Podcasts about truman administration

Can we find an honest president, or an honest presidential administration? By what standards do we identify “corruption” when it comes to the White House? Dr. John Robert Greene, author of “Little Helpers: Harry Vaughan, His Cronies, and Corruption in the Truman Administration,” joins Jeff to discuss the long and sordid history of presidential scandals […]

Can we find an honest president, or an honest presidential administration? By what standards do we identify "corruption" when it comes to the White House? Dr. John Robert Greene, author of "Little Helpers: Harry Vaughan, His Cronies, and Corruption in the Truman Administration," joins Jeff to discuss the long and sordid history of presidential scandals and how Americans' views on presidential behavior have changed over time. Find Prof. Greene's book here: https://a.co/d/j7kG6ao #president #whitehouse #scandal Host: Jeff Sikkenga Producer: Jeremy Gypton Subscribe: https://linktr.ee/theamericanidea

Eric and Eliot host James Graham Wilson, an historian in the Department of State's Historian's Office to discuss his new book America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security From Roosevelt to Reagan. They discuss Nitze's background as an America First supporter between the wars, his anti-Semitism and his family's connection to the Black Tom sabotage incident during World War I. They talk about his pioneering work as a national security professional on the Strategic bombing survey during and after World War II as well as his role in drafting NSC 68 during the Truman Administration, his vexed personal relations with George Kennan (who he succeeded as Director of Policy Planning at State), Henry Kissinger, and Robert McNamara. His relentless focus on the strategic nuclear balance and the character traits that perhaps kept him from ever becoming the Cabinet Officer he longed to become while nonetheless serving and influencing national security policy for more than 40 years. They close noting that his concerns about nuclear self-deterrence seem eerily relevant in today's circumstances of great power competition. https://a.co/d/5thvl34 Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

PREVIEW: #RETALIATION: A-BOMB:  Excerpt from a two-hour conversation with author Evan Thomas of the Interim Committee meeting in his new work, ROAD TO SURRENDER, when the decision was reached in the Truman Administration to use the untested atomic bomb on Japanese cities, factories, people.  The decision is neither well informed nor well argued.  The decision is retaliation for the Imperial Japanese Empire's attack in 1941 and after.  The decision is made with the understading that this new weapon could lead to worldwide risk of conflagration, which it did.   More later tonight. 1944 Imperial Japanese Navy Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II by  Evan Thomas  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Road-Surrender-Three-Countdown-World/dp/0399589252

PREVIEW: #FBI: #CHAPLIN: An excerpt from a two hour conversation with biiographer Scott Eyman re his new work, CHARLIE CHAPLIN VS AMERICA --a tribute to a genius who survived extreme London poverty and abandonment to come to America to dominate 20th Century Hollywood -- and was persecuted by the FBI and the Truman Administration in a fever of Red paranoia.  Much more later today. 1940 Hollywood

#Hiroshima: #Nagasaki: What did Oppenheimer and the Truman Administration know of radiation? Charles Pellegrino, author, To Hell and Back: Last Train from Hiroshima https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Back-Hiroshima-Pacific-Perspectives-ebook/dp/B013FWE5XW/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=7CKgU&content-id=amzn1.sym.579192ca-1482-4409-abe7-9e14f17ac827&pf_rd_p=579192ca-1482-4409-abe7-9e14f17ac827&pf_rd_r=143-0258134-6610437&pd_rd_wg=eYrla&pd_rd_r=fb694f30-5c5e-46f2-8ae4-45093a45334a&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk Photo:  1945 Tokyo No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow

Melvyn Leffler is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Virginia and one of the world's leading scholars of U.S. foreign relations. His many award-winning books include For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, The Soviet Union, and the Cold War and A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. His most recent book is Confronting Saddam Hussein, about the decisions that led America to war in Iraq in 2003.

Dr. Melvyn P. Leffler is the Edward Stettinius Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia. He is one of the leading historians of U.S. foreign policy. Professor Leffler is the author of numerous prize-winning books, including: A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War; For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War; Safeguarding Democratic Captialism; and, most recently, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq.

When I was growing up, people didn't fret much about food safety. Trichinosis from undercooked pork was about all I heard about. But today people hear about much more: norovirus, salmonella, campylobacter, staphylococcus, listeria, and there's much more. So what in the world is happening? Our guest, Timothy Lytton, distinguished university professor and professor of law at Georgia State University knows an awful lot about this. He's the author of a seminal book entitled "Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Struggle for Food Safety." Interview Summary When your book came out, I was so excited to see it, because there was so much talk out there in the general world about food safety, but to have somebody with a kind of your legal background take this on and put it all into a single volume, I thought was extremely helpful. So let me begin with a basic question. So how did you get interested in food safety and why do a book on it? You know, our political world is largely characterized by an ongoing debate about people who favor government regulation against people who favor letting free markets run their own course. I found this debate somewhat unsatisfying. I'm really interested in a lot of ways that government activities and market activities interact. In fact, in most contexts we have not really two alternatives, one between government regulation and the other free markets. But instead, we have a complex interaction between public and private efforts to try and govern health and safety problems. This really is characteristic of what I would call complex regulatory systems. They involve at least kind of what you might think of as three legs of a stool. On the one hand, you have government regulation, you have private governance, supply chain management, and other things that companies do to protect health and safety. You have liability, lawsuits and liability insurance. These three legs of the stool really are interactive and they together comprise what I would call a complex regulatory system. And food safety's really a great example of this and I think it was for me an important way to try and illustrate to people that our regulatory world is a lot more complex than the choice between government regulation and free markets.   There are a lot of places where business and government interests are at odds and government needs to keep a watchdog eye on business and make sure that they behave in ways that are consistent with the public good. You would think that government and business interests would align, that it's not in a business' interest have an unsafe food product that goes out there because all kinds of bad publicity and litigation and things like that can happen. So is it not true that there's alignment of goals?   I think there's alignment of goals. I think it's also fair to say that sometimes there's a difference of opinion as to just how aggressive or ambitious food safety regulation ought to be. On the one hand, industry tends to be a little bit more cautious. They may be worried about costs for food safety advances that may be unproven and government may be very nervous about making sure that consumers are properly protected they may be a bit more aggressive. I think one thing that is important to keep in mind is that even though there are those tensions, there's a very powerful interdependence between the efforts of government regulators to try and advance food safety and the efforts of private industry supply chain managers. In fact, a lot of the standards that grow out of the system are standards that have come out of collaboration between them. So for example, standards for agricultural water quality that help reduce the microbial contamination of water that is used to irrigate crops. Those originated in technical committees that were put together by industry associations, but those technical committees included members who came from government regulatory agencies. By the same token, when government came around trying to develop guidance and regulations to govern agricultural water quality, they called on industry in the notice and comment period. So the same group of experts have been really working over the course of the last two and a half decades on water quality standards. They've been doing it in different institutional venues, sometimes in industry technical committees and sometimes in the government's notice and comment process and sometimes in informal ways at conferences where they also meet and merge with academics. But, there's an enormous amount of collaboration that comes out of this ongoing conversation that is occurring in these different institutional venues.   Thanks for that background. I'd like to ask you about the system's approach to food safety that you proposed. But before we do that I'd like to ask kind of a broader question about where we stand with food safety in the US. So the industry is quick to claim that US has the safest food supply in the world. Is that really true? And how big of a problem is food safety in America?   You know, it really depends on how you measure it. The CDC estimates that each year from foodborne illness there are 3000 deaths, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 48 million cases of acute gastroenteritis. That really means serious enough illness to include diarrhea or vomiting or nausea that would be strong enough to keep a person out of work for a day or away from school. Now when you think about it in terms of deaths, that is 3,000 people a year who die from foodborne illness or foodborne-related illness. That's much less than something like tobacco which is close to half a million, or obesity which is closer to quarter million, or auto accidents which is about 34,000. In that context, the number of deaths from foodborne illness is relatively low as public health problems go. On the other hand, if you think about the 48 million episodes of acute gastroenteritis each year, people being sick enough to really have to knock off a day of work and in some cases getting much sicker than that, that's an enormous number. That is one out of six Americans every year. That is far more than the number of Americans who are injured in falls, car accidents, cutting, cycling, poisoning, and fire burn injuries all put together. It is orders of magnitude larger than those other things. So in that sense foodborne illness is a significant public health problem. And since we dedicate resources to things like falls in the home or car accident injuries, we probably should also be paying attention to food safety.   As you think about trends and look at the drivers of food safety, the way farming is done in the US, the way food is transported and those sort of issues, are you expecting that the challenges will become even more serious as time goes on, or are these being reined in?   I think that things are moving in two different directions one of which is difficult for food safety and one of which is advantageous. On the difficult side: the industrialization of food; the mass production; the large and growing global markets; and the increasingly complex supply chains where we're getting a lot of our produce from around the world This makes the problem much more difficult because there is just a farther reach that regulations would have to get to in order to help protect consumers from the risk of contamination. Also the ability to track and trace back the root causes of contamination just becomes more difficult as the food system becomes increasingly global. On the other hand, there are a number of important advances in technology. In particular, advances in technology that relate to surveillance and tracing. The ability to actually isolate and create a DNA fingerprint for different pathogens that are harvested from people who are sick or are harvested from investigations where contamination might occur, and that allow public health authorities to actually discover and spot outbreaks as they occur more frequently. And also increasing sophistication in tracing them back to their root causes. That growing technology, that ability to spot and trace back the source of foodborne illness, I think, is probably something that is getting better and better over time.   That's good news to hear and fascinating description of this. So you talk about a system's approach to food safety. What do you mean by that?   When we think about food safety, what we want to do is realize that instead of just pushing on one of these legs of the stool - more government regulation or for less government regulation, greater industry vigilance or less industry vigilance, greater liability or increasing liability insurance for growers or other food producers - we need to think about how these things are interrelated. We need to think about how we can help them complement each other. So for example, it may be the case that what we want to do is relieve the government of its burden, to some degree, of inspection because the government just doesn't have their inspection resources, it needs to cover all of the food industry and it struggles to do so. On the other hand, retailers who sell the food actually have a global and robust system of third party audits and that is driven by economic incentives and it has a much farther reach than government. We might find ways to rely more on that and government can then shift its resources away from things like inspection, which is really doesn't have the resources to do comprehensively and spend more of its money on surveillance of foodborne illness, so we can spot outbreaks when they occur, as well as tracing investigations to figure out what are the root causes of those outbreaks. That requires a governmental infrastructure at the federal, state, and local level and on some levels increasingly at the global level, that really only government can put together and overlook and oversee and develop. And so these are ways in which we can think in a system's approach, that instead of just looking for government to do everything or industry to do everything we can sort of divide the different types of tasks that are required, to create a robust food safety system and look at the ways in which these different branches of the system can complement each other.   Let's look beyond our own borders and talk about how other countries address these issues. How does the US measure up to what other countries are doing?   We don't really know the answer to that question, we don't really know how well the US is actually doing. It's extremely difficult to figure out whether or not any particular regulation or intervention works. In fact, that's really the story of a lot of different regulatory areas, food is not different in this way. We spend an enormous amount of money on developing and implementing regulations, but very little money in trying to figure out how effective they have been or whether they've been efficient or whether there are better ways to do them. Those questions are very difficult to answer and they are enormously expensive. As a result, we don't really know how well the US food safety system is doing. That becomes a similar problem when we look at places like Germany or England or Japan to figure out, well, how well are they doing? It's pretty hard to measure that as well. So there's not even something to compare here. I think a lot of people have general impressions about whether food is safer in one country or another and this will depend on the sector. Food safety in meat is different than fluid milk and it's different than fresh produce or poultry. I think it's a difficult question to answer and I think you hear a lot of opinions about this, but most of those opinions are not really, I don't think, grounded very clearly in the kinds of careful measures we would need to have in order to have good reliable answer to that question.   I'd like to underscore something you just said that it's hard to know whether the food safety regulations that we have actually work. So why is that the case and what do you think are some of the greatest challenges facing the food safety system today?   It's just a very curious thing. When I was doing my research, I would ask people how well is your system working and they couldn't tell me. If you ask someone in industry, we put in a million dollars into marketing, what do we get for it? They will be able to come back to you in a year and tell you for the million dollars you put into marketing, in the budget, we got X number of sales. We can do the same thing with quality control. We give you a million dollars, what did we get for it? A year later they'll come back and say, "Well we had X number of fewer defective products." But when you ask a company executive we give you a million dollars for food safety last year, what do we get for it? They can't really tell you. They give you some vague story about how they have improved the culture around food safety and institution. The same is true with government officials. When I ask people at the USDA, you know how well are your food safety inspections going? Have they improved the quality of American food safety? They really couldn't even begin to answer that question. One of the top officials at USDA told me, "Gee, I'd really love to know the answer to that question." I think there are a couple reasons why. One is it's very hard to measure how much illness there is, of the estimates of 48 million episodes, that's really, you know, a projection based on statistics. Of those 48 million episodes only 800 involve identified outbreaks. So, we only have 800 that we actually are counting. Of those, there are only about 300 identifiable food vehicles and of those, there are only about three to four cases where we can trace back to the root causes. So, we don't even know where the foodborne illness is coming from, even if we have a rough estimate of how much there is. It's also hard to know what caused the illness because we don't have root cause analysis or it's very rare. We don't know whether or not a particular intervention fell short or really made the difference. It's very difficult to figure out what the different levels of illness connected with a particular food are. We can make a food safety change but we don't have any way to measure on the public health side whether or not illness has been reduced as a result of that. When illness rates go up or down, we don't really have a way of tracing that back to where the failure's occurring in the system. We can't connect particular interventions to improve food safety with particular public health outcomes in terms of reducing illness.   You know, it's amazing how complicated this is, because when you're a consumer and you go to the store, you go to a restaurant and you buy something, you just assume it's going to be safe. And there are a whole bunch of people that are paying attention to that and making sure that that is so, but it's way more complicated than that. So interesting to hear you lay that out. So let's talk about what you think effective reforms would be. I'd like to ask about one thing in particular, in this context, where some people have called for reorganizing federal food safety regulation under a single federal agency which kind of makes sense instinctually, wouldn't it make sense instead of having destroyed the things going on, that all take place under one umbrella? I know you have some reservations about that. Could you explain?   Sure, I'll just start with this idea of a single food safety agency. This is a proposal that has been put forward in every single presidential administration, Democratic and Republicans, since the Truman Administration. It's basically the idea that if we can rearrange the bureaucratic structure of food safety, we can reap efficiencies and do a better job. I think there are a number of reasons to be skeptical of this particular approach to fixing the food safety system. First of all, there's very widespread lack of support from Congressional oversight committees. Congressional oversight committees and industry are basically connected with particular agencies. There are about 15 federal agencies currently that deal with food safety and each one has its own oversight committee in Congress. If you were to consolidate that, you would reduce the power of each of those congressional representatives to actually serve the interests of their constituents. It would make it harder for industry to sort of exercise influence in government. As a result, there's really not much support in Congress for this sort of consolidation. Second, it would require a massive and complex statutory overhaul. The food safety laws of this country go back to the late 19th century. They're involved in many difficult and complex and large statutory laws and they all are put together in a complex system. And I can't imagine the Congress getting involved in that level or scale of a statutory overhaul what it would take to consolidate this all in one agency. Furthermore, the agencies have different expertise and culture. So USDA is populated largely by people who do animal veterinary science and they look at beef production and poultry production. FDA's populated by microbiologists and they look at a lot of things related to water quality and safety and food production. These are just different technical skills and so reorganization would be very difficult. And finally, I would say that there's no evidence from other countries that have done this and a number of countries have done this, that they have reaped any public health benefits from this. We do know it would cost an enormous amount of money at the front end, but we don't have any indication that it would actually save us any money or be more effective at the back end. I think we would do a better job, rather than consolidating and rearranging the bureaucracy, to do a better job of knitting it together and creating cooperative task forces and more interaction between agencies. There's actually a lot of this already. There are joint task courses that have membership from USDA and FDA and the CDC and the other agencies involved. And I think that that growing coordination is probably a better approach to the food safety system than trying to consolidate. When we move away from that, I think there are probably three things I would focus on in terms of advances that would be good reforms for us. The first is to focus more government investment on outbreak investigation, to put more money into the CDC's surveillance systems for foodborne illness and the inter-agency cooperation that goes into investigating outbreaks. We need more information in order to know whether what we're doing is working and one way to generate that is better surveillance at the public health side and better investigation. Second thing I would do is I would rely more on private resources for oversight of that system. That is to rely more on private auditors and on liability insurance and the liability system to try and put pressure in order to have food producers more compliant with food safety regulations as opposed to spending a lot of government money on what's really become quite an inadequate inspection system. And the last thing I would stress is that we want to look for opportunities for feedback and learning. We want to be more experimental in the way that we think about food safety, try something out and then build into that a way to evaluate whether we think it works and whether or not we think it's an efficient way to go about advancing food safety in that way. Only if we generate more information, we'll be able to do things that we have greater confidence are safeguarding consumers as opposed to what we're doing now, which is largely just shooting in the dark.   Those things make a great deal of sense. So let me close by asking you kind of a broad summary question. You're really on top of this, of course, as you see trends like in public opinion on these issues, on actions that are being taken by the administrative and legislative branches of government, what industry is doing, is there a reason to be hopeful that things are moving in a good direction?   I think there are two sources of hope at least. One is that we are seeing steady technological advances in the ability to fingerprint DNA of foodborne pathogens. Those technological advances are sort of moving along and as they move along, they are spinning off better ways to spot foodborne illness outbreaks when they occur, more effective and efficient ways to investigate the root causes of it. And they are also creating new ways of thinking about how we can intervene in food production to try and create opportunities to reduce microbial contamination after it occurs or before it occurs. So technological events I think is a great source of hope. There are really a lot of very smart minds working very hard in a number of fields to try and improve food safety. The second thing I think that's a source of hope is the maturation of liability insurance. This is not something that most people think about very much. But when you think about big public health problems of the last century - things like urban fires in the 19th century and things like car accidents in the 20th century - liability insurance became a major driver for safety reforms in those two areas. Liability insurers basically collect premiums to ensure when those accidents happen and then they try and figure out ways not to have to pay out when the accidents happen on the insurance policies. So they get into the safety business. Many of our safety features associated, for example, with fire safety measures in our houses, in public buildings, as well as the type of things that our cars have in terms of safety equipment are driven by the liability industry trying to look for ways to reduce risks so that they cannot have to pay out when there are accidents. I think those types of markets are emerging in food safety. Increasingly we see food safety liability insurers getting into the business of trying to help companies figure out how to comply with the state-of-the-art in food safety.   Bio   Timothy D. Lytton is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law and currently serves as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Georgia State University College of Law. He teaches courses in torts, administrative law, and legislation. His research focuses on tort litigation and the regulation of health and safety. Lytton is the author of several books, including Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Struggle for Food Safety (University of Chicago Press 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 ABA Silver Gavel Award, Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food (Harvard University Press 2013), Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse (Harvard University Press 2008), and the editor of Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts (University of Michigan Press 2005). Lytton has B.A. and J.D. degrees from Yale University. He is licensed to practice law in New York, Ohio, and Georgia, and in 2018 was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

After Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949 Republicans and Democrats immediately began pointing a finger at one another. The debate that ensued is known as the "Loss of China", with Republicans like Senator Joe McCarthy and later General Douglas MacArthur blaming the Truman Administration for losing China to the Communists, but Democrats like Dean Acheson and Truman blamed it on the incompetence of Chaing Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang. Still others, like Chinese scholars more recently, claim that America never lost China because it never had it in the first place, and that the Chinese people wanted communism. This week we break down this debate and examine it from its many sides. How could the United States prevented the Chinese Communist Party from winning the Chinese Civil War? Had communist spies infiltrated the US government and tipped the balance in Mao Zedong's favor? What role did the Soviet Union play? Was Senator Joseph McCarthy right in claiming that insidious forces were at work? Listen to this episode and find out. Instagram: @loins_of_history Facebook: @loinsofhistory Twitter: @JLoinsofHistory @loinsofhistory Our opinions are our own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policy of our employers. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theloinsofhistory/support

Donald, Christian, and Connor return to the subject of Stalin and Stalinism. Picking up from the Great Purge, the episode covers the Second World War through the death of Stalin, or the High Stalinist period. Among other things they take up the questions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Gulag system, and the rise of technocracy in the postwar years. The episode ends by exploring the lessons to be learned from studying Stalin and Soviet history, and what a lot of the Left gets wrong in their orientation toward the past. References: M. J. Carley - 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II S. Davies, J. Harris - Stalin's World: Dictating the Soviet Order M. Djilas - Conversations with Stalin J. E. Duskin - Stalinist Reconstruction and the Confirmation of the New Elite, 1945-1953 D. Filtzer - Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labor and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II B. Kagarlitsky - The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present N. Khrushchev - Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Volume 2 M. P. Leffler- A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War M. Lewin - The Soviet Century N. Naimark - Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty R. C. Raack - Stalin's Drive to the West: 1938-1945 The Origins of the Cold War G. Roberts - Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold 1939-1953 A. Weiner - Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution

Darkness Radio presents: Intersections: Alien Abduction. Past life Regression & Hypnotherapy with Hypnotherapist and Author, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke! Every year, thousands of reports pour into MUFON of UAP being cited all over the US and the world. But, what is quietly reported is the actual contact with alien life and humans actually being abducted by said aliens. Licensed Hypnotherapist Lesley Mitchell-Clarke joins the show to talk about abductees experiences, what the process of hypnotherapy is like, what these beings want from us, and if the trauma of these experiences ever truly heals...  Get Lesley Mitchell-Clarke's book, "Intersections" here: https://amzn.to/3P2dedw Darkness Radio has partnered with the UFO Disclosure Symposium in late May! Be part of this newsworthy conference and get your tickets here: https://ufodisclosuresymposium.com/?ref=tim%40darknessradio.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Darkness Radio presents: Intersections: Alien Abduction. Past life Regression & Hypnotherapy with Hypnotherapist and Author, Lesley Mitchell-Clarke! Every year, thousands of reports pour into MUFON of UAP being cited all over the US and the world. But, what is quietly reported is the actual contact with alien life and humans actually being abducted by said aliens. Licensed Hypnotherapist Lesley Mitchell-Clarke joins the show to talk about abductees experiences, what the process of hypnotherapy is like, what these beings want from us, and if the trauma of these experiences ever truly heals...  Get Lesley Mitchell-Clarke's book, "Intersections" here: https://amzn.to/3P2dedw Darkness Radio has partnered with the UFO Disclosure Symposium in late May! Be part of this newsworthy conference and get your tickets here: https://ufodisclosuresymposium.com/?ref=tim%40darknessradio.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Benn Steil is a senior fellow and director of international economics, as well as the official historian in residence, at the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book, The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War, was named the winner of the New-York Historical Society's Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize, awarded each year to the best work in the field of American history or biography. Before his death, FDR developed four pillars of a post-WWII foreign policy: peaceably dismantle the British Empire; build permanent peace between the United States and the Soviet Union; profitably dismember and deindustrialize Germany, and integrate the global economy with short-term IMF loans. This represented the hope for a one-world architecture where the US and Soviet Union got along. Circumstances quickly forced then-President Harry Truman to pivot and begin dividing the world between Marshall states- countries that asserted liberal democracy and free markets- and Soviet states under communist rule. This marked the dawn of the Cold War. “When we get to 1947 and the Marshall plan, the Truman Administration is already in a major corrective mode. The State Department is already talking openly about a two-world vision for the post-war order.” ————————————————————————— To learn more about this episode, including podcast transcripts and show notes, visit *salt.org/talks* ( http://salt.org/talks ) Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s nearly led to a full-scale nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union. It thankfully didn't happen, but we came much closer than many realize. Today's guest Martin Sherwin is author of the book Gambling with Armageddon. He gives us a riveting sometimes hour-by-hour explanation of the crisis itself, but also explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world. Mining new sources and materials, and going far beyond the scope of earlier works on this critical face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union–triggered when Khrushchev began installing missiles in Cuba at Castro’s behest–Sherwin shows how this volatile event was an integral part of the wider Cold War and was a consequence of nuclear arms. We look in particular at the original debate in the Truman Administration about using the Atomic Bomb; the way in which President Eisenhower relied on the threat of massive retaliation to project U.S. power in the early Cold War era; and how President Kennedy, though unprepared to deal with the Bay of Pigs debacle, came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here too is a clarifying picture of what was going on in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union.

The long awaited sequel to our episode on the 1944 DNC and the first in a three part series, Brian is joined by friend of the show Justin Roll to discuss the key role that the Truman Administration played in starting the Cold War. In this episode we talk about the decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Subscribe for access to all our premium episodes, and early release of episodes of Mechanical Freak Presents. https://www.patreon.com/seattlesucks

The long awaited sequel to our episode on the 1944 DNC and the first in a multipart series, Brian is joined by friend of the show Justin Roll to discuss the key role that the Truman Administration played in starting the Cold War. In this episode we talk about the decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Subscribe for access to all our premium episodes, and early release of episodes of Mechanical Freak Presents. https://www.patreon.com/seattlesucks

This wide-ranging & globe-trotting episode begins with a brief look at the successful 1953 expedition to summit Mount Everest, then pivots to some less inspiring international intrigue, as Cold War fears led the USA to meddle in the internal politics of Iran, Guatemala, & Vietnam, among other nations. John Foster Dulles's leadership of the State Department & his brother Allen Dulles's direction of the Central Intelligence Agency pushed forward a newly aggressive approach in US foreign policy, tossing aside the relatively cautious "containment" doctrine of the Truman Administration. American efforts at winning international hearts & minds ranged from persuasion (in the case of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, & the Congress for Cultural Freedom) to regime change (removing Iranian & Guatemalan leaders) & even outright mind control (in the case of Project MK-Ultra). In domestic politics, Senator Joe McCarthy (& his sidekick Roy Cohn) would finally fall from prominence after unsuccessfully targeting the US Army. President Dwight Eisenhower approved an expansion of existing New Deal economic assistance agencies in the mid-50s, but avoided creating new social programs. Finally, in the 1954 Congressional elections, Democrats regained control of the federal legislative branch, which surprisingly eased political headaches for Republican President Eisenhower, who'd been clashing with GOP conservatives over his moderate agenda.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/boomertomillennial/posts)

PALE BEASTS by John Thrasher Every human culture has tales of white animals. For example, Native Americans have their white buffalo. Revelations describes a pale horse. Pre-Christian Europe had white unicorns, China has white tigers and white dragons, India actually did have white elephants, and Wales believed in a harbinger of doom that took the form of white owl. The coming of any of these meant drastic change, for good or bad. In Pale Beasts, six of these creatures show up all at once, to do battle on the hottest day of the year in perhaps the most densely populated city in the United States. About the Author I was born in the Truman Administration and raised in Indiana. My earliest memory is of me at 16 months, standing in my crib, playing with ghosts. I don’t now know what was actually happening, but that’s the way I remember it. So of course I grew up convinced that what we can see, feel, smell, touch and hear is not all there is to reality. I write to try to test what else might be just outside our sphere of influence. https://www.palebeasts.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Pale-Beasts-John-Thrasher-ebook/dp/B07KMY8LNB/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=john+thrasher+pale+beast&qid=1579711319&sr=8-1 http://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/root/twia/jethrasher.mp3

The Korean War reached a key turning point when President Harry Truman removed General Douglas MacArthur as the conflict's top strategic commander. MacArthur provoked the decision with his statements and actions that undermined the Truman Administration's military policies. Nevertheless, the American public was outraged that an unpopular small-town politician like Truman could end the career of a revered war hero like MacArthur. Congress considered impeachment for a time, but it backed down when top military & diplomatic officials consistently testified that the president's decision had been proper & well-justified. The legislative branch limited presidential power in 1951 by pushing through the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limited chief executives to 2 elected terms. Accusations that new government programs were "socialistic" nixed political reforms. American society shifted in a more devout direction due to a growing revival of religious participation, and American culture increasingly reflected the public's fears during the Cold War. Artists faced tough decisions about whether they should criticize anti-Communist fervor or go along with it. The episode concludes with a preview of the political changes that will open up a new chapter of the Cold War during the 50s.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/boomertomillennial/posts)

This episode will focus on the moment when Britain was about to depart Mandatory Palestine and there was heightened uncertainty about whether the State of Israel would be formed. The episode highlights the battle between the personalities and policy differences of President Harry Truman and his advisors, and chronicles America’s dramatic path to recognizing the Jewish State.Host David Makovsky will be in conversation with Ronald Radosh, co-author of one of the preeminent books on Truman and 1948, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel.Audio Clips Used"FDR Dies 450412 News Clip 01, Old Time Radio""President Roosevelt Meets Middle East Leaders [Etc.]"Last British Troops Leave Palestine - 1948"70th Anniversary of UN Partition Plan VoteAt War with the Experts [CSPAN] See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

One way to look at an iconic or important landmark like the White House is with reverence. This is the seat of a global power. This is where Kennedy stared down the Cuban Missile Crisis. It represents freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. Another way would be with a slightly more cynical eye: This is a house built by slaves. It’s actually not even that old—most of it was torn down and rebuilt during the Truman Administration. Look at all the idiots who have lived there, this house allowed the Civil War to happen, it perpetuated Vietnam, it’s where sleazebags preyed on interns.Which of these two attitudes is correct? The Stoics would argue that they both are and that both perspectives—at different times—are key to doing the right thing. A person working in government service at the White House can use the positive legacy of the institution as a form of inspiration, as a call to a higher standard of behavior. This is a special place. I must do it justice. This kind of reverence can draw the best out of a person, even in difficult or tempting situations. But at the same time, a person who is too reverent, or who has projected too much of their own idealism onto a place or an organization can find themselves bending the truth to protect it. Or doing unethical things to maintain their job inside it. I’m not going to jail because the guy holding this office for four years is asking me to lie for him. The President isn’t a king—he’s a public servant like every other person in the government. We can use cynicism productively. It, to use Marcus Aurelius’s phrase, helps strip things of the legend that encrusts them and gives us an objective view. A person who understands the legacy of the White House from both perspectives is less likely to do something wrong, more likely to be courageous than a person who has just one view. And the same applies for so many different things. How do you see marriage? How do you see money? How do you understand the history of your country or your race or your industry? Being written about in the New York Times or winning a Nobel Prize? You want to see the higher essence of things...and their lower nature. You want to see the ideal...and the reality. Be blinded by neither. Deceived by neither.

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio's and Waldo Heinrich's massive study of the conflict's last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army's role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration's unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author's experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader.

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massive study of the conflict’s last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army’s role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration’s unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author’s experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massive study of the conflict’s last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army’s role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration’s unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author’s experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massive study of the conflict’s last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army’s role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration’s unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author’s experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massive study of the conflict’s last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army’s role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration’s unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author’s experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Serious and casual scholars and readers interested in the Pacific War would do well to commit reading Marc Gallicchio’s and Waldo Heinrich’s massive study of the conflict’s last two years, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2017).  The two authors, both masters in the field, take on the monumental task of offering a civil-military synthesis of the war against Japan that covers both the home front and the campaigns in exacting detail.  Along the way, they introduce readers to a wide range of new and interesting interpretations that both validate and challenge long-held presumptions that have dominated the American historiography since the 1950s.  In our conversation, Marc Gallicchio offers several insights into the book, particularly with regard to civil-military relations in time of global total war, the US Army’s role in clearing the Philippines, the problems with the FDR and Truman Administration’s unconditional surrender policy, and the decision to use the atomic bomb.  At the same time, Marc shares several interesting insights and anecdotes about the war from the perspective of average Americans – including his co-author’s experiences and observations as a veteran of the 86th Infantry Division – that make this authoritative book so accessible and relevant for the contemporary reader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Blackbird9's Breakfast Club's Wednesday Podcast, Truman and Tavistocks Alchemic Laboratory. Tonight we will look at the history of The Tavistock Institute and U.S. President Harry Truman.https://www.blackbird9tradingposts.org/2018/11/21/truman-and-tavistocks-alchemic-laboratory-blackbird9/In the First Hour we cover the chaotic events brought on by the teachings of the Frankfurt School Marxists. Their mission has always been to establish a Greater Israel ruled by globalism under the direction of Talmudic Noahide Law and at the same time force all other nations to surrender their independent sovereignty. In our Second Hour, Truman and Tavistocks Alchemic Laboratory, the host continued with the role of fundamental bio-logical programs and stimuli and how these have been exploited in the New World Order (NWO) Psychological Warfare models developed by The Tavistock Institute and implemented during the U.S. Presidency of Harry Truman after World War II. From the basic biological needs of Homo Sapian, to the earliest point "^" and cup "v" symbols of male and female, to the symbol of the Cyclops in Homer's Odyssey who's demand for MORE was used against him by Ulysses and his men, to the titillating dance of Salome in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, to the Id-Ego-Superego model of Sigmund Freud, to the establishment of The Tavistock Institute in 1947, to the Give-Them-Hell-Harry policies of the Truman Administration, to the rise of the Global Telecommunication Revolution, the host examines how the manipulation of a few basic human sub-routines can easily move the masses.

Welcome to Blackbird9's Breakfast Club's Wednesday Podcast, Truman and Tavistocks Alchemic Laboratory. Tonight we will look at the history of The Tavistock Institute and U.S. President Harry Truman.https://www.blackbird9tradingposts.org/2018/11/21/truman-and-tavistocks-alchemic-laboratory-blackbird9/In the First Hour we cover the chaotic events brought on by the teachings of the Frankfurt School Marxists. Their mission has always been to establish a Greater Israel ruled by globalism under the direction of Talmudic Noahide Law and at the same time force all other nations to surrender their independent sovereignty. In our Second Hour, Truman and Tavistocks Alchemic Laboratory, the host continued with the role of fundamental bio-logical programs and stimuli and how these have been exploited in the New World Order (NWO) Psychological Warfare models developed by The Tavistock Institute and implemented during the U.S. Presidency of Harry Truman after World War II. From the basic biological needs of Homo Sapian, to the earliest point "^" and cup "v" symbols of male and female, to the symbol of the Cyclops in Homer's Odyssey who's demand for MORE was used against him by Ulysses and his men, to the titillating dance of Salome in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, to the Id-Ego-Superego model of Sigmund Freud, to the establishment of The Tavistock Institute in 1947, to the Give-Them-Hell-Harry policies of the Truman Administration, to the rise of the Global Telecommunication Revolution, the host examines how the manipulation of a few basic human sub-routines can easily move the masses.

DEMOCRATS AND RUSSIANS It's July 2018 and the mainstream media has been on fire for over 18 months with allegations that President Trump "colluded" with the Russians to win the 2016 Presidential election. So far, we have seen very little in the way of evidence that Trump or any member of his campaign had anything more than a conversation with the occaisional Russian. Still, whatever "new information" the media learns, they feverishly connect dots which have no business being connected. As a student of politics and history, I have found the behavior of the media as well as Democrats to be appalling. What I hope to do for you in this podcast is to give you some idea of the history that exists between Democrats and Russians. At the end of this podcast, my hope is you will understand why I am appalled at the current behavior of the Mainstream Media and the Democrat Party. The Russian Hoax by Gregg Jarrett This story begins in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Bolshevik takeover of Russia was the first successful Marxist revolution and it sent shock waves around the world, particularly in Western countries. European and American intellectuals were swept up in the excitement of revolutionary change and what it could mean for the future of the world. Violence and Terror in the Russian Revolution Remember, in 1917, Marxism had never been attempted as a governing philosophy. Russia would be its first laboratory. The intelligentsia had a rooting interest, hoping for its success. The early days of the Russian Revolution under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin were bloody in the extreme. Anyone opposing the new Bolshevik government under Lenin was deemed a "counter-revolutionary" and typically met horribly cruel deaths, often by starvation. Although Lenin died in 1924, he was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, who was even worse. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust by Miron Dolot While this was going on in Russia, in the United States, fear was growing. It was fear of the "Red Menace" or the "Red Scare." Many Americans feared a Marxist revolution would come to America. New immigrants from Europe, particularly Eastern Europe and Italy were often receptive to leftist propaganda. The leftists, however, never really gained a foothold because the rise of organized labor blunted the revolutionary fervor. In short, American businesses adapted. Still, on university campuses around the U.S., the cutting edge of political thought centered on the great collectivist experiment going on in Russia. To bring Americans a bird's eye view of what was happening in Russia, the New York Times assigned a journalist named Walter Duranty to cover the progress of the Russian Revolution. Duranty filed news accounts accentuating the positive and to his everlasting discredit, all but ignoring the negative. The trouble was, the negative Duranty either played down or ignored entirely was so monstrous, it was clear he was acting as a propaganda tool for Stalin. Crimes of the Bolsheviks Duranty ignored the deliberate and intentional starvation of as many as 11 million Kulak peasant farmers, an atrocity rivalling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry in its immensity. The New York Times still displays Duranty's Pulitzer Prize in its headquarters offices in New York City. The prize was awarded before it was learned that Duranty was a fraud. Duranty's reports from Russia were followed closely by academics, who were excited to know of the revolutionary progress and successes. Although viewed with hostility in the halls of American government as a subversive ideology, antagonism toward Russian Marxism faded completely when the United States found itself allied with Russia after Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941. Who was Walter Duranty? At that moment, many of those left wing university intellectuals as well as others who were just plain, old, pro-Russian Marxists, found their way into the US government in various roles to help defeat Nazism. Immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US found itself with tons of pro-Russian Marxists all throughout the institutions of government, placed there by the FDR and Truman Administrations. These were people who were favorably disposed toward Stalinist Russia and many of them were current or former members of the Communist Party of the United States. Others were recruited as spies. But all of them were Democrats. Almost immediately after the war ended, Russia and the United States became Cold War enemies. In 1948, a former American communist and spy for Russia, Whittaker Chambers, revealed that a vast network of Russian spies existed in the United States. Richard Nixon, a California Congressman at the time, listened to what Chambers had to say and what he said was explosive. Chambers accused a Truman Administration official in the State Department, Alger Hiss, of being a Soviet Russian spy. The accusation mattered a great deal because Hiss accompanied FDR to his meeting with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta, where the construct of post-war Europe was being discussed and decided. Truman also appointed Hiss to draft the UN Charter. The accusation that a Soviet Russian spy was that close to the President of the United States caused a political earthquake, resulting in an avalanche of cries of partisanship and character assassination directed at both Chambers and Nixon. Knowing this was political dynamite, Democrats began to line up in defense of Alger Hiss's loyalty to the United States. Among those Democrats attesting to Hiss's loyalty were two sitting Supreme Court Justices, one past Democrat Presidential candidate and one future Presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson. The Democrats went to the mat for Hiss, sealing Nixon's reputation as one of the worst and most cynical villains in US political history for condemning an "innocent man" as a disloyal American. Except, there was one problem. IT WAS ALL TRUE! Hiss was indeed a spy for Russia. Although the question of his guilt remained unsettled and was debated for decades, after the fall of the USSR, old KGB documents revealed Alger Hiss was indeed a spy for Russia. The damage to the Democratic Party did not end there. Subsequent to the Hiss Affair, Senator Joseph McCarthy held hearings in 1954, accusing many dozens of State Department officals along with many prominent people in business and entertainment of being Communists, loyal to Russia. Although McCarthy did accuse many people later shown to be totally innocent of any disloyalty, while holding leftist or even Marxist political views, those same KGB documents, made available in the mid-1990s, also confirmed that dozens and dozens of those he accused, all of whom were Democrats, were indeed spying for Russia. The Venona Secrets US News & World Report: Declassified Docs reveal KGB Spies in US Even to this day, the news media refuses to tell the entire truth about Hiss or McCarthy. To this day, despite the existence of incontrovertible evidence of Hiss's guilt, Democrats playing on the ignorance of Americans, continue to defend Alger Hiss and condemn Whittaker Chambers, Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, who were guilty of only zealously defending the United States, showing great courage and patriotism. Blacklisted by History by M. Stanton Evans Witness by Whittaker Chambers At this juncture, it is fair to point out that the Democratic Party is not pro-Russian, per se. What I hope I am making clear here is that the Democratic Party has been a home for those harboring pro-Russian sentiments. From the 1920s through the 1950s, those sentiments were clearly ideological. But in 1960, America elected a vehemently anti-communist and therefore, anti-Russian President, John F Kennedy, who was a Democrat. He was a true profile in courage, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, it's rather ironic that his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, who turned Communist, defected to Russia, marrying a Russian woman, returning to the United States, where he murdered President Kennedy. It now seems almost like COSMIC KARMA for the Democratic Party. As we moved through the 60s, 70s and 80s, left wing, pro-Russian, pro-Soviet extremism became prevalent on both college campuses and in the media. For example, during the 1960s, much of campus rioting was instigated by pro-Russian groups aligning themselves with the Democratic Party. This also carried on through the 1970s. Political parties in the US, which at least tangentially aligned themselves with the Democratic Party had Russian sponsors and were aligned with the policies of the Soviet Union. One example: The Socialist Workers Party, which got its orders directly from Moscow. Russian involvement with Democrats became more pronounced during the 1980s under President Reagan. While Reagan was President, Russian sponsored movements like "No Nukes" came to fruition. It argued in favor of the Russian position regarding the placement of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Western Europe. Also, the burgeoning environmental movement was secretly funded by Russian interests as a way to keep the US out of the market as a supplier of oil and natural gas, two commodities Russia needs and depends on greatly. Then, of course, there was Ted Kennedy's appeal to Yuri Andropov, the leader of the USSR at the time. Kennedy was hoping to enlist Andropov's cooperation in defeating Reagan in the 1984 election. Kennedy's outreach was an act of treachery, but Reagan won re-election easily, taking 49 of 50 states. All of this was done to undermine the power and influence of the United States and in every case, found its most vocal support in the Democrat Party. Soviet Influence on Peace Movement Newsweek: Putin is Funding Green Groups to discredit natural gas Russian-funded environmental group gave millions to anti-fracking groups   It should disturb every American when a foreign power, be it friend or foe, attempts to insinuate themselves into our electoral process, but it should not be altogether unexpected. The United States is the greatest and most powerful country in the world. We should be prepared for others to interfere in our elections. But before they can interfere in our elections, we should take note of how they are interfering in our political system in other ways as I have outlined here. Russian interference didn't begin in 2016 and it won't end in 2018. Questions regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Russians remain unanswered. The approval of a deal sending 20% of America's uranium ore and the timing of a $150 million "contribution" to the Clinton Foundation, along with vast sums for speeches given in Russia, deserve as much or more attention than the strained effort to find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians. If links exist, let us see the evidence. But if we are left with only our suspicions in the absence of evidence, then we ought to have the courage to leave those suspicions wanting. The Democratic Party for nearly 100 years has never been so ferociously anti-Russian as they are now. It is obvious that their ferocity is fueled by political expediency more than it is by a search for the truth. Just as it was for Walter Duranty. Just as it was for Alger Hiss. Just as it was for Ted Kennedy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a speech to The Ripon Society, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called for a sweeping reorganization of the federal bureaucracy, saying that “our government is still basically functioning in the structure that dates back to the Truman Administration.” The veteran businessman, congressman, and cabinet official also commented on other issues, including potential budget cuts at the Pentagon, the President's handling of foreign policy, and whether he was surprised Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan.