Chamblee54

This is a repost of a previously published effort. This is a work of speculation, and has no basis in proven fact. The thesis of this post cannot be proven nor disproven.
Listening to talk radio while you drive is a dangerous activity. You might start to think, and look at the man behind the screen.
Neal Boortz was on a rant today about Jane Fonda. It it the same story you have heard many times…she gave aid and comfort to the enemy, she is a traitor, American troops died because of her,she should have been executed.
Sometimes when you hear something too many times, you begin to have doubts about what you heard. A light bulb went off in PG’s head when he heard the Fonda Rant again.. .What if Jane Fonda was working for the US government when she went to Hanoi?
What was in it for the government? This trip gave our government a discredited leader of the antiwar movement to denounce. When the government was trashing Jane Fonda, they did not have to defend the disastrous policies of that war.
Miss Fonda has been an icon of right wing hatred ever since, as well as of military training. ( Disclosure: PG was never in the service, but is repeating what others have said.) One story has Miss Fonda giving the North Vietnamese information about activities by American forces. How would she get this information?
The infamous trip to Hanoi took place in the Summer of 1972. American troops were being withdrawn, and anti war protests lost most of their  passion. ( It was also soon after the death of F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the Watergate burglary) The war in Vietnam was essentially over for America. We were no longer trying to win, but to negotiate a face saving treaty. President Nixon called it “Peace with Honor”. Miss Fonda’s actions had little impact on these negotiations.
Miss Fonda made some radio broadcasts from Hanoi. Is it possible that coded messages to our troops were included in these broadcasts? Is it also possible that she gave the North Vietnamese misinformation on purpose?
Why would a women known for her left wing activism do such a thing? Maybe, the FBI had some dirt on her and blackmailed her.
In 1967, Kurt Vonnegut published a book titled “Mother Night”. It tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr. Mr. Campbell made propaganda broadcasts for Germany in World War II, which were secretly used to pass coded messages to the Allies. He was condemned as a traitor after the war, but never prosecuted .He did not win an Academy Award.
The role of the government in this affair could have taken another role. Perhaps Miss Fonda was sincere in her actions, but aided by the government. Miss Fonda was under surveillance in 1972. The government would have known about her plans to go to North Vietnam, and perhaps could have stopped her. But, because her going to Hanoi was to their advantage, the government allowed the trip to take place.
The above is speculation, and could be horribly wrong. The fact that Miss Fonda has expressed regrets over her trip neither proves nor disproves this. She got great movie roles, and won two Academy Awards, during the seventies. This may be a coincidence, or maybe it was a reward for her service.
But clearly, the trip she made to Hanoi had propaganda value to the US government. It has been a Godsend over the years.
During his rant today, Boortz said that US troops died because of Miss Fonda. By saying this, he can ignore the tens of thousands of troops who died because Richard Nixon chose to wait until 1973 to sign a “peace treaty”. He could have made the same deal in 1969. Peace with honor indeed.

There has never been a performer quite like Tiny Tim.
Herbert Khaury was born April 12 1932, to a Lebanese father and a Polish Jew mother. At an early age, he developed a love of vaudeville style music. He learned to play a ukelele, and began performing in his natural baritone voice.
One night, Mr. Khaury discovered falsetto singing. After trying numerous stage names, he settled on Tiny Tim. He got the attention of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, and appeared on that show. Laugh In made Tiny Tim an overnight sensation. He performed “Tip Toe Through The Tulips”.
On December 17, 1969, Tiny Tim married Miss Vickie (Victoria Mae Budinger) on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. The show attracted an estimated 40 million viewers. The couple had a daughter, Tulip Victoria, and divorced after 8 years of marriage.
Tiny Tim continued to perform up until his death November 30, 1996. He had diabetes and heart problems. As wikipedia tells the tale: “He continued to play concerts despite the warnings that, due to the fragile state of his heart, he could die at any moment. While playing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” at a Gala Benefit at The Woman’s Club of Minneapolis on 30 November of that year, he suffered another heart attack on stage. He was led out by his third wife, Susan Marie Gardner (“Miss Sue”, whom he had married on 18 August 1995), who asked him if he was okay. Tim responded, “No, I’m not!”, his final words…He is interred in the mausoleum of Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.
There is a tribute site to Tiny Tim, and an official site. Under Tiny Trivia, the following items are listed.: 01. Tiny Tim was a devout Christian. 02. Tiny Tim had diabetes. 03. Tiny Tim was 6′ 1′ tall!! 04. One time, when Tiny Tim was staying at Ceasar’s Palace, he decided to have a little fun and order ONE OF EVERYTHING on the menu! 05. Tiny Tim used Eterna 27 by Revlon.06. He also used Jergen’s Body Shampoo.07 He used Vaseline Intensive Care: the yellow bottle for his upper torso and the green bottle for his lower half. 08. Tiny Tim also used Oil of Olay – eight times a day.09. Tiny Tim never ate cheese or meat. 10. Tiny Tim liked to use Viva papertowels after showering in hotels because he didn’t trust the cleanliness of hotel towels. .11. Tiny constantly washed his hands and “creamed” his hands with lotion afterwards. 12. Tiny Tim loved, in this order, #1 pizza, #2 chinese food, #3 popcorn.

In case you didn’t notice, there are lots of places to go on the internet. PG makes good use of the bookmark feature. From time to time, he needs to clean out the toolbox.
Typically, only a handful of basics stay in the bookmarks menu. These include standbys like yahoo, weather radar, facebook, and the fishwrapper. The rest go into either the frequent or shortcuts folder. Frequent has the everyday sites, and shortcuts has the rest. Before tonights cleanup starts, there are 1113 links in shortcuts. It probably needs to be thinned out.
One link that gets kicked out is Atlanta People With Blogs Who Get Together To Drink. This is a local aggregate that has provided much enjoyment in the past. Unfortunately, it is now classified as an “attack” site. The aggregate has moved to Atlanta Blogs. That link will go into the frequent folder, along with obsidian wings and Matt Taibbi.
Taibbi is a treasure. He writes for Rolling Stone, among others. He has had some great coverage of the financial armegeddon, and at decoding PR pablum. More economics is found at DuckinginDoorways. Chamblee54 left the first comment there.
The rest of these are going into deep storage. There are just sooo many good blogs, and between everything else going on, one can only do justice to so many places. There is also the matter of good intentions. The Keyboard is your friend is a collections of keyboard shortcuts. PG is fond of these, but just doesn’t feel like looking just yet.
Yourfuneralguy deals primarily in advice to those who are sending off a loved on. Lately, though, he has covered the departure of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Execution of the Day covers capital punishment through the ages.
Likethedew is a retirement home for laidoff  fishwrapper scribes. It tries to look like a dead tree newspaper, with four columns full of story tidbits. You follow a link at the bottom of each story to read the rest. Chamblee54 doesn’t want to look like a newspaper, it wants to look like a blog.
The Bilerico project has a tidy little story about Jesus. Written by Patricia Nell Warren, she has the man faking his death, escaping to Rome, only to have Mary Magdalen go to France with the kids. Some people think the Bible is the only book ever written about this. Or ever written, period.
Famous People is  fascinated with the recently deceased. The ghoul du jour is Karl Malden (born Mladen George Sekulovich (Mladen Đorđe Sekulović, Serbian Cyrillic: Младен Ђорђе Секуловић) March 22, 1912 – July 1, 2009). It is hoped they take American Express (Don’t leave home without it) at the pearly gates. He is quoted thus:” My father was a milkman. So, I delivered milk.”
Guyswithiphones and Girlswithiphones are endless collections of self portraits. Many of them are NSFW. The same could be said for this optical illusion and belly b******e. The home of the latter is currently featuring pictures from a white trash wedding.
MargaretandHelen is a treasure. The two ladies have been best friends for sixty plus years, and they share their opinions with you. Today’s episode begins : “Good Lord Margaret. I had no idea Michael Jackson was this popular”
By amazing coincidence, July 1 is the 2nd birthday of ListServe. No, this is not a yahoo service, but a wildly popular site that features top ten lists. The top ten top ten list includes:
10-Top 10 Human Sideshow Freaks/09-Top 10 Bizarre Mental Disorders/08-Top 20 Best Gangster Movies/07-Top 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams/06-Top 10 Most Evil Women/05-Top 10 Unsolved Mysteries/04-Top 15 Amazing Coincidences/03-Top 15 Manipulated Photographs/02-Top 10 Incredible Recordings/01-10 Fascinating Last Pictures Taken/

Vanity Fair has come out with a piece about Sarah Palin. It could be described as a whack job on the whack job. It makes neither the medium nor the message look good.
There is a quote from Mrs. Palin that sums up the impact. She was talking to Andrew Halcro. He was an independent candidate in the Governor’s election that Mrs. Palin won in 2006. “Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?”
What impact will “liberal media” material have on the Palin bandwagon? Few of her admirers will read this piece, just as few of the non admirers are going to change their minds. And how much of this will be remembered in 2012/2016? The woman is already running for the White House.
In 1968, Richard Nixon came back from the dead one more time. Lyndon Johnson had been run out of office over outrage at the War in Vietnam. The opposition to Tricky Dick was Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, who may have been worse. In a tight race, Mr. Nixon became President. He was not a runner up in a beauty pageant.
George W. Bush is another POTUS who may not have been overqualified. The incumbent Vice President ran a very poor campaign, with the help of the “liberal” media. After the Repub talent for theft got him into office, Mr. Bush started a war in Babylon and helped wreck the economy. Maybe qualifications do really matter.
Sarah Palin is popular for herself, not because of her husband or father. Just like Nixon’s going to China opened that door, (for better or worse), it could be the “Conservative” Republicans who usher in the age of equality for women in national politics.
The VF piece had little new information. There was this gag inducer:”When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.””