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From: hsgj@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.rumor
Subject: Re: Jack Stanley's Presidential rating list
Message-ID: <345@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Sat, 24-May-86 00:57:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.345
Posted: Sat May 24 00:57:18 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 25-May-86 16:44:41 EDT
References: <3040@decwrl.DEC.COM> <9859@ucsfcgl.ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Reply-To: hsgj@batcomputer.UUCP (Dan Green)
Followup-To: net.politics
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 38
Xref: watmath net.politics:16367 net.misc:9699 net.rumor:2511

In article <9859@ucsfcgl.ucsfcgl.UUCP> arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL) writes:
>In article <3040@decwrl.DEC.COM> arndt@lymph.DEC writes:
>>Richard Nixon I see you at least rate higher than the above booby.  But he
>>should be a 10.  His detractors even are saying nice things about him now
>>and history will judge him (just behind Ronny) as the greatest president of
>>our century.  (If ONLY he had burned the tapes!!!)
>
>Not *this* detractor.  I have nothing nice to say about Nixon.  Well,
>let us be more precise.  The two nice things I have to say about him
>aren't very nice (sort of damning with faint praise):
> [...]
>	(2) He didn't actually *try* to impose martial law, although
>	    he sho 'nuff *thought* about it.
> [...]
>Me, I rate Nixon a 1.  Or whatever the lowest is.
>
>		Ken Arnold

I agree with Ken Arnold.  A real eye opening book which is historically
accurate (in my opinion at any rate) is "Time of Illusion" by Jonathon
Schell.  This book describes Nixon and his staff's attempt to centralize
all the police government agencies (read FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) under one
roof -- and under WHITE HOUSE control.  To me this speaks of dictatorship
where one person controls the "police" of the nation.  Schell points out
that probably the only reason this never went through is that the guy
who was the director of the FBI (Helms???) knew that he would lose all
his political contacts if his organization was taken away from him.  So
he (apparently) threatened to expose hidden secrets about the Nixon
admin if the deal went through.  As we know, the deal was cancelled.  A
lot of good that did ole Dick :-).
   Schell also describes lots of other neat things.  By the way, I am
changing the followup line to not include net.rumor anymore.  But I am
leaving this posting in net.rumor cause I feel tyrannical...

-- 
Dan Green    ARPA: hsgj@vax2.ccs.cornell.edu  <== Preferred
~~~~~~~~~    BITNET:  hsgj@cornella
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