While Sarah Palin is at the moment the key player in what could be a shifty move on behalf of the New World Order in superficially ordaining one result while achieving another, Michele Bachmann could be a key player as well.  Bachmann's latest comment made Sunday at a mega church was that God had personally called on her to run against Barack Obama in 2012.

In 1964 the John Birch Society flexed much political muscle within the potent rightist ranks of the Republican Party.  Today it is the Tea Party displaying clout within a Republican Party that in 2010 gained control of the House of Representatives.  Standing on the top tier of Tea Party  popularity  among current notable Republicans are Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

In 1964 the Vietnam War was gathering momentum.  A debate was  occurring between President Lyndon Johnson and his conservative Republican rival Senator Barry Goldwater that, in retrospect, resembled the legendary account of Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreeing to do battle.

Lyndon B. Johnson was one of the craftiest legislative leaders in American history.  His ability to shrewdly dicker and make a minimum wage law or Medicare was a thing of great natural beauty.

The inherent Johnson tragedy lay in the fact that when he assumed the presidency he began making decisions in the realm of war and peace for which he was profoundly ill suited.  The Gulf of Tonkin was rigged to display North Vietnamese animus toward the U.S. that did not exist in reality.  

An astute French historian and political scientist named Jean Lacouture told all that were willing to read and listen that the Vietnamese independent movement was strongly embraced by Ho Chi Minh's father.  Ho Chi Minh told any Americans willing to read or listen that his sturdy admiration for George Washington stemmed from that great general's fight for independence from British rule whereas he and other Vietnamese wished to end foreign dominance as well.

Tunney used the word to accent what he perceived as a wrong-headed view of the United States being able to resolve conflicts through a continuing military commitment.  The people of Vietnam would see that the best hope for their future resided in linkage to American power.

The Vietnam War ended with over 59,000 U.S. losses.  The foreign losses, counting Cambodia as neighboring offshoot as well as Vietnam, is unknown in any kind of precise calculation but estimated at 2.5 million or more according to some estimates.

The tragic human suffering did not end with the termination of life.  The dropping of Agent Orange to remove the heavy jungle forestation that U.S. strategists were convinced would make it easier to fight a hit and run smaller guerilla force did not deter a determined enemy that engaged and disengaged under its own strategic terms.

The one element that prevents so many from achieving success in reporting is intransigence.  Aided frequently by pressure, sometimes through a stubborn instinct, other times through refusal to apply the hard work and corresponding judgment to follow through, reporters will fail to observe an important trend.  

Walter Cronkite was someone who began reporting as a teen and was delighted to be in journalism.  This showed when he demonstrated a refreshingly youthful buoyancy over a positive achievement such as America placing astronauts on the moon.

On the sober front of international relations, Cronkite shook the collective collar of middle class America, those regulars who watched his network news broadcasts, when he asserted that to look for victory in the morass of the Vietnam War quagmire was to seek the impossible.  

In the age of Barack Obama, both the Republican Party as well as the South appear marginalized and out of step with the rest of America. Yet it wasn't so long ago that the South represented the foundation of America's conservative hegemony. Starting with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, the Republican Party prevailed in nine out of the next fourteen presidential elections with a reliable Southern base.

Specifically, the Republican Party exploited white Southern resentment against the cause of civil rights and integration. The "Southern strategy" as it was later called, enabled Republicans to end the Democratic Party's previous domination of the South following the Civil War. A key figure in that realignment was the renowned evangelist Billy Graham.

The 1964 battleground had been contested on ideological grounds that Johnson, a seasoned and skillful politician, used to his advantage.  The incumbent used Goldwater's strong right wing ideological base against him.  

Johnson seized the moment by appealing to the group that determines presidential elections, what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. termed the "vital center" and made his challenger and supporters look like a third party and a disorganized one at that.  

The linkage was made easier after Goldwater in his acceptance speech used the phrase "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice" while the Arizona senator's chief primary opponent, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, repeatedly referred to his conservative opponent, even at the party's national convention in San Francisco, as "outside the mainstream of American political thought."

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Tomorrow, America honors the birthday of heroic civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Americans revere King across the political and ethnic spectrum for his wisdom, idealism, courage and practice of non-violent civil disobedience against the forces of racial oppression. Thanks in large part to the trailblazing efforts of King and his followers; America inaugurates its first black president the very next day when Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20th. Yet even as Americans celebrate the historical arc from Martin Luther King to Barack Obama, the scars of racial injustice remain woven into our country's fabric.

Understandably, historians have overlooked the immediate aftermath of King's assassination in a Memphis, Tennessee hotel on April 4th, 1968. The meaning of King's life as well as the tragedy his loss represented has received considerable attention from historians and the body politic. Yet the immediate aftermath of King's death was dwarfed by his iconic life as well as the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the violence that took place during the Democratic National Convention later that year.

It was John McCain who launched an extra-marital affair with a woman linked to a leading American fortune.  After John married Cindy his political career was given a rocket thrust by his father in law, a multimillionaire brewery distribution heir.  He left his first wife following her serious injury in an automobile accident.

So now it is John McCain along with his "do anything that I'm asked to do" running mate wearing Neiman Marcus and leading designer labels characteristically unlike her "Soccer Mom" self-cultivated image who endlessly shriek about Barack Obama and his roaring pursuit of socialism.

Shortly before the beginning of the Democratic Convention of 1960 a group of prosperous looking Texans stood in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, the convention's headquarters, and one said in a strong, determined accent with a notable Texas twang:

"That Kennedy is making me damned mad!"

The youthful Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy and the politically experienced majority leader of that same body, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, had exchanged plenty of verbal blows as each sought to win the Democratic nomination and the opportunity to face Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the fall presidential campaign.

Born on this day in 1934

America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own, they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits, the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.
Bill Moyers

I happened to be reading Moyer's Blog early this morning looking for his interview with Public Citizen's Joan Claybrook which I missed when it aired on PBS last Friday on "Bill Moyers Journal."

The subject of the segment was lobbying and lobbyists and their pervasive influence on our political system.

I have a large measure of respect for both Moyers and Claybrook and an enormous loathing for lobbyists and their destructive influence on MY country and I was disappointed to have missed the program.

Fortunately for me I learned from Karl Rove that Al Gore invented the internet a few years back, and that invention led to the discovery of You Tube where I found a clip of the segment and I feel very good about the modern world this morning.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

So when did you first realize our country was led by liars? Was there a particular incident, campaign or speech resulting in an epiphany? Did a cynical role model let you know our country's decision makers could not be trusted to tell the truth?