Looking back to 1980: Bobby Seale , John B. Anderson, and more

A buddy and I went to see #BobbySeale, the co-founder with Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party in 1966, speak in a small lecture hall on the UMBC campus in 1980. We may have been the only white kids there.  Seale focused on his latest campaign to promote buying products from local merchants and being active in your community, but talked about #HueyNewton and rich white liberals, too.

Huey  studied California gun laws in the mid 1960s and discovered that you could ride around in a car with certain guns legally as long as they weren't concealed.

Bobby chuckled about going to Berkley to recruit young, white rich kids with $$$ and rebellious zeal. He did not want to answer questions about Huey's current problems(1980).

There was a brief greet and meet afterwards and my buddy and I were quiet until Bobby pressed us for our opinions so I  posed the question about  how could local merchants avoid dealing with big corporations, and I've forgotten Bobby's answer but he was a he!! of a salesman and probably would have become a rich dude had he chosen a different path.

That same year I attended an on campus Marxist club meeting and learned quickly that this group was more worried about beer,  dating, and raising cash so that was my last visit there because  I had cooler friends for those pursuits.

I was a registered Democrat who was feeling the party's drift away from blue collar "values" and voted for John B Anderson, a Republican Congressman from Illinois, who ran as an Independent.

I wrote brief news summaries for the UMBC radio station and caught a ton of grief from the boss for  stating in an on air OP-ED that Jews and Arabs used common tactics in the Mideast.

It's a big world out there. My views have changed some in forty years. Screaming STFU isn't the answer.

June 9, 1980

Here's some interesting Presidential debate history. John B. Anderson and Reagan debated  in Baltimore, MD on September 21, 1980 in Baltimore, MD. The next debate was between  Reagan and President Carter on October 28, 1980 in Cleveland, OH.

June 20, 2020

Anderson was briefly considered as possible candidate for the Reform Party nomination in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, but instead endorsed Ralph Nader. In January 2008, Anderson supported Obama, a fellow Illinoisan.

July 14, 2020

I wonder if folks in Oakland who want to rename Jack London Square to Bobby Seale Square are aware that Seale renounced violence in the early 1970s and  wrote Barbeque’n with Bobby , a cookbook., in 1988.

July 28, 2020

Forty years later and there's another Presidential debate  in Cleveland, Ohio. First 2020 U.S. presidential debate will move to Cleveland after Notre Dame withdraws. 

Aug 13, 2020

All of the hoopla over Kamala Harris as the Dem VP sent me scurrying to the history books.  In 1972 Shirley Chisholm, a congresswoman from Brooklyn , NY,  was the first black woman to run for President. McGovern won the Democratic nomination that year. Also, in May 1972 she visited George Wallace in the hospital after Arthur Bremer shot him at point-blank range during a campaign appearance in Laurel, Maryland. 

Sept, 8, 2020

I was thinking about Bill Walton's friendships with Jack Scott and SLA sympathizers, and while searching the net, was reminded that Jimmy Carter commuted Patty Hearst's jail sentence in 1979.

Oct 10, 2020

 Carter and Reagan squared off only once due to a number of disagreements which left no room for a Mondale/Bush VP debate. I bet they didn't consider John B. Anderson's running mate, former Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey.

Jan 30, 2021

I  was not familiar with this comment from Fabian Socialist, George Barnard Shaw(1856-1950), “ I had no other feeling for the working classes than an intense desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people,” but felt it coming when I began my flight from Democrat party in 1980.

And recently #PaulEmbery , a British firefighter, union official, and lifelong Labor activist,  wrote an article ,“Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class,” which comments on how Shaw's condescension  has  become the dominant ideology of the progressive intelligentsia, which embraces every subcategory of identity politics except class identity.

April 20, 2021

RIP #WalterMondale. I'm not sure what a Mondale/Bush 1 VP debate would've been like had it not been skipped in October 1980.

April 24, 2021

I doubt if this came up in the 1980 debates but found it in a review of The Marble Man by Thomas L. Connelly (1977).

In August 1975, President Ford signed a bill restoring the rights of citizenship to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The legislation had been approved unanimously in the Senate and was passed by a vote of 407 to 10 in the House of Representatives.

June 17, 2021

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which would preside over the 1977 CIA Director confirmation hearings, Joe Biden assured #tedSorensen that he would help guide him through the process, but later turned on him. Sorensen had some baggage, but this is a lesson  to not trust our current President.

 Sorensen later said Biden should be awarded the “prize for political hypocrisy in a town noted for political hypocrisy.”

July 18, 2021

 Biden nominated Tom Udall, a former US senator and the nephew of the late Mo Udall, as ambassador to New Zealand. Mo ran against Carter in the 1976 Presidential primary and supported Teddy Kennedy against Carter in the 1980 Democratic primary. The old boy network lives on in the Democrat party.

August, 19, 2021

Biden’s approval rating hit the lowest point in his presidency, and his total failure in Afghanistan ranks right up there with Jimmy Carter's mishandling of Iran hostage situation which lasted 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981.

Dec 7, 2021

RIP #BobDole. Dole's caption for a photo of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon “see no evil, hear no evil—and evil.”

Sept 27, 2022

In 1979, Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., was able to get Congress to pass an unrelated spending bill that exempted the Tellico dam construction from the Endangered Species Act. Is this similar to what Manchin is trying to do with the Mountain Valley Pipeline?

Nov 5, 2022

Since I voted for this Presidential ticket in 1980:  John Anderson/Patrick Lucey ticket received 5,719,437 votes for 6.6 percent of the total vote in the 1980 presidential election.

Dec 31, 2022

In hindsight, Billy Carter, Jimmy's brother, was an amusing clown compared to Hunter Biden. Lunden Roberts, a former exotic dancer and mother of Hunter Biden's child, requested their child have Biden as its last name through her lawyer Tuesday in a case where Hunter asked to lower his child support payments. 

Feb 20, 2023

The news of Jimmy Carter nearing the end remind me that he acknowledged in 2020 that his son Chip smoked a joint with Willie Nelson on the White House roof on September 13,1980.