Would you support a Batista, or Somoza like candidate for US president?

How about Trujillo?

He made the trains run on time.

Make sure all those bananas are packed and shipped on time. All that coca leaf has to be harvested and processed into cocaine so the Washington lawyers won't run out.

I was trying to think of the name of that asshole in Paraguay ...
Stroessner, was it?
:hi:

...not aware of? Hmm. I better look around the board some more.

Oops, almost forgot. I don't like no stinking Batistas, or Somozas.

Don

That's what politics is, after all.
:hi:

I just had to look for the rest of it. I will find it. I got all night.

See ya later and take it easy.

:toast:

Don

...over the years? Maybe more than a couple?

B-)

Don

:-)

have sex with Spiro Agnew?

It was the cocaine that made him do it.

that Mrs. Agnew had a habit.

Kim Agnew was okay. Of course, Abbie Hoffman said something rude about her when he knew he was being listened to by strange humans looking to start things. They told her dad, and he ranted about the youth movement in general and Abbie in particular.

Just goes to show that you never know where they'll show up. Abbie did well to use humor to deal with certain types. You do, too.

I would not consider anything he had to say as meaningful, although it might be entertaining. There was a great surplusage of loudmouths, most with empty heads and drug-addled brains, back then. There were some things they got right, and much incoherent noise.

I must confess I am not familiar with Ms Agnew.

I use humor to deal with lots of things.

Now that I think about it, Spiro Agnew might have made an excellent leader of a stooge government somewhere.

I guess you wouldn't be interested in including Abbie as a potential president.

He actually was an intelligent person, who while "underground" showed some amazing organizational skills at the grassroots level. He was presented an award by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his environmental work on the Hudson River.

He is not the sort that I relate to much. I'm not trying to disrespect his accomplishments, which were substantial, more than I've got to show, but the giant ego and desire for the spotlight arouse an antipathy in me. I suppose that says something about me as well. I read a biography of him a couple years ago, not much of which stuck with me, but I retain a sense of tragedy, of his never really growing up. You sound like you have an interest. I would like to hear your assessment of him, if you felt like it.

in his early anti-war phase. I know that he got his start in political activism in the civil rights movement.

During the time he was "Barry Freed," he became friends with Tommy "the Rabbi" Trantino, an inmate at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey. Tommy had committed a terrible, evil crime as a young man. Decades later, he was no longer the vicious snake who, jacked up on speed, killed two human beings in the most brutal of crimes. He was attempting to repay his debt to society, by working on things like Rahway's "Scared Straight" program. He wrote a haunting (and haunted) book, "Lock the Lock."

After the events that were known to the world as "Attica," Tommy worked with my friend Rubin Carter to advocate serious prison reform. That's a long story, but suffice to say, Trantino was working to transform his life.

Barry Freed became one of the people who supported Tommy's work from the outside. Later, after he re-surfaced, Abbie did some important work on the Iran-Contra case. I've always thought that was the cause of his death.

Abbie had addiction issues. And, under the influence, he was capable of being very, very obnoxious. The last time I was with him, his rude and obnoxious behavior almost got him beaten up in a bar in upstate NY. Intoxicated people, be it on alcohol or any other substance, tend to be rude and obnoxious. Yet it often takes more than the substance to make a person a drunk.

That sounds about right.