Bonita—It’s true Eisenhower inherited the Viet Nam situation following the French defeat. Very worried about fighting a ground war in Asia it was JFK who escalated the conflict by using it as a model for counter-insurgency warfare. Kennedy had very grandiose ideas about how special units like the Green Berets could defeat pro-Communist insurgencies. The Kennedy gang was so anxious to regain power following JFK’s death they undermined LBJ 24/7 over the war in hopes of derailing his presidency to open the door to the White House in 1968 to Bobby Kennedy. The blood of thousands of American soldiers is on their hands.

Gulliver—I recall the Kennedy folks did everything they could to undermine LBJ particularly over the Viet Nam. Sad really because JFK and his crew started the war. In the army at the time recall JFK was trying out a new doctrine to win counter-insurgency wars with Viet Nam as his laboratory. Had LBJ cleared the Kennedy folks out of the administration we might have won the war and LBJ today would be remembered as a great president.

With Hillary as VP it would just like Kennedys and their buddies undermining LBJ 24/7.

Run for president?

Are women any happier now?

Good post! To see Bernay’s theories in action I recommend “Triumph of the Will”, the famed Nazi propaganda film. The film’s underlying theme is the sublimation of the instinctual life in the service of the state. Bernay’s sublimation theory has been turned on its head in today’s society in which instinctual gratification is the sine qua non of a normal personality. Bernay might have seen that had he considered the possibility of today’s female dominated polity.

What freedom doth thou speak of, Frannie? Is it the right to work like a dog to make ends meet, not spending sufficient time with the children, multiple marriages,inadequate savings to fund a comfortable retirement, etc, etc, etc? The quality of thinking of today’s women brings to mind the civic mentality in Orwell’s “1984”!

Michelle—I’m a free as bird single man free who lives alone. In my late 60s,very tall, slender, good natured, well off, the children grown and gone, and my exs didn’t get a red cent of my dough I’m hot property with the ladies! If this Newsweek article is correct, about half of married couples cheat. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/0…. Supporting this contention is an ad from the Ashly Madison dating service for adulterers. The site has millions of members. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TV68DKZ3WA

Sarah Palin is America’s Mary Carey, the porn star who can for governor of California following the Gray Davis recall. The ballot open to anyone paying the $3500 filing fee drew almost 300 candidates. Mary was a regular guest of Fox. Smart, pretty, articulate and sporting deep cleavage revealing her fabulous boobs she improved Fox’s rating. Despite all the publicity she drew a few thousand votes. Palin’s “hot” in the same way but like Carey won’t draw the votes needed to win. The regular polls and bookies show the McCain-Palin ticket got no bounce from her nomination. The bookies have Obama with a 3 to 2 lead in electoral college and 3-5% in the popular vote. Once Obama’s famed neighborhood organization gets up to full speed, Obama could deliver a landslide.

Infidelity replaced baseball as the national past time. The Ashley Madison dating site for adulterers has millions of members and runs t.v. ads! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZLjwhEp7nU

What a strange comment! You’ll have to take my word I served in the army from 1959 to 1962 and later held a reserve commission from 1967-1968 in the United States Public Health Service.

What amazed me about the GOP convention was the utter absence of racial diversity. Creepy to see in today’s America just a sea of upper middle class folks.

We’re clearly in a very deep and likely very long bear market. I’m almost 50% in cash with the remainder in high yielding dividend stocks. Readers who bought Fording should sell now. The Canadian government intends to treat at least the cash portion of the buyout price as ordinary income subjecting it to the mandatory 15% withholding. American shareholders will also face the tax. Unlikely the IRS foreign tax credit formula will also much more than a 50% recovery for most taxpayers. I still like Diana Shipping (DSX) which pays close to a 14% dividend. Very well run young fleet expecting delivery of 2 capesize vessels in 2010. Company policy is to pay out 100% of net income to shareholder. It’s an ideal stock for seniors. Also like Grammercy Capital which appears to be under accumulation.

Probably is true that Hollywood’s portrayal of prostitution contributed to the subsequent cultural and sexual revolution which wrecked stable marriage to bring us to a redneck family soap opera queen Sarah Palin trying for VP. Palin’s nomination is the final coffin nail in the culture wars. Very strange for me as a father and grandfather to watch the GOP’s mostly white upscale convention delegates wildly rooting for a neglectful mother seemingly unconcerned about her pregnant 17 year old daughter marrying a classmate. These folks give new meaning to the GOP’s hobby horse “family values agenda.” We’ve come a long way from when Her Majesty’s Customs seized my copy of “Lady Chatterly’s Love” in 1960 when I landed in Dover on the ferry from France while on army leave from Germany.

In my late 60s I have the impression there really is a slacker generation. Yesterday, for example, a family friend whose children I watched grow up told me his oldest daughter following graduation from Smith returned home and works a yoga instructor! I frequently meet youngsters with good educations seemingly satisfied with mediocre jobs which pay just enough for the rent, food and internet access.