JFK vs Trump

[Bill Chapman]

You do realize this is a song cheering Johnny Reb?
Or am I  missing  something?

Individual soldiers are my point
Pretty sure Dolly was cheering on every 'Johnny' that went to war for America

[Tom Scully]

BTW, from the moment JFK or Obama settled upon the make up of their cabinets, neither democrat stood a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding in what amounts to an American, right wing, nuthouse.

https://www.cato.org/blog/hadley-gates-iraq
February 4, 2014 11:14AM
Hadley and Gates on Iraq
By Christopher A. Preble
Former Bush national security adviser Stephen Hadley took to the Wall Street Journal's op Edward pages last week to try to make the case that the Iraq war was worth fighting.

The particulars of Saddam Hussein's tyranny are familiar:
......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates

...Gates was nominated to become the Director of Central Intelligence (head of the CIA) in early 1987. He withdrew his name after it became clear the Senate would reject the nomination due to controversy about his role in the Iran-Contra affair.[24]

Gates was nominated, for the second time, for the position of Director of Central Intelligence by President George H. W. Bush on May 14, 1991, confirmed by the Senate on November 5, and sworn in on November 6.[25]

During a Senate committee hearing on his nomination, former division chief Melvin Goodman testified that the agency was the most corrupt and slanted during the tenure of William Casey with Gates serving as Deputy. According to Goodman, Gates was part of an agency leadership that proliferated false information and ignored 'reality'. National Intelligence Council chairman Harold P. Ford testified that during his tenure, Gates had transgressed professional boundaries.[26]...

Obama won the 2008 primary contest against Hillary by distancing himself from her senate vote authorizing the Bush AUMF, only to keep a perjurer, admirer of Oliver North and unapologetic Iraq invasion and occupation neocon on at DOD, who shafted Obama in print soon after exiting the Obama White House.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty/2014/01/07/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html
National Security
Robert Gates, former defense secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama’s leadership in ‘Duty’
By Bob Woodward
anuary 7, 2014

.....Gates wanted to quit at the end of 2010 but agreed to stay at Obama’s urging, finally leaving in mid-2011. He later joined a consulting firm with two of Bush’s closest foreign policy advisers — former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser during Bush’s second term. The firm is called RiceHadleyGates. In October, he became president-elect of the Boy Scouts of America.....

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/washington/30hadley.html

....Mr. Hadley is interviewing candidates, including military generals, for a new high-profile job that people in Washington are calling the war czar. The official (Mr. Hadley, ever cautious, prefers “implementation and execution manager”) would brief Mr. Bush every morning on Iraq and Afghanistan, then prod cabinet secretaries into carrying out White House orders.

It is the kind of task — a little bit of internal diplomacy and a lot of head-knocking, fortified by direct access to the president — that would ordinarily fall to Mr. Hadley himself. After all, he oversaw the review that produced Mr. Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq. But his responsibilities encompass issues around the globe, and he has concluded that he needs someone “up close to the president” to work “full time, 24/7” to put the policy into effect. He hopes to fill the job soon....

https://archive.org/stream/LundbergFerdinandTheRichAndTheSuperRich/Lundberg_Ferdinand_-_The_rich_and_the_super-rich_djvu.txt
THE RICH AND THE SUPER-RICH
A Study in the Power of Money Today

BY FERDINAND LUNDBERG

.....After two Republican Administrations from 1952 to 1960, gained by using a clearly
apolitical war hero as a stalking horse, the country again went Democratic under John F.
Kennedy, himself a wealthy heir although basically a political man from a political
family. Kennedy, even with no war providing an excuse for a coalition, awarded his
chief Cabinet posts to Republicans from the camp of big wealth. Douglas Dillon,
Republican and very wealthy heir of the founder of Dillon Read and Company,
Forrestal's old firm, was made Secretary of the Treasury. Robert S. McNamara,
Republican president of the Ford Motor Company, was made Secretary of Defense.
McGeorge Bundy, Republican, was made liaison man to the CIA. Dean Rusk, a
Democrat, but president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1952 to 1960, was made
Secretary of State.
The basic government posts, in other words, went to men deep in the camp of big
wealth. But those posts that required dealings with the hoi polloi in social contexts went
to party men versed in the rhetoric of inspirational ambiguity.
Dillon resigned under Johnson and was replaced by Henry H. Fowler, a career
Democrat; but most of the rest of the Kennedy team continued, with the distant goal a
mirage: the Great Society. The laudable stated ends of this Great Society are the end of
want and of inequalities of opportunity.
As Princeton University political sociologist Richard F. Hamilton remarks,
In an affluent society, a liberal, welfare-oriented party can go a long way toward
satisfying the wishes of its followers. Rather than preside over a drawn-out struggle
between the people and the interests, as if it were an either/or game, the new style is to
give both what they want and pay for it out of the returns from a stable and rapidly
growing economy. In essence this is the Galbraithian solution--not to struggle over the
"take" but to increase its size. Thus, the typical new figure on the political scene is the
liberal demagogue--one who can cater to the masses because he is willing to pay them
off and can do so without depriving the interests of what they want. He can be for civil
rights, for improved housing, for urban renewal, for a poverty program, and at the same
time can vote against a reduction of the depletion allowance. The Great Society
synthesis overcomes that age-old problem of liberal politics: how to reward the
clientele. Before affluence, the result was a long, hard and usually indecisive fight with
the interests or it was capitulation. The new liberal, however, does not have to fight or
switch. 60
The attraction of the Great Society for the wealthy, however, is the new opportunities
it creates for making money on huge government contracts. In the area of defense there
is a huge tax-supported military establishment making constant highly profitable
demands--up to 40 and 50 per cent profit--on industry for complex new weapons. In
urban renewal there is the vast profitable enterprise, replete with windfalls, of
rehabilitating the commercial heart of the big cities. In slum clearance and school
buildings there are vast slushy construction projects of low quality in the offing. And in
the antipoverty program itself there is vast roadbuilding, as in Appalachia (which needs
few roads), as well as opportunities for the local political machines.
As Dr. Hamilton remarks, "Large numbers of entrepreneurial types have recently
discovered that 'there's money in poverty.'"
We have, then, as he notes, now developed "liberals of convenience" as contrasted
with "liberals of conviction," and staunch Republicanism is no longer to be taken for....

[Tom Scully]

What's this fixation your ridiculous country has for the military, flag-waving and self-aggrandizement?

Without the pre-Trump variety of "military, flag-waving...." life in U.S. cities, especially Bill of Rights protected speech, assembly, journalism, and due process of the courts, would be much more similar to life in Moscow, Shanghai, or Hong Kong.

IOW, where do you suppose the U.S., its four other "Five Eyes" allies, Taiwan, and more generally, routine passage of ships in the world's oceans be, if not for the presence and operations of the U.S. Navy or the presence in Europe and abilities of U.S. ground forces? "Showing the flag" is a deterrent to, for example, Putin increasing Russia's "land grab" of a portion of Ukraine the size of the state of Texas.

Would Germany be an independent, reunited, economic power house? What level of independence would be experienced today in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and other former captive countries of the former Soviet Bloc?

The U.S. is unique and is burdened by the national debt rung up partially from the cost of offsetting the declining commitment of the UK's Commonwealth and Japan and Germany to commit the funding required to adequately defend themselves.

https://twitter.com/philewing/status/1011779124292214785
Failure to Provide U.K. Royal Navy Escorts for New Carriers is ‘Potentially Dangerous,’ Warn Lawmakers
By: Jon Rosamond
June 25, 2018 6:27 PM
......

Less than 40 years ago, PM Thatcher was able to order a sizable force to cross the Atlantic to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina.
Would you really prefer to state, in the same week China's Xi broke the 1997 Hong Kong treaty with the UK and Putin set himself up as president of Russia until 2036, for the U.S. to reduce its militarism more to a level of your liking? Turn your criticism to aggressor countries with territorial grabbing ambitions, such as Israel.

The U.S. electorate certainly must be manipulated to continue to weigh down its grandchildren with heavy debt burden. I don't recall Obama hyper-militarizing domestic holidays or response to protestors in the manner recently perfected by Benedict Bonespurs.

[Gerry Down]

I don't recall Obama hyper-militarizing domestic holidays or response to protestors in the manner recently perfected by Benedict Bonespurs.

I dont recall Obama ending racism either. Probably why Obama was so quiet during the George Floyd situation - he has no solutions to offer.

[Gerry Down]

"American heroes defeated the Nazis ... dethroned the Fascists ... toppled the Communists."
        -- Donald Trump, at the White House today.

Nobody else had anything to do with it. 

Europe was losing the war before America got involved.

[Paul May]

What's this fixation your ridiculous country has for the military, flag-waving and self-aggrandizement?

Ridiculous country? My guess is at some point in history our military likely saved your ass. What third world country do you inhabit?

[Colin Crow]

JFK was largely a do nothing president.  His primary attribute in history was that he took a good picture. He felt inconvenienced by the civil rights movement.  In terms of his character, he was a serial adulterer including using his position to take advantage of young girls, he lied about his numerous medical conditions during the 1960 campaign including having his doctor file false reports, he took a laundry list of drugs including an anti-psychotic mediation that would have disqualified him from the presidency. Jackie was so concerned about their impact on him that she inquired about it.  Imagine if Trump were on such medications during a nuclear crisis like JFK faced in Cuba? He knowingly lied about a "missile gap" with Russia during the campaign.  A claim he knew Nixon could not rebut because the information was classified.  He used his father's influence to avoid a court martial for failing to maintain a proper watch in a combat zone which resulted in a large Japanese destroyer being able to ram and sink his small, mobile PT boat resulting in deaths among his crew.  A legacy of corruption and mostly do nothing results.  LBJ accomplished more in his first hundred days as president than JFK did in his entire lifetime.

And yet no praise for Oswald either?