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Beginning of the End

A fugitive from American fraud and bribery charges since the 1970s, Robert Vesco may have died in Cuba, which jailed him for a more than a decade.

The Associated Press reports that a Robert Vesco died and was buried last year in Havana, but quotes an American writer who interviewed Vesco as having doubts.

Nixon Man

A $200,000 bribe to Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President over a Securities & Exchange Commission investigation was among the charges that led Vesco to flee the US.

Before the fall Vesco collected the bad seeds of several First Families.

Vesco knew failed restaurateur and Nixon brother Donald Nixon, who testified at the bribe trial, and employed Donald Nixon Jr. One of Franklin Roosevelt’s sons was also charged by the SEC.

Vesco ended up in Cuba after hiding out in several Caribbean nations. Among other dubious schemes he worked with Donald Junior on aids cures before the Cubans jailed him for 13 years. Nixon got off with a month’s house arrest.

Dealing With Loss

The internets are ablaze with commentary on the Bush Library vote at the Methodist General Conference.

Broad statements abound.

“Looks like the Bush presidential library wont be in Dallas after all. This is the first time in US history that a proposed venue/location for a presidential library has said no to the request.”

….except for Nixon, who crapped out at Duke, Whittier College, the University of Southern California, Independence Missouri, Leavenworth Kansas, Baker Oregon, Chapman College in San Clemente and another by the City of San Clemente [Recalled as if it had come to pass in the Battle Creek Enquirer]. Also Reagan at Stanford, and Kennedy at Harvard.

So Close, And Yet…

The intrepid vision questers at Fast Company have encountered a truly lost world, one where a youthful Richard Nixon painted the golden vision of a slacker tomorrow.

“We see the time not too far distant when we can have a four-day work week and family life will be even more fully enjoyed by every American . . . These are not dreams or idle boasts—they are simple projections of the gains we have made in the last four years.”

Time reports that Nixon could not name this beckoning future, but the Vice President was clearly high on his own fumes:

“…whatever it is, it is something new and far better than anything the world has ever seen.”

Not What He Had In Mind

Getting Right With Jesus

“The omnipresence of “God bless America” as a political slogan is an entirely recent phenomenon. We know because we’ve run the numbers. Analysis of more than 15,000 public communications by political leaders from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 — the beginning of the modern presidency — through six years of George W. Bush’s administration revealed that prior to Ronald Reagan taking office in 1981, the phrase had passed a modern president’s lips only once in a major address: Richard Nixon used it to conclude an April 30, 1973, speech about Watergate.”

“The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America“

Dick’s Last Trick?

The Nixon Blog continues it’s perversely Nixon-centric view of the universe, offering up Obama early adopter and Weatherman William Ayers‘s lack of jail time as the price the nation paid for poor Dick Nixon’s crucifiction.

Defender onto death and former Nixon Library head John Taylor explains how the crimes against Nixon echo down the ages.

“If everyone knows that William Ayers and his comrades in the Weather Underground were planning to set bombs to murder innocent people, why didn’t they do time?

Because the investigation against them was muffed thanks to the illegal activities of the Washington Post’s favorite Watergate answerman himself, Mark Felt — aka Deep Throat. ..Now we know the truth. If it hadn’t been for Mark Felt, President Nixon might have finished his second term, and William Ayers might have gone to jail.”

Great to see Taylor getting all huffy about illegal break-ins!