Ehhh...

Stein sounds indistinguishable from the Clinton apologists. I just lost a great deal of respect for him.

If we were alive, we would vehemently disagree with you.

I just wanted to be loved. Is that so wrong?

As for you, Felt, your throat aint deep enough for the monster waiting on you when you join me in the eternal furnace.

By the way, can anyone here get a message to Joe Gibbs for me?

FDR - world class liar. Truman honest except when Democratic Party matters came into play. Eisenhower? Liar and adulter. JFK - liar and cheat. LBJ - world class serial liar. And cheat. Nixon. Liar, patriot, peacemaker. Reagan. Lied about his war experience, about policy. Bush I - lied about CIA activities, Iran-Contra - but lies for the good of country. Adulterer. Clinton. Lied because he could. Adulterer.

All strong Presidents with significant legacies. None will be judged higher by their legacies than FDR and Nixon in 50 years....not even Reagan.

Hoover. A moral man who never did anything morally wrong. Fed all of Europe after WWI, even. Jimmy Carter. Moral, religious. "I'll never lie to you". Two Presidential disasters.

Bush II? As moral and religious as Jimmy Carter and about as visionary. Lets his subordinates do the lying. However, he has one great lie going...that he says he cares more about America than just making the rich richer.

There is hope for him yet, Warden. Let's hope that Dubya has also been lying the whole time that he considers Islam the Religion of Peace. He can't be as stupid as Jimmy Carter was about the Commies....

Slightly agree with the Warden, but for different reasons. I agree that it's a bit bullshit: "You had no way of knowing this, but your actions led to removing from power a man who could have stopped an atrocity." What?

BUT, I also agree with Stein's evaluation of the crime. Lying, provided nobody gets hurt/killed as a result, is bad juju, but I've come to expect it from pols. Good? Bad? Who knows, but it doesn't phase me at all -- the whole Clinton thing got a big "meh" out of me from day 1. He's a creep? Jesus, stop the fucking presses, nobody knew. Of course he's a creep, but that's not what I want (to avoid) in a president -- my question is will he make the economy better, the laws more free, and the government smaller? Of course, he only kind did parts of a few of those, but if I'm going to condemn the man, that's going to be why. Nixon was before my time, but whatever the man did, lying to the public (*when nobody got hurt as a result*) is the least of my concerns.

::sigh::

Jesus, CF, you never take a day off, do you? I don't have time to talk about the "making the rich richer" line, so I'll just state that you're completely and utterly without a leg to stand on and leave it to the good folks at townhall.com to back me up.

OK, fine, I'll get you started. Look up the number of low-income people who get money *back* from the IRS. If you like, add to that the number that draw a significant portion of their income from government programs. Look at the number of medium-low income people who pay nothing to the IRS. Now look at what percentage off the top income-earners pay, say, 90% of the tax base. You'll find that the first two numbers are very, very high, while the last is staggeringly low. Sorry I'm not doing the legwork, but like I said I'm busy.

A couple of things:

1 - Stein is just plain wrong about what effect Nixon would have had on what occurred in SE Asia from '75 to '78. Without Watergate he's still a lame duck President who's popularity is largely based on having extracted us from th SE Asian quagmire, there is no way that he was going to get back into Vietnam, and Cambodia wasn't even on our radar until after the Magayez (sp?) incident, and not until after the '76 election wrt the scale of genocide. No, the post-75 attrocities in SE Asia cannot be ascribed to the fall of Nixon.

2 - Nixon did far far more than lie to protect underlings.

The Watergate burglary was for a known purpose, to tap the DNCs phones at the behest of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). This was not an isolated incident.

The burglars were part of a WH organization called the Special Investigations Unit, but popularly known as "the Plumbers", headed by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. This organization, paid for in part by illegal campaign contributions, engaged in a wide range of criminal acts, including phone tapping and burglary, against those on its "enemies list." For example, prior to the Watergate fiasco, broke into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and stole records in hopes of finding material to discredit Ellsberg. Finally, just prior to the famous Watergate burglary the plumbers broke into the DNC HQ at the Watergate and tapped the incorrect phones, so they were sent back in and got caught.

Nixon knew about the break-ins as testified to by his counsel John Dean.

Nixon did not lie to protect underlings, in fact the WH pressured the plumbers to plead guilty. Presidential Counsel Dean and former AG Mitchell both instructed the plumber to committ perjury. So Nixon was not lying to protect underlings, on the contrary the underlings were pressured to perjure themselves to protect Nixon.

Nixon tried to subvert the Special Investigator by ordering the AG to fire Cox, leading to the "Saturday Night Massacre" as Nixon fired two AG until reaching Robert Bork, who fired Cox and then resigned himself.

3 - In addition, Nixon was well known for his creative and vicious use of "dirty tricks" going back to his run for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas. For examples, in 1972 when President Nixon was running for reelection, CREEP authorized another series of illegal activities. It hired Donald Segretti to stage "dirty tricks" against potential Democratic nominees, which included mailing letters that falsely accused one candidate of homosexuality and fathering an illegitimate child. He compiled an "Enemies List" and had the IRS and others harass people on the list.

The man was known as Tricky Dick and with good reason. We cannot know what damage would have been done to our republic if he had not been brought down.

vonKreedon: 'get back into Vietnam'? All we had to do was keep doing what we were doing -- fund and support the South Vietnamese government.

Instead, the Watergate-besotted Congress cravenly decided to wash their hands of the whole thing.

We cannot know what damage would have been done to our republic if he had not been brought down.

At any rate, Nixon was a scoundrel, but at least he didn't rape anyone.

someone,

"All we had to do was keep doing what we were doing -- fund and support the South Vietnamese government."

The US would have had to have given air support and there was no will to do this. It would have meant US troops (support not infantry) in Vietnam and more POWS.

After the Paris deal went through there was North Vietnamese violation that caused Kissinger to recommend bombing after more POWs had been returned. Nixon approved the recommendation but the bombing never happened. Even Nixon had lost the will to keep supporting Vietnam.

Keep in mind the mood of the US at the time. Any support of South Vietnam was totally opposed by Democrats and the general public was a best indifferent and defeatest (much of the public was on the Democrats side on this issue). The idea that we almost won was only taken seriously by the public years later. The joy of watergate was much more about Vietnam than it was about Alger Hiss.

I don't buy the idea of Watergate leading to the fall of South Vietnam.

James, I admire your boot-licker toady boy loyalty!

Did you realize the suffering 1000 oligarchs of 1958 Paraguay had 95% of the wealth of a nation of 1/2 a dozen million, but paid 90% of the taxes?

Yes, with concentration of wealth, comes tax obligations unless IOUs accrue....

Why, I'd kiss their Paraguayan asses, if I were you James! Never was so much asked of so few. plutocrats....

The point was legacies. Bush will leave with 1 trillion in debt, tax cuts borrowed from France and China money enriching a few, us still stuck in Iraq, and Binnie alive and wekk. Your Dear Leader has a Jimmy Carter level legacy....assuming Bush II pulls off a Carteresque Camp David..

The jooos were behind Paraguay.

And Donald Segretti.

"...tax cuts borrowed from France..."

Say what? France is only 1/7th the size of our economy. Their tax burden is the highest in Europe (well over 40%). Their unemployment rate is twice ours. Their GDP growth rate is half ours. Their average work week is only about 80% of ours. They are running a budget deficit of about 3.5% (the one decent comparion for the froggies- their deficit is about the same as ours, as a % of the GDP). They have no money to invest in the US. In fact, they are currently borrowing money.

Do you honestly believe they are financing our economy?

You know what crime brought Algier Hiss down? Lying! He lied to the House committee about knowing Whitaker Chambers, and Chambers proved he did. Something about buying a car off of him, I don't remember exactly.

Hiss was a dirty spy, no question about that. I just find it ironic that Ben Stein lays out his laundry list of political liars, as if to exonerate Nixon, yet fails to mention the cause of all this trouble is that Nixon's committee got Hiss for the very same "crime." I'm sure Stein knows that, he's a smart fella.

Without watergate, Nixon MIGHT have been able to salvage something for the US and prevent the disaster that happened in SE Asia after we left - given the mood of the country, the odds were not in his favor but there was a chance. With watergate, well we know what happened.

People in SE Asia paid a high price in blood for the fecklessness of the Democrats and US paid a lesser but significant price in international standing. All in all, a high price to bring down a President who did nothing significantly wrong.

And (Cedarford will hate me for this but I have to say it) Nixon did save Israel in 1973 - a fact for which I and my family will always be grateful.

Hey, Cedarford, I'm a little creeped out to see you're down with The Trickster, because I am too, as in, I've seen "Nixon" four hundred and sixty-seven TIMES and it KEEPS GETTIN FUNNIER
EVry SINgle TIME i SEE it ...

but anyway: Doesn't it bother you that he bailed Israel out? I mean, he was closer to those eeeeeeevil Zionists than any president until Dubya. I would have thought that'd weigh heavily with you.

Knemon -

Nixon had an admiration for Israel as the underdog it was back in the early years - while at the same time realizing Jews in the USA considered Nixon their lifetime enemy because of his work in "cleansing" Communist Jews out of the government, union, and Hollywood agencies they had infiltrated and in many cases ran. He frequently stated that the Jews in the media were out to get him basically for HUAC and the Alger Hiss affair, not his policies - among the most liberal of any Republican leader. He maintained his biggest enemies had been Jews even long after he left the Presidency. And he was right, they were out to get him.

But his personal admiration for Israel wasn't enough. Nixon also had other reasons - cause to strongly support Israel to go against the Soviet Communists that were using Arab countries as proxies and to try to entice the fat Jewish wallets that provided half of the contributions to the Democratic Party away. The first objective worked, but like several Republicans inc. George Bush II, ass-kissing to Israel has still failed to sway the Jewish wallets. It is a long standing Republican dream - without Jewish money the liberal wing of the Democrats would be crippled. And the Republicans have had just enough Jewish defections come to them since Nixon's times - to keep them enticed..

It is also important to note that much changed with Israel in the 30 years after Nixon left office. Changes Nixon noted. Israel lost it's strategic value as Soviet detente worked, and the damage the Arab oil weapon caused became clear. Israel's colonization of further Arab land, as Nixon said, was a disaster that cost Israel most of it's remaining international support. Nixon was angry about the Zionist treachery behind the Pollard Affair, where a high-placed DOD Jew betrayed America for Israel, and where Israel traded those top secrets he stole to the Russians in return for Soviet Jewish dissident Visas to Israel.

Nixon also weighed in on the short-term and long term prospects for Israel. He thought the short term was good for Israel but it relied on a technological edge bound to narrow and had failed to adequately work with peace initiatives due to the Zionist hunger to seize more land. But still, a "thumbs up".

But Nixon said - as Arabs narrowed the technological gap, buying technology on the open market with oil dollars, as the the Muslims won the demographic race, and with Muslim nuclear weapons "I am still hopeful we can stop Pakistan...but eventually...unless a peace treaty comes soon...they will have it". Nixon said in the long haul that would mean one thing for Israel..

He mutely turned his thumb down for the interviewer

Cedarford,

You have this bizarre idea that communist tendencies and sympathies are inherent in Jews. You'd have to long long and hard in my extended family to find such.

By the admission of their own leaders, the North Vietnamese forces were in utter disarray by the time our troop withdrawal was nearly done. Their ability to recruit new personnel was near nil as it was viewed as suicide. All we had to do was make sure the guys in the South had bullets in their guns to maintain that balance. But the severely weakened White House couldn't make a bid for the common decency of fulfilling our obligation while a group led by Teddy Kennedy, who wouldn't know an honorable act if it ripped off his and beat him over the head with it, decided it was cool to just make a clean break. And do it very publicly so the NVA had a perfect recruiting tool that proclaimed the South utterly helpless to defend itself.

It's funny. There is a book out called, 'Whats the Matter with Kansas' which treats voting Republican as a psychiatric disorder. I've long wondered what in the hell is wrong with Massachusetts that it keeps returning Kennedy to office and added his cohort Kerry just to add insult to injury.

Uh-oh. Cedarford is explaining why Nixon was good while the Jooos (and apparently the Paraguayans) are bad.

Look away, younglings. This thread contains dark ruminations of a poisonous nature. Gaze not into that abyss, for its name is madness.

Matt30:

The statute of limitations ran on the espionage charges. Hiss was convicted of perjury based on the following testimony to the grand jury:

Q. Mr. Hiss, you have probably been asked this question before, but I'd like to ask the question again. At any time did you, or Mrs. Hiss in your presence, turn any documents of the State Department, or of any other Governmental organization,over to Whittaker Chambers?

A. Never, excepting, I assume, the title certificate to the Ford.

Grand juror: To nobody else did you ever turn over documents? To any other person?

A. And to no unauthorized person.

Q. Mr. Hiss, Mr. Chambers has testified that he obtained typewritten copies of official State Department documents from you.

A. I know that.

Q. Did you ever see Mr. Chambers after you went into the State Department?

A. I do not believe that I did. I cannot swear that I did not see him some time, say, in the fall of 1936....

Q. Can you say definitely that you did not see him after January, 1937?

A. Yes, I think I can definitely say that.

Now, who did Nixon lie to and what specifically was the "lie" ? Nixon was never under oath. He never committed perjury. It's unfair to compare him to someone as despicable as Hiss.

CF: I don't expect to be back reading this thread anytime soon, but I'll just say this much. I looked up the tax burden on the IRS website, and it's about half of the income tax paid by the top 1%. Looked up the wealth distribution on one of the liberal "OMG IT'S SO UNFAIR" sites and it said the top 1% have 38% of the wealth. Also, the bottom ~40% pay nothing or very nearly nothing, or in many cases get something *back*. Man, those rich bastards are really screwing the poor over, aren't they?

In the time I've been following politics, I used to just get angrier and angrier as the libs kept saying how the "rich" were screwing over the poor, poor poverty-stricken minorities. Then I had a revelation: the liberals aren't stupid or evil or deluding themselves; they're just different. I agree with Ben Franklin. I don't believe it shouldn't be the government's job, and it's *certainly* not in the Constitution, to give money to the poor. Liberals, even though it's not in the Constitution, think that it should be. I don't think there's anything anybody can say that will change somebody's philosophical view on whether income redistribution is a legitimate function of government, so I'm just going to stop trying and hope that my "side" outnumbers the other guys.

*I don't believe it _should_ be the government's job...

"Gaze not into that abyss, for its name is madness."

Or cedarford, either one.

Considering Ben Stein was one of Nixon's speechwriters, his defence of Nixon is about as surprising as discovering 4 quarters = 1 dollar. Seriously, Ben Stein is an incredibly bright guy, but did we expect anything less than full-fledged devotion to Nixon?

Eric -

I generally enjoy your posts. But Facts are Facts. Not all Communists were Jews. But over 50% of the Bolsheviks and USA Communist Party came from 3% of the population in both the Soviet Union and the USA - the Jews.

That your family doesn't include Jewish Communists is well and good, but even non-communist Jewish Trade unionists in America, that really feared all they worked for was being undermined by the communists doing mass liquidations in Europe pre-WWII - expressed dismay. "While it is true that most Jews are not Communists, most Communists here are Jews. And if this becomes a general pogrom against Jews due to the criminal nature of the Soviet system, Jews who are not Bolsheviks, but simply Progressives like us advancing society will also suffer."

For every Gentile like Alger Hiss Nixon took down, along with his associates at the start of the Cold War, 5 Jews were removed from government positions, Hollywood. Pressure led to the Gentiles still in control of the ACLU to purge it's communist element, mostly Jewish, in that era..The NAACP did not purge it's communist Jews until the mid-1960s, a J Edgar Hoover initiative...

Before the Soviets fell, the remaining Red Jews and the communist sympathizing Jews in the media - left largely alone as Communists elsewhere were purged - protected on 1st Amendment grounds, protested the Rosenbergs, Glassers, and especially Gentiles like Hiss who did not draw attention to the actual demographics of the communists - were innocent!

When the Soviets fell, we got a window period to examine the KGB files. Hiss, the Rosenbergs, et. al. were guilty as sin, as Nixon charged 40 years earlier.

Nixon lived with the knowledge that because of his purges, Jews in the media and their allies were gunning for him. Many honestly believed the Rosenbergs, Glassers, and Hiss Gentile-types were innocent. And Nixon was scared of their power, and money, having the ability to bring him down.

His support of Israel - that advisors thought might sway MSM media moguls - turnerd out to be no shield against those foes. And, his odious hardball defensive tactics, as he has said, after leaving office, "Gave his enemies the Sword with which to slay him."

Hey Seedy, I've got an idea- let's make all of them wear yellow Stars of David! That way it would be real easy to figure out how many of them are Commies, Zionists, etc.

Woodstock:

Thanks for the clarification regarding Hiss' perjury conviction. My recollection was spotty.

I did not mean to suggest that Nixon and Hiss are comparable in any meaningful way. Hiss most certainly was a spy and a traitor. Of course Nixon was never convicted of any crime, any lying he may or may not have done, I do not recall it was ever suggested he did so under oath. I just found it odd that Stein brings Hiss into the discussion without mentioning that the one crime Hiss was convicted of was perjury.

If it appeared that I meant anything more than that, then I apologize for my lack of clarity.

Matt30:

No harm done. We just disagree. I view a very distinct difference between lying and perjury. And, while even I occasionally lie (you didn't think my name is really Woodstock typewriter #230099, did you?), I am not a perjurer.

Dogstar -

A better idea! How about each brain-dead American like you have 4 "credible RTL nurses" affidavits symbolized by a "Jesus Loves" Rutabaga insignia - so your feeding tube is not unplugged a la Terri Schiavo.

Or because dumb folks like you rely on lying ignorant Bible-thumpers....maybe a carrot insignia might be more recognizable. That way, you can be assured by the symbol of the Vegetative, Flat-Line Carrot brain.....that nurses at RTL-controlled facilities will don their gas masks and keep you sitting in your own feces and pump your feeding tube contents into your stomach.

Aww, poor Dogstar....he has the rutabaga and carrot symbols on him demanding extraordinary medical intervention ...So the old dear gets the tube gruel pumping in.....and the feces hosed off him once a week...isn't Right to Life so precious, ladies?? Stop giggling! Who wishes to take a deep breath and hose off Mr Dogstar so he has a few more months before the feces fatally infect his bedsores?? OK, then, lets draw lots for who has to take a dep breath hose and swab the old braindead patient-thing off for now...."

C, you seem to miss the inherent folly of labeling people by religious ancestry regardless of whether they are observant. The bulk of those identified as both Jews and Communists were Jews solely by ancestry and attempted upbringing. This is how Zionism was founded, because regardless of how assimilated Jews were within a culture they were treated as foreign elements and this greatly encouraged their alienation. Those who took up Comunism, like most communists, had already rejected the religious aspects of their history, just as much as those with grounding in other religions, such as former seminarian Josef Stalin. With Stalin, his religious training is left as an interesting biographical tidbit but any figure with ancestry is identifed first and foremost as a Jew. As if Marx were studied along with the Talmud. It reveals the very persecutive behavior that led so many down the path to ruin in the first place.

Jewish groups came to the defense of the Rosenbergs largely because they were misled. This is easy to do when so much genuine persecution was part of the common experience. The same can be observed today in blacks taken in by poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson. The Rosenbergs certainly didn't acts out of any belief the USSR would lead to a better world for Jews but rather that religion would be eradicated.

That thing, though it has lucid moments, is actually a tin-foil hatted troll.
With all respect to the excellent people on this thread; it has been indulged by many others, yet continues to crap upon the carpet. The only remedy now is to please, please starve it.

Who's the lawyer for tricky dick
That's a sex machine to all the chicks?
STEIN!
Ya damn right!

Who is the man that would risk his neck
For his brother man?
STEIN!
Can you dig it?

Who's the cat that won't cop out
When there's politicians all about?
STEIN!
Right On!

They say this cat Stein is a bad mother
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I'm talkin' 'bout Ben.
THEN WE CAN DIG IT!

He's a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
BEN STEIN!