Monday, January 8, 2018

Diversity in American politics, part 2a


This is the second page in a set of five pages.  This page is about one of the factions in the Democrat Party, which I'm calling "patriotic Democrats".  Here are the other pages.  A clickable link means that this page has been published
  • Part 1a, already published, which shows the major factions in the Republican Party.  A link to this page, published in December 2017, can also be found in the archives on the right.
  • Part 1b, published in October 2018
    • The most effective Republican lobbying groups
    • The dispute over tariffs between Chamber of Commerce and Donald Trump
    • The Log Cabin Republicans
    • The Koch Brothers
    • President Trump campaigned for the 2018 reelection of his 2016 rival Ted Cruz
  • Part 2b
    • The rivalry between the Clintons and the Obamas
    • Classic Liberals (people who are open-minded to new political ideas
    • Economic Moderates
  • Part 2c - Blue Dog Democrats and individual Democrats who have publicly disagreed with their party
    • Zell Miller
    • Bill Clinton, who reformed the welfare system
    • Zell Miller
  • Part 2d - Democrats who don't like Capitalism (they prefer Socialism)
    • the United Nations
    • A private college in California
    • The Democratic Socialists of America
  • Part 2e - Democrats who don't like Democracy (they love Karl Marx's ideas, and they approve of undemocratic ideas like street demonstrations, which they hope will turn violent, in accordance with Karl's demand that the revolution must be violent, so that the ruling classes will be eliminated from the face of the earth.
    • Definitions of the words "Democracy" and "Republic"
    • The history of the concept of democracy
    • Zell Miller
    • Karl Marx's alternative to democracy (the dictatorship of the proletariat)
  • Part 2f - Organizations that don't like democracy
    • The City Council in a California City
    • A college in Vermont (whose students became an angry mob, according to the Washington Post, when a conservative tried to speak on their campus)
    • The Democratic Socialists of America (a misnamed organization)
    • Antifa
    • Named Democrats who don't like democracy
    • News stories about anti-democratic Democrats
  • Part 2g - More named Democrats who don't like Democracy
    • Radicals in the DNC have lost some of their power
    • The Blue Dog Democrats are making a comeback
    • Jonathan van Ness asks for political peace
    • Rodney King also asked for peace
    • Jesus also asked for peace
  • Part 3 - (unfinished) will name some factions within some of the minor parties, such as the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Green Party.  This page will name a Communist who ran for President three times.  He would not have had the approval of Karl Marx, who was an advocate for a violent revolution that would wipe out the classes of people that he saw all around the world.

Note: When I started writing this set of essays, I intended that it would be a three-page set, but a few days ago, I found that I had written a lot about one faction in the Democrat Party (the patriotic Democrats), so I had to move all of the material about the other factions onto another page.  At that moment, this series became a four-page series instead of a three-page series.


The history of the Democrat Party

This is the first paragraph of this undated page on the website of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  All of these links were on their page.

Note: This page was written by British subjects, who spell the words favor, color, and labor differently than Americans do.  I didn't change the way they spelled any of their words.
The Democratic Party has changed significantly during its more than two centuries of existence.  During the 19th century the party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed civil rights reforms after the American Civil War in order to retain the support of Southern voters.  By the mid-20th century it had undergone a dramatic ideological realignment and reinvented itself as a party supporting organized labour, the civil rights of minorities, and progressive reform.  Since Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, the party has also tended to favour greater government intervention in the economy and to oppose government intervention in the private noneconomic affairs of citizens.  The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never been officially adopted by the party.

The page included a copy of a Thomas Nast cartoon that included a donkey.

This is a link to a January 21, 2019 Politico story about a heated argument during the 1980 Democrat Convention between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy.


Some Democrats are patriotic

This page is about them.  However, there are other factions within the Democrat Party who are not patriotic.  They will be described on the next page.  This is a list of of the factions of the Democrat Party that I am writing about on both pages.
  1. Patriotic Democrats (this page)
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt
    • Harry Truman
    • John Fitzgerald Kennedy
    • Brian Schweitzer (an ex-Governor)
  2. The hatred between the Clintons and the Obamas
  3. Classic Liberals
  4. Bleeding-Heart Liberals
  5. People who want one governmental body to control the whole world
Another page will include factions within some minor parties including the Socialist Party, the Green Party, and the American Communist Party.

Very few patriotic Democrats are visible now, but they played a big part in America's history.

The photo on the left shows Democrat President Harry Truman taking off his hat while he passed by a small group of U.S. Soldiers.

The photograph, dated July 15, 1946, is on this page of the website of the Truman Presidential Library.  This description of the photo is on the page.

Four Nisei soldiers present the colors as President Harry S. Truman reviews their regiment. The Nisei were second-generation Japanese-Americans. This is a review of the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

This article has more information about the Nisei soldiers.  They were Japanese Americans, but President Truman honored them because they helped the U.S. military win World War 2.

In that place and at that moment, the first responsibility of those soldiers was to "present the colors" (show the American flag) so that the President could salute it as his way of showing respect for the flag that represented his country.  When these soldiers performed this duty, they were not Japanese-Americans, they were Americans.  They had the same responsibility to fight for their country as any other group of soldiers.  A soldier's willingness to fight for America is always more important than his ethnicity.


President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Introduction

This image is available on the Wikimedia website.  The following text is their description.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly left, during the time he was assistant sec of the Navy (1913 - July 1920).

Link to the Wikimedia page.

Before he was elected, the stock market, which had been rising steadily and broadly, crashed.  The three parts of it (the rally through most of the 1920s, the crash, and the slow recovery) are explained in detail by this book, which I have read.

Link to the Amazon page for this book.

Link to the biography of the author, John Kenneth Galbraith on the website of:

The Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia.com

The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential Library

His 2006 obituary in the New York Times

A timeline of his life on the website of the Harvard University Gazetts

This graphic shows an outline of the major events during a time period that is called the Great Depression, although there is no agreement among economists for a definition of an economic depression.

Roosevelt was elected in 1932.  He had been a two-term Governor of New York.
He had three Vice-Presidents, the last of which was Harry Truman.  Link to the list of his Vice-Presidents, on the website of the F.D.R. Presidential Library in New York.


His economic policies

 During his first campaign, he promised economic help for Americans so that they could deal with extremely high unemployment that hurt the middle class and a large drop in the prices of stocks that hurt the upper class business owners.
Business owners have always been the ones who hire and fire people, so when these companies saw large declines in the sales of their products, they responded by reducing the number of people who worked for those companies.  Salaries are always a large expense for any company.  The layoffs reduced the amount of income that people could use for buying consumer goods, which then further reduced company revenue.

 His first political campaign emphasized changes from the pain of bad policies by the previous president.  These policies were advertised with a catch-all description that itself implied "change" because Americans hated the poverty of the Great Depression.
The many pieces of legislation that he signed into law early in his presidency were collectively called "The New Deal" because he tried to offer a change from the economic policies of his predecessor, Republican President Herbert Hoover, whose term ended just after the crash of the stock market in 1929.

One of those new laws created the Social Security Administration as a way to provide money to people after they had retired.  The money came from taxes on employers and employees.

The main benefit of Social Security is the guarantee of the income, but a large disadvantage is the poor investment that it represents compared with the very long-term results of the stock market.  In February 2015, I wrote two essays on another blog about Social Security.  The first page describes the program and shows its' problems.  The second page describes some solutions, including a proposal from a commission set up by President George W. Bush to allow people to invest some of their Social Security money in the stock market, which would vastly increase how much money they would receive at retirement.

A Better Retirement System, part 1.

A Better Retirement System, part 2.

The poster on the left was one of many that were used by the U.S. Government to publicize the new program.  The second page of my two-page set of essays analyzes the economics of the program with the help of an economics professor.  Two videos show the poor rate of return on a Social Security "investment" compared with the long-term stock market indexes.

In the early 1930s there were widespread business failures, bank failures, and poverty-related public health issues like hunger and disease.  In Russia, then called the U.S.S.R., Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving millions of Ukrainians to death, which contributed to world-wide economic problems.


Roosevelt believed that large-scale government agencies with broad regulatory powers could solve large-scale economic problems, so he encouraged Congress to create agencies, some of whom still exist today, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, now part of the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, a semi-autonomous body with the authority to oversee mutual funds, stockbrokers, publicly-owned companies, and all of the U.S.-based stock exchanges..


Nationalism helps any nation's economy

The economic problems of the United States were reduced somewhat because patriotism resulted in more sales of clothing and other items made by American companies, which meant more income for the owners and investors in those companies.  The stock prices of those companies reached a bottom and started going up.

1930s clothing label
The University of North Texas produced this report on the Buy American Act.  The following text is the University's description of the law, passed by Congress and signed by President Hoover on his last day as President.

The Buy American Act is the major domestic preference statute governing procurement by the federal government.  Essentially it attempts to protect domestic labor by providing a preference for American goods in government purchases.  In the 110th Congress a new reporting requirement was added to the Buy American Act.  The Buy American Improvement Act of 2007 would make statutory the definition of "American made," increase the domestic content requirement from 50% to 75%, and place limits upon the "inconsistent with the public interest" and "use outside of the United States" exceptions to the act.


Roosevelt sees and prepares for a second major crisis

American industries, with help from Roosevelt's agencies and the 1933 Buy American Act, increased production of military hardware with the goal of fighting and winning the world war that Roosevelt's military advisors had been expecting.  The German Chancellor had imposed severe economic controls over his own economy in order to control the 1923 hyperinflation in Germany that was caused by the end of World War 1, which Germany lost.  Losing the war also caused the destruction of many important parts of the German economy, but their nationalism helped to rebuild their economy.

This is the first paragraph of a November 17, 2011 Business Insider article about German fear of hyperinflation.  The link was included.
As the Euro crisis intensifies, Germany is still adamant that the European Central Bank must not step in to save everyone.

These are the 5th and 6th paragraphs of the same article.
And, for another thing, there are folks in Germany who still remember the hyper-inflation of the Weimar Republic after World War 1, when the value of the currency was obliterated.

This hyper-inflation threw the country into disarray and set the stage for the rise of Hitler. And, not surprisingly, the collective memory of the period has been seared into the German sub-conscious.


TLink to a November 15, 2013 article about Germany's hyperinflation on the website of The Economist.


Under Chancellor Hitler, Germany rebuilt their economy so well, they even produced a strong military again, which was noticed by the American military analysts who reported their analysis to President Roosevelt and his friend Winston Churchill, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice.

The New York Times published this paper on September 1, 1939.  Franklin Roosevelt was in his second term as President.


This page of the History Channel website has more information about the events of that day.  Roosevelt is only mentioned on this page because of his strong support for the safety of America and our allies in Europe when they were visibly threatened by Germany and later, Japan.  He was a patriotic Democrat.

These two paragraphs are on this page of the History Channel website.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in the article.
As early as 1937, FDR warned the American public about the dangers posed by hard-line regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan, though he stopped short of suggesting America should abandon its isolationist policy.  After World War II broke out in September 1939, however, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in order to revise the country’s existing neutrality acts and allow Britain and France to purchase American arms on a “cash-and-carry” basis.  Germany captured France by the end of June 1940, and Roosevelt persuaded Congress to provide more support for Britain, now left to combat the Nazi menace on its own.  Despite the two-term tradition for presidents in place since the time of George Washington, Roosevelt decided to run for reelection again in 1940; he defeated Wendell L. Wilkie by nearly 5 million votes.

Roosevelt increased his support of Great Britain with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 and met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August aboard a battleship anchored off Canada.  In the resulting Atlantic Charter, the two leaders declared the “Four Freedoms” on which the post-war world should be founded: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, which declared war on Japan.  The first president to leave the country during wartime, Roosevelt spearheaded the alliance between countries combating the Axis, meeting frequently with Churchill and seeking to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin.  Meanwhile, he spoke constantly on the radio, reporting war events and rallying the American people in support of the war effort (as he had for the New Deal).

Roosevelt knew that a strong American economy would help the American military protect the safety and the security of freedom-loving people all around the world.


Two heads are better than one

These are the first three paragraphs of this page on the website of the National Park Service.
June 1940.  Britain and its new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill stood alone as the last bastion against the Nazis and their domination of Europe.   World War II had begun on September 1, 1939 and in less than one year the German war machine had engulfed Czechoslovakia,  Hungary, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and France and was  now poised on the shores of the English channel to invade Great Britain.

May 1940 witnessed the defeat of British and French forces at the battle of Dunkirk by the Nazis.   Despair and resignation to becoming yet another conquered nation began to spread among the people of Britain.  Winston Churchill would have none of it.  He raised the battle cry, giving one of  the greatest speeches in history on June 4 in an effort to rally British spirits.  He said that “Even though large tracts of Europe…have fallen or may fall into …all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.  We shall go on to the end.we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be…”  At the conclusion of the speech he reportedly said to a colleague “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got.”   The German Luftwaffe air force began to rain bombs on London and nearby areas, hoping to force a quick surrender.  British ships were being sunk regularly on the Atlantic.

As Britain stood alone, Churchill knew that the only hope for the nation’s survival and the rest of Europe lay in the hands of the  President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill worked together to defeat the armed aggression of German Chancellor Adolph Hitler and Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the lesser threat of Italy's President Benito Mussolini.

Link to Mussolini's biography on the Biography Channel.

Link to Mussolini's biography on the History Channel.

Link to Mussolini's Wikipedia page.

Link to a description of Mussolini's rise to power on the website of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

 This is the caption for the photo on the left, which is found on this page of a web site called 2Day.

President Franklin D Roosevelt signing the Declaration of War against Japan.  He signed a similar declaration of war against Germany and Italy on 11 December 1941.

These two paragraphs are on the same page.
At the beginning of the war, when Churchill had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, the US President had personally asked to be kept appraised of British Naval developments by him.  So began the long and close liaison between the two men.  When war broke out in 1939 few would have anticipated that less than a year later Churchill would be Prime Minister and leading the only free country in the whole of Europe.

The two men would communicate on more than 1700 occasions and spend 120 days together in conference as the great drama of the war unfolded.  With Roosevelt at the helm America had been transformed: from under half a million men in uniform in 1940, by 1945 she had more than 12 million serving all around the globe, supported by an equally transformed military-industrial powerhouse that armed the free world,
This is the first sentence in the second paragraph.  The two men referenced in this sentence are Roosevelt and Churchill.

"The two men would communicate on more than 1700 occasions and spend 120 days together in conference as the great drama of the war unfolded."

The last photo in the following set is a campaign poster for the 1944 election, his last.
The following text was copied from the History Channel page quoted above.
"In the resulting Atlantic Charter, the two leaders [F.D.R. and Winston Churchill] declared the “Four Freedoms” on which the post-war world should be founded: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear."
The relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill was facilitated by a long series of very private messages that were personally transported by the man described in the biography on the right, which I have read.

Mr. Stephenson worked quietly and efficiently to assist both governments in the preparations for war, and he also helped to fool Hitler into wasting his military assets on an invasion of  Yugoslavia, a country that had little military value for Germany.  Link to a page, last updated in 2011, about Hitler's war in the Balkans, on the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation.


The last chapter in Roosevelt's life

Link to the March 25, 1941 page of the History Channel website.  On that day, Yugoslavia became an ally of Germany, Japan, and Italy.

These are the first four paragraphs of the D-Day page of the F.D.R. Presidential Library.
As dawn broke on June 6, 1944, German soldiers defending the French coast at Normandy beheld an awe-inspiring sight—the largest amphibious invasion force in history massed in the waters of the English Channel.  The long-awaited invasion of northwest Europe was underway.

The giant invasion had taken years to organize.  Hundreds of thousands of men and millions of tons of weapons and equipment were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain in advance of the operation.  The invasion force consisted chiefly of Americans, Britons, and Canadians.  But troops of the Free French and many other nations also participated.

The invasion was the culmination of Franklin Roosevelt’s Grand Strategy, especially his decision to pursue a “Germany First” policy and his insistence—in the face of Churchill’s preference for a peripheral strategy—that the operation go forward in 1944.

The Normandy invasion established a solid “Second Front” in Europe.  Its success left Hitler’s armies trapped in a vise, fighting the Red Army in the East and an expanding Anglo-American-Canadian force in the West.
This is the third paragraph.

"The invasion was the culmination of Franklin Roosevelt’s Grand Strategy, especially his decision to pursue a “Germany First” policy and his insistence—in the face of Churchill’s preference for a peripheral strategy—that the operation go forward in 1944."


These are the first three paragraphs of the D-Day page of the website of Mt. Holyoke College.
D-Day was the beginning of the end for not only the Germans but Hitler most of all. D-Day forced the Germans to fight a two front war again just as they had in WWI.  Yet again the Germans could not handle war on both sides of them.

“By the end of June 1944, about a million Allied troops had reached France.” - "World War II." World Encyclopedia 2004.

Reinforcements for the infantry of D-Day had come in.  On June 26th, 1944 the Allies captured the French port of Cherbourg.  After that day, the Germans began to retreat.  On August 25th, 1944 came the day that the French had been waiting for, Paris had been liberated.

These two photos lied to the American public.

They hid the fact that a disease called polio was making him more and more unable to stand without help.

This is the first paragraph of the polio page on the website of the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States.  Not only did he serve an unprecedented four terms in office, but he was also the first president with a significant physical disability.  FDR was diagnosed with infantile paralysis, better known as polio, in 1921, at the age of 39.  Although dealing with this crippling disease was difficult, many believe that his personal struggles helped shape FDR, both as a man and as a president.

 President Roosevelt died in April 1945 during his fourth term as President.

History Channel link.
The 9th Division of the U.S. Army had just crossed the Elbe River in Germany and was heading east towards Berlin, the home of the Nazi Government.

Whenever a President dies while in office, his Vice-President becomes the new President without the need for a new election.  Roosevelt's last Vice-President was Harry Truman, who was sworn-in as President in April 1945 less than two hours after Roosevelt died, according to the New York Times obituary.

These are two paragraphs from the obituary.
Mrs. Roosevelt had immediately given voice to the spirit that animated the entire Government, once the first shock of the news had passed.  She cabled to her four sons, all on active service:

"He did his job to the end as he would want you to do.  Bless you all and all our love. Mother."
"She cabled to her four sons, all on active service:"

That meant that all four of the President's sons were on active-duty service in the U.S. military.


This is another paragraph from the same New York Times obituary.
Mr. Roosevelt died also in a position unique insofar as the history of American statesmen reveals.  He was regarded by millions as indispensable to winning the war and making a just and lasting peace.  On the basis of this opinion, they elected him to a fourth term in 1944.  He was regarded by those same millions as the one American qualified to deal successfully and effectively with the leaders of other nations- particularly Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Marshal Joseph Stalin- and this was another reason for his re-election.


President Harry Truman

These are two sections of his page on the Biography Channel website.  The photo on the right was found with a Google search.

Military Career

When World War I erupted, Truman volunteered for duty.  Though he was 33 years-old—two years older than the age limit for the draft—and eligible for exemption as a farmer, he helped organize his National Guard regiment, which was ultimately called into service in the 129th Field Artillery.  Truman was promoted to captain in France and assigned Battery D, which was known for being the most unruly battery in the regiment.  In spite of a generally shy and modest temperament, Truman captured the respect and admiration of his men and led them successfully through heavy fighting during the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

Early Involvement in Politics

After the war, Truman returned home and married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth “Bess” Wallace in 1919, with whom he had one daughter, Mary Margaret.  That same year, he made a foray into business when he and an associate, Eddie Jacobson, set up a hat shop in Kansas City.  But with America experiencing an economic decline in the early 1920s, the business failed in 1922.  With the closing of the business, Truman owed $20,000 to creditors.  He refused to accept bankruptcy and insisted on paying back all the money he borrowed, which took more than 15 years.

About this time, he was approached by Democratic boss Thomas Pendergast, whose nephew James served with Truman during the war. Pendergast appointed Truman to a position as an overseer of highways, and after a year, chose him to run for one of three county-judge positions in Jackson County. He was elected judge, which was an administrative rather than a judicial position, but he was defeated when he ran for a second term. Truman ran again in 1926 and was elected as a presiding judge, a position he held until he ran for senator.

The next section says that F.D.R.'s poor health during his fourth presidential campaign in 1940 forced him to think hard about his choice for Vice-President.  As a Democrat, he didn't want a Republican to be elected, but his current Vice President was widely hated in the Democrat Party.  Harry Truman, however, was a well-liked two-term U.S. Senator, so President Roosevelt and his political advisors chose him as the Vice-Presidential candidate in 1940.

Other biographies of Harry Truman.
Truman Presidential Library Encyclopedia Britannica
Wikipedia The History Channel
Link to his 1972 obituary in the New York Times.

As the successor to the U.S. President who had responded to German and Japanese aggression, with Italy's help, his first responsibility was ending the threat of more violence against the innocent and helpless people of Europe and southeast Asia.  He accepted this solemn responsibility and, with the help of our military allies, won the war with a minimum of lives lost.

On June 7, 1945, President Truman encourages Japan to surrender. He spoke in English on American television networks, but the Japanese were listening.
On August 7, 1945, President Truman announced that America has used an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in an attempt to encourage Japan to surrender.

Starting at 52 seconds in the first video:

"What has already happened to Tokyo will happen to every Japanese city whose industries feed the Japanese war machine."

Starting at 1 minute, 1 second in the second video:

"If the Japanese insist on continuing resistance, beyond the point of reason, their country will suffer the same destruction as Germany."

Link to the timeline of his decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.  This link, on the website of the Truman Presidential Library, has separate links to documents in HTML and PDF formats.

The Japanese government was determined to fight to the last man.  They failed to surrender after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, so America had to drop a second bomb on a second city called Nagasaki.



 This 5-minute documentary film, uploaded by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 2007, shows the extreme amount of dedication that Japanese soldiers had, especially the officers.  Many of them expected to die at the end of their missions.
This 8-minute newsreel shows the formal surrender of Japan onboard the U.S.S. Missouri, September 2, 1945.

I should not have to say this, but the delay by the Japanese Government cost more Japanese lives than the two bombs.  This is the fifth paragraph of a May 25, 2016 Time Magazine story, inspired by a visit by President Obama to Hiroshima.  The link was in their story.
The United States’ objective in the war had been laid down publicly by President Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943: the unconditional surrender of all its enemies, allowing both for the occupation of their territory and the imposition of such new political institutions as the Allies saw fit.  In the early summer of 1945 those terms had indeed been imposed upon Germany.  But as a brilliant 1999 study by Richard B. Frank, Downfall, showed, the Japanese government—while well aware that it could not win the war—was not at all ready to accept such terms.  They particularly wanted to avoid an American occupation of Japan, or any change in their political institutions.
"... the Japanese government—while well aware that it could not win the war—was not at all ready to accept such terms.  They particularly wanted to avoid an American occupation of Japan, or any change in their political institutions."

Links to stories about Obama in Hiroshima, all dated May 27, 2016.
Washington Post New York Times The Guardian (U.K.)
Los Angeles Times U.S.A. Today C.N.N.


President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The PT Boat sailor

These are the first four paragraphs of the August 2, 1943 page of the History Channel website.
On this day in 1943, future President John F. Kennedy is serving as commander of a torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands when his ship is fired upon by the Japanese navy.

As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard University.  In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his influence to get Jack, as he was called, into the Navy.  In 1942, Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the Pacific.

In July 1943, according to the official Navy report, Kennedy and the crew of PT 109 were ordered into combat near the Solomon Islands.  In the middle of the night on August 2, their boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and caught fire.  Several of Kennedy’s shipmates were blown overboard into a sea of burning oil.  Kennedy dove in to rescue three of the crew and in the process swallowed some of the toxic mixture. (Kennedy would later blame this for chronic stomach problems.)  For 12 hours, Kennedy and his crew clung to the wrecked hull, before he ordered them to abandon ship. Kennedy and the other good swimmers placed the injured on a makeshift raft, and then took turns pushing and towing the raft four miles to safety on a nearby island.

For six days, Kennedy and his crew waited on the island for rescue.  They survived by drinking coconut milk and rainwater until native islanders discovered the sailors and offered food and shelter.  Every night, Kennedy tried to signal other U.S. Navy ships in the area.  He also reportedly scrawled a message on a coconut husk and gestured to the islanders to take it to a nearby PT base at Rendova.  Finally, on August 8, a Navy patrol boat picked up the haggard survivors.

This page of the website of the U.S. National Park Service also mentions the fact that he saved the lives of some of his crewmen that day.  The page includes the photo on the right.

This page of the website of the Kennedy Presidential Library is about his eager service to his country during World War II.

The History Channel web page doesn't say it explicitly, but some of the U.S. Navy sailors who were on that boat died when the Japanese boat rammed it.  Lieutenant Kennedy felt the loss of his crewmates and wrote letters to the families of those dead sailors.

This book collector's web page states that a collection of letters written by Kennedy to the family of one of the dead crewmen were sold at auction in 2014 for $200,000.


The U.S. Navy recognized the efforts of a PT Boat sailor

These are the first two paragraphs of the June 12, 1944 page of the History Channel website.  Note that these events took place 10 months after the PT boat was rammed and sunk.
Lieutenant John F. Kennedy receives the Navy’s highest honor for gallantry for his heroic actions as a gunboat pilot during World War II on this day in 1944.  The future president also received a Purple Heart for wounds received during battle.

As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard.  In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his influence to get Jack into the service.  In 1942, Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the Pacific.
This is about half of the first sentence in the second paragraph.

"As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy ...."


Kennedy after World War II


This October 10, 1992 article in the (U.K.) Independent discusses how the Kennedy family, headed by Joseph P. Kennedy, became wealthy.  It appears that this was done using the principles of capitalism, enhanced by a network of well-placed friends.  The author speculates that this money was used to promote the idea that a very low-grade Navy Officer would be a good candidate for political office.

These are the first three paragraphs of a January 8, 2013 Forbes Magazine article about Joseph P. Kennedy.  The link in the second paragraph was in their article.
Though never terribly fascinated by the Kennedy family political dynasty, stories about Joseph P. Kennedy (JPK) always interested me from an economic angle.  It's said that Kennedy properly told his son Jack (JFK) that "wars are bad for business", and then the late Jude Wanniski used to write that JFK's unyielding support for the gold standard ("the foundation stone of the world's payments system") was a function of his father having drummed it into his head from early childhood.

With the above in mind, I read David Nasaw's excellent new biography of the business titan and statesman, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.  Neither of the previously mentioned anecdotes was confirmed in the book, but that doesn't detract from an illuminating story about one of the 20th century's foremost businessmen whose insights extended well into the economic and foreign policy spheres.  Readers will very much enjoy this book.

Before getting into to the economics of Kennedy, it's perhaps worthwhile to point out what surprised me within.  First off, though he was certainly self-made, his early life story was hardly one marked by poverty.  Kennedy's father was by most standards very well-to-do (as was wife Rose's family: William Randolph Hearst attended her debut) such that he attended Boston Latin, followed by Harvard.  Kennedy was not a "bootlegger" as is often assumed, though he did start a liquor importing business as Prohibition ended, and after having made a great deal of money in banking, investing, and in movies.  And while it's long been a known quantity that he was very rich, it surprised me to learn that by the 1950s he was one of the 15 richest Americans.
These are the last two sentences in the third paragraph.

"Kennedy was not a "bootlegger" as is often assumed, though he did start a liquor importing business as Prohibition ended, and after having made a great deal of money in banking, investing, and in movies.  And while it's long been a known quantity that he was very rich, it surprised me to learn that by the 1950s he was one of the 15 richest Americans."

For the benefit of anyone who is a fan of socialism or communism, this means that the father of President Kennedy was a fan of capitalism who may have used his wealth for a political purpose - putting his son into the White House.


U.S. Senator Kennedy

JFL Library link including a 26-minute movie that was made to help reelect him in 1958.

This is the description of this page of the J.F.K. Presidential Library, which included 46 digital pages.
This folder contains materials collected by the office of President John F. Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, both prior to and during his Presidency, concerning then Senator Kennedy's successful 1958 re-election campaign. Materials in this folder include correspondence and a newspaper article.

U.S. President Kennedy

The November 8, 1960 page of the History Channel website, titled "John F. Kennedy elected president", was one long paragraph.  I broke it up into four separate paragraphs to make it easier to read.
John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon.  He was also the first Catholic to become president.

The campaign was hard fought and bitter.  For the first time, presidential candidates engaged in televised debates.  Many observers believed that Kennedy’s poised and charming performance during the four debates made the difference in the final vote.   Issues, however, also played a role in the election, and the nation’s foreign policy was a major bone of contention between Kennedy and Nixon.  Nixon took every opportunity to characterize Kennedy as too young and inexperienced to handle the awesome responsibilities of America’s Cold War diplomacy.  (Nixon was, in fact, only a few years older than Kennedy.)  He defended the past eight years of Republican rule, arguing that Soviet power had been contained and America’s strength increased.

Kennedy responded by portraying foreign policy during the Eisenhower years as stagnant and reactionary.  In particular, he charged the Republicans with losing Cuba and allowing a dangerous “missile gap” to develop, in which the Soviets had overtaken the United States in the building of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.  Kennedy promised to reinvigorate America’s foreign policy, relying on a flexible response to changing situations and exploring options ignored by the staid and conservative Eisenhower administration.

Kennedy claimed during the campaign that he looked forward to meeting the challenges facing the strongest nation in the Free World.  He did not have long to wait before those challenges were upon him.  During the first few months of the Kennedy presidency, Nixon’s criticisms seemed to have some validity.  Kennedy appeared overwhelmed, first by the catastrophic failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, then by a blustering Nikita Khrushchev during a summit meeting in Europe, and finally by the construction of the Berlin Wall.  And there was also the deteriorating situation in Southeast Asia to consider.
These sentences are part of that one long paragraph.

"[Nixon] defended the past eight years of Republican rule, arguing that Soviet power had been contained and America’s strength increased.  Kennedy responded by portraying foreign policy during the Eisenhower years as stagnant and reactionary.  In particular, he charged the Republicans with losing Cuba and allowing a dangerous “missile gap” to develop, in which the Soviets had overtaken the United States in the building of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.  Kennedy promised to reinvigorate America’s foreign policy, relying on a flexible response to changing situations and exploring options ignored by the staid and cnservative Eisenhower administration.  Kennedy claimed during the campaign that he looked forward to meeting the challenges facing the strongest nation in the Free World."

Presidential Candidate John F. Kennedy valued the safety and the security of the United States, judging by the fact that he mourned when the Cuban government was overthrown by a violent revolutionary named Fidel Castro who was friends with other violent revolutionaries in South America.


Protecting America from Russia

This is the complete text of this page on the website of the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State.  The photo and caption were included in the article.
President Kennedy with his cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis
 In October 1962, the Kennedy Administration faced its most serious foreign policy crisis.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saw an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro’s Cuba and make good its promise to defend Cuba from the United States.  In May 1960, Khrushchev began to ship ballistic missiles to Cuba and technicians to operate them.  He believed that President Kennedy was weak and would not react to the Soviet move.
After extensive consultation with his foreign policy and military advisers, Kennedy blockaded Cuba on October 22, 1962.  The two sides stood on the brink of nuclear war, but Khrushchev capitulated six days later and the missiles were dismantled.  In return, Kennedy disbanded its own missile sites in Turkey.  The most confrontational period in US-Soviet relations since World War II was at an end.
These are the first two sentences of the third paragraph.

"After extensive consultation with his foreign policy and military advisers, Kennedy blockaded Cuba on October 22, 1962. The two sides stood on the brink of nuclear war, but Khrushchev capitulated six days later and the missiles were dismantled."


President Jimmy Carter

These are the first three paragraphs of an undated article on the Military.com website.
During Jimmy Carter's 1975 presidential campaign, he was often referred to as "the peanut farmer from Georgia."  But biographies of the candidate often neglected to mention that, before his successful farming and feed supply business and political career, Carter had been a Navy submarine officer.  His seven-year naval career ended only when James Earl Carter Sr. died and his son chose to save the family farm.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Ga.  Our first president to be born in a hospital, he was raised on peanut prices, local politics, and his family's strong Baptist faith.  Accepting a nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy, he graduated in a wartime three years with the Class of 1946.  That June, he married Rosalynn Smith, and the young couple embarked on a series of military assignments that included Ensign Carter's duty on the battleships Wyoming and Mississippi.

After the Officer's Course at the New London, Conn.-based U.S. Navy Submarine School, Carter was assigned to the sub Pomfret SS-391 and soon was promoted to lieutenant, junior grade.  After doing graduate work in physics at Union College, he served as executive officer aboard the submarine K-1 (SSK 1), the first postwar submarine built, and was promoted to lieutenant.  But in 1952, Carter was detached from the K-1 to participate, under then-Capt. Hyman Rickover, on the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels.  In October 1953, Carter was training the crew of the submarine Seawolf in use of these plants when his father died.  At his own request, Lt. James Earl Carter Jr. was honorably discharged after seven years, four months, and eight days of active duty.  He remained on reserve duty until 1961.



Former Vice-President Joe Biden

These are the first five paragraphs of a February 17, 2019 story in the Hill.  All of these links were in their story.
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday called for a strong relationship between the U.S. and its traditional allies.

“The America I see does not wish to turn our back on the world or our closest allies,” Biden said during a security conference in Munich, according to The Washington Post.

“The America I see cherishes a free press, democracy, the rule of law," he added.  "It stands up to the aggression of dictators and against strongmen.”

Biden also received a standing ovation at the conference as he criticized President Trump's treatment of traditional European allies, according to The New York Times.

“This too shall pass. We will be back. We will be back," he said.


James Woods used to be a Democrat

His Twitter account has 2.2 million followers.



I like this Democrat who is still alive

 His name is Brian Schweitzer.  He was the Governor of Montana from 2005 to 2013.

His Facebook page.

His biography on the website of the National Governor's Association.
This is his description on this page of the official website of the State of Montana.  The link was on their page.
Brian Schweitzer was a farmer and rancher who had held no elected office prior to being elected Montana's 23rd governor in 2004.  The grandson of Montana homesteaders, Schweitzer, a Democrat, grew up on a cattle ranch in the Judith Basin, earned a bachelor's degree in international agronomy from Colorado State University, and a master's in soil science from Montana State University.  He worked overseas on agricultural and irrigation projects and has visited 37 countries.  Among Schweitzer's accomplishments were job creation; increasing Montana's electrical generation capacity and oil production; and investments in K-12 and higher education.  During the Schweitzer years Montana's bond rating was upgraded and a budget surplus of more than $400 million was left at the end of his term.
These are the first two paragraphs of a September 13, 2013 MSNBC story.
Former Gov. Brian Schweitzer will not run for Montana’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2014, NBC News confirmed Saturday.

Schweitzer, known as a folksy, bolo-tie-wearing popular figure in Montana, was a favorite among Democrats to hold on to Sen. Max Baucus’ seat after the six-term congressman said in April he would not seek re-election.
These are the first two paragraphs of a June 5, 2014 Time Magazine article.  The links in the second paragraph are in their article.
To get rid of the trash, former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer either has to drive it away in a pickup from his remote lake house or burn it in a rusty oil barrel. But with the cellular signal from a nearby tower, he is able to broadcast live high-definition video of himself from his wine cellar to MSNBC viewers all over the country.

That same technology has also allowed him emerge in the last several months as a notable force in Democratic politics, as he has begun to explore publicly the possibility of a 2016 presidential bid and offer criticisms of President Obama and his heir apparent, Hillary Clinton. In this week’s TIME magazine, I have a story about Schweitzer on the range, his views of the party, and his thoughts on how to win in 2016. (The story is free to read online for subscribers. Everyone else click here to subscribe.) Suffice it to say, he is not just another Democratic candidate.
In July 2014, a month after the Time Magazine article, I wrote an essay on a different blog titled The Democrat's Best Choice in 2016.  My essay includes videos of him being interviewed, one-on-one by reporters videos of him making speeches, and the following graphic.   I had not seen the Time Magazine article at the time.


If the Democrat Party had nominated him for President in 2016, I think he would have received a lot of votes from Republicans who didn't like Donald Trump.  He might have even won, as a Democrat, against Donald Trump because so many Republicans had been hurt by Donald's campaign.

His political views are very moderate because of his background as a business owner (a ranch) and because he is a member of the National Rifle Association.

Because he has moderate political views, I would have been comfortable with him being elected as President in 2016.
Brian spoke at the 2008 Democrat National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

His first words:  "Hello, Colorado.  I'm a rancher.  I'm a rancher that's made my living raising cattle, growing wheat, barley, and alfalfa in Montana."

He also describes Colorado as "a great place to raise a family, to start and grow a business, and build a community."

These are family values.
He appeared in December 2013 on an Iowa public-broadcasting station.

He argued for an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that it produces much of the world's heroin.

He also said that the President of Afghanistan's brother is a major drug dealer.  I agree with all this, by the way.
This is the description of this video, which was uploaded in 2008 by Brian's reelection campaign.

On Tuesday, May 27th, the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) announced its endorsement of Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer for re-election in the 2008 campaign.

Announcing the NRA-PVF endorsement at a press conference in Billings, MT, was NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

As of the date that this essay was published, this is the most recent tweet that he posted on his Twitter account @brianschweitzer.

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