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PRESS RELATIONS
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS RELATIONS
You should know up front that I do not like the style, format or tone of Press relations at the White House nor in the rest of the coverage of the President. It is my intention that my relations with the Press Corps be modeled after the style and tone of the JFK – Press Corps relationship. One aspect of this is that I intend to treat the Press well. One simple thing I remember from the Kennedy Campaign days was on a cold night, when everyone had had a long day and was exhausted and worn down, John F. Kennedy said those press fellow have been grinding away all day. They must be miserable. Send them a plate of sandwiches. The interviews or briefings were conversational and humorous, rather than unpleasant. It takes two to tango. I am reminded of the scene in the film Out of Africa where Karen Blixen asks Barclay Cole if she could borrow one of Denys Finch-Hatton’s books. Barclay tells her a fellow borrowed a book and never returned it. When Barclay said to Denys “You wouldn’t lose a good friend over a little thing like that would you? Denys answered “No, but he has - hasn’t he . . .” There are two sides to every relationship. I start out here, now, with these words, offering to be a good friend for you if I occupy the White House. That ball is in your court now to handle well and enjoy a good relationship or to mishandle and lose one.
I have lived my life under the radar, purposefully mostly as I was able to be highly effective in important and sensitive matters. I moved around the world with a kind of invisible security network monitoring me but with virtually no public relations contact. So initializing and managing relations well with the Press Corp may be a discovering new territory experience for the Press Corps as well as myself. I intend to give the career Press people more extensive access than has been the case with previous administrations. Remember, though, part of my background training has been in the U. S. Coast Guard which has a Zero Tolerance policy on such things as drugs or actions against America. You can expect that from me also, as well as Zero Tolerance for a lack of courtesy and respect for the office of President.
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Intellectual Life and Actions
As an Individual Member for the past several years of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which among other things works to market American goods and services in China, I participated in an international project benefitting a children's school. The book you see above left Apple Picking Time (Michele Benoit Slawson, Illustrations by Deborah Kogan Ray, Crown Publishers, Inc. Dragonfly Books 1994) is a very fine children's book which inspired me to purchase 200 children's books and send them to the Chamber as my personal donation to the school. I selected books which were not ethnocentric but seemed to have an appeal universal to all kinds of people. The cost of the books was a bit of a stunner but what really got me was the shipping costs nearly equaled the cost of the books themselves. The icing on the expenses cake was that China's Customs Department would not release the books for the children even though they were a gift for a school in China unless a hefty Customs tax was paid first. It turned into such a dragged out overly expensive deal I discontinued doing it. Sort of like the tree tax decreed by the old Ottoman Empire of Turkey: if you had any trees on your land, in the area we know today as Israel for example, you had to pay a tax for each tree, so everyone chopped down all their trees to lessen their tax bill, leaving the place arid and barren as described by Mark Twain, not fit for agriculture. (It is only the Jews planting new young live trees over the last hundred years that has given a new birth to the trees there, making shade and generating a little moisture for rain, and irrigating the desert with techniques learned at the University of California at Davis among other things, that have turned Israel into such an agricultural producer the tiny country provides a large portion of the fresh produce for Europe. Don't think for a moment that these things happen overnight, without great labor; my mentor once told me Einstein himself said something like it takes five generations to breed a genius.) This awesome effect that taxes can have is what the great U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was referring to when he wrote that the Power to Tax involves the Power to Destroy. It is true that what is called Tax Policy is a serious matter and the State Power of any nation has the undoubted right, in its sound discretion - and most wisely with great sensitivity - to impose such taxes as it finds necessary. Yet this is a kind of pernicious tax that should be extremely rarely imposed because as can be comprehended on its face this kind of unwise tax ultimately harms the country that enacted it rather than helping it.
You see a couple other literature sources I draw on intellectually. The large book by C. L Sulzberger The Last of the Giants (1970) with its fine cover illustrations of World War II/post World War II European leaders President Charles de Gaulle of France, Sir Winston Churchill of England and West Germany's first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany was authored by the man who wrote the Foreign Affairs column in The New York Times in days when it was somewhat more intellectually classy, was better thought of, even called by some though not all the paper of record and was not losing circulation and not reducing its page size, instead of as today acting politically merely as a sewage pipe for extreme left wing .orgs and all. The newspaper at the top of the photo is a local newspaper which carries the Foreign Affairs column now authored by Cy Sulzberger's successor, the generally thoughtful and intelligent Tom Friedman who I follow catch as catch can in the print and television media. These fine authors have contributed greatly to my knowledge base and analysis perspectives in international relations. Mr. Sulzberger's son I believe has gone on to become the present Publisher of The New York Times. I express my respect for their work. Like Will Rogers said "All I know is what I read in the newspapers." Aaaand, as Sir Winston Churchill said "Be careful what you say about people who buy their ink in thousand gallon drums." As my father's father was the Publisher of a newspaper himself, the British-American in Chicago in the years leading up to World War II, before Mayor Daley made it part of Ireland, my grandfather put Sir Winston's portrait on The Front Page with a bold caption stating that We Believe This Man Will Be The Saviour of Europe. Just the kind of thing Winnie would like. We need newspapers. They perform a great service even if they go off on a wild wing tangent. I am not so much for wings. Some airplanes have very wide wingspans like the plane shown in the fine film The Aviator starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Howard Hughes's giant Spruce Goose which I have been aboard. I see their sometimes usefulness and I see their sometimes uselessness. You have to have them, you cannot fly without them. It is a question of size, good design and payload. I design in more power, more range, more payload in the bay and sleeker, more efficient sweepback wings that blend smoothly with the main body rather than hanging so far out. I am more on the model of the Space Shuttle or the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Should I become President we are going to move it.
As I am by profession a United States and International Lawyer (Syracuse University College of Law Juris Doctor with ABA-Approved International Legal Studies Program Certificate May, 1985) I also included this newspaper page because I want to teach you something about The International Legal System. The mid-page article indicates then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - who is no longer in office himself - seems to be telling U. S. President George W. Bush to close the camp at Guantanamo, Cuba where the U. S. Military holds and interrogates enemy combatants such as Al Quaeda terrorists. This may reinforce the misconception many people labor under to the effect the UN is a sort of World Government and the head official of the UN is sort of above the Presidents of all of the Member Nations of the UN. Nothing could be further from the truth. The UN derives its existence from contributions to it from Member Nations. The U.S. contribution each year is larger than any other; presently I think the U.S. pays about 25% of the UN's income. There is no chain of authority or chain of command running downward from the UN to the Governments, Presidents, Monarchs, or Prime Ministers of the Member Nations. Many people seem to think that the UN is a kind of international super government, but it is completely untrue. Without the Member States, especially the United States, the UN has almost no power or authority at all. The International Law of the situation is that the U.S. President never takes any order from anyone in the UN. Nor does the Head of Government or Head of State of any other nation. So I include this to set the truth out plainly about this matter.
You see at the right of the photo my car keys. The small leather and attached bronze medallion is a token given me upon completion of a Men's Fraternity curriculum authored by Robert Lewis which is titled Authentic Manhood and runs for three years, completing a single six month weekly 6:15 -7:30 a.m. class segment each year, so the total program is 18 months, although we skipped some repetitive parts I think and finished in two years. Each man had a long thorough examination of his Character, and correcting of weaknesses and strengthening of strengths by himself and in teachings and following the proverb that one man sharpens another as iron sharpens iron also in interaction with other men in small groups. It is inscribed
REJECT PASSIVITY
ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY
LEAD COURAGEOUSLY
EXPECT GOD'S REWARD
I express my appreciation for the teaching and guidance of Senior Pastor Chris Cannon and then Associate Pastor Todd Wendorff, who has moved on to his own church, and the men in our mostly cold dark weekly early morning classes for those years at King's Harbor Church, situated in the former church building of Hal Lindsey under whom I studied in the past and am proud to call a friendly acquaintance although he's moved on some distance away.
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WANT TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE?
Apart from our cat Duke who you see doing what he loves to do - sleep - you see my copy of a book standing up titled ABSOLUTE VICTORY. This book has an Introduction or Forward by President George H.W. Bush. Near the end of the book there is a first person account by a woman who as a young girl was in Hiroshima or Nagasaki on the day the atomic bomb was detonated there. She lived to remember and tell the story of that day because at the time the bomb exploded she was below ground level in a stone cellar. After the blast and heat wave passed over her head she heard noises and went up the stairs to the outdoors to see what was the matter. She was one and one-quarter miles from where the bomb had exploded. She looked around and saw the local people standing around screaming in pain. The reason they were screaming in pain is because their flesh hung from their arms and bodies in ribbons. This was, remember, the world's first atomic bomb; it was relatively small in power compared to today's nuclear bombs. Yet it caused this kind of damage - not even counting the radiation fallout that would kill tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning sickness - even one and one quarter miles away from where it exploded. It is the annouced plan of Osama Bin Laden, and no doubt many others like him have the same intent, to explode nuclear bombs in American cities. OBL has designated eight cities which are listed as including if I remember aright Boston, New York, Washington Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles in a 2005 book by Paul WIlliams. It is to prevent this destruction of America - what Osama Bin Laden calls an "American Hiroshima" - that I express my campaign in terms of urgency. It is my clear sense that, I alone having already saved America twice from nuclear bomb-ers, I am the best-qualified, in truth the only one qualified, to protect you and our country from this direct threat. In this sense, if you can understand me, I do not seek the Presidency for me, but rather for your sakes. Your choice is with me to not be burned up or with the others to, at some point in time, more probably be nuclear-bomb-incinerated at some millions of degrees. This is not my own theorizing but is based upon factual information in books written by those who have studied this problem. Go ahead, read all about it. If you fail to help me, to overcome the unfairnesses presently prevailing in the electoral system and become President this may more probably be your future.
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Disclaimer required by the Federal Election Commission Rules:
This web site has been paid for by the Principal Committee To Elect John W. Stevenson President of The United States of America in the 2008 Election.
John W. Stevenson approved this message and web site and intends they comply with all relevant laws.
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