell with a Twitter page back during Watergate? She was like a gossip columnist with inside accounts of what was going on during Watergate simply because she was married to the Attorney General of the United States John Mitchell. Not that I believed he was filling in her chatty wife who was basically the motormouth of Washington during the early and mid 1970s. Who would share any little dirty secret that she could come up with regardless of who it might help or hurt.

The best gossip columnists are the gossip columnists not just with inside sources, but credible inside sources so what they write and say in public doesn't sound like fiction or a like a good soap opera, but there's real truth to what they're revealing about someone or some people, or some situation. Hollywood actress Shelley Winters, was a gossip columnist, as well as an author, with a great sense of humor who was very bright in general, but with her humor as well in-between acting parts. Martha Mitchell who just happened to be the wife of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States in Attorney General John Mitchell, fit that bill as well. 

CBS News: ' John McCain Had Wicked Wit That He Often Aimed at Himself'

Source: CBS News- Senator Lindsay Graham and Senator John McCain on Capitol Hill. 

Source: The New Democrat

"Here's how John McCain made it clear he was happy to see you in the Senate hallways.

"Haven't seen you in a while. How was the Betty Ford clinic?"

Or he'd growl, "Whaddya want?"

From CBS News 

"See President Obama and  Sen. John McCain trade barbs at the Al Smith dinner, just before the 2008 election."

Source:CNN- Senator John McCain, at the 2008 Al Smith Dinner. 

From CNN

There are a lot of great things about Senator John McCain that we can respect and love about him, that I respect and love about him. His service in the Vietnam War where after he gets captured after his plane gets shot down he refuses to go home early, so his fellow Navy officers don't have to stay there as POW's and go through additional punishment and torture.

John McCain's straight forth honesty and candor, which for a politician especially a long time member of Congress where John McCain first gets elected to the House in 1982 and then the Senate in 1986 where he would remain a Senator until his death last Saturday: honest politicians especially honest members of Congress is about as common in Washington as blizzards and hurricanes in Arizona in August.

Members of Congress the most honest of them, tend to tell people and the media what they're thinking with spin. They won't tell you directly what they're about to do and thinking by just saying it, but instead will use spin to say exactly what they're thinking and about to do. Senator McCain, wasn't like that. 

If McCain didn't like you or respect you, he would just flat say that as Donald Trump has found out over and over. John McCain, had this ability and political skill to do what he wanted and take any position he wanted regardless of the political consequences and get away with it, because he had this AAA credit rating with his voters who told them that they might not agree with him on everything, but they respect him and the positions that he takes and why takes them, because he would make the case to them.

But the one thing that I'll remember most about John McCain, will always be his sense of humor, especially as someone who also writes political satire and humor on occasion. When you live the life of a John McCain and not only fight in the Vietnam War, but get shot down in it and if that's not bad enough you get captured by the other team and held in captivity and tortured for the next five years and manage to survive all of that and make a great life for yourself after that, you almost have to have a great sense of humor and be able to laugh about life especially yourself just to keep a positive face and perspective about yourself and life in general.

There are several lines about Senator McCain that I'll always remember and they're all about politics and his time in Congress and one of them having to do with the Congressional spending bills that the House and Senate have to deal with every year to fund the government. And if you're familiar with Senator McCain, you know he was a rock solid Conservative especially as it related to fiscal policy and wasn't just a fiscal Conservative, but somewhat maverick if not fanatic about it.

Congress is famous for a lot of bad things especially, but one of those things are known as porkbarrel projects. Money that a Representative or Senator manages to get attached to some spending bill that is directly related to their district or state that everyone else has to pay for that only benefits this district or a part of this state or that state. Senator McCain, would always say about these porkbarrel spending bills that Congress doesn't spend money like drunken sailors, but that Congress gives drunken sailors a bad name when it comes to spending. He was always making fun and attacking the waste in the Federal budget and all of the additional waste that Congress would try to attach.

Senator McCain, represents not the golden age of American politics or even Congress, but a time when Democrats were Democrats and Republicans were Republicans, but that they were competitors and not too countries looking to destroy each other. A time when Congress wasn't like the Vietnam War, but more like a playoff football game where both teams wanted to win, but also recognized the other team's right to exist and respected eacb other. A time when governing and campaigning weren't separate from each other because politics and government have and will always go together, but a time when politics didn't replace governing.

McCain represents an era where the two parties could work together to do the things that needed to be done and should've been done. The speech that he gave when he came back to Capitol Hill last summer right before the Senate was going to vote on an ObamaCare repeal bill and him talking about the need for Democrats and Republicans to work together, is a perfect example of that. 

John McCain is someone that won't just be missed, but someone who won't be replaced either. There is is no one else in Washington especially in Congress that is worth risking their political careers to do the right thing anymore, now that Senator John McCain has passed and is what will be missed about him the most in Washington.

Keith Hughes: McCarthyism Explained- US History Review

Source: Keith Hughes- Senator Joe McCarthyism Explained 

Source:The New Democrat

To talk about McCarthyism I think you have to talk about Senator Joe McCarthy who in the early and mid 1950s was the ranking Republican on the Senate Investigations Committee first as Ranking Member and then as Chairman. And when Republicans won back Congress in 1952, Senator McCarthy becomes Chairman of the Senate Investigations Committee thanks to the Dwight Eisenhower sweep where the Republican win back the White House, House, and Senate all in the same election.

Source: Professor Girard- The Joe McCarthy Era 

Because of the landslide Republican victory in 1952 Senator McCarthy is now one of the most powerful members not just of the Senate, but the entire Congress as well. And with that now has the power to launch his investigation into supposed Communists in the U.S. Government. That is how we get what became McCarthyism and this hyper partisan, tribalist, guilt by association, nationalistic Far-Right movement in America, that came right after the House Un-American Activities Committee that was supposed to investigate Communists in Hollywood.

To talk about Senator McCarthy, you also have to talk about what McCarthy and his movement represented in America back then and still represents today. This us against them tribalistic-nationalist mentality that they're supposed to be the real Americans and anyone who disagrees with them must hate America and therefore should be under investigation because they're working for the other side and not deserving of the same constitutional rights as the so-called real Americans the McCarthyite's who want to stamp out communism and Communists in America at all costs even if that means violating Americans constitutional rights like the First Amendment and Fourth Amendments.

And to talk about Joe McCarthy, you also have to talk about not just how he became so powerful in the Senate with the position that he obtained, but how that movement was allowed to get started in the first place. The Cold War and the start of America's long battle with communism with Soviet Russia and other communist and authoritarian states around the world and this hysteria that the Communists are coming and are going to take our country away from us and take away everything that we believe in and Senator McCarthy being a smart enough politician to see how he could play that and use it to his political advantage and his political skills the speeches, as well as radio and TV appearances that he gave back in the early and mid 1950s is how his movement was able to come about at all.
Source:Keith Hughes