Let's talk about Nixon

originally posted by Thor:
You're right, I am now confused.

But at MSG, Plant asked about forests.
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In the 1977 show he did. Of course, he famously asked about laughter in the '73 concert there that became The Song Remains The Same. In fact, I had misremembered and was quoting from the show I saw in Oakland in '77 (where Plant and Peter Grant infamously assaulted a BGP employee after hearing the news of Plant's son's auto accident) where he did in fact ask about trees. Sorry for the crossed wires.

Mark Lipton
 
It's possible that if you Google my name and the band in question you'll see that I knew far too much about this sort of thing. Not so much now.
 
originally posted by maureen:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
And, again policy-wise, Eisenhower was to the left of Jimmy Carter.
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I think I disagree with this, but not with much fervor.
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It's true - read this "Notorious socialist president Dwight D. Eisenhower"
by the liberal curmudgeion

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budiansky.blogspot.com
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At the risk of being serious, the fact that Eisenhower did not, like Reagan and Bush, undo progressive taxation, does not put him to the left of Jimmy Carter. He was, mostly, even for his own time, a moderate Democrat who ran on the Republican ticket, but he was at least complaisant in the face of HUAC and McCarthy. I'm no great defender of Carter (though I like him better than most, I guess), but I don't think Eisenhower was more liberal than he was.

On the other hand, I'm persuadable about the issue. I really don't know that much about his domestic policies, beyond his allowing the witch-hunting of the 50s to occur.
 
I think McCarthy was a political conundrum for a series of presidents; politicians climb the hierarchy by picking their battles and calculating risks to a nicety. Even Johnson approached McCarthy with circumspection.
 
Remember the fall of McCarthy started with the speech on the senate floor denouncing him by Margaret Chase Smith Rep from Maine.
It's a shame we lost the New England Republican mentality in this country for the no nothings we have now.
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
Collins and Snow, not a bad one-two punch for Maine. Hope they can stick.
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While Maine gets a lot of snow, their Senator's name is Snowe. And word is the tea party wants to go after her in two years in the Maine Republican primary.
 
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
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Nice words. Did defense spending shrink under Eisenhower? Did social welfare programs grow?
 
I'm very disappointed. I expected this thread to be about the real Nixon.

mojo+nixon+whereabouts+unknown.jpg
 
Gonna paint my face on a nuclear bomb....

Defense spending statistics are interesting. 2004-present are the highest levels ever as far as I can tell, even including WW II. 1952-2002 stays more or less constant, with a low of 283.8 billion in 1976 under Ford/Carter, and a high of 449.3 billion in 1968 under Johnson. Ike did seem to raise levels some from Truman but I suppose we had to pay for Korea somehow.
 
originally posted by Bwood:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Apparently, Nixon knew that Congress was set on creating a federal environmental protection agency and making it an independent commission (like the SEC or FEC). Under an independent commission, the members of the commission often serve terms that are longer than a presidential term. Also, commission members can only be removed with cause and do not serve solely under the pleasure of the President. So, rather than having that, Nixon decided to compromise by approving the creation of the EPA as a federal agency with an Administrator appointed by the President and who could be removed without cause, thus ensuring the agency would always be run by individuals appointed by the current president.
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I think that's true. There was a groundswell of interest in living in places where the rivers didn't spontaneously combust, and tap water was not too many ppm of DDT. So Nixon wanted to co-opt the issue to win the next election cycle.

Ok, who remembers Earth Day?
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I do! Went to the first one!

I think the younger members of this bored lack context. America was becoming a cesspool. My father did a re-enactment of Thoreau's travel down the Concord and Merrimac rivers in '72 and it was incredibly disgusting and depressing - dead fish and toxic waste all over. The cities were thick with yellow smog. Soot everywhere. Kids getting sick with lead poisoning. Boston Harbor stank. There was a consensus that something had to be done before we killed everything including ourselves. Most people don't realize how bad it was - and could be again.
 
The Cuyahoga catching on fire was a big moment too. I remember my father was still puzzled about this ten years later - how can a river catch on fire?
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
The Cuyahoga catching on fire was a big moment too. I remember my father was still puzzled about this ten years later - how can a river catch on fire?
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Very easily: you put a sheen of something flammable on the surface and light it. Did you see any photos of the burning of the Gulf oil slick after the big spill? The real wonderment was how long the Cuyahoga stayed on fire, bespeaking of a thick layer of goo on top of the water.

Mark Lipton
 
I think my father was puzzled by the surface semantics, in the way that philosophically minded folk often are: rivers are water, water is the opposite of fire, therefore rivers can't burn. But there it is, burning on TV!

Or actually, I think he understood perfectly well how it would work a la Mark's comment, and enjoyed permuting the actual situation into one in which a contradiction was seemingly made manifest. Some people get off on that sort of thing, as it turns out - Heraclitus and Nietzsche come to mind in addition to dear old dad.
 
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