Saturday, November 13, 2004

http://www.ytedk.com/politics.htm

http://www.ytedk.com/politics.htm

posted by gt @ 11:37 AM 0 comments

Monday, November 08, 2004

The great thing about america is

The great thing about america is any little boy can grow up to be president.
Of course, there are a few steps to take along the way.
Shaking hands until your hands bleed.
Sucking up to the men with power, and betraying them when they are old and helpless.
Buying votes, stealing votes, counting votes, knowing the score.
Bending lesser men to your will.
Embezzling millions.
Rides in small planes with poor safety records.
Reporters, watching, scribbling.
Choosing a wife for the size of her daddy's bankroll.
Ruining the reputation of your opponents, honorable men.
Sending men to die and to kill.
Looking for the next rung on the ladder, planning ahead.
Working twice as hard as the other guy.
Working the phones, pleading, begging, threatening, checking the polls, counting votes, giving orders.
Hiring a band, like pappy ferguson used to do.
Having more helicopters than the other guy.
Striking from a distance without being seen.
Bragging about it later.
Playing hardball, with the only bat and glove in town.
Not slowing down after your first heart attack.

Not every boy in america wants to do these things.
It's about willpower. The guy who gets tired first loses.
Me, I have some of that, but I've lost most of my elections and have no shot at president. What I can do is write about it.
LBJ had it. Joe Kennedy too, and in the collision course between these two men
hangs a tale.

posted by gt @ 3:06 PM 0 comments

outline

it occurred to me once .. i'm not sure how the check spelling icon works.. that one way i could structure this would be to have a 1 page version, a 10 page version, a 100 page version, and a 1000 page version. i could shoot for writing a first draft of the 100 pages this month. ha.

posted by gt @ 3:02 PM 0 comments

Sunday, November 07, 2004

some audio clips

gandhi 1
http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_107.html
gandhi ii
http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_108.html
fannie lou hamer
http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_401.html
lbj announces for president
http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_141.html
signs civil rights act
http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/speech_144.html
this one is about 4 minutes, but it doesn't have the part andy jacobs talked about, that i still need to write up below.

http://www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive2.html
more audio clips at the history channel:

# Lyndon B. Johnson, Senate majority leader, Announces candidacy for the presidency

# Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. vice president; Frederick R. Kappel, AT&T chairman, Engage in first satellite telephone conversation

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, On the assassination of President Kennedy

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, Signs Civil Rights Act of 1964

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, Delivers State of the Union address

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, On KKK murder of civil rights worker

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, Orders U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, Signs Medicare bill into law

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, On the resumption of air strikes against North Vietnam

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, Announces he will not seek reelection
this one is my first overtly political memory. I was 8. I didn't become politically active until I was 10.
What we didn't know was he was lying.. He would have accepted the nomination if offered, and hoped that it would be.

# Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th U.S. president, On the assassination of Martin Luther King

posted by gt @ 8:31 AM 0 comments

68 primary

more stuff i didn't know:
Ronald Reagan sought the gop nomination in 68.
source, dan quayle, standing firm.

posted by gt @ 8:21 AM 0 comments

caligula

tonight i read suetonius' chapter on caligula.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/st04w10.txt

posted by gt @ 4:27 AM 0 comments

Saturday, November 06, 2004

galbraith booklist

Partial bibliography

* Modern Competition and Business Policy, 1938.
* A Theory of Price Control, 1952.
* American Capitalism: The concept of countervailing power, 1952.
* The Great Crash, 1929, 1954.
* The Affluent Society, 1958.
* The Liberal Hour, 1960
* The New Industrial State, 1967.
* The Triumph (a novel), 1968.
* Ambassador's Journal, 1969.
* Economics, Peace and Laughter, 1972.
* Power and the Useful Economist, 1973, AER
* Economics and the Public Purpose, 1973
* Money, 1975.
* The Age of Uncertainty (also a BBC 13 part television series), 1977.
* Annals of an Abiding Liberal, 1979.
* A Life in Our Times, 1981.
* A Tenured Professor, 1990.
* A Journey Through Economic Time, 1994.
* The Good Society: the humane agenda, 1996.
* The Nature of Mass Poverty
* Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went

posted by gt @ 8:04 PM 0 comments

kitty kelly

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385503245/ref=ase_counterpunchmaga/104-8495760-8544731
link to book on the bushes, also discusses lbj.
what i'm reading: memoirs of john kenneth galbraith, "A Life in Our Times"
one thing i didn't know:
galbraith, a tenured professor at harvard, recruited eugene mccarthy to run against lbj, over vietnam.
another: in the 1968 new hampshire primary, lbj beat mccarthy 49% to 42% -
in a write-in vote. He hadn't planned to enter the primary so hadn't filed.
Richard Winger could remind me which senator - the one who died age 100 recently - was elected by write-in. Strom Thurmond, that's it. So 49% is pretty good - for a write in.
LBJ just wanted no opposition at all. It was a tactic he had used before, being selected Kennedy's veep by acclamation at the convention.

JFK said the true story of LBJ's nomination can never be told. There are different versions of it. The camelot version is that Johnson was Kennedy's first choice, but that he expected him to say no. "Camelot version" is the term used for the whitewashed version of kennedy's life in books by insiders, Sorenson, Salinger, Slessinger. Galbraith is a little more independent, but of that ilk.

Another version has it that J. Edgar Hoover and Johnson blackmailed Kennedy with inside information on his mob connections and girlfriends.
Perhaps the most convincing is the version that his daddy ordered him to; that J. Edgar or whoever else made the deal with Joe, and Joe dictated terms to Jack. Bobby was appalled, not, at this point, being in on all the dirt.
One of these days I'll need to make a chart of who said what happened when. Kennedy was nominated. He had promised the veep spot to Symington... but Kennedies, Kennedys, are not known for truth telling, and he may have promised the veep spot to a number of people. At some point there was a phone call to LBJ. At some earlier point there had been a meeting. Johnson and the Ambassador, Joe Kennedy, were in contact, or were they? Like Hirohito, both Johnson and Joe Kennedy were masters of the phone. Joe stayed away from Jack, to prevent the appearance of pulling his strings, while calling him 4 times a day, pulling strings. The morning after the nomination, a call to LBJ, offering the veepship.
The chart, if i make it, could reference which books say what.
It comes down to what Jack said,the true story will never be known.
Let's say he got the Johnson treatment.


LBJ did not enjoy being vice-president. He took the job partly out of a calculation that presidents do not always live out their terms. He knew Kennedy had Addison's disease and perhaps other health concerns. I do not suggest or allege that LBJ participated in JFK's killing. He knew, though, that Kennedy was prone to risky behavior. Fast cars, sinking ships, drugs, booze, fast women, gangsters, plane crashes... the pattern was already well-established. If for some reason scandal had kept Kennedy from running again in 64, Johnson would be well-positioned.

posted by gt @ 6:09 PM 0 comments