about Nixon??? Your rhetoric is extreme, and you appear increasingly to me to reflect the same intensity and lack of charity as those you condemn. If you have the time get hold of the Frost/Nixon interview, watch it and reflect.
_{A monk asked, "What is the most important principle of Zen?"
Chao-Chou answered, "Excuse me, but I have to pee. Just imagine, even such a trivial thing as that I have to do in person."}

in my opinion, have only reinforced the ease with which one in high office in America can commit a crime and get away with it. Nixon should have been made an example of, if, as we say we are, a nation of laws.

^{"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination."}

the disaster of the end of vietnam. economic recession. he let new york die. he fostered the great vipers of cheney and rumsfeld in his white house nest, allowing the next generation of republican criminals to plague our generation. there were other blunders, and if he pardoned nixon to spare the nation pain, he merely pushed that pain forward, so a new generation could pay the cost of republican scandal and corruption.

ford did great damage to this nation, by allowing us to avoid coming to terms with a republican party that brought us illegal war, run amok intelligence communities, rife corruption, and government without ethics. because ford feared a liberal uprising, indeed, perhaps even something close to revolution, he let the man most responsible for tarring the presidency get away scot free. to this day, there has been no "healing," only forgetfulness and a repeat of nixon's worst errors.

ford may have been a nice guy and a decent human being, but he didn't serve his country well by taking the easy road.

how, if Nixon had been prosecuted, it would have prevented the rise of the Neocons to power and the installation of our current First Clown to office. From my perspective, the criminals running the government today make Haldeman, Dean, Erlichman, Mitchell, et al look like choirboys.

The virtue--or lack thereof--of Nixon's pardon is still a ripe and relevant debate topic. But the fact that he "got away with it" doesn't, in my view, automatically connect to America's tolerance of the Bushco Bullshit.

"If they buy the premise, they'll buy the bit."

--Johnny Carson

the seedbed from which the Iran-Contra debacle germinated; naturally the same faces and their proteges are now the problem. The rot could have been dealt a serious setback then.

Ford wasn't a King.

Ford was a public servant (and not even an elected one) who, for whatever reason, did his job badly (in that respect) and shoveled the problem downstream, like a lazy janitor who stuffs food waste into cardboard boxes to rot rather than disposing of them properly.

Now the entire planet is facing the consequences of the refusal to act more forcefully.

or am i just a fool when I pray
"forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"
<_{"Are we at the terminus of a civilization, a culture, that staggers on the edge of extinction?" - hattip usda at CE.}

Ford's Supreme Court Legacy
Justice John Paul Stevens Remains One of Ford's Most Enduring Legacies

By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG

Dec. 27, 2006 — - One of President Ford's most enduring legacies was his nomination of Justice John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court.

Now in his fourth decade on the court, Stevens is a maverick thinker who has proven to be surprisingly liberal and has kept the court from moving further to the right.

In a tribute last year, Ford praised the independent Stevens and said he was "prepared to allow history's judgment of my term in office" to rest exclusively on the nomination.

He said he agreed with Stevens' views on the separation of church and state, and on requiring rigorous procedural safeguards for criminal defendants.

Ford nominated Stevens to the Supreme Court in 1975, when he was a Chicago-based federal appeals court judge, to replace liberal giant William O. Douglas.

Douglas had suffered a debilitating stroke the year before, and he turned in his resignation letter to Ford the next year with great reluctance -- and only after concerned colleagues on the court had urged him to do so.

..snip

The Stevens Choice

Stevens was above reproach. He had even been counsel to a special commission that had investigated ethics complaints against members of the Illinois Supreme Court. Stevens has said he believes that work caught the attention of administration officials, who were looking for a nominee with sterling credentials and no ethical problems.

Ford's decision to nominate Stevens over better-known conservative favorites like Bork shaped the direction of the closely divided court -- and, by extension, the country. Stevens has sided with a five-bloc liberal majority to reject abortion regulations, uphold affirmative action programs, denounce religion in the public sphere, and demand greater protections for criminal defendants.

...snip

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2754268&page=1

posted in full for educationl purposes only

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; A01

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

"I think he was a super secretary of state," Ford said, "but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. "Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood," Ford said. "Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period." But Ford viewed Kissinger's dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration's ability to fully air policy debates. "They were supposed to check on one another."

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, "I'm making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this" by giving up the post of security adviser.

Kissinger was not happy. "Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this," Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. "They'll write that I'm being demoted by taking away half of my job." But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger's White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. "I didn't consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn't get his advice, which I didn't," Ford said. "I made the decision on my own."

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. "Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, 'I'm offering my resignation.' Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. 'Now, Henry, you've got the nation's future in your hands and you can't leave us now.' Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

Ford added, "Any criticism in the press drove him crazy." Kissinger would come in and say: "I've got to resign. I can't stand this kind of unfair criticism." Such threats were routine, Ford said. "I often thought, maybe I should say: 'Okay, Henry. Goodbye,' " Ford said, laughing. "But I never got around to that."

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as "coy." Then he added, Kissinger is a "wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks."

Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was "an act of cowardice on my part."

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."

Christine Parthemore contributed to this report.

wapo

cared about anything other than its consumer-driven economy at the sacrifice of the poorest and the middle class?

Emotions were sparked during the McCarthy hearings, but they quickly faded and what is now on the horizon has not been seen as a threat to their style of democracy by the electorate. They voted twice for Bush. Enuf said. Corporations will rule America. It's too expensive for a principled person to run for office.

Ford was a centrist concilator and for that he will be condemned to an in your face nationalistic country who uses their military around the world to enforce their concept of democracy. Too bad they don't know anything about compromise. In case Americans don't know, it always has been, "America's way and the rest of the world doesn't have a vote!"

before falling off the righthand edge of the intellectual world in his dotage, wrote two books which were characterized much less by flashing lasers than by an attempt to extrapolate the moral evolution of humanity in the centuries to come.

Ender's Game

The first book, "Ender's Game", became one of the most popular books in the history of science fiction.

It follows the early years of Andrew ("Ender") Wiggin, a boy who is selected and trained by the military to be the planet's general to fight a faceless, demonized foe ("the buggers") for his twin characteristics of empathy and ruthlessness - needed to both fully understand the enemy and to destroy them.

Ender's final months of training are spent in a video-game-like environment where he commands a virtual simulated fleet. Cracking under the relentless strain, Ender finally decides to "flunk out" by savagely achieving victory over their virtual enemy by exterminating their homeworld - and their species - in a graduation exercise.

But to his horror, Ender discovers at the end of his "training" that he has not been training at all but commanding actual forces by remote control. It was not a game; Ender's "xenocide", the extermination of an entire species, is real.

Ender is ten years old.

Most horrifyingly, Ender's empathy has brought him to the shocking and inevitable realization that the entire war was based on mutual misunderstanding rather than mutually imcompatible endstates. It could have been resolved with one honest series of dialogues.

Speaker For the Dead

Ender's saga continues in "Speaker for the Dead", set thousands of years later. His life artificially prolonged by the relativistic effects of frequent space travel, the guilt-driven Ender has wandered seeking expiation for the evil he committed in ignorance.

Ender has become a "Speaker for the Dead", a healer who presides at funerals on request. His role is both simple and complex - he arrives and conducts a thorough and probing investigation of the life and actions of the deceased. He then speaks the "truth" of their life at a memorial service - respecting neither delicacy, position, wealth, power or "decency".

The speeches are revelatory and shocking. Many would simply prefer to hear "nice things" spoken of the deceased. Ender "speaks the life" of the deceased unflinchingly, using the same qualities of empathy and utter ruthlessness that made him the planet's supreme general.

Cathartically for the mourners, Ender's revelation of both the good and the hideous actions of the deceased are accompanied by revelation of motives for those shocking actions - and most importantly for the mourners for whom all funeral services are held, revelations of the community's own complicity in both the motives and the actions themselves.

The deceased stands revealed, complete and whole. The community can begin healing.

Early in "Speaker for the Dead", Ender arrives on Lusitania to "speak" a death of a man killed by its aboriginal peoples, at the very moment when humanity stands on the brink of exterminating those peoples in retaliation.

His "speaking" of a man's death at the hands of the aboriginals will serve both to examine the man's life and to forestall and confound the most vile and unspeakable repetition of history - the second "xenocide".

There are other later books in the series, but these two are the keystones.

Ford and the Agonist

Voices on the Agonist are providing counter-information about Gerald Ford that illuminate the complexity unspoken in his inevitable media hagiography and "CNNonization".

None of us may be "Speakers For The Dead" - but we're valid parts of the voice. As you can see from that photograph of Ford, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the unspeakable not only can - but does repeat itself, has repeated itself, without willingess to tell that truth both empathetically and ruthlessly.

Perhaps Graham is a voice of that empathy and others are voices of that ruthlessness. As an aggregate the Agonist is delivering a picture of a complex man living in complex times, pointing out both the goodness of the man and his errors - and the complicity of the community. Respect for the dead is not shown by praising them, it is shown by knowing them. One sole monochromatic view by itself produces falsehood, no matter how good the motives.

And as far as "respect for the office" goes, the president is not a King. The president is a servant like a janitor is. In 2006 it's time to start treating them like the employees they are - and framing in terms of the office-holder having a little respect for the employer, the people who provide them with that office.

There is nothing "holy" about that office. It's a janitor's cubicle. It's imbued with authority solely by the will of the people and provided or robbed of merit or respect by the current holder.

This is an employee review. With both voices in place the review can proceed with more honesty.

I confess I never really thought much of Gerald Ford. I knew that Chevy Chase didn't resemble him much, but I probably saw more of Chevy Chase spoofing Ford than Ford himself. I knew that Ford pardoned Nixon, and I kind of understood why. I knew that Ford did not distinguish himself much in office, and yet he trounced -- trounced -- Ronald Reagan in the GOP primary in 1976.

The world didn't blow up. The economy didn't collapse, though inflation hit us hard. And in an age when politics was much more moderate in tone and liberal in values, he was known as a bipartisan leader of sorts. I never would have voted for him, had I been old enough, but as I look back at what the GOP has had to offer the White House since, he seems to be not all that bad in retrospect.

So it really is quite shocking to me, the reactions offering everything from naive praise to vehement hatred expressed towards Gerald Ford, the man who's merited scarcely a mention in blogs ... that is until he died.

it goes on mentioning Booman, Bernedene and others

http://mediagirl.org/node/1416

oh man via Crooks and Liars...he was delicious

It's only when they die that it's even possible an arsehole or even an average human being becomes totally perfect. I've never understood the need for those who live to lie about those who died as if they never existed as a person. That's totally creepy and weird in my mind.

Ford is no exception. He was a human being that made mistakes but now that he's dead, he was not a human being that made mistakes. It's like a high speed trip to fairy tale land. LOL!

NYT, By Scott Shane, Dec 29

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 — President Gerald R. Ford was never one for second-guessing, but for many years after leaving office in 1977, he carried in his wallet a scrap of a 1915 Supreme Court ruling. A pardon, the excerpt said, “carries an imputation of guilt,” and acceptance of a pardon is “a confession of it.”

Mr. Ford’s decision to pardon Richard M. Nixon for any crimes he might have been charged with because of Watergate is seen by many historians as the central event of his 896-day presidency. It also appears to have left him with an uncharacteristic need for self-justification, though friends say he never wavered in his insistence that the pardon was a wise and necessary act and that it had not resulted from any secret deal with his disgraced predecessor.

“I must have talked to him 20 times about the pardon, and there was never a shred of doubt that he’d done the right thing,” said James Cannon, a Ford domestic policy adviser and author of a 1994 book about his presidency. During one of their discussions, Mr. Ford pulled out the 1915 clipping, from Burdick v. United States. “It was a comfort to him,” Mr. Cannon said. “It was legal justification that he was right.”

Over the last three decades, as emotions have cooled, many who were initially critical of the pardon have come to share Mr. Ford’s judgment that it was the best way to stanch the open wound of Watergate. In 2001, a bipartisan panel selected Mr. Ford as recipient of the Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library, singling out for praise his pardon decision, which Mr. Ford later said he believed was a major factor in his failure to win election to the presidency in 1976.

In a 2004 interview with Bob Woodward, reported Thursday night on The Washington Post’s Web site, Mr. Ford offered another, less lofty motive for the pardon: his friendship with Nixon, which lasted for two decades after the pardon and which letters show was closer than publicly understood.

“I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon,” Mr. Ford told Mr. Woodward, “because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma.”

Vice President Cheney Hails Ford's Pardon of Nixon in Funeral Service at U.S. Capitol Rotunda

By Calvin Woodward and Jeff Wilson

WASHINGTON Dec 30, 2006 (AP)— The nation honored Gerald R. Ford in funeral ceremonies Saturday that recalled the touchstones of his life, from combat in the Pacific to a career he cherished in Congress to a presidency he did not seek. He was remembered as the man called to heal the country from the trauma of Watergate.

Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon, so divisive at the time that it probably cost him the 1976 election, was dealt with squarely in his funeral services by his old chief of staff, Vice President Dick Cheney.

"It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, speaking in the Capitol Rotunda where Ford's body rested. "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon."

Hundreds of ordinary Americans lined up for a chance to view the closed, flag-draped casket of the 38th president late into the night and through the weekend. From teenagers in sweat shirts to mothers pushing infants in strollers, they flowed into the night in two steady streams along velvet ropes encircling the casket, pausing only for the periodic changing of the military guard standing watch.

In the 70s, Betty Ford really was a remarkably hip First Lady
by Joe in DC - 12/30/2006 10:21:00 PM

Take a look at some of the things Betty Ford said and did back in the 1970s. She really did speak her mind honestly. This was back in the days when there were normal Republicans. Betty Ford was not out of the mainstream of her party then. Imagine what the right wingers and theocrats would have done to her if they owned the GOP then like they do now:

Thrown into the role of first lady during a period of deep distrust in government, she fulfilled the role of honest arbiter of American family life and of the modern woman, speaking candidly on just about any subject she was asked about, both shocking and delighting the country.

She was a product and symbol of the cultural and political times — doing the Bump along the corridors of the White House, donning a mood ring, chatting on her CB radio with the handle First Mama — a housewife who argued passionately for equal rights for women, a mother of four who mused about drugs, abortion and premarital sex aloud and without regret.

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