Ah, the good old days of U.S Foreign Policy

Did Jimmy Carter create the Beer Boom?

There's been a little storm "brewing" (LOL) on the internet about whether Jimmy Carter's deregulation of the beer industry led to the incredible diversity of brew that we now have in the USA. 

There may have been 5 or 6 varieties of beer in the convenience stores of my youth. 

Fifty year later, the typical Stop'n'Shop now carries about 75 varieties of beer, most of which you've never heard of. 

Here's Eric Kain of Balloon Juice:

If you’re a fan of craft beer and microbreweries as opposed to say Bud Light or Coors, you should say a little thank you to Jimmy Carter. Carter could very well be the hero of International Beer Day.
To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening the market back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry:

Here's your chart. 

Good stuff, right?  We deregulated, little guys brought competition to the marketplace, and a plethora of brews were brought to a thirsty public.

 Here's what Reason magazine had to say on the subject:

I personally find it particularly meaningful that government and industry and (I presume) anti-drinking scolds colluded to criminalize a behavior that wasn't just victimless, but downright awesome; and that the removal of that appalling bit of illiberal nannyism helped usher in a phenomenon I would have bet the house against two decades ago: a thriving and variegated American industry of delicious beermaking.
And given that, what's wrong with making deregulation a "starting point"? (A concern of the original article) Imagine for a crazy moment a world in which the default expectation would be for government not to flop its grotesque belly onto the forehead of various industries, not to meddle in the affairs of pre-pubescent drink vendors, not to redistribute $20 billion a year (give or take) of our money to mostly well-heeled agriculture companies just to make sure they don't face competition from poor people. I'm not talking about no regulation here, but rather the idea that if such-and-such activity isn't hurting anybody it shouldn't be subject to governmental micro-managing, license-imposing, winner-picking, and even arrest.
One of the common misconceptions about libertarian enthusiasm for deregulation is that it's some kind of (presumably paid-for) philosophical cover for wanting the very richest Corporates to be even richer. Speaking as a libertarded conspiracy of one, my favorite bedtime deregulation stories are about stuff like beer, air travel, and talking about politics on radio and TV, where after you lifted restrictions that in retrospect sound like they came from another planet, people do what the normally do when left alone—create all kinds of interesting new artifacts, businesses, and even ways of life. Regulations so often piss me off because they so often fall disproportionately on the backs of the little guy, while the big guy—even/especially the one whose misconduct precipitated the regulation in the first place—walks off with a well-lobbied exemption. Generally speaking, the fewer activities are illegal, the freer us opposable-thumbs types are.

Damn.  I wish I'd written that!

But wait....there's more. 

After publishing some of these findings about Jimmy Carter's involvement in the beer boom, James Fallows had to issue an in absentia retraction for Mr. Kain, based on the research of a reader namedTom Hilton:

While I have immense admiration for President Carter, and would love to see him get the credit he deserves for all sorts of things (and who knows; now that Obama has officially supplanted him as History's Greatest Monster, maybe he will), but E. D. Kain's claim that Carter "deregulated the beer industry" (in Kain's words) is grossly inaccurate. What Carter did sign was HR 1337, which legalized homebrewing "for personal or family use, and not for sale"--'deregulating' individual, not commercial, behavior. The legalization of homebrewing did contribute to the growth of the craft beer industry (according to Charlie Papazian, 90% of the pioneer craft brewers started out making homebrew), so President Carter certainly deserves credit for that...but it just as certainly isn't "beer industry" deregulation. 
IMO, the step that really touched off the craft beer explosion was the legalization of brewpubs in various states--WA and CA in 1982, OR in 1983, with others following shortly thereafter. This is consistent with the graph, which shows a leap in numbers from 1979 to 1989 (meaning the growth could have started at any point during that decade); according to the American Brewers Association, the low point was 1982, meaning the turnaround actually began in 1983 (not 1979). Also: of the 1500 breweries in existence today, 2/3 are or began as brewpubs.

That would change everything, wouldn't it?  There's a huge difference between homebrewing and operating a brewpub and operating a full-blown distillery. 
So Eric Kain, who started the discussion, jumped back in. 

Your reader is quibbling over the definition of deregulation. Removing a barrier to entry to any market is an act of deregulation whether or not access to the market is direct or indirect.

If, for instance, people were not allowed to bake their own bread without a license from the government and strict adherence to a number of regulations, then this would effectively crowd out a lot of people who would otherwise become bakers. One doesn't need to legalize the sale of home baked bread in order to deregulate the bread market, they simply need to legalize the baking itself which provides people with basic access to the craft as well as to the supplies necessary to pursue that craft. Likewise, regulating away home bakers would also crowd out a lot of suppliers who would otherwise provide baking goods and information to home bakers. Soon only bakeries with access to lots of cash and influence would have any market share at all, regardless of whether or not smaller bakeries were legal.

The same phenomenon applies to home brewing. In the pre-Carter days there was little or no access to home brewing supplies, very little knowledge base for do-it-yourselfers to draw from, and far less experimentation with home brewing, making it effectively impossible to gain entry to the beer market for non-corporate brewers. Carter's deregulation essentially stripped away all these barriers to entry, making it possible for a number of people who would otherwise not have entered the market to do so. Did deregulation of brewpubs also help lead to the craft beer explosion? Certainly. But as your reader notes, 90% of craft beers began as home brews. Without Carter's deregulation, the brewpubs themselves would never have taken off. 90% of the craft brews we now have would never have existed. Even if this didn't allow home brewers to directly sell their beer in the wider market, it allowed them to gain the skills and information necessary to do so.

Removing these barriers to entry can rightly be understood as deregulating the beer industry. It's just semantics to suggest otherwise.

My head is starting to hurt from trying to figure this out.
 
Here's what I do know.  Somewhere, based on this Tempest In A Brewpot, the deregulation of the beer industry brought diversity and competition to the market.  The same thing happened in the airline industry, the deregulation of my own trucking industry, and in every other area where nanny-staters, busybodies and other parasites have decided to get the hell out of your way.  And Jimmy Carter had something to do with it. 

The guy is still alive, you know, but nobody will ask him exactly what happened because once he starts talking he doesn't stop. 

Freedom is good.  As long as you're not hurting anyone else, your freedom is a good thing.  Heck, it's a great thing.  It's the most undervalued asset on this planet.  Nobody planned on me being able to drink a Shiner in a East Fort Worth bar this afternoon.  There is no beer czar.  Therefore, the beer industry isn't screwed up. 

We do have a Drug Czar, an Education Czar, and for all practical purposes, a Healthcare Czar, and therefore those industries are as f***ed up as a soup sandwich. 

Let's deregulate healthcare and education.  We have no idea who will step in to make us happy for less money.  And in the meantime, raise a Shiner Bock in praise of Jimmy Carter, and thank the gods that we don't have a beer czar. 



 

How Jimmy Carter saved beer

This is from the noted Right-Wing, Libertarian, Free Market, Reactionary magazine The New Republic. 
When you're reading this, think of the strides we could make if we deregulated medicine. 

I am not a drinker, but this, per E.D. Kain, seems like an unappreciated accomplishment for the 39th president:

If you’re a fan of craft beer and microbreweries as opposed to say Bud Light or Coors, you should say a little thank you to Jimmy Carter. Carter could very well be the hero of International Beer Day.

To make a long story short, prohibition led to the dismantling of many small breweries around the nation. When prohibition was lifted, government tightly regulated the market, and small scale producers were essentially shut out of the beer market altogether. Regulations imposed at the time greatly benefited the large beer makers. In 1979, Carter deregulated the beer industry, opening  back up to craft brewers. As the chart below illustrates, this had a really amazing effect on the beer industry: 

Possibly this was all a plot to jack up peanut sales. But it worked.
It's worth noting that Carter got no political credit for this move, and that the benefits didn't appear until long after he departed. Some policy successes -- like a successful war or peace treaty -- yield immediate political dividends. But others produce little change until many years later, by which time everybody has forgotten your policy had anything to do with it.

On The Fair Pay Act

Here's some info on the Fair Pay Act, courtesy of the National Committee on Pay Equity:

The major provision of the Fair Pay Act prohibits wage discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin among employees for work in "equivalent jobs." Equivalent jobs are those whose composite of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions are equivalent in value, even if the jobs are dissimilar. The Act is a natural extension of the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which is limited to sex-based discrimination in the same jobs. For enforcement purposes, the Fair Pay Act allows class action lawsuits to be filed and provides for compensatory and punitive damages. It also fills the information gap for workers by requiring some employers to disclose to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) general job classifications and their pay statistics (although it maintains individual confidentiality). The bill prohibits a company from lowering any employee's wage rate in order to implement fair pay.

In other words, it's a feast for lawyers. 

How do you determine if pay is "fair" between dissimilar occupations? 

There has been a variety of experiences with pay equity implementation. In a school district, elementary school head secretaries were compared to audiovisual technicians. In a hospital, registered nursing assistants were compared to plumbers. In a shoe factory, console operators/sample stitchers were compared to cutters. In a retail food chain, cashiers and meat wrappers were compared to stock clerks. In state and municipal governments, job evaluation systems have allowed comparisons to be made between many female- and male-dominated jobs. These have included comparing Clerk Typists and Custodians; Secretaries and Lab Technicians; Finance Clerks and Maintenance Workers; Emergency Services Operators and Fire Dispatchers; and Dining Hall Coordinators and Automotive Parts Technicians. Through collective bargaining negotiations, Social Workers in a large county received a pay adjustment after being compared to Parole Officers.

In other words, the National Committee on Pay Equity will decide.  With the lawyers.  God help us all.  Your boss might consider giving you a raise instead of that slacker in the next cubicle, but would it be worth the risk? 

Ok, here's a thought experiment....  Name two people who have done your job, for the same time, who works as hard as you, with the same results that you achieve. 

You have thirty more seconds. 

Pencils down.  Turn in your papers. 

If you were able to think of anyone who has done your job for the same time with the same effort with the same results, you are probably unemployed.  Equality isn't possible for longer than 3 days on a job.   

This is the Obama Camp's opening salvo in the non-war on women from the Obama Camp. 

Government intervention in the price of something decreases demand for the thing.  There is going to be more money for lawyers, more money for government salary evaluators, and less money for you. 

Perhaps I've exagerrated.  Obama may wind up doing the exact job, for the same duration, with the same results as.....Jimmy Carter. 

The 4th Best President EVER ! (Right behind Jimmy Carter, Andrew Johnson, and Millard Fillmore)

Since they are total hacks and since they wouldn't want to do anything to expose Dear Leader to ridicule, 60 Minutes didn't include this bit of Barackaganda in their recent Obama interview. 

They did screw up and include it in the transcript  Heads will roll. 

Have a terrifying glimpse into the minds behind The Teleprompter:

President Obama suggested, during his recent CBS interview, that his domestic and foreign policy achievements over his first term surpass any other United States president, “with the possible exceptions” of Presidents Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson.

“I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln,” Obama told Steve Kroft, “just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.”

Here's cartoonist Michael Ramirez:

 

A Hypothetical Question About The Nobel Peace Prize

The last three Democrat adminstrations have produced three Nobel Peace prize winners.

Carter/Mondale - Carter won it, and then went off into full-time Foreign Policy interference. 

Clinton/Gore - Gore won it, and then went off to be a Green Scam Billionaire. 

Obama/Biden - Obama won the Peace Prize, and then went off to bomb the crap out of Libya, get involved in Pakistan, and then carefully maintain the other wars that we had on our plate. 

So....There's long been talk of replacing Biden on the 2012 ballot with someone who is marginally sane.  Now there's talk of replacing Obama on the 2012 ballot with someone who is marginally electable. 

If this happens, and the new Democrate Duo happens to win, is the Nobel automatically awarded to one of the new Statists?  Should it be, just to save time? 

Just wondering. 

Welcome Back Carter

It was 32 years ago today. 
Jimmy Carter gave his infamous "malaise" speech.
It actually holds up pretty well, but nobody was in the mood for it at the time. 
No one wants to listen to sanctimonious hectoring about shared sacrifice from someone widely perceived as the root cause of the need for shared sacrifice. 

Here's a Jimmy Carter/Barry Obama mashup, assembled by some genius from the Laura Ingraham show. 

It really is that bad, isn't it ?

I found this on Denny's site. 

Barack Obama, The Warmonger, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Irony is now DEAD.

Barack Obama, the leader of the U.S. forces killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 261 days, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I read something about it around 4:00 this morning, but assumed it was a send-up by The Onion or Iowahawk.


Lord have mercy, it was just a few weeks ago that The Teleprompter Jesus ordered a dozen Bunker-Busting Bombs for a potential attack on Iran. (Bunker-Busters are the most devastating weapons available without going nuclear.) Here's The Debka File:


All this urgency indicates that the Obama administration has been preparing military muscle to back up the international condemnation of Iran’s concealed nuclear bomb program, its sanctions threat and his willingness to join the negotiations with Iran opening on Oct. 1 in Geneva. Tehran may have to take into account a possible one-time surgical strike against its underground enrichment facility as a warning shot should its defiance continue. In particular, the world powers this week demanded that Iran open up all its nuclear facilities and programs to full and immediate international inspection. Failure to do so could bring forth further US military action.


I heard the folks on NPR fumbling around this morning, trying to explain the Nobel committee's decision. Even that gang of White House Sock Puppets were bewildered. They decided that it was probably awarded for Obama's desire for "Multilateral Approaches" to world conflicts. Note the dark type in the article above. I wonder if Iran is worried about France building up Bunker-Buster stockpiles.....


Everyone knew Obama would get this award, but I figured they would have the decency to wait until he was out of office, the way they did it with Jimmy Carter or The Goracle Of Music City and any other Democrats that I may have overlooked.


Unbelievable. They've given the world's highest honor to a marketing campaign. He's doing everything that Bush did - Gitmo, Two Wars, Wiretaps, etc etc etc - but he's so much nicer about it ! ! And he's willing to get France involved !


Whether our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is just or unjust, our President is the military leader in both wars. He's ordering people to kill other people. If Barack Obama has any sense of shame, he will thank the committee for their consideration and return the prize.


What a freakin' farce.

Is Jimmy Carter a racist?

I've avoided this issue for long enough, so here goes.....

Jimmy Carter believes that Barack Obama's critics are racists. So does Janeane Garofalo. So does Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who believes, at minimum, that race is a motivator for those who oppose the President's agenda.

Let's move that accusation to the back burner for a few minutes, and move on to some definitions.

There are multiple forms of racism. The one that gets the most attention is the Ku Klux Klan / Aryan Nation / Han Chinese / We're God's Chosen People variety. This type of racist feels that certain races are inferior. I grew up with some of that in Mississippi.

There's another form. This is the racism of the paternalistic, quota-loving, tokenism sort. Race has to be taken into account on just about everything - hiring quotas, social promotion, the makeup of the homecoming court, construction contracts, etc etc etc. If the Big Daddy group doesn't set a lower standard for the lesser group, the lesser group won't ever make it on their own, a concept that the Bush administration once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

I don't like either variety of racism. I live on an oddball corner lot where "the neighbors" are, starting from the east, black, lesbian, gay, black, white, white, and Hispanic. I'm a long, long way from being colorblind, but that's not the point. When the Hispanic couple first moved in from Mexico, they had a less than charming habit of opening their garage door in the middle of the night, tuning 5 or 6 jam boxes to the same mariachi radio station, and turning the volume knobs up to eleven.

One of the Sapphic ladies, one of the black ladies and I didn't hesitate to walk across the street and ask them to turn down the volume, since East Fort Worth isn't Juarez. We didn't take cultural differences into account. We didn't research Mexico's tradition of having lots of friends over, shooting guns in the air, and cranking up the volume at 1:00 a.m. We didn't question whether they were capable of performing the action we requested. We acted like they were.... just.... like.... us. To do otherwise, IMAO, would've been racist. (Aw, honey, they're Mexicans. We can't expect them to behave like, you know, people.)

Enter Jimmy Carter, and the others who equate opposition to Obama with racism.

Barack Obama has added a projected two trillion dollars to the national debt. No one, I repeat, no one in Washington believes his statement that his healthcare plan will be "deficit-neutral". He has blatantly reneged on his pledge to post all proposed legislation on the internet before signing. It doesn't look like we'll be transferring terrorists out of Gitmo any time soon. Granted, Leader Of The Free World is a tough gig, but he got elected based on what he said he was going to do. He has made, and is making, pledges that he isn't going to keep. Those who voted for Obama based on his promises must be disappointed.

If you fail to express this disappointment, or protest against Obama's deceptions, is it because you suffer from "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? Remember how Republicans turned on the elder Bush when he violated his "Read my lips: No new taxes" pledge?

So here's a question for Jimmy Carter, Janeane Garofalo, and Mark Potok. Are you people racists?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Mouse That Roared....

Remember the concern about who is going to do reporting if the traditional print media goes under?
Remember when people cared if CNN's coverage of an event was any good or not? People are writing letters to the New York Times about how crappy CNN's coverage of the Iranian protests has been.
That was then, this is now.

If you haven't heard, there's a revolt going on in Iran.
I've had ample opportunity today to listen to the radio. I didn't hear a peep about the revolt in Iran on KERA, our National Socialist Radio affiliate. None of the right wing AM stations - KSKY, KLIF, or WBAP were talking about it. KMNY, the lefty station (1360 on your AM dial) spent the day damning Rush Limbaugh.
AS OF 8:09 P.M., THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM'S WEBSITE DOESN'T MENTION IRAN ON THE FRONT PAGE ! ! !

Well....like the old men said when Ebeneezer Scrooge died, I'll go to their funerals if refreshments are served.

This revolution is being broadcast all over the world, as it happens, but without the CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC content filter, or Voice Of God network anchorman.

It's amazing. Check this out from Little Green Footballs, especially at the .30 mark where the woman gets knocked down by police, hops up like she's got Allah on her side, and goes back for more:



I'd like to meet that lady.

When you get a chance, look at the Tehran Twitter Feed. Amazing, depressing, and exhilarating. There are thousands of voices out there, Tweeting away, many of them doing it in English for YOUR benefit. Be grateful.

Andrew Sullivan has been going at it for four days straight, posting a fraction of the tons of material sent to him. Talk about your "first draft of history".... Eat your heart out, Newsweek.
Here's a sample of what Andrew's been posting. Warning: neither of these videos is for the squeamish.





Here's where things started getting out of hand....



When Iranian "students" took Americans hostages during the Jimmy Carter Era Of Darkness, the clerics who led the Iranian revolution claimed that the students were acting on their own.
Years later, six of the former hostages now claim that one of their student captors was.... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now semi-legitimate president of Iran.




It's funny how those revolutions will turn on a guy. Trotsky, Che, Danton, and now Ahmadinejad.
But, I digress.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It will be Tweeted, Texted, Blogged, Emailed,and YouTubed. Coming straight to that little screen in front of you.

Happy Presidents Day

Happy Presidents Day

Here's a list of the United States presidents and first ladies that I've seen, along with the circumstances. I've given each encounter a numerical grade based on nothing more than the general vibe of the experience.

Let's start with the most recent president. In February of '08 I saw Barack Obama when he spoke at Reunion Arena in Dallas. This was the infamous appearance where he got applause for blowing his nose. Having re-read my post about the event, I'm proud to say that I didn't get suckered in, although I had a lot of respect for his rhetorical skills. I'm also proud that I contributed $12.50 to help him defeat She Whose Name Is Not Spoken in the Democrat primary. But Godalmighty, he's an economic disaster.

Score: 7

I used to manage the Bookstop store at Preston & Forest in Dallas. (We were bought out by Barnes & Noble, who eventually closed all the locations or converted them to B&N stores.) This store was in the same shopping center where one-time presidential candidate Ross Perot got his infamous $10.00 haircuts. In 1992, Perot was often in our store saying things like "Ahm lookin' fer yer books on guvment waste !" We'd go find whatever he was looking for, and two nights later the little man would be quoting the books on television. We were drunk with power.

Another celebrity of sorts often came into the same store to kill time. George W. Bush was then owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, and he often came in the store and spent a lot of time in the History, Current Events, and Biography sections. He always bought more than one book. You can say a lot of things about the man, but illiterate he's not. In person, he's a really nice guy. We had more than one conversation about how 3rd baseman Steve Buechele's batting average was improving. Somewhere in my house I've got an autographed GW Bush business card that I've been trying to find for about 10 years.

Score: 9

I've never seen the current Secretary Of State, or her husband.

Score: 10 (out of gratitude)

The guy before The Clintons was George H.W. Bush. I saw him throw out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers baseball game in 1991. Papa Bush was captain of the Yale baseball team, and played first base. But the pitch he threw made it only 2/3rds of the way to home plate before bouncing in the dirt.

Score: 4

My mother went to high school in Merigold, Mississippi, and graduated in a senior class of maybe 7 people. One of these 7 was a guy named Larry Speakes. After running a few newspapers, Larry became press secretary for senator James Eastland, and then worked his way up to press secretary for president Ronald Reagan.

Larry's now known for two quotes: "I would dodge, not lie, in the national interest," and "Those who talk don't know what is going on and those who know what is going on won't talk."

In 1981 or 82, my father bought a used Winnebago motor home for about $2,500.00
That was about $2,000.00 more than it was worth. We worked on it for a few weeks, and decided to take it on a shakedown cruise.
From Mississippi to Washington D.C.
My mother made arrangements with Larry for us to get a private tour of the White House. My father's farm co-op gave us a 50-pound bag of Mississippi Delta rice to take to the Reagans. Larry's father was still the town banker in Merigold, and he gave us two fishing poles that he wanted to give his grandsons as birthday presents.

So my parents, two sisters, brother and I drove a ramshackle motor home all the way to the White House parking lot, got out of it with a 50-pound bag of rice and two fishing poles, went through security, and carried the stuff inside. We didn't get to go into the Oval Office, but Larry took us to the press briefing room where they have all the news conferences. Somewhere there's a picture of me behind the podium looking very un-presidential.

We got to see Reagan's helicopter land in the back yard of the White House. He was a very tall, very healthy looking man. The helicopter prop wash was blowing everyone's hair all over the place, but Reagan's didn't budge. He waved at us. I don't know if Nancy ever cooked the rice.

Score: 8

Before I worked at Bookstop, I managed stores for a Mom & Pop company called Taylors Books. I once had to help work the door for a Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter book signing when they came to Dallas. They were publicizing their book "Everything to Gain: Making The Most Of The Rest Of Your Life". The line of customers zigzagged down every aisle of the store, out the front door, around the store, and into the back alley. Carter seemed nice enough, and Miss Rosalynn seemed mildly sedated. Their publicist would hand them a book, the former president would write "Jimmy &", and his wife would write "Rosalynn Carter". They could get it done in less than 8 seconds per copy.

We had plenty of copies of the book. Acres of it. But the Carters could only stay for about two hours. Even at 8 seconds per copy, some customers were going to be turned away.

This would have been in 1987 or 1988. Reagan had been in office for most of his second term by then. History had already passed judgement on the Carter presidency, and that judgement wasn't very kind.

The people waiting in line to see JIMMY CARTER OF PLAINS GEORGIA with their own two eyes? They didn't care. These were die-hard democrats, the last of the true believers. Jesus Christ himself was inside Taylors Books, turning water into wine, and I was the one who had to keep letting them in at the rate of only one customer every 8 seconds.

This was my first experience with The Herd Mentality. It wasn't pleasant when Jimmy and Rosalynn left us to do radio and TV appearances.

Score: 2

I never saw Gerald Ford, although I had one supervisor in the early 80's who thought I should go to his wife's clinic.

In April of 1973, my parents got us up in the middle of the night to go to the new Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi. Richard Nixon was going to be guest speaker at the opening of the base. Daddy fired up the station wagon, Mama threw some peanut butter and crackers in the back seat, and we took off.
(This was near the peak of the Watergate scandal, and the only places that Nixon could appear without being booed were military bases in the Deep South.)
When we got to Meridian, we'd eaten all the peanut butter and there was already a mob in the open field that surrounded the podium. The best we could have honestly done for seats was about 75 yards away from the president. But we are not a shy family.
Daddy saw some empty chairs in the second row of the VIP area, and we started plowing toward them. The seats had signs on the backs, reserving them for assorted high ranking officers. My parents STEPPED OVER THE ROPE BARRIERS WITH THE SECRET SERVICE MEN WATCHING, and led us to the chairs.
We got to hear Nixon speak from about 10 yards away. When the speeches were over, my mother was impressed that Pat Nixon got down on her knees at the edge of the stage to shake hands with a woman in a wheelchair.
Daddy's theory on why we got away with it: The Secret Service knew that any family smelling that much like peanut butter couldn't be a threat to the president.

Score: 8

I never got to see LBJ, but I saw his wife Lady Bird get the BRIT International Award of Excellence for her work in preserving Texas plants and wildlife. Fort Worth's own Van Cliburn played the piano and sang for her. It was a great night.

Score: 7

That's all the presidents and first ladies that I've seen. Hope you enjoyed hearing about it. I've enjoyed remembering it.