When Did You First Get Pissed Off About Where Our Country's Leaders Were Leading Us?

[Bfgrn]

I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam war fiasco (JFK planned to withdraw by 1965), the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the riots at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, left the Democratic Party splintered.

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of JFK's most trusted advisers predicted what followed:

For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics. Galbraith and Vietnam

It has been the conservative era that started with Nixon that ushered in the clientelism, regulatory capture and corporate lawyers authoring laws that benefit only the corporations.

In 1965 there were a few hundred lobbyists in Washington. Today there are 35,000 registered lobbyists in DC.

Two true liberal Democrats said it best:

"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy

 

[Votto]

for me, it was LBJ's shit-for-brains acceleration of the Vietnam war...

'n also his dumb-ass "War On Poverty"...

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was laying in my crib and my first words were asking my mother why the federal government was such a cluster.

 

[Kosh]

When Did You First Get Pissed Off About Where Our Country's Leaders Were Leading Us?

When the far left was openly hijacking the Democratic party and leading the US down a path of destruction, much like they did in Europe.

 

[hangover]

I'm all of 26 years of age.

well, in that case, given your age, I suppose you can be forgiven for not being able to recognize what a complete and utter clueless fuck-up GWB was...

What's your excuse for not recognizing the good he did for this country?

Dude, you got to get off those drugs. There are only four past presidents in U.S. history that rank lower than Jr.. He destroyed all U.S. credibility and dignity, even with our allies, with that stupid Iraq war. He more than doubled the national debt, from $5.5 trillion to $12 trillion, and totally destroyed not only the U.S. economy, but also the global economy. And he did it with a republican congress. Giving any credit to a clown like Shrub, is like saying Hitler was good for Germany.

I realized this country was headed the wrong way when JFK was assassinated by a right wing conspiracy. He was killed because he was going to end the Vietnam War, and the industrial military complex was making too much money to let that happen. And worst of all they got away with it, with the help of the Warren commission. The right wing extremists have been fucking this country ever since....and blaming the liberals. The last three republican presidents added over $11 trillion to the national debt. Shrub Jr. left office with a $1.2 trillion annual deficit, and the cons blamed Obama before he even got in the White House. You have to be a complete moron to buy that. And because we have so many stupid cons, we get the dysfunctional congress that we have today. There's no cure for right wing stupidity.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Nowadays I am far more pissed with the extremes right and left trying to deceive the American people. I can figure out what an Obama or a Bush admin is up to without any problem. But the extremists have their own secret agendas.

 

[Bfgrn]

When Did You First Get Pissed Off About Where Our Country's Leaders Were Leading Us?

When the far left was openly hijacking the Democratic party and leading the US down a path of destruction, much like they did in Europe.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

The only party that has been hijacked was the Republican party by the far right.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers

By Victor Gold

After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.

As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.

Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.

Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.

He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.

He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold

Victor Gold grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he attended the public schools, and Tulane University. After working as a reporter-correspondent for the BIRMINGHAM (Alabama) NEWS, he earned his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1950-52.


In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the public relations firm of Selvage & Lee. Six years later he became Deputy Press Secretary to Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.


In 1965 Gold opened his own political public relations firm in Washington, listing among his clients then-Republican House leader Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. At the Republican conventions of 1968 and 1976 he worked with press secretary Lyn Nofziger on behalf of the presidential candidacy of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. During the Nixon administration he served as press secretary to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew until January, 1973.


In 1980 Gold joined the staff of Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a speechwriter and senior advisor, a position he held during the Reagan-Bush campaigns of '80 and '84. He served on the Bush vice-presidential staff in 1981, and as a Bush advisor in the campaigns of 1988 and 1992. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Political Communication from his alma mater, the University of Alabama.


In 1989 Gold served as a member of President Bush's election-oversight delegation to the first free Romanian elections.


A frequent speaker on the national political and campus circuits, Gold has also appeared on numerous network television shows. His articles, covering politics and sports, have appeared in NEWSWEEK, HARPER'S, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, PLAYBOY, CONNOISSEUR, READERS' DIGEST, NATIONAL REVIEW, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.

 

[deltex1]

I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam war fiasco (JFK planned to withdraw by 1965), the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the riots at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, left the Democratic Party splintered.

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of JFK's most trusted advisers predicted what followed:

For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics. Galbraith and Vietnam

It has been the conservative era that started with Nixon that ushered in the clientelism, regulatory capture and corporate lawyers authoring laws that benefit only the corporations.

In 1965 there were a few hundred lobbyists in Washington. Today there are 35,000 registered lobbyists in DC.

Two true liberal Democrats said it best:

"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy

If the conservatives took over in the late sixties, how come Bubba proclaimed the end on big government in the 90s...and wtf is Obabble doing in the White House...and why is the bitch of Benghazi gearing up for 2016?

 

[hangover]

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

It's the equivalent of the Muslim religion taking over the middle east.

 

[Bfgrn]

I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam war fiasco (JFK planned to withdraw by 1965), the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the riots at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, left the Democratic Party splintered.

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of JFK's most trusted advisers predicted what followed:

For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics. Galbraith and Vietnam

It has been the conservative era that started with Nixon that ushered in the clientelism, regulatory capture and corporate lawyers authoring laws that benefit only the corporations.

In 1965 there were a few hundred lobbyists in Washington. Today there are 35,000 registered lobbyists in DC.

Two true liberal Democrats said it best:

"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy

If the conservatives took over in the late sixties, how come Bubba proclaimed the end on big government in the 90s...and wtf is Obabble doing in the White House...and why is the bitch of Benghazi gearing up for 2016?

The American people are beginning to wise up. Conservatives have NEVER given us less government. ALL they have given us is debt, and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.

"The excuse cannot be used that Congress massively increased Reagan's budget proposals. On the contrary, there was never much difference between Reagan's and Congress's budgets, and despite propaganda to the contrary, Reagan never proposed a cut in the total budget."
Murray N. Rothbard - former Dean of the Austrian School, an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher

"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
David Stockman - Director of the Office of Management and Budget for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Grover Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt..."
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy."
Charles Krauthammer

 

[Votto]

Nowadays I am far more pissed with the extremes right and left trying to deceive the American people. I can figure out what an Obama or a Bush admin is up to without any problem. But the extremists have their own secret agendas.

What the hell is an "extremist"?

I'll tell you what an extremist is, an extremist is someone who is not bipartisan.

The term bipartisan, however, means that the American people are about to grab their ankles.

For the life of me, I don't understand how the Tea Party can be labeled extremist for wanting balanced budgets in contrast to a government prints trillions of dollars a day in deficit spending.

 

[editec]

for me, it was LBJ's shit-for-brains acceleration of the Vietnam war...

'n also his dumb-ass "War On Poverty"...

Yeah it was LBJ for me, too.

HIS war in Viet Nam was my complaint.

 

[Redfish]

for me, it was LBJ's shit-for-brains acceleration of the Vietnam war...

'n also his dumb-ass "War On Poverty"...

Yeah it was LBJ for me, too.

HIS war in Viet Nam was my complaint.

I agree, but lets remember that Viet Nam belonged to Kennedy and Johnson. LBJ was a terrible president-------viet nam, war on poverty, great society---all bullshit.

But it really started with FDR (before my time). thats when liberalism began its destruction of the USA

 

[deltex1]

I've been around since Harry Truman was President, so I lived through a good portion of the liberal era that started with the New Deal and ended with the Great Society. It was America's finest moment. It was an era with huge economic growth and shared wealth, fantastic successes in technology, vast expansion of citizen freedoms and liberties and the growth of a middle class that defined this country and made America the 'city on the hill', the envy of the world.

That era ended at the end of the 1960's and the conservative era began. It has continued ever since. It has been a negative mirror image of the liberal era. We now lead the world only in the dubious like incarcerating human beings, killing innocent people and launching Hirohito sneak attacks on sovereign nations.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam war fiasco (JFK planned to withdraw by 1965), the assassination of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the riots at the 1968 DNC in Chicago, left the Democratic Party splintered.

John Kenneth Galbraith, one of JFK's most trusted advisers predicted what followed:

For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics. Galbraith and Vietnam

It has been the conservative era that started with Nixon that ushered in the clientelism, regulatory capture and corporate lawyers authoring laws that benefit only the corporations.

In 1965 there were a few hundred lobbyists in Washington. Today there are 35,000 registered lobbyists in DC.

Two true liberal Democrats said it best:

"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy

If the conservatives took over in the late sixties, how come Bubba proclaimed the end on big government in the 90s...and wtf is Obabble doing in the White House...and why is the bitch of Benghazi gearing up for 2016?

The American people are beginning to wise up. Conservatives have NEVER given us less government. ALL they have given us is debt, and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.

"The excuse cannot be used that Congress massively increased Reagan's budget proposals. On the contrary, there was never much difference between Reagan's and Congress's budgets, and despite propaganda to the contrary, Reagan never proposed a cut in the total budget."
Murray N. Rothbard - former Dean of the Austrian School, an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher

"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
David Stockman - Director of the Office of Management and Budget for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Grover Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt..."
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy."
Charles Krauthammer

Your charts are sooooooo conveeeeeenient.

 

[Redfish]

hope you don't mind my asking... how old are you...?

I'm all of 26 years of age.

well, in that case, given your age, I suppose you can be forgiven for not being able to recognize what a complete and utter clueless fuck-up GWB was...

Bush made mistakes, no one will disagree with that, Iraq being his biggest one. But, compared to the kenyan clusterfuk, Bush was a great president.

The main difference being that Bush loves this country and Obama hates it.

 

[Redfish]

If the conservatives took over in the late sixties, how come Bubba proclaimed the end on big government in the 90s...and wtf is Obabble doing in the White House...and why is the bitch of Benghazi gearing up for 2016?

The American people are beginning to wise up. Conservatives have NEVER given us less government. ALL they have given us is debt, and the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.

"The excuse cannot be used that Congress massively increased Reagan's budget proposals. On the contrary, there was never much difference between Reagan's and Congress's budgets, and despite propaganda to the contrary, Reagan never proposed a cut in the total budget."
Murray N. Rothbard - former Dean of the Austrian School, an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political philosopher

"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
David Stockman - Director of the Office of Management and Budget for U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"Grover Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt..."
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy."
Charles Krauthammer

Your charts are sooooooo conveeeeeenient.

Yeah, he thinks that conservatives controlled the government from 1920 til today.

 

[zeke]

for me, it was LBJ's shit-for-brains acceleration of the Vietnam war...

'n also his dumb-ass "War On Poverty"...

Yeah it was LBJ for me, too.

HIS war in Viet Nam was my complaint.

I agree, but lets remember that Viet Nam belonged to Kennedy and Johnson. LBJ was a terrible president-------viet nam, war on poverty, great society---all bullshit.

But it really started with FDR (before my time). thats when liberalism began its destruction of the USA

Sure red sure. After WWII we enjoyed the greatest period of prosperity for the middle class that has ever or will ever exist again. Damn liberals.

Rethugs destroyed the economy for the middle class red. Republicans. Not liberals.

 

[Kosh]

When Did You First Get Pissed Off About Where Our Country's Leaders Were Leading Us?

When the far left was openly hijacking the Democratic party and leading the US down a path of destruction, much like they did in Europe.

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

The only party that has been hijacked was the Republican party by the far right.

Well it goes to show the far left sees anyone that is not far left as far right.

The Dems were Hijacked by the far left when Carter refused to sign a damaging health care bill.

 

[hjmick]

Reagan's amnesty.

Bush 2 going into Iraq.

Obama.

Watergate would have probably done it had I been a tad older and paying attention...

 

[Redfish]

Yeah it was LBJ for me, too.

HIS war in Viet Nam was my complaint.

I agree, but lets remember that Viet Nam belonged to Kennedy and Johnson. LBJ was a terrible president-------viet nam, war on poverty, great society---all bullshit.

But it really started with FDR (before my time). thats when liberalism began its destruction of the USA

Sure red sure. After WWII we enjoyed the greatest period of prosperity for the middle class that has ever or will ever exist again. Damn liberals.

Rethugs destroyed the economy for the middle class red. Republicans. Not liberals.

Yes, there was an economic boom after WW2. Lots of GIs came home and got jobs, bought houses, cars, etc. The economy was expanding, new businesses were not burdened with tons of regulations and taxes.

BTW, the economy is not "destroyed". The middle class and the poor are better off today than they were in 1947.

Our biggest problem today is 17 trillion in debt that goes up by 1 trillion every year with no plan in sight to ever stop its growth.

AND, both parties share the blame, liberal thinking is not limited to the dem party.

 

[Kosh]

Yeah it was LBJ for me, too.

HIS war in Viet Nam was my complaint.

I agree, but lets remember that Viet Nam belonged to Kennedy and Johnson. LBJ was a terrible president-------viet nam, war on poverty, great society---all bullshit.

But it really started with FDR (before my time). thats when liberalism began its destruction of the USA

Sure red sure. After WWII we enjoyed the greatest period of prosperity for the middle class that has ever or will ever exist again. Damn liberals.

Rethugs destroyed the economy for the middle class red. Republicans. Not liberals.

Oh my the far left is strong with this one.

Dwight D. Eisenhower January 20, 1953 January 20, 1961 Republican

Then again what would one expect from a far left Obama drone.