[rlmorel]

Ford wasn’t a boob, in my opinion. I do think he was a decent man, he just wasn’t really presidential material. The liberal media pretty much did everything they could to belittle him, and I admit I even laughed at the SNL sketches, but...he WAS and accomplished athlete. Just because he slipped and fell down some stairs or hit a guy with a golf ball, they played that to maximum effect because he took Nixon off the hook.

He showed his stuff in WWII during Halsey’s Typhoon. (Great book, btw...) but here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“Although the ship was not damaged by Japanese forces, the Monterey was one of several ships damaged by the typhoon that hit Admiral William Halsey’s Third Fleet on December 18–19, 1944. The Third Fleet lost three destroyers and over 800 men during the typhoon. The Monterey was damaged by a fire, which was started by several of the ship’s aircraft tearing loose from their cables and colliding on the hanger deck. During the storm, Ford narrowly avoided becoming a casualty himself. As he was going to his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the early morning of December 18, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees, which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the deck. The two-inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed him enough so he could roll, and he twisted into the catwalk below the deck. As he later stated, “I was lucky; I could have easily gone overboard.”
Because of the extent of the fires, Admiral Halsey ordered Captain Ingersoll to abandon ship. Lieutenant (j.g.) Ford stood near the helm, awaiting his orders. “We can fix this” Captain Ingersoll said, and with a nod from his skipper, Lieutenant Ford donned a gas mask and led a fire brigade below.
Aircraft-gas tanks exploded as hose handlers slid across the burning decks. Into this furnace, Lieutenant Ford led his men, his first order of business to carry out the dead and injured. Five hours later he and his team emerged burned and exhausted, but they had put out the fire.”

I’ve been on a carrier and often thought about how that steel ridge could have been a lifesaver in certain scenarios...I am glad it saved him.

[farmer18th]

You can lay at least a little bit of the welfare state, though, at Betty Ford's feet. She was the one that effectively pushed Hollywood morality into the mainstream with her 60 minute "living together" comments. The point is that the centrist bi-partisan types in the party really are the lost sheep who need to be told what to do by people who have vision. We should never really elect those types to lead the party. John McCain really doesn't have a coherent philosophy of government in his little pee brain; he just likes to stick people in the eye and play the general.

As a movement, we need to start thinking before just pulling levers.