I served under LBJ and then Nixon.

I don't wish to pursue it here, but I think poor Lyndon just got in over his head in lots of ways when you recall what his reform goals were as against what he was forced to do in military terms, and Westmoreland was a terrible commander in those circumstances. LBJ picked the wrong general at the wrong time.

Just so that I don't come across as anything other than myself - I am 38, and never served. I have, however, had a pretty good fetish for American History of the 60's since I was a whippersnapper, and was wondering -

Why does LBJ get such a free pass on a lot of this stuff from people? I mean, I have read the Great Society speech, and find it inspiring, and I have an idea how much political capital he spent to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts through - all good things. But he continually, habitually, and catastrophically LIED HIS ASS OFF to the American people about Vietnam: troop numbers (The Original Surge ™), military advances and the like - at best out of some sense of paranoid benevolent anti-communist instinct, and at worst because it was politically expedient to maintain and expand the conflict in order to be able to campaign and govern as being tough and righteous in the face of the Communist threat.

Much of the worst of the COINTELPRO violations took place during his administration, and the Chicago Democratic convention was during his watch as well.

All in all, I admire the guy for what he was trying to do, but I hate his methods and would like to see him called out a little bit more for he damage he did. It is a little too simplistic just to vilify Nixon - as tempting as that is, because Nixon was scum, plain and simple.

From the information available now, looking back at the period, it seems to have been a reasonable position to take during the 68 election that a vote for Nixon was an anti-war vote. That is FUBAR, and the blame for that has to be put on Johnson.

Ford's pardon of Nixon was one of the "...great moments when we turned the clock forward..."?

What?

Did I miss something? In my eyes it was the moment that has allowed the subsequent white-wash of Nixon's noxious legacy and led directly to his Golem manifesting itself in the Current Occupant.

Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Fielding - all of them worked in Nixon's white house, and would have had that much less respectability and subsequent clout had we been able, as a country, to collectively clear our throats and hawk up that huge loogie known as Nixon.

In general, I find your positions well worth the effort to understand, but on this one, I respectfully submit that you have missed the boat.

Sorry - Rove did not work in Nixon's White House. He was the president of the College Republican National Committee, and active during Nixon's Re-election campaign, working closely with Segretti and Atwater.

A semantic difference, I would submit, but an error on my part, nonetheless.

I'd like to second the nomination of Jim Brown as "...a Michael Jordan- or Wayne Gretzky-level player..."

Jim Brown ran around, over, and through people with strength, style, and flair; he was certainly head and shoulders above anyone else playing at the time, and has not really been emulated since in terms of dominance in a sport where it is muich harder for an individual to have that kind of impact.

5.22 yards per carry for his career. That is just absurd.

And Kohoutek's comment - "I felt good watching my kid grow up rooting for you." - is probably the highest praise an athelete can receive.

Bye, Brett. We'll miss you.

clamshell at 6:10

My seconds major point was about *incremental* cost. What would the US GDP have been in 1960 if WWII had never happened? Clearly less - and for a lot of the world, like Japan and Russia, the war had its benefits.

Oh, boy.

I don't think that I am necessarily going to disagree with you about what you are trying to say, but you should think VERY carefully before you go around trying to say that Russia and Japan benefited from WWII.

Disregarding Japan for a moment: Russia lost 20+ million people in WWII (I won't quibble about the exact figure), and hundreds of thousands of square miles were burned to the ground. The Cold War "peace-time" militarization might have had a beneficial effect on the industrialization process of the Soviet Union. But this occurred during the Cold War, not WWII, where, at the risk of repeating myself, THEY LOST OVER 20 FUCKING MILLION PEOPLE in what is commonly regarded as the most deadly and brutal front in any war in human history. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, THE MOST DEADLY AND BRUTAL FRONT IN ANY WAR IN HUMAN HISTORY. I wonder by what metric you are determining the "benefits" of this war.

There was a guy on Bill Moyers (see sig) who was a Republican House member at the time, who talked about the focus that Newt Gingrich brought with him in the 1994 elections. This was that it is the duty of Republican members of Congress, not to legislate according to the principles of their party, but to defeat Democrats.

I think this is the kind of crap that comes with that. It seems that the Democrats have fallen into that fever swamp, and it looks even worse on them because it can only work once - for the winners. If you are abandoning all principles just to win ... and still losing, it's - well, in an absolute sense, it is no worse, but - it looks doubleplusbad.