Good morning. Hello. How are you? #708
More rambling about Nixon's criming, Walmart run, a personal tale of Sargent Shriver, trip planning.
Good morning! Sorry I’m late had to do my Friday Walmart run. Exciting times. It’s a “recharge day” at work, which means we have it off, my first four-day week in like four weeks, really reminded me how much five-day workweeks suck, waah waaah I am such a softy I enjoy my personal time and projects and family as much as I do work god how liberal of me. Sorry, been reading too much history of conservatism. Finished Nixonland by Rick Perlstein last night, which ended before Nixon even got impeached, but that’s fine. It is a history of the conservative movement, not Nixon as an individual, and this volume related to Nixon’s influence on said movement, which, obviously was pretty over with by the time he got impeached, and now we move into the time of Reagan, which is going to suck and make me so mad, but persevere we wil.
In our last episode, Nixon scared even Kissenger with his bellicosity, insisting that the dyke network of North Vietnam be bombed, thus killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. And the military started doing it, dropping more ordinance on these dykes than they did on Dresden. And every day, Vietnamese peasants would start repairing the dykes, by hand, so that, you know, a half million people didn’t die. He only stopped because Jane Fonda brought the issue to the attention of the public, and the UN picked it up and accused America of war crimes. Mind you, he still denied it. He claimed he had evidence that it was all a communist plot, then duly fabricated the evidence, and sent his UN Ambassador George Herbert Walker Bush to the UN to present it (ahem Colin Powell). Bush did this in private with a meeting with the UN Secretary General that went so badly — details have not been made public — that the US promptly stopped claiming they had evidence and Bush came out of the meeting and said “I think the best thing I can do right now is shut the hell up.”
The North Vietnamese took a propaganda picture of Fonda on an AA gun, the administration used that to smear her, her father, Henry Fonda, started getting routine death threats and extortion threats against his daughter, which he then duly reported to the selfsame FBI that was instigating the threats.
And, the best thing about Nixon, of course, is his tapes, so this is all documented in his own words. No conspiracy theory here. But still, what do people think of Jane Fonda today? The libs think of her as yet another well-intentioned lightweight celebrity. The conservatives hate her. Yet Jane Fonda deserves the Nobel prize, and saved a half million people’s lives from an outright genocide attempt on the scale of the Rwandan genocide.
Oh Nixon also — no hyperbole here — plotted the actual assassination of an American journalist. Like was just actively working on a plot to murder this guy. It was only thwarted by his entirely unrelated criming with Watergate taking him down. He was going to kill this guy! Okay, I lied. Not entirely unrelated, because Jack Anderson had nothing to do with Watergate. BUT, while they were planning on assassinating him, they were also trying to pin the Watergate break-in on him, because he was an investigative journalist so that seemed, you know, plausible.
People were reporting on this before the election. McGovern was shouting about it. America did not want to hear it.
Oh a more personal note, I got to learn about the circumstances of Sargent Shriver landing on the bill as McGovern’s VP pick in the 1972 presidential election. Even though McGovern had had the Dem nomination locked up for a while, he didn’t get around to considering, let alone doing any due dilligence on, any VP candidates till the night before he had to make the decision. He picked a senator named Thomas Eagleton, who seemed great on paper, but then it turned out the dude had been institutionalized three times and had gotten electroshock therapy. This probably could have been handled but McGovern did everything the exact wrong way and basically ruined his campaign just as it kicked off. Eventually he had to fire Eagleton. Shriver was pick two. Shriver had a lot going for him: the Kennedy aura (he was married to JFK’s sister) and he was a Chicagoan, so it was thought maybe he could mend bridges with Richard Daly the elder and deliver Chicago since Daly was busy having a hissy fit because he liked war and being important and the Dems were done with both of those things.
This is all very inside baseball, but when I was about twelve years old, Sargent Shriver came to my house in Fairbanks, Alaska, when my mom hosted a fundraiser for the Alaskan Democratic candidate for US Senate, Glenn Olds, who was an old friend of Shriver’s and helped him found the Peace Corps. He lost to Murkowski (the elder, Frank, Alaska is all family politics, still, as we are seeing this week). But it was very exciting to me to meet Shriver who was also the father of Maria Shriver, who was on the television at the time, so, you know, big deal. Had a little crush on Maria Shriver, not gonna lie. I’ve always sorta stanned for Sargent Shriver since then.
Anyway, now I know why and how Shriver was on the bill. As I read it last night I thought “that’ll be useful at cocktail parties some day” which is a thing I often think when I learn a mildly interesting fact. Which is a hilarious to think because I am fifty and I’m not sure that this scenario has ever actually happened in reality. I mean, maybe there was some equivalent of me leaning on the bar at Tom and Jerry’s at 3 AM shouting at Carney or something, but, yeah, the ratio of fun-facts-for-cocktail-parties to actual-cocktail-parties has been seriously out of whack my whole life.
Onward to book three: The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan. I might even learn to spell Reagan’s name right the first time round. Reagan’s already been in the background of the first two books. I’m pretty sure the dude could have been president in any election back to Goldwater, even in that election, many people were saying this should put Reagan up and not Goldwater. But after Nixon’s fall, there really was no one to stop him on the right.
All right, what else. Walmart was fine, they are bringing out the back to school stuff and the halloween candy (Emma is going to be so excited. For surely, Halloween decorations must follow close on the heels of Halloween candy). This means all my snacks have lost their end caps and island displays so it’s been a real catastrophe for this fifty year old man who still eats garbage junk food snacks like a teenager even though they’re terrible. But at least I don’t drink two liters of Diet Coke every day anymore. God, all of you friends were so polite about that. You might kindly say “you sure drink a lot of Diet Coke, Rick,” but you left me to my horrible vices and my own reckoning. I appreciate that.
They had organic tomato fertilizer, yes, but it was some garbage fake Walmart brand. God. Remember when Walmart had real brands? I feel like aside from the grocery section this is increasingly not the case. Oh and toys. But the rest? Made-up gardening brands and electronics brands and tool brands. Fun fact: Hart is a tool brand owned by TTI, the same people who own Milwaukee. In many cases, the tools have the same innards. But TTI is not dumb and they’re not gonna sacrifice their margins for Walmart. Dewalt doesn’t bother with Walmart at all. Neither do half of the major electronics brands. The place is, like Amazon, turning into generics. Which, fine, I guess.
They did have a sweet new clear vinyl edition of the Lizzo album, though. I did not buy it. Because I have restraint. Lol. Four records have come in this week. Who are we kidding. Oh that seems a good segue for a record photo:
Coil reissue. Dais records.
The chatty electrician is coming today, in about an hour, in fact. That is exciting. Lots of little electrical projects need to be done. I do not mess with electrical. I tried once. It was not good.
And I have a sad business call with a liquidation firm regarding one of my angel investments which will be sad it is sad when companies go out of business. People put so much effort and love and energy into them and then sometimes it just doesn’t work out, and god, it’s the worst.
Other than that, I think gardening today mostly. I also gotta clean out the chest freezer which is now duly thawed and dried and just sitting in the middle of the garage. Vaguely thinking about donating it to the food bank but you know. Hoarding. Has its benefits. Except it’s such a pain to go out there every week and rotate everything in the chest freezer in FIFO stacks, gawd. It takes a lot of energy to be a prepper.
I also have some baking dreams for this weekend but not sure if we’re gonna pull that off.
Made a bit of progress on thinking about how to get to Boston for Bauhaus. I had imagined a complicated four-night trip where I drive to NYC, see some peeps, spend one night there, drive to Boston the next day, see Bauhaus, stay an extra night to see peeps, then back to NYC for one night, see some more peeps, then drive home. Emma pointed out that: I could just fly. Ugh. I mean, she’s the one who has to watch Jane while I’m gone so if she’d rather I be gone two nights instead of four, that’s fine, and I can do the NYC trip later in September or October. But flying. Yuck. Planes, yuck. I imagine just pulling into the parking garage and I start to get angry. It really is insane maybe I ought to just get over it.
An mix of uniformly new songs today. Most actually out today. Been up for a while, been listening to the new releases, these are the most… poppy of the new tracks I listened to this morning. The new Allison Russell Brandi Carlile jam is awesome. New Yeah Yeah Yeahs is good too, I must admit. Really gotta get over that one catastrophic show at the Paradise back in the day. I don’t know anything about this Gorilla Toss band but I love this new track of theirs… with Neu!? Covering them? Remixed by them? No idea. Gotta investigate. There is a new Kim-Deal-free Pixies track. It is…not bad? Shoud I give them a new chance? Torn.
Okay have a lovely weekend talk to you guys Monday.