Showing posts with label 1960s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1960s. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Seventh Edition. Night of Camp David

From Amazon:

Night of Camp David Kindle Edition

4.2 out of 5 stars   (863)

 “What would happen if the president of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?” Back by popular demand, The New York Times calls the 1965 bestselling political thriller by the author of Seven Days in May, “A little too plausible for comfort.”
 
How can one man convince the highest powers in Washington that the President of the United States is dangerously unstable—before it’s too late?
 
Senator Jim MacVeagh is proud to serve his country—and his president, Mark Hollenbach, who has a near-spotless reputation as the vibrant, charismatic leader of MacVeagh’s party and the nation. When Hollenbach begins taking MacVeagh into his confidence, the young senator knows that his star is on the rise.

But then Hollenbach starts summoning MacVeagh in the middle of the night to Camp David. There, the president sits in the dark and rants about his enemies, unfurling insane theories about all the people he says are conspiring against him. They would do anything, President Hollenbach tells the stunned senator, to stop him from setting in motion the grand, unprecedented plans he has to make America a great world power once again.

MacVeagh comes away from these meetings increasingly convinced that the man he once admired has lost his mind. But what can he do? Who can he tell?

Sound sort of familiar?

December 12, 2025


I'm reminded that as the Third Reich crumbled around him, Hitler concluded that the German people just weren't worthy of him.

And then there's this:
Q: Can you explain what's going on with the bandages on Trump's hand?

LEAVITT: We've given you an explanation. The president is literally constantly shaking hands.

Machinegun Lips Leavitt's statement is a dog that doesn't hunt.  At this point, it's clear that there's something going on.  The constant bruising on the hand suggest pretty strongly that Trump is frequently getting a picc line to his hand.  He's getting IVs, probably, but for what? 

He also recently had an MRI, and speaks of getting cognitive tests.  Somebody is monitoring him pretty closely medically, and Trump himself doesn't seem to know fully why.

Cont:

A blog entry on the same topic:

The Alarming Signs of a President in Decline

December 15, 2025

Trump's a complete a**hole.

cont:

Q: A number of Republicans have denounced your statement on Rob Reiner. Do you stand by it?

TRUMP: Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.

December 17, 2025

The National Review

The president of the United States is a hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer.

A prediction:

I stated here before that Trump would only last 18 months in office.  He hasn't even made 12 yet, and his mind is complete mush.  He has a television address tonight I'm unlikely to watch, but my first prediction, not the one I created the subtitle for, is that it'll be full of rambling praise for himself and blame upon Joe Biden.

It'll also be jam packed with lies.

The bigger prediction, however, is this.  I'm going to restate the 18 month prediction as an outer date.  He's really declining rapidly.  He'll make it to 2026, probably, but my guess right now is not past the end of March.  Part of this will depend upon how close he gets us to war with Venezuela and how utterly unhinged he becomes regarding his domestic opposition.

My next prediction is that this will completely shatter the GOP.  The GOP is going to get pounded in the 2026 election and become utterly unglued.  It won't go away, but it'll take it three or four years to rebuilt itself into something.  

December 21, 2025

Trump: I took cognitive tests. By the way, not easy. The first question is like what is this and they show a lion, giraffe, fish and a hippopotamus. And they say which is the giraffe.

Hmmmm. . . 

I don't follow Rod Dreher because I think he slipped off the rails some time ago, but there's no real denying he's one of the real intellects of the National Conservatives/Christian Nationalist whom I think largely have the levers of power in the Trump Administration right now.  So I was surprised when I ran across something he posted on Twitter.

Dreher hasn't changed his views on things, and he defends Trump on some thing I think Trump is actually completely wrong on, such as the recently released National Security Strategy (which makes sense form Dreher's point of view, because of his beliefs), but regarding Trump himself, after his comments on Rob Reiner:

Something is very, very wrong with this man. A father and mother were murdered by their son, most likely, and Trump makes it about himself.

Its been obvious for years that something is deeply wrong with Trump.  Indeed, given his overall character, something has been wrong with Trump for decades, but his earlier character flaws are now being overtaken by his dementia.  

I note Dreher here as I think what we can begin to see pretty clearly is the move to replace Trump with Vance.  We predicted that Trump would be out within 18 months, and its starting to happen right now.

Dreher, who was one of the first Christian Nationalist and National Conservatives, is outright stating that Trump is mentally ill.  He's also attacking the MAGA public figures like Fuentes.  Erika Kirk is endorsing Vance for President in 2028.  Mitt Romney, whom conservatives regard as the last real conservative Republican candidate for the White House, is writing op eds urging taxation.

Now, not all those things are related, but some of them are.  It's clear that Republicans are beginning to maneuver for the 2028 election and they're leaving Trump behind.  Romney is old at 78, but he's not demented and he's younger than Biden was when he ran for reelection and he's younger than Trump, whose most radical MAGA base is urging to unconstitutionally run again in 2028.

Related to that, Vance is only in the administration as he wants to run in 2028.  He's tainted with his association with Trump and the stench that creates is getting worse and he knows it.  He's also the only real National Conservative who stands a chance of being elected in 2028.  Indeed, there were never any others who stood a chance.  Marco Rubio is a conservative, but not a National Conservative.  Elise Marie Stefanik is a conservative, not a National Conservative, as well.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn't stand a chance, is a far right wing populist.  Kevin Roberts, who is behind the scenes and somethat close to Vance, is definitely a National Conservative but he has no chance.  Stephen Miller is loathsome.

So now we're seeing the jockeying for position, but we're seeing more than that.  Some Republicans are finally outright condemning Trump over things he says.  Massie and Rand Paul are outright defying him with no real consequences.  Republicans who don't want to be part of a 2026 and 2028 bloodbath are bailing out of Congress.

Behind the scenes, there has to be a raging debate about how much longer the GOP lets Trump carry on.  He's been the functional equivalent of World War One naval dazzle camouflage which has served their interests well. . .up until now.  Now he's drawing fire.  He falls asleep in public.  He rambles on and sounds rough, while making statements that are often downright weird.  He insults vast numbers of people for petty reasons.  He's causing inflation in many areas of the economy through his beliefs on taxes, while destroying the economy for those who supported him in other areas.  

And he's on the verge of getting us into war.

While all that's going on, of course, his administration has now gone so far in trying to keep the government's files on perverted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein secret its reached the absurd level. Everyone knows that Trump and Epstein were friends.  The lingering news story has served to remind people that Trump has a sexual track record which necessarily raises questions, given his association with Epstein, as well as John Casablancas.  Old information that was re-released from the Epstein files serves to remind that one of Epstein's teenage victims ended up as a contestant in one of Trump's pageants.  Trump sent Epstein, although he denies it a hand drawn birthday card featuring what appears to be the immature body of a teenage girl, with his signature drawn across where the reproduction organs are, and with a poem emphasizing enigma and shared secrets.

MAGA victims of TDS of course still desperately want to believe that there's no there, there, but something is there, if only the names of people who may have participated in the abuse of up to 1,000 girls and who are significant figures.  Maybe Trump isn't listed amongst them, but there's some reason his administration is trying to desperately to keep this stuff secret.

My guess would be that Vance has no idea what it is.  But Vance, Kirk, Roberts and Dreher all know that if Trump rides things out to 2028 his increasing dementia combined with the risk of scandal is just too high.  If this blows up, and its starting to, it'll wreck the GOP so completely there won't be one in 2028.

Kirk and Dreher are preparing the groundwork now.  Mentioning that what Trump is doing is vile is part of that.  Mentioning that Vance should run in 2028 is as well.

Vance will be sworn in as the President before June.

December 22, 2025

These things are just  nuts:

cont:

We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population…They say that Denmark was there 300 years ago with a boat. Well, we were there with boats too I’m sure.

Donald Trump. 

The United States isn't 300 years old. . . 

And that small population comment is just the sort of thing a New Yorker would say . . . 

And then there's this gem. Trump wants a fleet of twenty five battleships built.  Battleships have been obsolete for decades.

Everyone knows they're nuts, and yet they allow him to just charge on with this lunacy.

The man is not well, and they know it.

cont:

It appears the battleships will not be battleships.

Still, Trump's absolute megalomania in which everything must be named for him is clearly a sign of mental illness.

December 23, 2025

We’re bringing down drug price by 1000%, 1200%, 1300%, 1400%. A drug that sells for $10 in London is costing $130 in New York. We are bringing it down to $20. You can do your own math. But it’s 2000%, 3000%

Donald Trump. 

December 26, 2025

A Christmas rant from somebody who is clearly mentally unhinged:


By this point, it's clear that Trump, if not full blown insane, goes into fits of raving insanity.  We should all be scared as there may come a day when he goes from ranting into action.  

The real question at this point is why the cabinet has not removed him.  His unfitness for office, or anything else, is completely apparent, so there's a reason behind that.

The reason might be J. D. Vance.

In spite of Trump's propagandized reputation, Trump isn't a lot of the things he's claimed to be.  He's not smart, he's not an economic genius, he's not a conservative, and he's not a recognizable Christian.  He is a good salesman, or was, who has made his name into a brand. He's also a self serving narcissists. As part of his branding, he's managed to convince a fair number of people that he is what he clearly isn't.

But he is useful for certain elements that back him.  Once he's gone, the NAM, the NatCons, and the Dixiecrats really don't have everything in common by a long shot.  Vance is a NatCon, not a Dixiecrat, and people like Miller might fear Vance coming in.

The mass defection from the Heritage Society suggests, however, that Vance may have lost his shot.  If Trump is going to be retired people have to support Vance.  The NatCons are falling apart.  

December 31, 2025

Trump announced today that his dumbass triumphal arch will start construction in two months.

This likely needs to go up quicker than planned as the terminal limits of Trump's sanity/end of office/natural life are beginning to roar up into his view.  This will add to the pile of rubble that will need to be hauled off and dumped in the Potomac when he's gone.

Related threads:

Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief

 

Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief

2028 Election, Part I. The Preview of Coming Attractions Editions.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Sixth Edition. The demented panicked Octogenarian edition.

Monday, December 31, 1945. The end of a historical episode and the dawn of a new one, additional labels.


Wednesday, September 24, 2025

In Memoriam. Claudia Cardinale

Tunisian born Claudia Cardinale has died at age 87.  Her entry into film came after being chosen as the most beautiful girl in Tunisia, where her Sicilian parents were immigrants.

One of the Italian (in her case Sicilian) bombshells of the 1960s, Cardinale is famous for a series of well regarded Italian movies, but perhaps best known in the US (outside of film aficionados) for her unlikely role as the Mexican heroin in The Professionals and again as the heroin in Once Upon A Time In The West8 1/2 may be her best known Italian film.

She was married once, and had two children, the first of whom when she was a teenager and whom was the result of a rape.  Her parents raised that child as her brother until her true mother was revealed to him when he was eight years old.

In addition to Sicilian and English, she spoke French.

Overshadowed in the US by Sophia Loren, she was known as "Italy's girlfriend".

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .The Thomas Crown Affair.

Eh? 

Allow me to explain.

I posted this yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .:   Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. O.W. Root @NecktieSalvage · 1h People think I am exaggerating when I ...

Last night, I tried to watch the Thomas Crown Affair.

I'm generally a fan of older movies, and often watch ones older than this.  But I couldn't make my way through it.  The appearance of the characters and the urban settings were just too much for me.  The thing is, I"m pretty sure it was accurate.

All the office workers and businessmen are dressed in contempoary suits, some of which were quite nice and still would be today.  The hats really stood out, with every man wearing a Trilby, something really identifiable with teh 1960s, but which when we look back on the 60s, is easy to forget.

The 1960s may have been the era of Haight Ashbury and hippies, but it was also the era of men still wearing suits and ties in the office.  It isn't really into the 1970s that this began to change.  The wide lapel  loud color suit came out of the 60s, but it didn't show up until the early 1970s, which is really, culturally, part of the 1960s.  Even so, men were wearing coat and tie in the office.

The other thing I encountered leading to this thread was a link from something on Pininterest, which lead to a set of photos that a high school teacher/photographer, took of high school students in his school in the 1970s.  I'm not going to linke them in, as some of the photos he took were, in my view, a bit lacking in modesty (not anything illegal, but just something I wouldn't really think a person should photograph), but maybe that was his point.

It wasn't that I didn't recogize the photographs.  I really did.  That's the thing.  All the boys and girls in tight fitting t-shirts.

I have my father's high school annual from 1947, and I've written on the appearance of the studends that appear in it before:

Standards of Dress. Attending school


This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946.  Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).

Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents.  It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country.  None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids.  I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.

So how do we see them dressed?  One is wearing a striped t-shirt.  Exactly one.  Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt.  Of those, all but one are wearing ties.

One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.

Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day?  Probably they did.  I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties.  And somebody knew hot to tie them.  None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.

NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.

Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year.  Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school.  Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC.  Most of the boys are in uniform.  Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties.  A couple have t-shirts.  Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.

NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.

Here are the Junior girls that year.  As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt.  They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.

Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that.  Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years.  This is s cross section of students from a Western town.  The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers.  They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really.  No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.


I don't know that things had changed enormously by the mid 1950s.

Kids still new how to dress fairly formally, by contemporary standards, and girls are always shown wearing relatively long skirts and blouses.  Boy nearly are always wearing button up shirts, not t-shirts.  For something more formal boys still appear quite often in jacket and tie, or suit and tie. Consider the school dance here from the 1950s:

Dance.

Not ties in a quick review, but still pretty cleanly dressed for the boys and very well dressed for the girls.

By the 60s, things were evolving.

And by the 1970s, they had really changed.


And not really for the good.

In the 70s, men still wore coat and tie to the office, but the trend line is pretty obvious. 

If anything, youth dress hit rock bottom in the 1970s.  It's intersting that office dress has hit rock bottom, right now.

And, like Atticus Finch noted, dress does matter. 

Thursday, May 15, 1975. The Raid on Koh Tang.


A Marine Corps raid on Koh Tang island took back the Mayaguez, which they found deserted, while a Navy air raid destroyed the now Khmer Rouge run Cambodian navy.  

Eighteen Marines were killed in combat and an additional 23 in a helicopter crash in the raid.  Khmer forces were much larger than anticipated and resistance heavy.  The helicopter passengers were not fully accounted for when the withdrawal occurred and it was later determined that three of the Marines (Joseph N. Hargrove, Gary L. Hall, and Danny G. Marshall) a shall) and two Navy medics (Bernard Guase and Ronald Manning) may have been alive when they were left behind on the island.

Sailing under a white flag, a Cambodian vessel brought thirty Americans to the destroyer USS Wilson.

It is really this date, and not the one that was declared several days earlier, that should be regarded as the end of the Vietnam War Era, as this was really the last combat in the US's involvement in the Indochinese War, of which the Vietnam War was part.  It interesting came to an end somewhat in the way in which it had started in earnest, with Marines being deployed over a ship, as they would be because of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 14, 1975. Hmong evacuation.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Saturday, April 26, 1975. The attack on Saigon begins.

The NVA commenced its attack on Saigon with a bombardment of the Bien Hoa Air Base.

TV Guide had an article on Sex and Violence in television, which is interesting given the context of the times.


It also featured McCloud, which was a popular police drama in the era of police dramas.  The show featured Gunsmoke veteran Dennis Weaver as a New Mexico police detective somehow assigned to Brooklyn.  I recall my father used to watch it.  That entire plot line sounds a lot like the plot of 1968 film Coogan's Bluff, which featured Clint Eastwood as a sheriff's deputy from Arizona on assignment in New York.

TV Guide was a weekly magazine my father subscribed to.  I don't know if it exists anymore.  It ran all of the television schedules for the week.  I always thought it was an odd thing to subscribe to really, but it came to the house.

Last edition:

Monday, April 21, 2025

April 21, 1975. The end at Xuân Lộc.

The ARVN, which had fought hard at Xuân Lộc, finally abandoned the city and retreated toward Saigon.

Thiệu in 1968.

President Thiệu resigned, leaving the government in the hands of Vice President Trần Văn Hương.

He was a career army officer who interestingly started off in the Việt Minh, in which he rose to be a district chief.  He left them, however when it became obvious they were Communist and were committing atrocities.  He enrolled in the French controlled Vietnamese governments Merchant Marine Academy but rejected a position on a ship when he discovered that the French owners were going to pay him less than his French colleagues.  He thereafter  transferred to the National Military Academy in Đà Lạt, graduating in 1949.  He was part of the junta that overthrew Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963, after having prevented a coup a few years earlier.  He was elected President in 1967 after the US insisted on democratic elections.  He was reelected in 1971, as the only candidate running, as opponents believed the polls would be rigged.  His resignation speech was a whopping two hours long, but did include the memorable lines,"I resign, but I do not desert."

He was a convert to Catholicism.

He died on September 29, 2001, in Boston.  In Hawaii to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife Mai Anh, the September 11 attacks impacted him psychology and contributed to his death which occurred after his return to his home in Boston.

Kissinger bizarrely believed that his resignation would lead to a negotiation to save Saigon, which is something that apparently his successor, Dương Văn Minh, also believed would occur.

The last New Zealanders at their embassy in South Vietnam were evacuated from the country.

Last edition:

Saturday, April 19, 1975. The ARVN withdraws from Xuân Lộc.

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Tuesday, April 8, 1975. "Over in a month".

U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater claimed that the Vietnam War "would have been over in a month" had he been elected President in 1964.

1964 Goldwater bumper sticker.

Seems doubtful.

Goldwater was the most right wing truly conservative Republican candidate to have ever been nominated, far more conservative than Ronald Reagan, and a true conservative, unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office.

A South Vietnamese pilot, Nguyễn Thành Trung, dropped bombs on the Presidential Place and then defected.  

This is an event that I can recall occuring.

He want on to serve in the North Vietnamese air force and then worked as a commercial pilot for Vietnam Airlines.

South Vietnamese Major General Nguyễn Văn Hiếu was found shot dead in his command post.at the  Biên Hòa airbase, 

The Godfather Part II won an Academy Award for best picture, the first sequel to do so.

Frank Robinson became the first black manager in Major League.  More on Robinson:

April 8, 1975: Frank Robinson Becomes Baseball's 1st Black Manager

Last edition:

Monday, April 7, 1975. A meeting in Thailand.