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ScrubLeague posted:I'm watching this Oliver Stone film now. Boy he was really up his own rear end with his directorial style after JFK.       Can somebody modify this so he's making shadow puppets or something?  NIXON-AT-LAW   Nixon raps before class:    
Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 01:04 on May 11, 2017 |
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May 11, 2017 00:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MacmN1EtIPQ I'm with you on your first two picks for amazing politicians, Mr. Milhouse
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May 11, 2017 01:09
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Flutieflakes017 posted:I approve of this thread. It is a genuinely good speech “Always remember: Others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
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May 11, 2017 18:27
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Dear Mr. Ho Chi Minh I wanted to write you this letter as soon as possible. I have a plan to end the war in Vietnam, but it will require some subterfuge on both our parts. So I'm gonna start talking smack about you publicly and doing some very aggressive things, while at the same time saying you should do what we want and also let's be friends. The important thing here is to IGNORE EVERYTHING I SAY PUBLICLY, both good and bad. I have to talk tough to please the conservatives in my party, and the good stuff is just what the state department and it's head (a personal friend of mine who I apparently don't trust at all) is doing as I direct them to. Just remember, ignore those guys. While I may *talk* tough, (publicly, not privately, though if I'm tough in private I mean it) you may notice I am vveerryy slloowwlly doing what you want. I have to do this slowly, because conservatives in my party again. And while that's going on, just a heads up, I may lash out very aggressively at anybody I perceive as friends of yours or helping you, regardless if they are a victim of circumstance or not. I'm doing this to show you what a mean dude I am and how you want to be rid of me sooner rather than later. Speaking of me being a madman, I may sometimes react wildly out of proportion in these secret negotiations, and attack you very aggressively for a time, while still doing what you want me to do, because international prestige, face, etc. Just so we're clear on it, I know you want me to leave. What I want from you is to say "I won't attack and take over this completely useless ally of yours." I know you've made it very clear you have no intention at all of doing that. That's fine; I just want you to say it. That way when you do what you want to do, I can stand back and say "well, you broke the treaty, typical communist" and nobody will blame me. Speaking of blame, I'm gonna offer you a several billion dollar a year foreign aid package as a condition for not attacking my lame duck ally. We both know drat well you won't collect it, but some people may accuse me of abandoning my weak and useless ally, and I want to be able to say "not me." Anyway, I think that's about it. I gotta get back to faking diplomatic cables to show my political nemesis order the assassination of the previous head of our useless ally, and planting a political opponent's campaign literature in the apartment of a would-be assassin who tried to assassinate one of my political opponents who I stuck a deal with and is secretly working for me. Remember, the secret negotiations are the important ones, even though they are very similar to the public ones. Best, Richard Milhouse Nixon
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May 11, 2017 18:40
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Zas posted:anyway: haldeman or ehrlichman?? Ehrlichman got all pissy against Nixon because of the jail time he did HR Halderman 
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May 13, 2017 14:25
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bazomatic posted:What the gently caress, seriously? Reality is so loving weird. Assuming Nixon didn't do that poo poo he did with the Plumbers, his second term likely would have seen him introduce universal health care
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May 18, 2017 14:46
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Tingfinder posted:Trump might be what was needed to finally snap the far-right out of their madness Funniest thing I've read all week What would they have if they didn't have madness, the far-right is literally a con for the 0.1%
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May 18, 2017 16:28
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Though when Nixon was forced to fire Halderman and Erlichman he also said "this is like cutting off both my arms" and offered them all of his money. That firing might be also the first time the staff put Nixon on unofficial suicide watch
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May 18, 2017 16:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s62PeTxELL4 RIP Powers Boothe
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May 18, 2017 16:53
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LastInLine posted:Which republicans are calling for impeachment? I think the only one that's said "this poo poo is extremely concerning, we need an investigation now" is John McCain. Impeachment is what you call for when the crime is confirmed
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May 20, 2017 14:23
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On Watergate: Nixon ran his White House with secrecy, like Obama. He couldn't abide leaks to the press, and so after his election in 1969, he and the Attorney General Mitchell set up a group of "plumbers" to deal with leaks, and in general to pull dirty tricks on enemies. In this group included famous mustached rear end in a top hat G. Gordon Liddy, and two ex-CIA agents, Howard Hunt and James McCord. This group would do several dirty deeds (but not for dirt cheap) including breaking into the office of the Psychologist who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and the wiretapping of Democrat offices in the Watergate hotel. In June 1972, the Plumbers were caught in the Watergate, and immediate evidence suggested connections to the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREP). Further investigative reports (mainly by the NYT, Time magazine of all fuckin' organizations, and of course the Washington Post) were incredibly juicy, as they uncovered evidence of involvement with the break-in at the highest levels of the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein, intrepid WP reporters were helped in particular by the famous anonymous source Deep Throat, who was revealed finally in 2005 to be Mark Felt, then deputy director of the FBI. Nixon meanwhile instigated a coverup, paying off the Plumbers in jail, while using federal government agencies to cover up his involvement. (Note for anybody watching Nixon: one of the first scenes with Nixon and his advisors is a conversation which would be later be described as "the smoking gun": the hard evidence that Nixon was engaged in a cover-up. It's disclosure on the white house tapes would trigger impeachment proceedings and Nixon's resignation.) In the mind of Nixon, all of this was more or less justified, as other presidents had pulled similarly nasty tricks on him. Nixon had made his name as a communist-hunter in the early 1950s with the Alger Hiss case; which saw Truman using his power to try and protect Hiss. In 1960 while running against JFK, Bobby Kennedy would have Nixon's mother, elderly and dying of cancer, audited by the IRS to distract Nixon. So in Nixon's mind, anyway, the Plumbers were just how the game was played.
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May 21, 2017 15:55
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Tingfinder posted:I might be naive, but i thought that when their elected pissident can't even go 6 months before calls to impeachment, that at least some of them would realize that maybe they've gone a step too far. Unlike some goons, I don't like delivering bad news on the other hand friend, can I suggest you take steps to preserve your mind?
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May 21, 2017 22:35
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Watergate - part 2 While these things were reported, they didn't affect Nixon's re-election, which was by a clear majority in the popular vote and the most one sided victory in US History if you go by the electoral college. 1972 was basically year of the Nixon, a total triumph. Had Nixon made a full confession and apology after the victory, it is likely the whole thing would have blown over. poo poo starts to go downhill in '73. A Grand Jury to investigate Watergate convened, who had the power to issue subpoenas and collect testimony. E:[This was done by the senate in a vote of 77-0 in February 1973.] Judge Sirica suspected shenanigans in the Watergate burglary, and gave punitive sentences of 40 years each to the would-be wiretappers to pressure them into testifying. Around the same time Nixon begins a cover up of the cover up, and seems to have realized he was going to have to give up HR Halderman and John Erlichman, his two political operatives since the 1950s. One of the Watergate buglers, Jeb! Magruder, told Sirica that there had been perjury in the Plumbers trial, and implicated John Mitchell, former Attorney General, and John Dean, the President's new lawyer. John Dean the next day had a weird conversation with Nixon where he got the idea that Nixon was trying to get him to admit to stuff while being recorded. Dean flipped after this and became a witness for the prosecution. The key evidence became the White House taping system. Several presidents previously (like Johnson and JFK) had used voice activated taping systems, and Nixon had one installed in secret early in his administration. Ostensibly this was for history and record keeping; in reality it was to keep a subtle eye on Henry Kissinger, White House national security advisor. Despite being the chief author of White House foreign policy, he had been a **Harvard** professor before this, and Nixon + Halderman/Erlichman thought Kissinger might be leaking stuff to his "eastern establishment" friends. This wiretapping had a hilarious* unintentional effect: it totally insulated Kissinger from Watergate, and he was the only senior Nixon White House member not to be tainted in the later scandal. *I mean I find Chilean dissidents being vanished by the police hysterical, I don't know about you The taping system was inadvertently revealed by Nixon's lawyers. In an attempt to discredit John Dean, a transcript was released to the grand jury of a particular conversation between Dean and Nixon. The Grand Jury noticed it seemed verbatim. Next, Alexander Butterfield (an assistant of HR Halderman in Nixon's first term who had installed the taping system) gave testimony, and when directly asked, confirmed that a comprehensive taping system was operational in the White House. This was a bombshell, and three days later, when Butterfield took the stand again, all the major broadcast networks carried it live. The existence of the taping system was revealed to the world, and Nixon's days were numbered. Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 04:28 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 21, 2017 23:32
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Watergate - The disclosure of the taping system put Nixon in a impossible bind: he couldn't release the tapes, as he was in fact guilty. But at the same time, refusing to release the tapes was as good as admitting he was guilty, as the tapes were now the only thing that could exonerate Nixon. By this point a special prosecutor, Arcibald Cox, had been appointed by the attorney general to help investigate Watergate. Upon Butterfield's public testimony, Cox immediately issued a subpoenas for the tapes. Nixon refused, citing Executive Privilege and National Security as the reasons. [Side note: executive privilege is a weird little angle that the president has, it's complex enough that I genuinely wouldn't mind having somebody explain the inns and outs to me. I have a feeling this is going to be a current topic very soon.] Nixon also ordered Cox to drop the subpoenas. Cox refused - Nixon didn't have the power to give the special prosecutor orders, only the attorney general did. So Nixon order the Attorney general Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson resigned in protest, as did the #2 man at the department of justice, William Ruckelshaus. The next man, Robert Bork, fired Cox. [Courts would later find this illegitimate; as a special prosecutor, Cox could only be dismissed for "gross impropriety."] This of course was another bombshell, and was dubbed by the press "the Saturday Night Massacre." This triggered calls for impeachment in Congress. At the same time,(October 1973) public support for impeachment rose to a plurality for the first time, with 44% in favor, 43% opposed, and 13% undecided, with a sampling error of 2 to 3 per cent. A new special prosecutor was appointed, and Nixon agreed to release some tapes. He did this as it allowed the White House to choose what tapes to release, and partially censor them in the names of national security, and also to censor the president's profanity, of which there was a lot. This was viewed as positive by the press, but almost immediately, another scandal broke. One of the tapes given to Nixon's Lawyers had a 18 1/2 minute gap. Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods claimed she had by accident erased it while on the phone, but at this point people didn't believe much from the White house. If it wasn't an accident, it was incredibly blatant evidence destruction, likely done by Nixon himself. What was on those 18 minutes remains a fascinating mystery to this day - Nixon and HR Halderman both later claimed to not remember the conversation in question. The movie Nixon implies it was Nixon talking about what he knew about the JFK assassination. November 1973 saw Nixon make his famous "I am not a crook" speech. It also saw the VP, Spiro T. Agnew, resign for evading income taxes. Gerald Ford was confirmed by the senate as the new VP. 1974 saw a host of Nixon-connected men be convicted of perjury. The "Watergate 7" were indited: former Attorney General Mitchell, HR Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson. Nixon was secretly named as a unindited co-conspirator. In April 1974, Nixon started releasing censored tapes to the public. This was a desperate move - while the tapes didn't advance Nixon's innocence, they did show the public a man who swore a motherfucking fuckton, and frankly anybody who was as realpolitik as Nixon is going to sound like a callous rear end in a top hat. [side note: would any of us sound sane if we were recorded 24/7? I know I wouldn't. I know just the other day I said "if you believed everything you saw on the news, the only rational action would be to turn to supervillainy." And then "I mean, the deaths of hundreds of millions are really a solution to environmental problems and poverty all in one." And then I go onto say "I bet engineering some sort of chemical reaction in China's polluted ground water to make lots of diethyl mercury would be a good way to start." I mean I have to erase this tape, it makes me sound like a monster...]
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May 22, 2017 16:30
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come and get your Nix onquote:Initially, Nixon gained a positive reaction for his speech. As people read the transcripts over the next couple of weeks, however, former supporters among the public, media and political community called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment. Vice President Gerald Ford said, “While it may be easy to delete characterization from the printed page, we cannot delete characterization from people's minds with a wave of the hand.”[49] The Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott said the transcripts revealed a “deplorable, disgusting, shabby, and immoral” performance on the part of the President and his former aides. By this point Watergate was a dumpster fire. Republicans in the senate and congress, initially inclined to believe Nixon, had watched the President's behavior over the past year and now wanted investigation. Nixon himself was a basket case, and at one point was hospitalized with the flu. He kept saying to underlings that he wanted to have a bonfire on the white house lawn, burn all the tapes, then resign. The house judiciary committee in July 1974 recommended three articles of impeachment to congress: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of congress. At the same time, the court case Archibald Cox initiated 9 months ago was decided by the supreme court. The Supremes ruled 8-0 that Nixon couldn't use executive privilege to hold onto the white house tapes, and demanded the release of 24 tapes immediately. On the fifth of August, the White House released an audio tape made just a few days after the Watergate Break-in. Later known as "the smoking gun", it showed Nixon not only aware of a cover up, but instigating it. Nixon had always stuck to his line that he was innocent, even to his own lawyers. This tape made Nixon's attorneys think he was guilty, and had been lying to everybody for over two years. This was pretty much it for the N-dawg. In congress, the ten congressmen who had voted against impeaching Nixon said they would vote for impeachment when the articles came up before the full House. Impeachment first has to be voted on by congress, and then confirmed by the senate. Nixon's support in the Senate was gone - only 15 senators were willing to vote for acquittal. Barry Goldwater, and the GOP leaders in the house and senate went to Nixon, to pass on the news that he had no chance of winning, and resignation was the best option. And so Nixon resigned. The speech he extemporaneously gave when he left the White House was good. Nixon would be pardoned by Ford, a move that likely lost Ford his presidential election. I'm not sure what lessons you can pull out of this scandal. Hunter S. Thompson I think got it right when he said that the story of Watergate was ultimately a happy one; Nixon was brought to justice, the system worked. The thing that really sticks out for me in these god-cursed days is that Republicans all immediately sided by the good of the nation rather than the good of the party. Initially they did this even if they thought Nixon was innocent; they thought the issues serious enough that only a full investigation could clear the air. The other thing is that Nixon in his actions once the scandal became serious did a lot to drat himself. If you started off on Nixon's side, his actions 1973 on would almost inevitably put you in the full investigation camp, if not convince you that the dude was lying.
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May 24, 2017 14:34
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C. Everett Koop posted:I think the lesson is the same as it's always been: the cover-up is always worse than the crime and careful media manipulation can always get you off scott-free. The GOP didn't turn on Nixon until so much damning evidence hit the public that they had to turn, otherwise they would have been dragged down with him. It's the reason the GOP hasn't turned on Trump yet; they're looking at the polls and seeing that the base is still with him and (probably correctly) assuming that these scandals will be old-hat by the time football season comes around, much less the 2018 elections. Losing moderates doesn't matter 18+ months out from an election so who cares what they tell a pollster right now. You could be right, though I've read books on the Nixon era and the degree that the Republicans actually cared about at least getting to the bottom of the scandal surprises me. The GOP political culture has undeniably been completely transformed since then. Like the guy who said "what did the president know, and when did he know it" was a Republican (forget if he was a senator or a congressman, he was on the Watergate committee.) Another plink against the cynical interpretation is that the public still had some support for the president when both houses were united in wanting first an investigation, and then impeachment. If most of the GOP members were strictly poll-watching, you'd think Nixon's erosion of support would have tracked those polls more closely.
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May 25, 2017 00:48
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Coolguye posted:the real reason obstruction comes up so much in presidential impeachment proceedings is because it's easier to prove than a lot of other crimes and because that's the thing that actively makes more work for congress. the real instrument of impeachment is for congress to check the president, so don't fool yourself into thinking it's some sort of populist proceeding or whatever, it's specifically the president pissing off congress and congress pissing on him in return. It's true, unlike other proceedings, impeachment is totally political, this is how Bill Clinton ended up having articles of impeachment against him for lying about having an affair Also Mr. Koop you may be interested in this article agreeing that the GOP was a bunch of partisan motherfuckers with Nixon until it became too hot a position: http://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...l-they-couldn-t 
Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 23:21 on May 29, 2017 |
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May 29, 2017 23:19
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Lindsey O. Graham posted:uh, I don't think it's real; the date is '72 and that's some young Dick right there
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May 30, 2017 00:31
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^^  Contains supremely ironic cuts of the war in Vietnam implying its a democratic mess Honestly though properly psychedelic campaign ads sound groovy, I'm in an era where one of the candidates retweeted the trailer for Mass Effect 2 with some sound editing to make it a campaign commercial
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May 30, 2017 02:08
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