Probably the most dynamic and important year in my lifetime on CNN. What a year it was. If you didn't live it, you missed a real experience.
"1968" on CNN
- Thread starter joelbc1
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That explains a lot Trad. Your value sysrtem is damn nead 180 of mine.
I grew with VN and Watergate....you grew up with Reagan and Granada.
I was politically aware when Nixon resigned. I hung a FORD campaign sign outside my house in 1976.
You were probably one of the douchebags waving Viet Cong flags and attacking the police.
No offense.
A lot of them were practicing Catholics, Brian. I forgave them then, too. As Christ has asked me to do......mine is to forgive, not judge.
I just finished watching this last night. I was 8 at the time and aware of the turbulence, but didn't understand all of it. I was surprised how many things that happened then are in some ways similar to our current situation. I really enjoyed the series.
I watched it with my 17 year old daughter the other night. She couldn't fathom the police violence at the Chicago Democratic convention.
I was 12 at the time and remember quite a bit of it. Still get teary eyed thinking of the MLK and RFK assassinations and what might have been.
Those were some very drastic times.
I was 12 at the time and remember quite a bit of it. Still get teary eyed thinking of the MLK and RFK assassinations and what might have been.
Those were some very drastic times.
I was eleven. I've mentioned this before, I was a touch too young to completely comprehend everything; but you could certainly "feel" something was going on. By time the Kent State Massacre came around I was old enough to understand better, and certainly old enough to start thinking about the draft.
This, then, led up to the cocaine-infused psychotic party that was the 70's. I was in my mid-20's before the country started to feel normal.
This, then, led up to the cocaine-infused psychotic party that was the 70's. I was in my mid-20's before the country started to feel normal.
Agree about the significance. Great music, and the sexual revolution was in pretty good shape; other than that, the year really, REALLY sucked. I was 22.
The murders of Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy were the low points of 1968.
The manned space orbit of the moon was the
highlight of 1968.
The underlying tension in the United States
over the Viet Nam War caused President
Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from the 1968
Presidential election. This unpopular war was
a major source of unrest in our nation
Kennedy were the low points of 1968.
The manned space orbit of the moon was the
highlight of 1968.
The underlying tension in the United States
over the Viet Nam War caused President
Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from the 1968
Presidential election. This unpopular war was
a major source of unrest in our nation
Unfortunately I tuned in late and missed the King assassination. I don't know how they presented it.
Gotta go with Lone on this one. It was a tumultuous year to say the least. Assassinations, war, race riots, some douchebags were born (honestly just kidding).
The above caused a lot of anger, even hatred, right here in the U.S. It wasn't a fun year. Very interesting from a historical perspective though.
I was also born in 1968. I wonder how my mother felt being pregnant and all of this happening around her. I should ask her sometime.
Your Mom and others who brought children into the world in 1968 might remember the movie "Rosemary's Baby." It was a hit in 1968.
Still a very good horror movie that stands the test of time.
If she was anything like mine, she never really paid much attention to the current events. She was too preoccupied with carrying her first born child to care about who was being killed in Vietnam.
was 17 best time of my life. sex drugs and rock and roll best music era ever and best concerts. Made me understand how corrupt government is.
just like now oppress the poor and minorities.
just like now oppress the poor and minorities.
Stop the silliness. Who has a better chance of getting a sit-down with their Congressman? A HROT Poster? Or a K Street lobbyist rocking a $10K suit tailored in Hong Kong?
In 1996, my family and I visited DC. I asked then Rep. Ganske for a sit down with him and got 30 minutes with him. No donation before or after, no request during. I wanted my young kids to see that there really is someone representing them, and that they are accessible.
See, your post is what happens when you self-disempower.
I was only five, but I have many searing memories. I remember MLK being killed. I remember watching the train taking RFK’s body across the country. I remember the presidential conventions and Nixon being elected. I remember watching a lot of crazy stuff on the Smothers Brothers’ TV show. And more. It was a surreal year.
Wouldn't you agree that is the exception and not the norm? After all, what does a Crook/ excuse me, a Congressman want more than anything? Another term. What does it take to win another term? Money. Who gives more? You or the lobbyist?
Yes. It is the exception that a common man would reach out to a rep. Which is why lobbyists have so much power. Because the masses don't want it.
She was probably too high to do a lot of thinking. This was, after all, 1968.
That was a joke. No offense.
You should ask her. And share the answer here. I'll bet it won't top the way my parents felt on their wedding night, though: They were married Dec. 7, 1941.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Damn, and now his son thinks Sirhan Sirhan didn't act alone.
I was 11. We watched the war every night on tv. MLK and RFK were heroes to my mom (don't even ask). I remember her crying when they announced King's assassination and the absolute shock when Bobby was killed. My older brother was 20 and took me to an anti-war protest in Raleigh but that might have been in '69.
Then, in December '69, the whole family sat on the couch and watched them pull those damn blue capsules to determine draft status. Fortunately, my brother was in the 300's - I suspect he still remembers the exact number. My brother-in-law got 27...went out the next day and joined the Coast Guard. My older sister's (ditto) first boyfriend went to Vietnam. Came back...graduated from Wake Forest...got a great job...put a gun in his mouth and ate a bullet. Those injured in VN who later died of their injuries, even if it's decades later, can have their names added to The Wall...I think Richard's name should be there, too.
Then, in December '69, the whole family sat on the couch and watched them pull those damn blue capsules to determine draft status. Fortunately, my brother was in the 300's - I suspect he still remembers the exact number. My brother-in-law got 27...went out the next day and joined the Coast Guard. My older sister's (ditto) first boyfriend went to Vietnam. Came back...graduated from Wake Forest...got a great job...put a gun in his mouth and ate a bullet. Those injured in VN who later died of their injuries, even if it's decades later, can have their names added to The Wall...I think Richard's name should be there, too.
Power to the people.
The Democrat Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009 right after America’s orgy of bankster crimes, which the Republican President George W. Bush had tolerated, and which had brought down the global economy. This Democratic President didn’t prosecute the banksters; he protected them from prosecution. Although he promised the public that he would prosecute the banksters, he told the banksters privately that he would “protect” them, and he even went so far as to tell them, in private, that the public who wanted them to be investigated, and wanted them to be maybe even prosecuted, for what they had done, were comparable to the KKK in the 1920s, who, with pitchforks, had pursued Blacks, and then lynched them. The public in a supposed democracy were here being analogized, by this Democratic U.S. President, to being a racist, bigoted, mob. The banksters were their supposed victims. Obama told the banksters, in private, as reported in Ron Suskind’s 2011 Confidence Men:
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.
But then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,” he said. “And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.” According to one of the participants, he then said, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.”
No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.
After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.
Obama said “Everyone has to make sacrifices,” but he was talking to people who simply refused to be included in that “everyone.” As the mega-crooks who had been profiting from the crimes that had brought about the global economic collapse, those “sacrifices” should have been life-imprisonments. Only by means of such accountability, would their successors not try anything of the sort that these banksters had done. But such was not to be the case.
Obama kept his word to them. The banksters got off scot-free, and kept their personal hundreds of millions of dollars ‘earned’.
Examples:
On 21 September 2013 in The New York Times, William D. Cohan, formerly of Wall Street but now an independent investigative journalist, headlined “Was This Whistle-Blower Muzzled?” and he described how Richard M. Bowen III, who had testified to the FCIC, was muzzled by them. Bowen testified because he claimed that he had been fired by Citigroup after allegedly having told Robert Rubin (who made $142 million there) that the bum mortgages they were selling to the public were rigged and would bomb.
On 14 January 2014, Cohan headlined at Bloomberg News, “Prosecutors Balk, Bankers Walk”, and he summed up the outcomes for the people who had planned and orchestrated these thefts by fraud:
“Jimmy Cayne, the former chief executive officer of Bear Stearns & Co., continues to enjoy playing bridge and golf, his $400 million-plus fortune, his sprawling mansion in Elberon, New Jersey, and his duplex at the Plaza Hotel.”
“Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., … is closer to $520 million, according to people who prepared and studied Lehman’s public filings.”
“When Stan O’Neal resigned from Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2007, less than a year before it almost went bankrupt, he was given a parting gift of $161.5 million and a board seat — which he still holds — at Alcoa Inc.”
“Angelo Mozilo, the former Countrywide Financial Corp. CEO, … walked off center stage with a net worth of about $600 million.”
Those are just a few.
Of course, none of them was prosecuted, even though they all masterminded their respective organization’s role in the mega-crime, and benefited enormously from doing that.
Things have been a bit worse for a few of their employees, however:
“The lone civil case that occasioned a victory lap for the Securities and Exchange Commission was against Fabrice Tourre, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president who was guilty of nothing more than following orders as a foot soldier in the Wall Street army. Tourre is currently appealing his 2013 conviction in this ridiculous case; I hope he wins.”
It was for reasons like these that, on 12 November 2013, Reuters headlined “Judge Criticizes Lack of Prosecution Against Wall Street Executives for Fraud”, and reported that:
“The federal judge who oversaw the recent civil fraud trial against Bank of America Corp criticized the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday for failing to prosecute high-level executives over the financial crisis. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan said while companies have been prosecuted for causing the 2007-2009 financial meltdown, Wall Street executives have escaped justice. ‘The failure of the government to bring to justice those responsible for such a massive fraud speaks greatly to weaknesses in our prosecutorial system that need to be addressed,’ Rakoff said.”
So: though Obama publicly promised prosecution of banksters, he privately delivered protection of banksters — those people thus being the same ones who still occupy top positions of honor and authority, instead of shame and imprisonment, in American society. His promises to the public were lies, but his promises that were made secretly to these top agents of the aristocrats were his actual commitments. That’s how an aristocracy operates. Aristocrats (and their direct agents) are above the law. This is how an aristocracy is, in fact, most implicitly defined: people who are not, in fact, above (and making) the law, are subjects, in the traditional feudal — but now in the fascist — social order. Today’s aristocrats are the billionaires, plus some of the centi-millionaires. The top executives of mega-banks are crucial agents of the aristocracy; and, for that reason, can’t be prosecuted (since to prosecute them would make the principals — the aristocrats themselves — likewise vulnerable).
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