So Gerald Ford wasn't such a great guy afterall..

[Brassmask]

It's a red herring and its bullshit tactics/strategy crap that I abhor.

It might be a red herring if the comment I was responding to hadn't included the "of course, now they're all for pardons" quip - as if pardons were an uncommon thing before this administration.

It remains a fact that fewer presidential pardons have occured under this president than the prior president.

Whoopdeedoo.  The point from the comment you posted implied that republicans have been reticent in handing out pardons except when it saves their asses.  It wasn't implied that now the GOP was handing out pardons by the handfuls and that's why your comment re: Clinton did it! is moot and a red herring designed (consciously or unconsciously [I'm going with the latter]) to distract from the FACT that Goopers are now singing the praises of pardons.

The End.  (I'm hitting Post now.)

[Xavier_Onassis]

It remains a fact that fewer presidential pardons have occurred under this president than the prior president.
===================================================================

First, Juniorbush's term is far from over. Juniorbush never takes responsibility for even the most obvious and glaring of his multitudinous errors.

Second,  Ford's pardon of Nixon was the only pardon of one president by another. I am not required to see Ford's pardon of Nixon as a good thing. It was a very, very bad thing. Nixon spending a year in the slammer instead of of in the opulence of Short Hills would have served to make all his successors think more carefully about their actions, and would have caused people in many other countries to have greater respect for out sense of justice, which is currently thought to be more like justice as carried out in Waco, Abu Graib and John Wayne films.

[Brassmask]

Even more horrifying is the idea that Ford's pardon also kept America from getting at the truth in both his and Nixon's cover-up of the JFK murder.  Mutual backscratching is very popular amongst co-conspirators.

[Amianthus]

First, Juniorbush's term is far from over. Juniorbush never takes responsibility for even the most obvious and glaring of his multitudinous errors.

Clinton pardoned 396 people. Bush 1 pardoned 74. Bush 2 has pardoned 113. Even if Bush 2 pardoned the same number of people as Clinton did in his last two years of office, he won't reach Clinton's total. FDR, incidently, issued several thousand pardons.

[Amianthus]

Mutual backscratching is very popular amongst co-conspirators.

What emerged from the two-hour retrospective was a compelling portrait of a president trying mightily to do the right thing. Fresh evidence also was presented that undermined the theory that Mr. Ford had cut a "deal" to pardon Mr. Nixon before the beleaguered 37th president would leave office.

Benton L. Becker, then a young lawyer dispatched by Mr. Ford to negotiate the pardon with Mr. Nixon, recalled arriving at San Clemente and observing a former president who was thin, depressed, physically ill and humiliated from the disgrace of his resignation. Mr. Becker reported to Mr. Ford, by phone, that he was unsure Mr. Nixon would survive if they could not reach a pardon agreement.

Mr. Ford nonetheless insisted that a pardon be issued on his terms and not be watered down by Mr. Nixon's lawyers. Mr. Becker explained to Mr. Nixon face-to-face that acceptance of the pardon, according to the Burdick case, would amount to an admission of guilt. With this, the negotiations nearly broke down.

Mr. Nixon's own lawyer -- Herbert "Jack" Miller -- revealed for the first time at the Duquesne conference that Mr. Nixon had strongly resisted accepting the pardon. Speaking with permission of the Nixon family, Mr. Miller disclosed that Mr. Nixon at one point told him "that he did not want a pardon," especially if there was some imputation of guilt. "He felt that if he had done something wrong, let him be indicted and go to trial," Mr. Miller said. Mr. Miller said he had to convince Mr. Nixon that it would be impossible to get a fair trial in Washington, where potential jurors overwhelmingly believed he was guilty, before the former president would relent.

This revelation by Mr. Nixon's lawyer punctured the theory that there was some pre-arranged pardon deal. In fact, as Mr. Ford would point out in his filmed interview: "I was going to become president, period." Either Mr. Nixon was going to be impeached, or he was going to resign. Striking an advance deal would have gained Mr. Ford nothing.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07001/750263-109.stm

[Brassmask]

Yes, yes.  Nixon said he didn't want to be pardoned.  Ever prideful and unashamed...blah, blah, blah.

If he did play it that way, it was only because he knew that Ford had no choice but to pardon him because he had the goods on Ford.  If Nixon ever even had to go to a deposition once, Ford knew he would sink them all with the JFK murder.  Of Course, Ford was going to pardon him.

And everyone acts like he sacrificed his possible future as an actual elected president, but the truth is that his becoming vice-president was more than likely arranged as payment for playing nice in the Warren Commission by A) acting as Hoover's mole and feeding Hoover every little nuance and bit of information the Warren Commissioners talked about and B) making sure that all of America was given the impression that Oswald was the lone assassin and pulled off the greatest feat of marksmanship in the history of gunfire.  Ford even going so far as to falsify evidence and flat out lie.

I find it highly more likely that Nixon regarded Ford as a useful fool and knew full well if he ever got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Ford would have no choice but to pardon or face a lynch mob right alongside Nixon and anyone else that was still alive who helped kill JFK.

This is parapolitics.   On the surface, so understandable and self-evident but under the surface, gears turning everywhere and no one knows exactly how it all works or where true allegiances lie.

The operation that murdered JFK works like the mob.  It's a family.  And one of the family is in trouble, the whole of the family works its ass off to get that one out of trouble.  And if there is no way to free the one who is in trouble without revealing the existence of the family then that troubled one meets an untimely end.

Like Jack Ruby.

[Amianthus]

This is parapolitics.   On the surface, so understandable and self-evident but under the surface, gears turning everywhere and no one knows exactly how it all works or where true allegiances lie.

Sorry, I prefer the simplicity of Occam's Razor myself.

This whole conspiracy within conspiracy is too complex to hold up for very long. All it takes is one person to slip up, and it's all revealed.

[Brassmask]

Sorry, I prefer the simplicity of Occam's Razor myself.

The conspirators thank you.

How come Occam's Razor doesn't apply to Watergate?  Or Iran/Contra?  You can say all day that the simplest answer is usually right but in the end, sometimes the simplest answer is the realm of fools.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I think that WHOM is pardoned and for what is far more important than how many pardons were issued.

Nixon should not have been pardoned. Maybe Ford was blackmailed, maybe he thought it was for the good of the country and the vgery survival of every Bluebird of Happiness that ever lived. But it was still a mistake.

And Juniorbush is by far and away the very WORST president ever, unless we include Jefferson Davis.
\

[yellow_crane]

Now, of course they're all for pardons.  If you worked in the Bush administration wouldn't you be all for pardons?

Of course, you're totally ignoring the fact that the Bushs (either of 'em) have given less pardons than any other president. Clinton was nearly the king of pardons, giving out more than most other presidents.

_______________________________________^^^^_________________________________________


Clinton failed to pardon Leonard Peltier

He deferred to the FBI, who are clearly responsible for imprisoning an innocent man, a Sioux activist.

Too bad.  Whether he did it out of fear, or out of his sociopathic compromising, he failed a lot of people.

Guess you would have to know the long history of repression against Indians in N and S Dakota.

I have been there.  It is the FBI in that region who belong in prison.

Oh well, he's the new, the Nafta Democrat.

Piss on him.  He did pardon a few questionable Clinton activists, and left Leonard to spin in the wind.  Piss on him.

[Lanya]

Brass:
Yes, yes.  Nixon said he didn't want to be pardoned.  Ever prideful and unashamed...blah, blah, blah
_______________________
Of course he didn't want to, because by accepting a pardon he accepted guilt.

That should have been in 30-point type in every paper in the land. "NIXON SAYS HE"S GUILTY, ACCEPTS PARDON"

That would have gone a long way toward healing.  He never could accept that he was guilty, and the nation knew it and resented that he was pardoned. 

[Amianthus]

How come Occam's Razor doesn't apply to Watergate?  Or Iran/Contra?

It does.

[Brassmask]

Brass:
Yes, yes.  Nixon said he didn't want to be pardoned.  Ever prideful and unashamed...blah, blah, blah
_______________________
Of course he didn't want to, because by accepting a pardon he accepted guilt.

That should have been in 30-point type in every paper in the land. "NIXON SAYS HE"S GUILTY, ACCEPTS PARDON"

That would have gone a long way toward healing.  He never could accept that he was guilty, and the nation knew it and resented that he was pardoned. 

Lanya,

Nixon couldn't have cared less if anyone thought he was guilty or not because he knew he would never face any kind of retribution.  Agnew and Nixon hated each other and Nixon and Ford were co-conspirators in the murder of JFK.  Nixon and Ford had the goods on one another and so Nixon knew that he had Ford by the shorthairs.  Ford had no choice in the matter or else he would have to face destruction as an accessory after the fact to JFK's murder along with Nixon who, if it looked like he was going to be held "accountable" for Watergate would have sunk the whole JFK murder crew.

b

[Amianthus]

Nixon couldn't have cared less if anyone thought he was guilty or not because he knew he would never face any kind of retribution.  Agnew and Nixon hated each other and Nixon and Ford were co-conspirators in the murder of JFK.  Nixon and Ford had the goods on one another and so Nixon knew that he had Ford by the shorthairs.  Ford had no choice in the matter or else he would have to face destruction as an accessory after the fact to JFK's murder along with Nixon who, if it looked like he was going to be held "accountable" for Watergate would have sunk the whole JFK murder crew.

Nice hypothesis. No evidence for it, however.

[Brassmask]

Nice hypothesis. No evidence for it, however.

Other than facts, you're right.

Nixon was a co-conspirator in the JFK.  He insured that E Howard Hunt got a million dollars so that Hunt wouldn't "...open up that whole 'Bay of Pigs' thing..." which Halderman said (in his book) he eventually took to be code or a euphemism for the JFK assassination.

Ford was on the Warren Commission and signed his name to the lies told in the report.  Ford also simply falsified evidence by "clarifying" the location of the bullet hole in Kennedy's back.

In the way that Nixon was held hostage by Hunt for a million dollars, Ford was held hostage for a presidential pardon.  (Note:  Nixon didn't have to pick up the phone or meet Ford in a darkened parking garage to tell Ford that the pardon had to happen OR ELSE.  When the stakes are as high as the revelation that two sitting presidents were co-conspirators with a past president and with at least one future president, no one has to threaten anyone to get what everyone knows they absolutely must have.  Call it quid pro quo or a family sticking together or everyone holding everyone by the short hairs but it doesn't have to be spoken.)

Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 ALL had a hand in JFK's murder on one level or another.  Even Reagan declined to extradite Edgar Eugene Bradley to NO for Jim Garrison.