The Leadership Of Fools
Im saying that when the President does it, that means its not illegal!
Richard Milhous Nixon
It has been said that a nation can be judged by the way it treats foreigners within its borders. But more importantly, a nation can and should be judged by its elected leaders and their actions. I intend to go through approximately fifty years of elected quasi-leaders known as President of the United States and examine their actions. The side of the aisle which they align themselves with is irrelevant. Partisan politics will take no part in this discussion. A simple evaluation of the conduct, policies and/or actions of these individuals should suffice. But I must state ahead of time, I will dwell on the bad and not the good; the good actions of a leader are by far outweighed by the bad. Our leaders, in this case the President of the United States, should be held to a higher standard than the rest of the population. If a leader acts in a corrupt or malevolent fashion, then this is where the focus will be directed. I believe this should actually prove to be quite interesting. Their leadership skills or lack thereof will be bared for all to see and I believe this will show what type of man each president was. Below is the list of these men starting with Johnson and ending with Obama and their dates of service. Please note: Ford was never elected President of the United States, so I will bypass the time between 9 August 1974 and 20 January 1977.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President; 22 November 1963 to 20 January 1969. Elected to one term and assumed presidency after the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 22 November 1963.
Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President; 20 January 1969 to 8 August 1974. Elected to two terms and the only president to resign the office. On 27 July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee passed the first 3 articles of impeachment against Nixon and he faced almost certain impeachment by the Senate and removal from office. Nixons resignation speech was on 8 August 1974 and he vacated the Office of President on 9 August 1974. Nixon was later pardoned by President Ford on 8 September 1974.
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.), 38th President; 9 August 1974 to 20 January 1977. Never elected President or Vice President of the United States. Nominated in October 1973 for the office of Vice President after the resignation of V.P. Spiro Agnew and was confirmed by the Senate 27 November and by the House on 6 December 1973 and took the Oath that day. Ford assumed the Presidency on 9 August 1974 after Nixon resigned.
James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President; 20 January 1977 to 20 January 1981. Elected to one term.
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President; 20 January 1981 to 20 January 1989. Elected to two terms and survived an assassination attempt on 30 March 1981.
George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President; 20 January 1989 to 20 January 1993. Elected to one term.
William Jefferson Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III), 42nd President; 20 January 1993 to 20 January 2001. Elected to two terms and was impeached on 19 December 1998 by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice, but acquitted by the Senate on 12 February 1999.
George Walker Bush, 43rd President; 20 January 2001 to 20 January 2009. Elected to two terms.
Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, 44th President; 20 January 2009 to present. Elected.
Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently, and all for the same reason.
Jos Maria de Ea de Queiroz
Lets start with Johnson a Texas Democrat and his involvement in the Suite 8F Group; a right wing political activist group which was concerned with their ability to secure and maintain massive profits in the oil, reconstruction and armaments industries, amongst others. According to Spartacus Educational, SeveralTexas politicians became involved in the Suite 8F Group, a collection of right-wing businessmen. A quick laundry list of the members of this group included Brown & Root, chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, American General Insurance Company, Cameron Iron Works, Quintana Petroleum, the Governor of Texas (who was also the owner of the Houston Post), Great Southern Life Insurance, Pure Oil Pipe Line, Humble Oil, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Majority Leader of the Senate (Lyndon Johnson) and other Texas politicians and lawyers. Suite 8F helped to coordinate the political activities of other right-wing politicians and businessmen based in the South. This list included but is not limited to the Secretary of the Navy and Treasury, Bell Helicopters, chairman of the Committee of Manufacturers, Committee on Armed Forces and Committee on Appropriations, Chairman Judiciary Committee, Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, political lobbyists as well as Oil and Gas Companies. The report goes on to state, The discovery of oil in Texas made a small group of men a great deal of money. They decided to join together to maintain profits. This included strategies for keeping the price of oil as high as possible. These companies and men did indeed maintain profits. If you look at the companies themselves as well as the individuals involved, what you will find is an inappropriate relationship between government and private businesses in which contracts were awarded over a period of time spanning decades. This is a perfect example of cronyism designed to bilk the U.S. taxpayers out of money and transfer that money into the pockets of an incestuous cabal of criminals and criminal organizations who appearance seems to be above the law.
So it would appear that government officials and private businesses joined forces to form their own little monopoly, fix prices, secure contracts and amass great sums of wealth. This is a part of the U.S. Constitution I must have glazed over, because I dont remember reading that anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. The report by Spartacus Educational goes on to name companies and individuals who decided where tax dollars were spent, who acquired contracts and how Johnson set up the committee to investigate lobbying in this area. Interestingly enough, not all politicians were in favor of this type of behavior. Dwight D. Eisenhower apparently wrote in his diary and called this immoral lobbying, The most flagrant type of lobbying, and called those involved So arrogant and so much in defiance of acceptable standards of propriety as to risk creating doubt among the American people concerning the integrity of governmental processes. Of course none of this actually ended even after the scandal with General Dynamics in 1963 over the $7 billion contract for a fighter jet, Johnson simply got in bed with a Standard Oil Company heiress by selecting her husband Paul Nitze as Navy Secretary. If you look at Johnsons escalation of the Vietnam War, his cronies were beneficiaries of contracts and they did make huge sums of money. These companies included the newly formed RMK-BRJ to obtain these contractsRMK-BRJ did 97% of the construction work in VietnamBrown & Root (Halliburton) alone obtained revenues of $380 million from its work in Vietnam. And of course lets not forget about Bell Helicopter, By 1969 Bell Helicopter Corporation was selling nearly $600 million worth of helicopters to the United States Military.
By all appearances, Johnsons involvement in the Viet Nam War cost over 58,000 men their lives and wounded another 153,000 plus men and all for the sole purpose of lining the coffers of certain companies which were involved with Suite 8F. Just how the American public allowed this is beyond me. I do realize there was a great deal of protesting against the war and the government for these shady dealings, but this type of governmental behavior has not been stopped. Johnson should have been in a prison cell long before he became president, he was one of the biggest crooks in the history of the United States government in general, not to mention in the White House.
I really dont think I need to continue with President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The evidence clearly shows how President Johnson used his power from long before his presidency and during his administration to aggrandize his own wealth and the wealth of his accomplices. Johnson is a perfect example of abject greed and a self-serving political leader whose main concern was only to his bank account and to the bank accounts of his confederates, and not the people of the nation which he was supposed to serve. Johnson was the epitome of greed and cronyism, and a disgusting example of a politician and a president. What really strikes me as funny is, President Johnson actually stood to gain the most from the assassination of President Kennedy and he in fact did! But people just dont want to talk about that. Conclusion: Johnson was an extremely self-serving, corrupt politician whose behavior was criminal.
We now move on to Nixon a California Republican and the only man to resign the presidency of the United States. The logical place to start would be with the Watergate scandal, but I believe we should start with the Huston Plan instead. While the Huston Plan was never actually initiated, it was implemented by government agencies. What the White House wanted was, A thorough coordination of all American intelligence agencies; he [Nixon] wanted to know what the links were between foreign groups al-Fatah; the Arab terrorists; the Algerian subsidy center and domestic street turbulence. The committee which was formed had J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI as the Chairman, The committee report confronted the issueand it laid out a number of other further steps, many of which were illegal. The report recommended increasing wiretapping, and microphone surveillance of radicals relaxing restrictions on mail covers and mail intercepts; carrying out selective break-ins against domestic radicals and organizations; lifting age restrictions on FBI campus informants; and broadening NSAs intercepts of the international communications of American citizens. According to GlobalSecurity.org, The president sent word back to Huston, through Haldeman, of his approval, but did not initiate any paperwork. This could be one instance where Nixon lived up to his nickname Tricky Dicky. Nixon did verbally implement the plan through Haldeman to Tom Huston who had the task of implementation, but Nixon didnt leave a paper trail. Hoover wouldnt act on this unless the A.G., Mitchell put the order in writing. The report went on to state, Ultimately, the president voided the plan, but not before NSA had become directly involved in the seamier side of life. While it is understandable the Nixon administration wanted information on terrorist groups such as The Weathermen and al Fatah, by not following the procedures for obtaining a court order for wiretaps or search warrants, and by attempting to have the NSA target and secure U.S. nationals communications and disseminate the intelligence to other agencies was a clear violation of the law. Even though the plan was scrapped, Four days before it was due, plans had gone to the directors of the FBI, CIA, DIA and the NSA. The Huston Plan was, Placed in a White House safebecame public in 1973and uncovered evidence that Nixon had ordered the NSA to illegally monitor American citizens. This obviously led to Nixons downfall. His statement, Im not a crook is a perfect example of a political leader who was in denial and thinking he was above the law and not bound by any sense of moral decency.
Lets move on the Watergate scandal. According to Wikipedia, The Watergate burglaries, which took place on May 28 and June 17, 1972, were the focus of the Watergate scandal. This scandal was the result of, The arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex. The FBI was able to connect, Cash found on the burglars to a slush fund used by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. An investigation by the Senate Watergate Committee later found Nixon had been recording conversations in the Oval Office, Recordings from these tapes implicated the president, revealing he had attempted to cover up the break-in. The report further states, Liddys team placed wiretaps on the telephones on the DNC Chairman Lawrence OBrien and Executive Director of Democratic States Chairman R. Spencer Oliver, Jr. Subsequently, seven men were indicted, For conspiracy, burglary, and violation of Federal wiretapping laws. While there is much more to this scandal, Nixon was also recording conversations in the Cabinet Room as well as other offices, plus his own private office in the Old Executive Office Building. According to a Washington Post article, Transcripts from a telephone conversation released show President Richard M. Nixon jokingly threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill in March 1974 as Congress was moving to impeach him. I can only imagine what would happen if a citizen of this nation jokingly threatened to nuke Capitol Hill or any other location within the United States. Break-ins, pay-offs, recording private conversations and cover-ups are not the acts of an honest man and definitely not the acts of an honest President. There is no point continuing with Nixon. While his operatives called their spying on the Democrats Ratf_cking, I think we can all see who the real Ratf_ck was; Nixon.
Apparently, Nixon believed and acted as though he was above the law. Threatening the nations capitol with a nuclear device (whether jokingly or not) is treasonous behavior. Ordering the burglaries and illegal wiretaps of the Democrats offices was criminal, as was his involvement in the conspiracy as was his order to spy on sovereign U.S. citizens. All of this shows Nixon had a complete lack of moral fiber as well as a corrupt and paranoid mind. Nixon may have stated, I am not a crook, but his being a crook was Nixons legacy to himself and to the United States of America. Richard M. Nixon not only disgraced himself, but he disgraced the nation and the office of the President. Conclusion: Nixon was a deceptive manipulator whose criminal and corrupt behavior was a disgrace to the nation.
The word politics is derived from the word poly, meaning many, and the word ticks, meaning blood sucking parasites.
Larry Hardiman
Next is Carter a Georgia Democrat who is considered to be the hero of the Camp David Accords, a so-called peace accord for the Middle East between Egypt and Israel in 1978. Carter is portrayed as the champion of the peace treaty in that region, but oddly enough, peace never really happened. Carter completely overlooked the al-Fatah massacre of 37 Israeli civilians, and allowed Arafat and his PLO to find safe-haven in northern Beirut. On the 29th of September 1977, Carter had a press conference where he spoke about the PLO, Its obvious to me that there can be no Middle Eastern peace settlement without adequate Palestinian representation A question later in the interview had to do with the assurances given to the PLO, Carter stated, If they acceptthe right of Israel to exist, then we will begin discussions with the leaders of the PLO. Of course the Coastal Road Massacre took place on 11 March 1978 after the press conference where Carter stated the PLO must accept the right of Israel to exist. So, on one hand, Carter the Nobel Peace Prize (2002) winning champion of peace, was the famed intermediary between Egypt and Israel, but he was willing to overlook the slaughter of Israeli civilians as long as the PLO recognized Israels right to exist. How disingenuous political leaders can be when they unequivocally state one thing and completely disregard that same thing at a later date, but later take credit for being a so-called champion of peace and dtente.
On 4 November 1979, Iranian terrorists who called themselves Imams Disciples raided sovereign U.S. territory known as the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. After women, blacks and other individuals (due to illness) were released, 50 U.S. citizens and diplomats, Remained imprisoned for 444 days. (Note: there is some debate as to whether there were 50 or 52 hostages in the end, but for the purpose of this paper it is irrelevant). According to u-s-history.com, Carters original response was, Economic sanctionsdiplomatic pressurecancelled oil importshe expelled a number of Iraniansfollowed by freezing about $8 billion of Iranian assets in the U.S. In late April, Carters failed plan dubbed Eagle Claw ended almost as soon as it began, The aftermath, as Iranians eventually found and mockingly paraded the wreckage on worldwide television, was total humiliation for the United States. While it would appear as though Jimmy Carter was the champion of Arabs, Palestinians and Iranians, he certainly wasnt the champion of the Americans or Israelis. Neither President Carter nor the Congress acted in an honorable fashion with regard to this Act of War. I personally believe Carter violated Article II, Section 1 by not defending and protecting the U.S. Constitution and I believe Congress violated Article I, Section 8 by not defending the United States against foreign aggression. I cannot understand why an individual with these lack-of credentials was ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, much less elected President of the United States.
I believe we cannot end our discussion of President Carter without mentioning the disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor. On March 28, 1979 a meltdown occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Middletown. The official story was, The most serious in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community. Supposed studies from the NRC, EPA, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Department of Energy, the State of Pennsylvania and several independent sources stated, Estimates are that the average dosein the area was only about 1 milliremexposure from a chest x-ray is about 6 milliremthe natural background dose of about 100-125 millirem per year for the area, the collective dose to the community from the accident was very small. The maximum doseat the site boundary would have been less than100 millirem. This is according to the NRC. Their conclusion regarding the health effects was the meltdown had, Negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the envir
by: Brett L. Baker
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