I like Ike !!

I always think of Dwight Eisenhower on the anniversary of D-Day, since he was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII, and was an integral part of the planning for Operation Overlord (which we all know as the D-Day invasion.)

Eisenhower was a VERY capable individual, even though the mention of his name always brings up the following picture, simply because he bears a strong resemblance to the cartoon character pictured below:



(Do you see the resemblance to his official portrait?:)



I was still a wee lad when Eisenhower was President, but have since discovered that he made some very significant contributions to our society during both of his terms of office:

1) his threat of the use of nuclear weapons concluded the Korean War with China (the main support of North Korea)

2) he covertly opposed Joseph McCarthy, but contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking the modern expanded version of Executive privilege.

3) he was a “moderate conservative” (there aren’t a lot of those left any more) who continued the New Deal agencies started by FDR

4) he launched the Interstate Highway System, which President Obama tried to improve last summer - but House Republicans blocked his attempt:

how can we rid of John Boehner?

5) he sent Federal troops to Alabama to force integration of schools

6) even though he was a superb military commander, he warned of the emerging military-industrial complex in his “Chance for Peace” speech in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?

Republican leaders in Congress today, naturally, want an INCREASE in military spending, at the expense of the poor and disadvantaged

More news about “Ike” can be found at the link below:

I like Ike

Although it’s fairly well known the Eisenhower was a golf enthusiast later in life, very few people know that another one of his passions was oil painting. Click on this link to see some "art by Ike".

Although Eisenhower was, arguably, the reason we got into Vietnam (due to his speech about the domino theory), his 1961 farewell speech is still worth watching today:

do you remember discussions of guns verus butter?

Since this is the end of this article, it seems appropriate to close with a song titled The End