Watergate's Hidden History Led Me To Margaret Chase Smith's Republican FIBS

On the left you are looking at the cover of a book I am currently reading, that being WATERGATE THE HIDDEN HISTORY.

The subtitle of "Nixon, the Mafia and the CIA" was a bit off-putting to me. I figured this would likely not be a very historically accurate accounting of Nixon's allegedly bad behavior.

Well.

So far, this book is being very interesting. It was published in 2012, 40 years after the botched break-in at the Watergate became the start of what became the most notorious Presidential scandal in American history.

I think I have previously mentioned my favorite genres, reading-wise, are Native American History, True Crime books, the Civil War and World War II.

I don't think I have mentioned that Watergate is also a subject about which I seem to have a continuing interest. I have read all of Richard Nixon's books, post-resignation. Haldeman's Diaries was very surprising. I ended up really liking H.R. Haldeman. I've read Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men and Final Days and all the subsequent books Bob Woodward has written on other subjects, like all the books about the perversity of the George W. Bush presidency, except for one sitting on my desk right now, The War Within, which I've not gotten to yet.

In our modern times there are some people who think the Republicans have become the Stupid Party. Apparently there are a lot of Republicans who think and say things that a lot of people think are stupid. I have noticed some of this stupidity myself.

The Republicans have a long history of thinking stupid stuff. Watergate The Hidden History is reminding me of some of it. Like the McCarthy stupidity of the 1950s.

I also have learned from Watergate The Hidden History that back in the 1950s and 1960s, in addition to stupid Republicans, there were also Republican voices of reason.

Republican voices of reason like Margaret Chase Smith.

Margaret Chase Smith was a U.S. Representative from 1940 til 1949, then a U.S. Senator from Maine from 1949 til 1973.

In 1964 Margaret Chase Smith became the first woman to be a candidate for the presidency at a major party's national convention.

Margaret Chase Smith rose to fame as an American voice of reason way back well over a half century ago, delivering, on June 1, 1950, a 15 minute speech that became known as the "Declaration of Conscience."

The "Declaration of Conscience" was directed at the bad behavior of fellow Republican Senator, Joe McCarthy, denouncing "the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle."

Senator Smith charged that McCarthyism had debased the Senate to "the level of a forum of hate and character assassination."

In the "Declaration of Conscience" Senator Smith defended every American's "right to criticize...right to hold unpopular beliefs...right to protest; the right of independent thought."

In the "Declaration of Conscience" Senator Smith acknowledged her desire for Republican political success, tempering that desire by adding that, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horseman of calumny -- fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear."

Margaret Chase Smith's four horseman of calumny became known as "FIBS." Which became shorthand, for many, for the Republican Party, the party of FIBS.

I am sure glad that Margaret Chase Smith types are now in the majority in the Republican Party and no one would ever think that the modern day Republican Party is still the party of FIBS....

What Sort Of Moronic Broadcaster Would Tell Listeners Obama's Lies Are Worse Than Watergate?

If you answered "Rush Limbaugh" you are correct.

When I was in Arizona this past March I was a little appalled to find out my mom listens to Rush Limbaugh. Then I figured out she listens to him for the same reason I do, that being that he can be amusing and ridiculously aggravating, with his insipid rantifying, at times.

My mom can take listening to Rush Limbaugh longer than I can stand it. At the longest, I can listen to a half hour, usually way less.

The ridiculous nonsense has been amped up due to the election next month, that and there having been a Democrat in the White House for almost 4 years.

Limbaugh can say the stupidest stuff, and then repeat the stupid stuff over and over again, with, I guess, no one in his audience telling him he is wrong, even though the listener may know he is wrong but does not call to wise the man up.

In the past week, in the short periods I listen to Rush, I have heard him repeat, multiple times, that no president has been re-elected with the unemployment number being 8% or above. Apparently Mr. Limbaugh has never heard of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Some of the right wing nutjobs, like Limbaugh, have been crusading conspiratorially that the unemployment figures are the result of the Obama administration somehow cooking the books, because if the unemployment number were 8%, or above, come election day, no way could Obama be re-elected, because no incumbent ever has.

Except for FDR, whom Limbaugh neglects to mention. Or does not realize was an American President.

And now we've got the cadre of so-called Conservatives, who really aren't conservatives, but are more accurately identified as being irrational reactionaries, screaming that Obama and his administration's supposed lies, regarding the deadly consulate attack in Benghazi, are worse than Watergate.

To say such a thing is just embarrassing, much more embarrassing than that whole not knowing FDR got re-elected when the unemployment rate was above 8% embarrassment.

Read part of Limbaugh's rant from today's radio show, as transcribed on Rush Limbaugh's website, in an article titled "Obama's Libya Lies: Worse Than Watergate" and you'll get a good dose of the whacked out nonsense that the rightwingers are spewing in their alternative universe.

Anybody else from the regime who went out and tried to blame what happened to our ambassador at Benghazi and in Cairo on this video was lying, big time.  Top officials at the State Department are unwilling to fall on their swords and take the blame for the lies.  The AP, Administration Press, is reporting State Department officials have briefed reporters (all except Fox, they weren't invited) about what really happened at the US consulate there, and they say that they never linked the attack to the anti-Muslim video.

"That was not our conclusion," and the question about linkage is for others to answer, which, if the State Department says we had nothing to do with it, where else did this lie originate? Where else could it have originated? The White House, which is quite telling. This is a major falling out here between the radical left State Department, the radical left White House. The State Department has thrown everybody at the regime overboard and under the bus on this. This ought to be the lead story. I mentioned yesterday or the day before in a brief monologue about how I think the current acceptance of all of this economic deterioration as the new norm is directly traceable to Bill Clinton and his moral failings and our being told that we had to accept that as the new norm.

I made the point here that this is bigger than Watergate. If Watergate were to happen today and it was a Democrat president, it would be tolerated. It would be applauded and praised as brilliant political strategerizing and foresight in thinking if the Democrats did it. But folks, an American citizen is arrested, an American ambassador is dead, three other Americans are dead.

Bigger than Watergate? What's next? Limbaugh demanding to know what Obama knew and when did he know it? Which was one of the classic Watergate questions, as in, what did Nixon know and when did he  know it?

Watergate was an epic scandal, a once in a lifetime scandal, the only presidential scandal that led to a president resigning.

And Rush Limbaugh thinks Benghazi-gate is worse than Watergate?

I tell you, Rush Limbaugh is a cautionary tale of the bad things that can happen when somehow an uneducated man, who barely made it out of high school, who did not go to college, is given a microphone where he can reach out to millions, like himself, who also lack the critical faculties needed to accurately process incoming data without blowharding their wanton Know Nothing-ness.

The Know Nothing Party arose in the 1850s. It's official name was the American Party. In the presidential election of 1856 former president, Millard Fillmore was the Know Nothing nominee. Fillmore had been a Whig, but the Whig Party was no more.

Fillmore's Know Nothing campaign slogan was "I Know Nothing but my Country, my whole Country, and Nothing but my Country."

The Know Nothings where known for being xenophobic and anti-Catholic, with other groups also targeted, like Irish and German immigrants, because the Know Nothings thought the country was being over-run by these groups. Hence the Know Nothings wanted to curb immigration and naturalization. Only male Protestants of British lineage could become a Know Nothing.

Do you see any commonalities between the Know Nothings of the 1850s and the Rush Limbaugh type self-described conservative Know Nothings of the 2010s?

Which brings to mind that saying that goes something like "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

Methinks the modern Republican Party may be doomed to becoming known as the Second Coming of the Know Nothing Party, and, in its place, a new party will rise. This happened many a time in the past. Not so much in the last 100 years.

But, as recently as 1912, Teddy Roosevelt ran for president on the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party ticket and came in second to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, with Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, the incumbent Republican, coming in 3rd with only 8 electoral votes, with Roosevelt getting 88.

So far, Taft has been the only incumbent American President to come in 3rd place in a bid for re-election. I don't know what the unemployment numbers were when Taft suffered his massive defeat.....

Insomnia In Texas With My Hero Richard Nixon

You're looking at me in the midst of an insomnia bout.

Well, it really was not insomnia. I went to bed around 10, had no woe falling asleep, woke up about 2:30, could tell I was not going to fall back asleep.

So, I got up.

I've been reading the Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. I'm easily influenced by anything I read. When Haldeman talked about my hero, Richard Nixon's, theories on sleep, in that it's a big time waste and we really don't need all that much, well, it imprinted on my memory.

Like how Nixon, sometimes, would stay up all night long, working on his plots and schemes. Or Nixon would wake up really early, and, like me, realize he was not going to be sleeping anymore, so he'd get up, like me, and go to work on his plots and schemes.

I'm wondering if Nixon got a bit more sleep maybe that whole Watergate disaster might never have happened. There really was way too much plotting and scheming involved in the Watergate disaster. That's real clear when reading the Haldeman Diaries.

I suspect I will be sleeping real well tonight, with a possible nap intervening between now and then. In the meantime, I'll be doing some heavy duty plotting and scheming.