AdamSmith

I don't know. I graduated summa and after I got my first job out of college, the boss said that was why he hired me over several other applicants.

If we take his reply as a regression rather than a progression... ?!

As you, I, and everyone in our profession know: Hope is not a strategy.

Does this give you any hope that your dear Edward will be treated kindly by the U.S. government if he comes back here, as you have suggested he do?

The inner demons that drove Nixon By David Gergen, CNN Senior Political Analyst updated 4:30 PM EDT, Tue July 30, 2013 'A political problem to the president'Video at http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/gergen-nixon-demons/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 Three of President Richard Nixon's top aides documented their experiences at the White House with home movie cameras. Now, that footage seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation is presented in a new documentary along with other rare footage and interviews. CNN Films' "Our Nixon" presents a new look at the Nixon presidency at 9 p.m. ET Thursday, August 1. David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN and has been an adviser to four presidents. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is a professor of public service and director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter. (CNN) -- CNN's new documentary, "Our Nixon," tugs open the curtain for a moment on one of the most complex, haunted presidents in modern times. I worked on his White House staff for more than three years and can attest that that while this isn't the complete Richard Nixon, viewers get a revealing, first-hand look at parts of the man rarely seen. It is hard for younger generations to grasp just how dominant a figure Nixon was for over four decades in American life. With the exception of Franklin Roosevelt -- the Babe Ruth of 20th century politics -- only Nixon has been nominated by his party for high office in five national elections. From the days he rocketed to power as a young, ambitious congressman until he went to his grave, Nixon made the cover of Time magazine 56 times. No one else in his time was as widely respected or reviled; no one else won a massive re-election only to leave the White House in disgrace. Nixon almost had it all -- and then he lost it. Why? Why do colossally powerful men make a colossal hash of things, even down to today? I was a relative innocent when I left the Navy in the early 1970s and by serendipity, was offered a job in the Nixon White House by Raymond Price, then the head of the speechwriting team and soon a wonderful mentor. Ray asked me to be his administrative assistant and within weeks, I was a note taker in Cabinet meetings, where I had a bird's-eye view of Nixon at his best. The CNN documentary captures some of those heady moments through the home movie cameras of Bob Haldeman (chief of staff), John Ehrlichman (top domestic adviser) and Dwight Chapin (RN's aide-de-camp and television impresario). The films show how much Nixon doted on the pomp and circumstance of the office -- the balloon drops at conventions, waving to mammoth crowds (7 million turned out when we went to Cairo), walking the Great Wall in China, sipping champagne with Zhou Enlai. Nixon lapped it all up. What is missing from the films are the serious, thoughtful conversations of Nixon away from cameras. In truth, he was the best strategist I have seen in the presidency -- someone able to go up on a mountain top, look 30 years into the future and try to bend the arc of history to favor the nation's security interests. He was a student of the past and like one of his heroes, Winston Churchill, thought that a leader who can see farther back can see farther ahead. Americans knew he could be mean and duplicitous, but I sensed they voted for him because they also thought he was smart enough and tough enough to keep the Soviets at bay. They were right. If your home is threatened, you want a German shepherd, not a cocker spaniel. In my early days as a junior lieutenant, I mostly saw the bright side of Nixon -- the one who read books recommended to him by his early counselor, Pat Moynihan, and debated the virtues of World War I generals with Henry Kissinger. Only when I had more experience and he invited me in closer did he begin to reveal the rest of him -- the dark side. That darker side is woven through the CNN documentary, mostly through the secret tapings that he made of himself and those with whom he was talking. Only a select few knew of the taping system; learning of it was a shock to all the rest of us on staff. I had not heard most of the tapes here but found them consistent with the Nixon I eventually came to know: a brooding, deeply insecure man who laments how little support he has from his own Cabinet and how much bias he sees in the press. It has been said that even paranoids have real enemies. Indeed, Nixon had plenty of real enemies, but his insecurities prompted him to create even more in the way he lashed back. He came to believe that politics is a jungle and that to survive, one must observe the law of the jungle: Either eat or be eaten. The late Leonard Garment -- along with Ray Price, one of the white hats in that White House -- thought Watergate could be traced back to the Vietnam War. Nixon came to power not only with insecurities but with a bitterly divisive war on his hands, one that threatened to tear the country apart. As was his wont, Nixon thought he had to control events, not be controlled by them. So, he started bugging the phones of reporters and his own appointees and eventually he set up a "plumbers" unit to stop national security leaks. In view of Garment, who served as a close legal adviser to Nixon, that effort to control anti-war fever turned into a political operation during the 1972 re-election. From there, it was only a tiny step to the Watergate break-in at Democratic headquarters. That is a persuasive theory, but I concluded there was something more basic also at work in Nixon's downfall -- and we see pieces of it in the CNN documentary. Fundamentally, I believe that as Carl Jung argued, each of us has a bright and dark side, and that the task of becoming a mature, integrated adult is to conquer one's dark side or at least bring it under control. Nixon simply did not have that dark side under control -- he had demons inside him and when they rose up in fury, as they did so often, they could not only destroy others but destroy him, too. There have been moments since his downfall that I have actually felt sorry for him. As a wise counselor of his, Bryce Harlow, once observed, we will never know what happened to Nixon when he was young, but it must have been something terrible. A word about the three men behind the cameras in the documentary: I knew each of them in varying degrees and am sure they never envisioned themselves as Nixon "henchmen." As their films suggest, they thought they had a ringside seat on one of the greatest shows ever -- and loved it. But they were swept into the web of intrigue in that White House and went along with the deceits, the dirty tricks and yes, the criminality. Ehrlichman eventually felt bitter and betrayed by Nixon; Haldeman, as the film represents, felt the critics were terribly wrong and that one day, Nixon would be better understood. Emotionally, I was drawn more to Chapin: he was young and relatively innocent, too, and he was one of the most creative advisers I have seen in the White House -- an impresario in the league of Mike Deaver and Jerry Rafshoon. His "sin," I believe, is that he was so devoted that he would do anything to protect Nixon. He paid with a broken career -- the price reckless leaders often exact from the young. Forty years later, Dwight -- to his credit -- is still trying to protect what he can of Nixon, telling me and others where he thinks the CNN documentary film is wrong (too one-sided, he thinks, and misleading in various ways). To this day, historians as well as those of us who lived through the Nixon period, disagree in our judgments. I will always believe that Nixon had elements of greatness in him, but he was ultimately the architect of his own downfall -- he could not control that dark, inner fury and, for the good of the country, he had to go. http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/gergen-nixon-demons/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

Same. Any salty carb I will want to eat by the bushel.

Do try not to get your penis stuck in a toaster. A message from the fire brigadeOur #FiftyShadesofRed campaign is designed to remind people we should be attending fires, not tambourines on heads or yet another handcuff incident Dave Brown theguardian.com, Tuesday 30 July 2013 08.40 EDT 'Using handcuffs? Wear the key round your neck.' Photograph: Action Press / Rex Features It sounds barmy doesn't it, the London Fire Brigade telling people about men putting their genitals where they shouldn't? But the fact of the matter is people put body parts in strange places all the time, get stuck, and then call us out to release them. We're not just talking one or two; our crews have been called out to over 1,300 "unusual" incidents since 2010 – that's more than one a day. Granted, they're not all penis-related, but some are very silly: people with loo seats on their heads, a man with his arm trapped in a portable toilet, adults stuck in children's toys, someone with a test tube on his finger. And a lot of handcuffs. More than 25 people call us out every year to release them from these. I don't know whether it's the Fifty Shades effect or not, but I can tell you this, most are Fifty Shades of Red by the time we turn up in a big, red fire engine with our equipment to cut them out. We launched our campaign, #FiftyShadesofRed, in a bid to highlight some of the less conventional incidents we've attended over the past few years. We tweeted about the incidents from our account, @LondonFire, which certainly raised a few eyebrows, not least among some of my international firefighting colleagues who were surprised to see us putting it all out there, so to speak. This included nine instances of men with rings stuck in awkward places; nine people with their hands stuck in blenders and shredders; numerous people with their hands stuck in letterboxes; a child with a tambourine on its head … the list goes on. We've even been called out to rescue a man whose penis was stuck in a toaster. The mind boggles but the message is serious: use some common sense and remember we're an emergency service and should be treated as such. It all seems like a bit of fun, but actually when people call us out in these circumstances, they perhaps don't realise that our firefighters are then not available to attend genuine emergencies, such as fires. Yes, accidents do happen, and sometimes situations can't be avoided, but I think an awful lot of these incidents could be prevented if people applied some good, old-fashioned common sense. Using handcuffs? Wear the key round your neck. Potty training a toddler? Watch them like a hawk so they don't end up with it stuck on their head. Like wearing rings? Lovely, but if they're too small, don't force them on. As well as attending each call being time-consuming, it is also pretty expensive, with each costing just shy of £300 of public money. Yet despite many of these call-outs being a bit wacky, they can also be very stressful and painful to those trapped, and some are potentially life-threatening. People getting trapped in machinery, or falling on to fences and getting impaled spring to mind. I'd like to reassure everyone that if there is a genuine emergency, and someone's in need of our help, we will of course always attend. Short of asking everyone to live in sterile white boxes, I'll sign off by asking everyone to take care – for your own sake, and for the sake of the fire brigade, whose time is sometimes wasted by people doing daft things. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/30/penis-toaster-message-fire-brigade-fiftyshadesofred

...We say: At night an Arabian in my room, With his damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how, Inscribes a primitive astronomy Across the unscrawled fores the future casts And throws his stars around the floor. By day The wood-dove used to chant his hoobla-hoo And still the grossest iridescence of ocean Howls hoo and rises and howls hoo and falls. Life’s nonsense pierces us with strange relation. Wallace Stevens, 'Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction'

Then you did not make him spend enough on your engagement ring.

At FunHog Ranch in Vegas I saw a tipsy patron try to have sex with the bathroom.

hito, I think you may have finally found your ideal husband.

On visits to Baton Rouge it has struck me as having a pretty wide liberal streak, maybe partly to do with LSU and other college populations there. Hope the sheriff's office can look forward to some lawsuits over this.

This page on the National Park Service web site, part of an article on Manzanar and other relocation sites, gives a good summary of the military rationale, the political and economic pressures also in play, and the various court challenges and rulings: http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/manz/hrse.htm

Not to keep picking nits, but then I don't think this is one: Several internees were killed by sentries. Also, "put to death" may not strictly describe those who died of inadequate medical care in the camps, but dead is dead.

Well, Miss Otis regrets...

According to the U.S. National Archives, "Roosevelt's order affected 117,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were native-born citizens of the United States." http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation/ Wikipedia gives the figure as 62%, sourced to: Semiannual Report of the War Relocation Authority, for the period January 1 to June 30, 1946, not dated. Papers of Dillon S. Myer. Scanned image at trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 18, 2006. "The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: 1948 Chronology," Web page at www.trumanlibrary.org. Retrieved September 11, 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

Not bad! 1fi·nesse noun \fə-ˈnes\ Definition of FINESSE 1: refinement or delicacy of workmanship, structure, or texture 2: skillful handling of a situation : adroit maneuvering 3: the withholding of one's highest card or trump in the hope that a lower card will take the trick because the only opposing higher card is in the hand of an opponent who has already played Examples of FINESSE She handled the interview questions with finesse. <maneuvered his opponent into checkmate with his customary finesse> Origin of FINESSEMiddle English, from Middle French, from finFirst Known Use: 1528 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/finesse fi·nesse (f-ns) n. 1. Refinement and delicacy of performance, execution, or artisanship. 2. Skillful, subtle handling of a situation; tactful, diplomatic maneuvering. 3. A method of leading up to a tenace, as in bridge, in order to prevent an opponent from winning the trick with an intermediate card. 4. A stratagem in which one appears to decline an advantage. v. fi·nessed, fi·ness·ing, fi·ness·es v.tr. 1. To accomplish by the use of finesse. 2. To handle with a deceptive or evasive strategy. 3. To play (a card) as a finesse. v.intr. 1. To use finesse. 2. To make a finesse in cards. [French, fineness, subtlety, from fin, fine; see fine1.] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/finesse 1. finesse To talk someone out of their thingsNot stealing persuading someone out of their belongs, or to do you a favor "I finessed her out of her panties" that means you talked her into letting you smashFinesse Gang - A group that finesse folks out of their things 2. Finesse 1. Extreme delicacy or subtlety in action, performance, skill, discrimination, taste, etc.2. Skill in handling a difficult or highly sensitive situation; adroit and artful management 3. An extreme extremely beautiful young women with an artistic sense and a feisty personality. She has exceptional diplomatic finesse. 3. Finesse 1. Elegant and classy sense of style, for both men and women.2. Finesse, when swag isn't enough. 3. A way of life, where a person carries themselves with chivalry and respect. "Dude, that's swagg!! Nah it's finesse, im at another level."Ex. of Chivalry, Opening doors for women, treating them with respect. 4. Finesse Finesse is when you could roll a joint, a phillie, dutch, perfect. when it looks good and pulls slow= finessed. "I finessed this shit""Yo that L is finessed" "I give you props, its finesse" 5. finesse The act of acquiring some fine-ass. person a:"So what were the magic words that you used to get them to come with us?"person b: "All I said was 'hey ladies, how would you like to go out on my yacht?'" person a:"Damn, you finessed that shit." "But they know it's really a rowboat, right?" 6. Finesse Kevin Donovan Skank Finesse http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finesse

North Carolina Republicans slammed over 'suppressive' voting billState on collision course with Justice Department over bill experts say will damage rights of poor, elderly and minorities Paul Lewis in Washington guardian.co.uk, Saturday 27 July 2013 10.40 EDT Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are set to pass a wide-ranging repeal of voting-rights protections. Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images North Carolina is set to introduce what experts say is the most "repressive" attack on the rights of African American voters in decades, barely a month after the US supreme court struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act. The bill, which was passed by the state's Republican-dominated legislature this week, puts North Carolina on collision course with Eric Holder, the attorney general, who has announced plans to protect voter rights in Texas. Civil rights advocates and experts in election law are stunned by the scope of the new law. What began in April as a 14-page bill mainly focused on introducing more stringent ID rules, ostensibly to guard against voter fraud, snowballed over the last week as it passed through the North Carolina senate. By the time it was passed by both houses late on Thursday night, the bill had become a 57-page document containing a raft of measures opposed by voting rights organisations. If the bill is passed by the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, voters will be required to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls, and early voting will be shortened from 17 days to 10. Voting rights experts say studies reveal that both measures would disproportionately affect elderly and minority voters, and those likely to vote Democrat. The bill also ends same-day registration. Instead, voters in the state will be required to register, update their address or make any other needed changes at least 25 days ahead of any election. It also abolishes a popular high-school civics program that registers tens of thousands of students to vote each year, in advance of their 18th birthdays. And it ends straight-ticket voting, the practice of voting for every candidate fielded by a party has on an election ballot, a provision that has been in place in the state since 1925. Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California and one of the country's foremost experts on electoral law, said: It rolls into a single piece of legislation just about all of the tools we've seen legislatures use in recent years to try to make it harder for people to register and vote.Hasen described the bill as "probably the most suppressive voting measure passed in the United States in decades". 'A sad day' Voting rights activists stand outside the supreme court in Washington. Photograph: MCT /Landov / Barcroft Media The bill has only been made possible because of a controversial supreme court decision, handed down on 25 June, which effectively halted the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The law, one of the cornerstones of civil rights era, was designed to prevent racial discrimination against voters in North Carolina, Texas and other (mostly southern) States. On Thursday, in an effort to get round the supreme court ruling, Holder announced his department would be asking a federal court in San Antonio to require the state of Texas to obtain advance approval before putting future certain election decisions in place. Holder also promised to take "aggressive action against any jurisdiction that attempts to hinder free and fair access to the franchise". It now seems likely that North Carolina will be next on his list of targets. William Yeomans, a law professor in Washington and a former chief of staff in the Justice Department, said Texas and North Carolina may just be the start of a series of legal battles over voter rights in states across the country. Voter ID laws in Alabama and Mississippi could be possible future targets. Yeomans said the North Carolina legislation represented "a sad day" for democracy in the US. It is clearly designed to suppress the vote. It is clearly designed to reshape the electorate to suite the needs of the Republican party. One of the ways they are going to do that is by disenfranchising minority voters.He added: "It was sadly predictable that this sort of thing was going to happen once the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act." Before last month's supreme court ruling, North Carolina would have been required to seek permission from a federal court or the Justice Department before enacting its rules changes. The requirement, known as "preclearance", was designed to ensure voting changes in certain jurisdictions were not discriminatory. After the supreme court's ruling, state legislators can alter their voting rules without federal interference – although they are still open to challenge in the courts. Unless Governor McCrory objects to the rule changes passed this week, they will come into effect in just over a month's time. Sonia Gill, associate counsel at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, described the bill as the "most repressive" legislation she had recently come across. "It throws everything that might damage voter rights in one large package of changes that is going to be devastating for voters in North Carolina," she said. In addition to the voting rights changes, the North Carolina bill weakens transparency regulations designed to reveal who is underwriting campaign ads. Political parties will be enabled to rake in unlimited corporate donations. The cap on individual campaign donations in North Carolina will rise from $4,000 to $5,000. 'We understand there will be lawsuits' Protests against decisions made by North Carolina lawmakers can be read on signs made by members of a grassroots movement fighting budget cuts and attacks on democracy. Photograph: Dj Werner/ DJ Werner/Demotix/Corbis Defending the changes, Republicans in the state claimed the changes will restore faith in elections and prevent voter fraud, which they claim is endemic and undetected. However, records show only a handful of documented cases of in-person voter fraud prosecuted in the state over the last decade, out of 30 million ballots cast. "We understand there will be lawsuits," said the state senate leader, Phil Berger. It's our belief the laws we are passing are consistent with constitutional requirements and they will be upheld.Nonpartisan voting rights groups argue that the true goal is suppressing voter turnout among the young, the old, the poor and minorities. They point out that the changes will almost certainly benefit the Republicans legislators who are implementing them. Although the new voting rules are likely to be challenged, the recent supreme court ruling deprives civil rights attorneys of one of the key instruments used to challenge electoral rules that are perceived to be discriminatory. In the Texas case, which relates to redistricting, the Justice Department is filing what is known as a statement of interest, in support of the private groups that have filed suit. The move rests on a case last year in Texas, in which evidence was presented of "intentional" discrimination in the way electoral districts were drawn-up. However the clause that allows the department to intervene in Texas cannot currently be applied in North Carolina. If the department chooses to challenge North Carolina's legislation, it will need to find another section of the Voting Rights Act that survived the supreme court ruling – or another legal statute altogether. Either way, well-placed observers say that Holder's department is likely to find a way to challenge North Carolina. "I think they are likely to get involved in this one," said Richard Hasen, whose latest book examines "voting wars" across the US since 2000. "It is pretty clear that they are going for broke here. They are going to go after these states as aggressively as they can." In his speech this week, Holder sounded defiant. He said he would not be discouraged by the supreme court decision on the Voting Rights Act and promised to "fully utilise the law's remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected". After announcing legal action against Texas, Holder also made a point of criticising an attempted photo ID law in South Carolina. He also said that while the action in Texas was the first step by the department since the supreme court decision, "it will not be our last". Matthew Miller, a Justice Department press spokesman until 2011 who remains close to Holder, said North Carolina's measure would "almost certainly" elicit a legal challenge from the department. "It is very hard to look at this legislation and see it as anything other than an attempt to stop people from voting," he said."They can cloak it in as much of the anti-fraud language they want but it is just a naked power grab. "If you do an analysis of the Texas statute and find it is discriminatory, it is hard to see how you would not reach the same conclusion with this statute in North Carolina." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/27/north-carolina-republicans-voting-rights-bill

Wow. Old Spice... Canoe...

Must take a lot of them...

Strange. I'm not seeing what you are. On my iPhone 4S/Safari the mobile site still displays the same as always before -- categories with new posts in bold, etc. Is there any way for the "Mark all forums read" or whatever it's called button to get stuck "on"?