Walt wrote:
I'm not paranoid enough to think that the elections will actually be
cancelled, but you can bet your Johnson 18 that they'll be some kind of
fear-inducing event right before the election.

Do you mean a real event, or a lot of caveman fascist whacko shrieking
about terror terror terror? Reminds of James Thurbers short story "The
Day The Dam Broke."


Recall 1984 (the election, not the book) where on the eve of the
presidential election there was a sudden "crisis" that the Soviets were
arming the Sandinistas with MIGs. Yes, this faded away in the cool
light of day (there never were any MIGs)

Hmm, now I might be inclined to disagree there. At that point in time, I
was riding around off the coast of Nicaragua listening to the back-then
Navy Sec John Lehman's lies about what we were doing there. In any
event, we stopped several Russian freighters, including one that we
almost had to ram and had the gun mount aimed right at her bridge, and
found MIG parts on two occasions. Was this a violation of Nicaragua's
sovereignty? Probably. In view of the Ortega brother's track record
though, I'm no more sorry about that than about the military ops in the
Gulf of Sidra, off Libya, which I also took part in.

One of the nice things about being in my position (oil king, calibrat'n
tech, qualified EOOW but standing a much lower watch) is that I got to
be on the "prize crew" detail which sounds like something out of
Hornblower books. It was my job, in the event of boarding other vessels,
to go along and check out their engineering plant. So I got a better
look at what actually happened.

The Sandinistas never got their hands on any operational MIGs. Were they
collaborating with the Russians to get some? Yes, they were, I can attest.





... it was on many peoples mind
in the voting booth that Tuesday. Granted Reagan almost assuredly
didn't need the help, but the point is they did it anyway.

Well, from where I was, I did not see any of that campaign's publicity
efforts. From Sec'y Lehmans utterly mendacious pronouncements, I can
imagine.


Right. He was never a hippie or a liberal. When he took over as editor
of National Lampoon in '73 (or so - the seventies are still kinda fuzzy)
the magazine lost much of it's initial anarchic briliance and tended
much more to frat-boy humor. By '76 or '77 all the talent had gone over
to work on Saturday Night Live and the magazine was a shell of it's
former self. He's not entirely to blame, but I date the demise of the
magazine as starting the day he took over as editor.

I wasn't that aware of what was going on back then, and couldn't afford
to get every issue anyway. It is surely the case that the NatLamp
started going downhill at some point along in there. Is PJ to blame?
Dunno, and and while I happen to think some of his stuff is funny, some
of it is pretty gross too. But he's not one of the whacko witch-burners
at least.

DSK