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Bill Minor (who has covered Mississippi politics since the early 50s) has some fascinating history about what the Democrats did about John Bell Williams, a Mississippi congressman who was stripped of seniority and a committee chairmanship, both, for campaigning for Barry Goldwater in 1964.  Minor strongly disliked Williams (there was much to detest about him and pretty much nothing to like).

Minor writes:

Back in the 1964 presidential race, Mississippi Rep. John Bell Williams, a hard-line segregationist, supported Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona against President Lyndon B. Johnson, who won in a landslide.

The House Democratic Caucus not only stripped Williams of his committee chairmanship, but wiped out his seniority (I wrote back then they left Williams little more than his zip code).

What did Williams do? Rather than switch to the Republican Party, he resigned his seat and returned to Mississippi to run for governor in the 1967 Democratic Primary. …

One of the most hilarious scenes ever in Mississippi politics came during the first primary between segregationist warhorses Williams and former Gov. Ross Barnett over the “tapes.” Everyone knew the “tapes” meant recorded conversations between Barnett and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, preceding the Ole Miss crisis over the admission of James Meredith.

In a finger-shaking, vilification-tossing clash – poetically, at a White Citizens Council forum – Williams discombobulated Barnett by asking him about “deals and underhanded agreements” he made with the Kennedys over admitting Meredith. Barnett tells Williams: “bring out your tape, if you’ve got one; bring it out and play it.” Mind you, nothing had been said at that point about the Barnett-Kennedy tapes. So this was actually Barnett’s first admission they existed.

The Williams governorship became one of the surliest the state has ever experienced, ending with a special session of the Senate called by Williams near the end of his four-year term, to confirm some appointees. The Senate snubbed Williams by quickly adjourning without action. As governor, Williams was more interested in shaking his fist at the National Democratic Party and the federal government than implementing programs to relieve the entrenched poverty in his home state.

Conservative blogger Free Citizen / SouthernCrown provides some interesting additional historical gloss and corrective to the Minor piece (as an aside, I think FC/SC is right about the corrections, although he’s more positive about Williams than I’d be) for those who want more of the history.

If you’ve not heard the tapes of Ross Barnett trying to put one over on both the Kennedys and the people of Mississippi, they are very much worth seeking out. However low your opinion may be of the man, the tapes will send it lower still.

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I’m reading a really nice piece about the financial meltdown by Micheal Lewis in Portfolio. I’m about half-way into it, but have read enough of this piece to highly recommend it. It’s well-written and has fascinating material in it.

Micheal Lewis became known for Liar’s Poker, his book about Wall Street in the 80s.  Ole Miss fans will know him for The Blind Side, which centers around the story of football player Micheal Oher.

If I get a chance later, I’ll write more about it.

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Good morning.

Hmm, November 28 . . . you know, that rings a bell. On this date one year ago, certain activity in Oxford (pdf) turned Dickie Scruggs’ — and Zach Scruggs’, Sidney Backstrom’s, and Steve Patterson’s — worlds upside down (we didn’t know then that Tim Balducci’s already had been and Joey Langston’s was about to be). The event’s effect on this brand-new little blog wasn’t immediately apparent either, but to say “changed everything” is mere approximation. Don’t know about you, but this one feels more like five years to me — and I’m not even Trent Lott, Ed Peters, Bobby DeLaughter, or PL Blake! As Patsy Brumfield has a look back and forth, I say Happy Anniversary, Scruggsiana.

From Mumbai, with the attack apparently over, the Times of India puts the death toll at 195 (at least 22 were non-Indian; five were Americans or had lived in the US, two were Canadians); eternal peace to them all. Though Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari promised Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to send his intelligence chief to help in the investigation, such opposition to that arose in Pakistan that now only a “representative,” not the ISI chief himself, will go. (What’s Urdu for “Psych!”?) As The Guardian‘s Richard Norton-Taylor and sources discuss the difficulty of spotting terrorists such as these in time to stop them, WaPo describes the focus on Pakistani militants, and Juan Cole and Pat Lang advise that resolving the Pakistani-Indian standoff over Kashmir needs Obama Administration commitment equal to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian one (Lang recommends partition).

Kevin Drum, posting about Samantha Power’s return to Camp Obama (on the transition team analyzing State Department personnel, operations, and policy), notes that

If we accept the conventional wisdom that Obama’s choice of Clinton as Secretary of State is a generous gesture meant to help unify the party, then there would be few more forthright ways for Clinton to reciprocate than by nominating Power for some kind of meaningful position at Foggy Bottom.

Then he adds the sentence italicized in this comment:

It would be a good sign that those hatchets have been well and truly buried.

Oh no, no, no. We’re not giving up that easily. If Hillary’s involved, there’s drama! There’s intrigue! Maybe some backstabbing! And sex!!

And even if there’s not, that’s our story and we’re going to tell that way.

Posted by: The Cable Yakkers on 11/28/08 at 6:07 PM

Hee.

Wiggle a paw if you’ve been stuffing it in like Mocha here:

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Thirteen and a half months ago, I wrote a long post celebrating news from Slate‘s Fred Kaplan about Bob Gates’ anything-but-Rumsfeldian approach to running the Pentagon. The key graf in that piece read:

… The point is, Gates has surrounded himself with, or been influenced by, some of the Army’s most creative warrior-intellectuals; and if he’d been given a chance to be the defense secretary for longer than two years and a month (Bush appointed him on Dec. 28, 2006), he might have been able to put some reforms in motion. …

Now Kaplan gets to pick up where he left off last year:

… From the start, [Gates] knew that he wouldn’t have time to make a lot of headway in these campaigns—which, within the military, represent fairly radical ideas. His intent was to spell out an agenda, and lay the groundwork, for the next administration.

Now it seems he’s going to be in the next administration. And it’s a good bet that President Barack Obama will be more receptive to Gates’ agenda than President George W. Bush ever was. First, Obama is open to new ideas generally. Second, at his Nov. 25 press conference, Obama said he would direct his new budget director to go over every program, every line item, with an eye toward eliminating those that don’t work or aren’t needed—and he pointedly included the Department of Defense among the agencies to be audited.

In short, Gates might be able to do many of the things that until now he has managed only to advocate. …

Kaplan goes so far as to call Gates’ retention “a stroke of brilliance—politically and substantively.” We’ll see about that, but at least it’s another suggestion that, at longest last, our stars may finally be coming into better alignment. (The Air Force brass may be less pleased.)

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h/t Dean Baker.

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h/t uggabugga for the Troubletown cartoon.

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My friend Pableaux Johnson writes from Louisville Kentucky (where he longs to move back to New Orleans) with a simple and straightforward recipe for turning leftover roast turkey into turkey gumbo.

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Tryptophan-wuzzled greetings, all. My admiration to y’all hitting the malls — don’t know how you do it.

A little update on Mumbai before we turn to happier topics . . . I’ve been looking especially for reporting on who’s behind this attack, the latest death toll of which I’ve seen is 143. Laura Rozen links Tariq Ali‘s suspicions that the attackers are homegrown and passes along Amit Varma‘s account of his night out in Mumbai. ToL’s Rhys Blakely, reporting that the terrorists’ “mothership” has been found with a corpse and a satellite phone aboard, says (a) this attack reminds experts of the methods attributed to Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the 2001 terrorist storming of India’s parliament with guns, grenades, and hostage-taking, but (b) Indian security forces also suspect the network of Dawood Ibrahim, “an underworld don who ranks among the world’s top five most-wanted men and is widely believed to have links with al-Qaeda.”

The Guardian‘s homepage runs stories on every angle, including Home-grown militants are prime suspects and Officials claim British links to attacks. NYT’s Jane Perlez has a fascinating account of Pakistani President Zardari’s attempts to talk down Indian fury — thereby putting himself sideways with his own security forces. WaPo’s Whitlock and DeYoung find Swedish terrorism analyst Magnus Ranstorp summing up best: “Anything could be in the cards. With most terrorist attacks, it’s relatively clear-cut who is involved. In this case, it could be all sorts of constellations that are at work.”

If news this hard is too much for your digestion, here’s something lighter: confounded wants the Kycols to see Zippy in his holiday Argyle. How’s this for prospering?

And to put our Awww factor through the roof, meta found some great still pix and a YouTube of the Obamas’ visit to St. Columbanus. Now we see why GlitterGirl enjoyed that so much . . .

Gratitude to Steve Benen for the text and video of Obama’s Thanksgiving message.

What are you up to today? My plans definitely involve more snooze.

P.S. Whoops, just as I was about to hit Publish, here came an email with a Today-Only Deal for country music fans — smoove timing, TT.

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When it became clear that Chinese factories were using melamine powder to fudge protein-level test for pet food (that made it to the US) and infant formula (in China), I wondered how long before we’d hear melamine crop up in our human food supply.  The answer would be “pretty quickly.’  And the FDA’s reaction?  Not to worry! It’s only trace amounts (though they’ve never studied whether there even is a safe level).  The Consumer’s Union’s reaction?  No so sanguine.  “‘It is very disturbing to us that no recall has been requested,’ said Jean Halloran, the group’s director of Food Policy Initiatives. ‘The FDA originally said there was no safe level for these contaminants in infant formula. So this formula is contaminated.’”

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Thanks to a friendly courier, I have a turkey (pictured below), and it’s in the oven.

update

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