BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
OTHER than my family and friends here are some of my fellow Americans I am thankful for.......
Who are you thankful for this year?
Thanksgiving
is a time for reflection – a chance to ask ourselves what we're really
thankful for, what really matters to us. This year, we've seen people
all across the country act boldly to defend our fundamental freedoms.
We've put together a few of the 2013 acts of leadership, courage and
vision that we think are especially deserving of our gratitude. We hope
you'll take a moment to share one or more of them to let your friends
and family know who you're thankful for this year.
Edie Windsor:
Taking the fight for equality to the Supreme Court.
Edie Windsor took on the government — and won. When her spouse
and partner of 40 years, Thea Spyer, died in 2009, the government
considered them complete strangers. Windsor and the ACLU fought back —
taking her case all the way to the Supreme Court. In June, the Court
issued a landmark decision striking down a key provision of the
discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Her determination led to a
history-making breakthrough that will affect the lives of millions
across America.
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Edie Windsor's victory for equality.
Javier Contreras:
Dreaming of a better life for DREAMers.
Javier Contreras, a 17-year-old student from Ann Arbor,
Michigan, was brought to the US from Mexico by his father when he was
four years old. Federal legislation grants young immigrants like
Contreras — referred to as DREAMers — the ability to work in this
country legally. But, they still face huge hurdles in accessing basic
necessities, like a driver's license. Javier took a tremendous risk by
becoming the lead plaintiff in an ACLU challenge to this law.
Thankfully, we helped Javier as well as many other DREAMers in Michigan
and across the country face one less obstacle in their daily lives.
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Javier Contreras and his fight for justice.
Edward Snowden:
Exposing the truth.
Edward Snowden risked everything and lost much to let the
American people know the truth about the government's massive, secret
spying program. By bringing to light information that the powers-that-be
would rather keep secret, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden play a
fundamental role in our democracy. His actions have helped advance
challenges to massive abuses of government power carried out in the name
of national security.
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Edward Snowden's courage.
Viviette Applewhite:
Fighting for the right to vote.
Viviette Applewhite is 93 years old and cast her first-ever
vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960. She has voted in nearly every election
since. But, under a new, restrictive Pennsylvania law, Viviette could
be barred from the polls. She is standing up for herself and everyone
else in her state who could be denied the right to vote as the lead
plaintiff in the ACLU's lawsuit challenging her state's harsh Voter ID
law.
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Viviette Applewhite standing up for the right to vote.
Jagjeet Singh:
Challenging religious discrimination.
Jagjeet Singh is a Sikh truck driver who, after being pulled
over for a flat tire, was called a "terrorist" by police officers and
arrested for refusing to remove his kirpan, which Singh was lawfully
wearing in accordance with his religious beliefs. When he showed up for
his court date, the judge referred to his turban as a "rag" — and
threatened to punish him unless he removed it. By speaking out and
forcing local government denunciation of his treatment, Jagjeet Singh
stood up for the right of everyone to practice his or her faith.
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Jagjeet Singh's refusal to stand for religious discrimination.
Wendy Davis:
Standing up for reproductive rights.
To stop a radical and dangerous bill that threatened women's
health and reproductive freedom in Texas, Wendy Davis launched an
awe-inspiring, one woman 11-hour standing filibuster — giving voice to
the concerns and realities of women across America [and creating a run
on pink tennis shoes everywhere].
Share with your friends why you're thankful for Wendy Davis' courage.
MORE repulsive anti-Christian propaganda from focus on the family cabal. This thanksgiving message doesn't reflect the teachings of Jesus Christ, and this kind of rhetoric turns more away from Christianity than it attracts. I am truly thankful to God for all my blessings; my family, friends, home, job, health, for His grace and love and providing for me and His protection. And I am thankful that I was raised to believe in a God of love and forgiveness and salvation. I am thankful that I was raised to believe in a God who teaches us to be compassionate and empathetic and to be responsible for providing for the least among us, for those in need. So thank you God for all my blessings, and please bless us all as we gather together, including the people of focus on the family. This from Daily Kos..... Steveningen
Ugh. Where to even begin with this one. The odious Focus on the
Family has released a video designed to teach you how to explain the
truth behind Thanksgiving to the kiddies. It is so rife with
distortions, fabrications, omissions, persecution complex, and
anti-government bias that it is a hideous thing of beauty.
Hi. I'm Stuart Shepard, This is Stoplight.
About now, children are bringing home Pilgrim hats and turkeys made
out of construction paper. And maybe making lists of things they are
thankful for. But, it's up to us to make sure they understand the full
context of what happened back around 1620.
We are the Pilgrims.
They were not called "the Pilgrims" back when this whole thing
started. England would not allow these Christians to live out their
faith they wanted to. They were told to fall in line with the
government's view of religion. If not, they could be taken to court,
fined or even imprisoned.
We are the Pilgrims.
So, some of them packed up and moved to Holland. Now thing were
generally better there. But then they watched as the culture began to
draw their children away from the Christian faith they were learning at
home.
We are the Pilgrims.
So, then they booked that trip on the Mayflower. A cargo ship. Not
really designed for passengers. Think of it as a floating
tractor-trailer being tossed about by a stormy ocean. It was spartan, it
was rough, but it eventually got them here to the New World.
We are the Pilgrims.
They signed the Mayflower Compact saying they were united in this
undertaking for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian
faith. Its simple framing of democracy would inform the U.S.
Constitution more than 150 years later.
We are the Pilgrims.
They learned about human behavior: That if the colony took what each
one produced and shared it with everyone else, well it brought out the
very worst in human beings. The colony only succeeded once it allowed
each family to have their own property and enjoy the benefits of their
own labor.
We are the Pilgrims.
So--after having government trample on their God given rights--after
seeing their children wooed away by a decadent culture, after a
treacherous ocean voyage, a harsh winter, after learning how imperfect
human beings function as a group--after all that--they held a feast to
celebrate. And they thanked God for His Providence.
We are the Pilgrims.
It was only after Christian faith was turned into action, and after
it was applied to real life troubles, and after they endured hardship
while giving thanks--that they became known as "The Pilgrims."
We--are--the Pilgrims.
Even those with a rudimentary historical understanding of Thanksgiving
would somehow remember to include the Indians at the first Thanksgiving
table. But I suppose that is just too much for today's xenophobic,
immigration-hatin' modern Pilgrim. Best just not to mention them and
give over that time to further drive home all that persecuting,
government intrusion and fear into your children's soft little heads.
Among all the tripe to be found in this video is this doozy that sits at the very heart of the religious right.
They signed the Mayflower Compact saying they were united in
this undertaking for the Glory of God and the advancement of the
Christian faith. Its simple framing of democracy would inform the U.S. Constitution more than 150 years later.
I teach this class on Monday afternoon, and it's not meeting this
week because of Presidents' Day, so I'm staying in the Seventeenth
Century for this diary. It's inspired by a discussion question I ask all
my students as part of the online activities attached to the course:
Ask most Americans why Europeans migrated to North America
during the colonial era, and most of them will answer “for religious
freedom.” By extension, most American consider colonial Massachusetts –
the union of two colonies settled for religious reasons--to represent
colonial America as a whole, which ignores colonial Virginia. To what
extent are these impressions accurate? Be as specific as possible in
your response.
We covered Virginia last week, so now it's time to consider the two
colonies that compose Massachusetts, particularly the fact that the
first group of settlers have managed to escape the abuse that the second
group of settlers pretty much asked for. So follow me below the great
orange Satan's magic sign for a discussion of the separatist Puritans we
know as the Pilgrims and the mainstream Puritans we know as, well, the
Puritans.
First, we have to deal with the term "Puritan." It may not even be
useful any more: like many other historical terms, it was attached to
the people who are described by it by their opponents, especially those
on the Royalist side in the English Civil War (1642–1651) who attached
it firmly to the idea of intolerance. Naturally, there's an extensive
historiographical trail on this, and where it's leading is to the phrase
"hot Protestant"
(interesting monograph if you want to know more about the term and the
argument). Anyhow, here's the image that history has lodged in our
minds:
(Deacon Samuel Chapin, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1883-1886, Metropolitan Museum of Art)
But I digress. Let's concede that the two groups of religious
migrants to Massachusetts were Calvinist Protestants who wanted to see
the Church of England reformed. The fact that we use different terms to
refer to the groups shows that there are issues. So to assess the
reputation question, let's look at the first group -- separatist
Puritans who had already migrated from England to the Netherlands in
order to practice their religion without interference. When these
people began to worry that their children would forget they were
English, they petitioned the Plymouth Company to settle in the upper
portion of their holdings, and were granted permission to send 40 people
to "New England". Because everyone was aware of what had gone wrong at
Jamestown and to ensure a secure return on their investment, the London
sponsors insisted they travel with 64 “strangers” -- non-Puritan
craftsmen, farmers and laborers --who would share in building the
colony.
The 104 travelers boarded the Mayflower September 18 1620
and arrived on Cape Cod (where Provincetown is today), well north of the
Virginia Company’s holdings. While they waited, they wrote the
Mayflower Compact. You will hear that this was British North America's
first constitution, and it was, but what it did was to give the
individual householders (who had to be accepted church members) control
over most civic and religious matters and thus guarantee their authority
over the “strangers.” After several weeks, they found a site on the
coast, and landed in December, which meant a New England winter, and
about half of the Mayflower settlers didn't make it to the next spring.
These people had help that the settlers in Jamestown didn't have. If
you went to school in New England, you'll be familiar with Indians
named Squanto and Samoset. You probably won't know HOW they were able
to help the Plymouth Colony Puritans unless you have a good imagination.
We know about Squanto (properly called "Tisquantum") because he was
captured by English traders (in fact, by an associate of John Smith in
1614, was carried to England, and returned to Massachusetts 1619 after
jumping off an English ship. Because he could interpret for his tribe,
the Wampanoags, the Indians and the Puritans concluded a treaty that
survived into the 1670s.
And about the first Thanksgiving. Well, no, because the holiday we
now celebrate was dreamed up by a VERY influential woman, Sarah Josepha
Hale, the editor of the major women's magazine of the 19th Century, Godey's Lady's Book.
Mrs. Hale began to lobby the presidents for such a day in 1846. She
struck out with Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and
James Buchanan, but Abraham Lincoln agreed with her, and the holiday was
celebrated in 1863. Still, especially in New England people dress up
as Pilgrims in late November, and political cartoons depict Pilgrims as
well to make all sorts of points. I thought I'd change the cartoon
every year, but Jeff Parker of Florida Today came up with one in 2006 that was SO good I'm keeping it in the deck until something even better and more topical appears.
(Jeff Parker, Florida Today, November 1, 2006)
Plymouth Colony suffered internal dissension, but the most famous
dissent was the Merry Mount settlement (near present day Wollaston).
This was apparently a secular community, where the settlers drank to
excess with the Indians, including Indian women. The last straw for
Plymouth came when the inhabitants set up an 8-foot tall maypole, which
the governor saw as a blatant demonstration of paganism. Thomas Morton,
the head of the community, was arrested and deported in 1628; once back
in England, he published an anti-Puritan tract (the three-volume New England Canaan)
in 1637 that ridiculed and condemned the rigidity of the Plymouth
colonists. Nathanael Hawthorne wrote a story about this, included in Twice-Told Tales, called "The Maypole of Merry Mount", and here's an illustration:
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882)
So paganism. Not as bad as the other Puritans, mainstream Puritans
who had stayed in England, 14,000 of whom arrived (along with 10,000
"strangers") between 1630 and 1640 to settle the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, Connecticut, New Haven, New Hampshire, and (not intentionally on
their part) Rhode Island. This settlement, especially Boston, was
intended to serve as example to a sinful world, but migration had three
significant limits: 1) MOST English Puritans stayed in England; 2) New
England emigrants represented no more than 30% all English who came to
British North America during 1630s, and, 3) the Puritans who stayed in
England saw this migration as hindering their efforts for religious
reform at home.
We know what this settlement did to establish the country we live in
today: Remarkable literacy, commitment to the education of children and
Puritan ministers (Harvard College was founded in 1636), and the first
printing press in British North America. We also know that religious
liberty in Puritan New England wasn’t what we think of when we say
religious liberty. The migration that John Winthrop led in 1630 had
consisted of a group of wealthy merchants who converted their charter to
a self-governing colony thousands of miles from the king and the
bishops of the Church of England. At the very least, they hoped it
would be a refuge from the divine punishments the separatists expected
to be incurred by the wicked English nation. Church membership, which
was synonymous with citizenship, was limited to “visible saints,” those
who could publicly and persuasively recount a conversion experience;
only full members who were male could govern the church, and it was
because of this that they worked hard to keep dissenters out of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. Yes, Roger Williams was banished in 1636, and
Anne Hutchinson in 1638, but this wasn't the worst thing these people
did in the way of intolerance.
So I give you two cases in which people who disagreed with the
Puritan leadership actually died at the hands of the Puritans: the
Pequot War, and a 1658 law that prohibited Quakers from traveling to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. The narrative concerning the Pequot War is
derived from a remarkable book: Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates (2008)
which is an absolute must read. First, the mainstream Puritans
imagined, as is evident from their Great Seal, that they were on a
mission -- nay, invited on a mission -- to help the natives of New
England:
(in effect 1629-1686, 1689-1692)
Vowell points out that William McKinley imagined the same thing about
the Philippines and the George W. Bush administration imagined the same
thing about Iraq. Anyhow, the settlers of Connecticut, attracted by
bigger land grants, followed their minister, Rev. Thomas Hooker (no, the term doesn't even come from the name of a person)
to the banks of the Connecticut River to found the city of Hartford.
The Pequot Indians, who were attempting to control the trade on the
lower Connecticut River and had already made an alliance with the
Massachusetts Bay colony (in 1635, to make sure the Pequot didn't keep
trading with the Dutch), balked at the incursion, and this led to war.
I'll just skip to the event that ended the war here. On May 25, 1637,
in league with the Mohegans and the Narragansetts, the Connecticut
forces encircled the settlement where Sassacus, the Pequot sachem, had
his headquarters, and started a battle. I'll let Vowell tell you what
happened next:
[Captain John] Mason [one of the commanders of the
Connecticut militia] is hit with arrows and Underhill's hip is grazed,
Mason is faced, on a smaller scale, with the same problem Harry Truman
would have when he was forced to ponder the logistics of invading Japan
in 1945 . . . The Puritan commander, in a smaller, grubbier, lower-tech
way, arrives at the same conclusion as Truman when he ordered the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mason says "We must burn them." And
they do.
In Mason's account of the war, he observes that as many as seven hundred
people, women and children included, were "utterly destroyed" --
meaning burned alive in their homes.
Again, here's Vowell, on Mason:
[Mason] praises the Lord for "burning them up in the fire of
his wrath, and dunging the ground with their flesh. It is the Lord's
doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes!" That might be the creepiest
exclamation point in American literature. No, wait -- it's this one:
"Thus did the Lord judge among the heathen, filling the place with dead
bodies!"
The remaining Pequots are hunted down by the Mohegans and the
Narragansetts who decapitate some of them and send their severed heads
to the English. Boston sells others into slavery in Bermuda. The colony
proclaims a day of thanksgiving June 15, 1637 "for the victory obtained
against the Pequot." That's a BIG difference from Plymouth and its
peaceful relations with the Wampanoags.
There's a punchline to this. The remnants of the Pequot tribe have a
major hotel and casino, the Foxwoods Resort, operating in Ledyard,
Connecticut on the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Reservation. A way to
separate the descendents of the Puritans from their money.
But, as they say, there's more. The Puritans continued to be dismayed
by people who promoted alternate forms of Protestantism, and John
Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts, denounced “lawlessness of liberty
of conscience” as an invitation to heresy and anarchy, and eventually to
divine anger and punishment. No Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists or
Quakers were welcome; they were given liberty to keep away from
Connecticut and Massachusetts, and if they did arrive, they were tried,
convicted and exiled as Anne Hutchinson had been. In 1658,
Massachusetts passed an especially strict set of anti-Quaker laws that
decreed any Quaker found in Massachusetts would be sentenced to
banishment upon pain of death. After three Quaker missionaries –
Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, and Mary Dyer, who had been a
strong supporter of Anne Hutchinson -- were indeed put to death
in 1660, the Quakers made an extra effort to publicize their
mistreatment. In 1959, Massachusetts put up a statue of Mary Dyer in
front of the State House, in Boston:
Killing people for dissenting religious beliefs appears to be why
later historians tried to wall off the Plymouth Colony from the rest of
the Puritans who settled New England. It's understandable.
So that's the settlement of some of Southern New England by people
who believed in religious freedom for themselves, but not for other
people. Next time, stuff you should know about Benjamin Franklin, who's
even more important in world history and the economic history of the
United States than you might have imagined. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/20/1066372/-US-to-1865-What-s-Bugging-Me-The-Puritans-and-the-Puritans-who-settled-Massachusetts-1620-1630
KINDA takes a lot of the wind out of their sails, doesn't it? boehner has his health insurance but he is till trying to keep millions of Americans from getting theirs. See Obamacare enrollments surging,
HealthCare.gov working better & The Massive Republican Campaign to
Sabotage the Affordable Care Act 20NOV13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/obamacare-enrollments-surging.html
Yesterday, House Speaker John Boehner went online and signed up for Obamacare. (Yes, really.)
Maybe it was a publicity stunt that backfired -- all we know is John
Boehner is now another Affordable Care Act success story. (According to this report, he's probably getting a pretty good deal.)
Poor John Boehner.
Thanks
to a Republican amendment to the Affordable Care Act, most members of
Congress will see their government-provided health insurance lapse at
the end of the year, leaving many of them no other choice but to enroll
in dreaded Obamacare.
As speaker of the House, Boehner is
technically exempt from the requirement, but in order to avoid
accusations of special treatment (i.e., because of politics) he decided
to take the plunge, too. And he wants you to know how difficult it was.
He even wrote a blog post about it.
“Earlier
this afternoon, I sat down to try and enroll in the DC exchange under
the president’s health care law,” he wrote. “Like many Americans, my
experience was pretty frustrating. After putting in my personal
information, I received an error message. I was able to work past that,
but when I went to actually sign up for coverage, I got this ‘internal
server error’ screen”: [Here he embedded an image of an internal server
error screen.] Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get past that
point and sign up for a health plan. We’ve got a call into the help
desk. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying …”
It’s a bummer Boehner
got that error message. Tyranny almost. But if he’d reached the point
at which he was signing up for coverage, it means he’d already had a
chance to shop around and pick a plan. His post is oddly quiet about
that part of the experience. Which is curious. As a 64-year-old heavy
smoker, it’s a marvel Boehner will be able to purchase individual market
coverage at all. I wonder what crazy law guarantees that he can?
At
any rate, since he didn’t disclose which plan he’d settled on, or what
his options were, I thought I’d try to re-create his experience for you.
So on Thursday night I possibly perjured myself, and created an account
on D.C.’s health insurance exchange for a nonexistent 64-year-old man
seeking individual coverage.
Because he’s shopping on the D.C. exchange, and not in Ohio under Healthcare.gov, I am assuming that his wife, Debbie Boehner, a real estate agent in suburban Cincinnati, has her own coverage, and so he’s not purchasing a spousal plan.
It turns out, Boehner, who as speaker makes $223,500 a year, has a lot of affordable options to choose from.
The cheapest policy for a 64-year-old is a high-deductible, bronze-plated BlueCross BlueShield plan with a $372.14 premium.
Just under 2 percent of Boehner’s income. Not bad for a man on the cusp of his golden years!
Now
Boehner just had a birthday, so in less than a year he’ll qualify for
Medicare. If I were him, I’d probably take my chances with a cheap plan
like this one and pocket the savings for my retirement, which could come
as early as January 2015. Who’s to say?
Then again, Boehner has a
stressful job, and that smoking habit. Plus, his net worth is in the
low millions. Under the circumstances (and since he’ll only be enrolled
for a year anyhow) it might be worth it for him to purchase something
more expensive.
I counted five $0 deductible plans (three
gold-plated, two bronze-plated) ranging in price from $699.86 a month —
or 3.7 percent of Boehner’s annual income …
… to $1,023.28 per month — or a heftier 5.5 percent of Boehner’s annual income.
That was the most expensive option available, by nearly $200 a month.
If
he’d decided to enroll in Ohio, his options would be generally cheaper.
The plans available in Butler County, where he resides, start at just
$203.51 a month for a 64-year-old, or 1.1 percent of his annual income.
Given the potential savings, I assume his decision to enroll in D.C.
reflects a high degree of confidence that he won’t be run out on a rail
by conservative hard-liners before the next Congress begins (at which
point, he’ll be eligible for Medicare anyhow).
Boehner’s actual
premiums will likely be somewhat higher due to that smoking habit.
Smoking’s actually the only thing insurers are allowed to underwrite
for. The fact that members are allowed to shop in the small group market
might affect his options and prices somewhat too. From there, though,
his costs could be dramatically offset by an Obama
administration rule that allows members to carry the federal
government’s contribution to employee premiums into the exchange.
Presumably, even if he’s eligible, Boehner will decline the contribution
to avoid a political backlash (though he fought hard behind the scenes
to preserve it for all members). But this gives us a decent sense of
the horror show he encountered Thursday, before he encountered that even
more horrible error message.
I understand how frustrating error
messages can be for the elderly. And at first I assumed that what had
ultimately derailed Boehner’s quest for coverage was a severe case of
Acute Technological Grandpaism (ATG). Befuddlement at the sight of error
messages is one of the most common symptoms of ATG.
But then I thought about it some more and realized it didn’t really fit the facts.
First
of all, there was at least one other person in the room with Boehner at
the time: the photographer. Whoever that person was is savvy enough
with electronics to snap digital photos. So there’s that. But also, the
pictures reveal that he went searching for coverage from his Capitol
Hill office. And I know from experience that Boehner is surrounded every
day by a staff that’s chock-full of smart, tech-savvy youngsters. His
website is one of the best on the Hill! Much better than Healthcare.gov.
So
then I figured either the D.C. exchange is really, really broken, or he
didn’t actually think through his cheap shot very well. And indeed,
while I was writing this article last night, shortly after his blog post
went live, a breakthrough. Chad Pergram✔@ChadPergramFollow
Boehner on #Obamacare: I just heard from DC Health Link that I have been successfully enrolled.
22NOV1963, the day President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX. Many in our nation still believe in various conspiracy theories that resulted in the murder of our President. I have to admit, I still have my doubts about the the official government reports declaring lee harvey oswald acted alone and was the only gunman. This is an interesting piece from David Corn of Mother Jones on the controversy surrounding the murder of JFK, and not quite laying the conspiracies to rest.It is followed by another good article by Bob Cessca of HuffPost on what the Kennedy assassination stopped.....
For
50 years, the murder of President John F. Kennedy has prompted dark
suspicions about what led to those tragic moments in Dallas' Dealey
Plaza. Hidden-hand theories about the assassination fueled numerous
movies and books in the years that followed and shaped a national
culture of conspiracy. The Oswald-didn't-do-it (or didn't-do-it-alone)
theory is the granddaddy of conspiracy theories; it paved the way for
alternative (and sinister) explanations for a variety of events,
including the assassinations or RFK and MLK Jr. and the 9/11 attacks.
The JFK theorizing—which, in certain cases, posits that a cabal of
government evildoers schemed the most notorious crime of 20th-century
America—made The X Files possible.
Like many late-year boomers, I grew up fascinated by the speculation,
poring over the latest "revelations" and initially believing the
worst—at one point, when I was 13, my best friend and I called Parkland
Hospital in Dallas and asked to be connected to the wing where the
supposedly still-alive Kennedy was being housed—but I came to conclude
that much of the conspiracy-mongering was bunk. In Slate, Fred Kaplan does an excellent job
chronicling his own similar trajectory, so I won't detail my
conversion. But as I spent more time investigating and reporting
national security matters, I came to the realization that government
officials, spies, and operatives tend not to be sufficiently competent
to pull off the murder of a president (with a well-placed patsy as the
fall guy!) and then mount a subsequent and wildly effective cover-up.
Still, I've resisted getting drawn too far into the Kennedy conspiracy
debates—a true black hole. But if you're asking, I do believe that
Kennedy was likely killed as the result of underhanded alliances and
government misdeeds. It's just that what transpired was more nuanced
than a CIA-Mafia-Castro-Soviet-Lyndon-Johnson plot.
I assume that Oswald shot the president. That loses me many JFK truthers. But the story of
what brought this one man to the sixth floor of the Texas Book
Depository is what's important and probably indeed the tale of an actual
conspiracy—one that was in plain sight at the time.
Oswald was obsessed with Cuba and a public advocate for Fidel
Castro's regime. In the summer of 1963, he opened a New Orleans outpost
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization. He tried
to infiltrate a local anti-Castro group, and on August 9, 1963, he was
arrested on Canal Street, after scuffling with three anti-Castro Cuban
exiles. (More than a week later, he debated one of the Cuban exiles on
the radio.) He printed up leaflets proclaiming "Hands Off Cuba"—a
reference to Kennedy administration's campaign against the Castro
regime.
All sorts of wild plans were devised by
Cuban exiles and their handlers for fomenting rebellion on the island.
And, of course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
Kennedy's antipathy toward Castro was no secret. In the first months
of his presidency, the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs was an
embarrassing failure for Kennedy and the agency. The Cuban Missile
Crisis of October 1962 justifiably caused a public freak-out across the
United States. It was clear that Kennedy had a Cuban problem.
What wasn't as clear was how Kennedy and his brother Bobby were
prosecuting a secret war against Castro. In early 1962, the Kennedy
White House approved Operation Mongoose, a plan cooked up by Brigadier
Gen. Edward Lansdale that included economic warfare, psychological
operations, and paramilitary action aimed at toppling Castro. The CIA
station in Miami took the lead. (Years ago, I wrote a biography of
Ted Shackley, who was the station chief at the time.) All sorts of wild
plans were devised by Cuban exiles and their handlers for blowing up
things inside Cuba and fomenting rebellion on the island. And, of
course, there was the occasional plot to kill Castro.
But not much was immediately achieved on the boom-and-bang front.
Toward the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Kennedy
ordered Lansdale to cease all planning for sabotage and paramilitary
operations. He didn't want any "crackpot" individuals taking actions
that could cause bigger problems. In early 1963, Operation Mongoose was
terminated. Though Kennedy, as part of the resolution of the missile
crisis, had pledged the United States would not invade Cuba, the CIA was
ordered to keep devising paramilitary operations against Castro, and it
continued working with its favorite exile groups. (One CIA official
asked if an exploding seashell could be deposited in a spot where Castro
went skin-diving.) On June 19, 1963, President Kennedy approved a
program of major sabotage with the goal of encouraging resistance to
Castro within Cuba. The CIA drafted a list of targets: power plants, oil
refineries, railroad tracks, highways, and factories. The Miami station
revved up its operations—with results. CIA-backed commando groups
composed of exiles attacked an oil facility in Casildo Harbor and then
assaulted a large sawmill on the coast of Oriente province.
This sabotage campaign was not acknowledged by the White House or
widely known by the American public. But the Cuban leader routinely
accused the aggressive imperialists of the north of mounting assaults on
his island nation. His charges were occasionally reported in the US
media, but generally dismissed as commie propaganda. Yet his accusations
were often dead-on accurate. In one long tirade, Castro claimed that
the CIA was using a 150-foot-long ship called the Rex in
attacks against Cuba and that it was berthed in Palm Beach. He was
correct. But this charge never became big news. (The CIA responded by
drawing up plans to sell the vessel to another cut-out corporation and
rename it.) The US media did not report that Cuba was indeed under
assault by CIA-backed raiders.
But anyone paying close attention—and listening to Castro—knew what
was going on. If not aware of all the details, he or she would have the
sense that a secret war was being waged by Kennedy against Castro.
Oswald presumably was such a person. There was a real reason for him to
proclaim, "Hands Off Cuba"—and, thus, reason for him to feel enmity
toward the president of the United States. (On November 22, near the
moment Kennedy was shot, a CIA officer was meeting a Cuban agent in
Paris and presenting him with a ballpoint pen rigged to contain poison
for an attempted assassination of Castro.)
There are those who postulate that Oswald's pro-Castro street
activism was designed as a cover to hide his true motivation. Perhaps
anti-Castro Cubans pissed off with Kennedy plotted a presidential
assassination that they could pin on a pro-Castro operative to rally
support for more direct US action against Castro. (At the time, however,
Kennedy and his aides were approving sabotage action against Cuba.) Yet
given Oswald's assorted (and mind-bending) actual and possible
interactions—with KGB officials, with pro- and anti-Castro Cubans, with
FBI officials, with a businessman who was interviewed by the CIA, with
folks connected to the New Orleans mob—it's possible to imagine almost
any conspiracy and find a possible Oswald link to back it up. After all,
he was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and un-defected
and returned to the United States—and then two months before the
assassination tried to return to Russia via Cuba. In early 1963, he
attempted to assassinate a retired right-wing general who was famous for
his screeds against communism.
Oswald was something of a Zelig. His past offers plenty of data
points for anyone peddling an unofficial account of the Kennedy
assassination. But in the swirl of supposition, there are hard and fast
facts. The Kennedy conspiracy to undo Castro—via internal rebellion,
paramilitary action, or assassination—did exist. It wasn't a secret to
Castro and his devotees. And in the last months of his life, Oswald at
times was fixated on the Cuban issue. His public actions were those of a
passionate and committed fan of Castro and the revolution. (The CIA,
not surprisingly, would not reveal Kennedy's get-Castro campaign to the
Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination;
consequently, the American public would not be able to fully evaluate
Oswald's actions.)
Five decades later, it's doubtful that the mysteries of the Kennedy
assassination—including Oswald's motivation or motivations—will be fully
resolved. The assassin was an odd and unstable fellow who never found a
comfortable place in the Cold War world. He might not have fully
understood all that drove him to shoot a president and shock a nation.
So how can we? But if we're compelled to make sense of this
history-changing and heinous act, then an obvious starting place is the
not-too-secret secret war on Cuba. It may well be that John Kennedy, the
charismatic leader who embodied a new era and a changing time, did die
as the result of a conspiracy—a conspiracy that involved the most
powerful men in the world and that originated in his own office in the
White House. And if this is the closest we can get to the truth so many
years down the road, it still offers an important—and painful—lesson
that deserves attention: Once the dogs of war (or secret war) are
unleashed, there's no telling where they will run.
The
first deep-water rig off Cuba appears to be drilling on the edge of the
Florida Straits—a swift-water connector between the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic Ocean.
The Kennedy Assassination and Pursuing 'What It Stopped'
Posted: 11/22/2013 7:39 pm
It's impossible to know for sure whether the Warren Commission
Report was correct, or whether the House Select Committee on
Assassinations was correct. We'll never know precisely what happened 50
years ago today in Dallas, conspiracy or not, as President Kennedy's
motorcade traveled down Elm Street toward the triple underpass.
That said, there's nothing wrong with speculating -- with having a hunch
about how and why it happened; whether the plot might've been one lone
nut or many conspirators working in tandem. But anyone who says they
know for sure should be greeted with incredulity.
In his book, titled Kennedy, Ted Sorensen, speechwriter and
special counsel to President Kennedy, wrote, "I must ask to be excused
from repeating the details of that tragedy. How and why it happened are
of little consequence compared to what it stopped."
Too often in these past 50 years, our all-too-human impulse is to
pursue the murder mystery. The "how and why" almost always takes
precedent over "what it stopped."
Nevertheless, like so many others, I spent time looking into the
details of the assassination. Eventually, I thought I had attained a
modest sense of what happened. I thought maybe that it was the Mafia
seeking to regain a financial stake in Cuba, and so, fueled by a sense
of pre-RICO invincibility, it targeted President Kennedy who stood in
the way of liberating the island from Fidel Castro and returning it back
to the unfettered cash geyser it had been under the Batista regime.
Oswald, who had almost certainly been recruited into the anti-Castro
movement, had been sent to the Soviet Union as a defector purely for
show to make it appear as if he was a communist in order to later
infiltrate Cuba and become part of the arsenal of assassination
possibilities against Castro. Instead, the plot against Castro was
redeployed to target the chief executive of the United States.
Whatever.
In the process of reading too many volumes about the assassination, I
stumbled onto some of the more crackpot theories, several of which
you've probably heard about.
There was the book by Dan Robertson, Definitive Proof: The Secret Service Murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, claiming that Secret Service Agent William Greer accidentally shot the president. Definitive proof? Hooey.
There was The Last Investigation, by the late Gaeton Fonzi,
in which the author, a former staffer on the House Select Committee,
ghoulishly determined that the slain president's head was being held
together with a mysterious metal clamp for some reason after the
president's body had been secretly absconded from Air Force One and
replaced with a lookalike. Also hooey.
There was the dum-dum bullet theory, claiming the president was shot
in the head with a rubber bullet, there was the doctored Zapruder film
theory, there was the Kennedy-is-still-alive theory and, of course, the
space aliens killed the president theory.
And there was the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink conspiracy theory dramatized by Oliver Stone in JFK.
While, as a movie, it remains one of my all-time favorites, the
metatheory presented in the movie was as ridiculously vast as it was
totally implausible, involving a cast of hundreds of conspirators, and,
in many places, outright falsehoods about Jim Garrison's investigation
and prosecution of Clay Shaw.
But what compelled me to learn more about what might've happened in
Dallas was no different than so many others. How could a lone, mixed up
weirdo with a bizarre past do this to the President of the United States
-- and to us? There were so many unexplained loose ends and unanswered
questions. Something wasn't adding up. It was like a real-life murder
mystery with the highest imaginable stakes. It was irresistible.
However, what ultimately changed my perception of both the Kennedy
presidency and his assassination was chance meeting with Ted Sorensen.
While he refused to take public credit for his speechwriting, Mr.
Sorensen was responsible for President Kennedy's most memorable
speeches, including the inspirational American University commencement
address, a personal favorite of mine. He co-wrote the president's
immortal 1961 inaugural, which included the "Ask not what your country
can do for you..." line. He also wrote the president's televised remarks
informing the nation about the quarantine of Cuba in response to the
installation of Soviet missiles there. As the story goes, he was simply
unable to author a back-up speech calling for air-strikes.
As a writer myself, I naturally jumped at the chance to visit with him and his wife at his Manhattan apartment.
Ted Sorensen in the Oval Office with President Kennedy.
We talked business for most of the meeting. But then, as the serious
conversation began to wind down for the afternoon, the topic of
Washington, DC came up and I mentioned that my Dad was once the acting
inspector general of the Treasury Department; his office looked out over
the east lawn of the White House. Matter-of-factly, I noted that after I
was born, I lived with my parents at the River House, an apartment
complex across the highway from the Pentagon.
Mr. Sorensen's face lit up and he smiled, "That's where I lived when I worked for the president."
My mind raced, "The president... Kennedy. He's talking about John F.
Kennedy. Of course he is. He worked for President Kennedy." For some
reason, until that moment, it hadn't really sunk in.
Not only was the meeting with Mr. Sorensen a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for which I will always be grateful, but there I was,
sitting in the living room of perhaps the closest adviser to President
Kennedy, second only to Bobby. If that wasn't enough, this brief stanza
in our conversation added a previously absent dimension of tangibility,
of human reality to the Kennedy era and the assassination. I shared
something in common, in a non-professional sense, with a man who was one
of Kennedy's most prominent voices -- a man who, more than nearly
anyone else, possessed a deep understanding of the president's mind,
motivations and goals -- a man who was one of the chief architects of
the Kennedy vision that had inspired so many Americans.
And he was in the White House on that terrible day. He had endured
the sudden death of his president and the agenda they, together, had
crafted.
Since that day in New York City, I really haven't cared about who
killed President Kennedy. Instead, I tend to think about what the
Kennedy administration might've achieved had it been able to fully
pursue its agenda.
Because I wasn't born until eight years after the assassination, I
never really had the personal connection and insight of older Americans
who lived through it. Now, having spent time with Mr. Sorensen, I almost
exclusively contemplate what he and others in the president's inner
circle must've felt on this day and the days that followed 50 years ago
and how utterly soul-crushing it must have been, not only because of the
death of this man they knew, but for the death of what they could have
achieved under his leadership.
If nothing else, the very continuity and steadiness of the presidency
was lost. In its wake, 11 years of comparative darkness ensued. From
1963 through 1974, America was dragged through a war, corruption and
more senseless assassinations, culminating in a crisis within the White
House itself. As a nation we still haven't quite overcome the cynicism
that bled out of that dark ride.
It's cold comfort to think that had Kennedy lived, we might've
sidestepped much of the darkness and death, as well as the subsequent
cynicism, since after all the promise of the too-brief Kennedy
presidency represented the opposite of what ended up happening:
inspirational leadership with the idealism of "peace for all time" as
its primary aim. We lost the opportunity to see it through to its
logical conclusion. November 22, 1963 disrupted and indeed cut down the
natural order of things.
But perhaps now, 50 years later, we can begin to set aside the often
morbid obsession with the "how and why" of the assassination and instead
share a renewed pursuit of "what it stopped." Cross-posted at The Daily Banter. Click here to listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast. BobCesca.com Blog with special thanks to Colleen Kirby.
THERE is nothing Christian about the christian american patriots militia. These people are a threat to our government, to our President and to the Republic. Their pathetic PR events make them easy to make fun of, but people like this, who make the threats they do, must be taken seriously. Here is some information on larry and his militia from Daily Kos and their 19NOV13 facebook page post where they state for God and everyone to see "We now have the authority to shoot Obama, i.e. to kill him.".....
Today is the day! Clinton-hater has-been gadfly sociopath birther insurrectionist Larry Klayman and his Reclaim America Now Coalition
have begun their Hatriots' Revolution. There are dozens--DOZENS--of
people wandering around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC. They mean
business. They have snakey flags and Confederate memorabilia. They are
quoting the Founding Fathers. They even wrote a new Declaration of Independence.
The speeches thus far are pretty predictable. Barry Soetoro is a
Kenyan Muslim usurper out to destroy our once great nation. The gun
grabbers are coming. We are all terribly oppressed by ObamaCare.
Benghaaaaaaaazi. America is on the brink of something really, really
bad. Blah, blah, blah.
This isn't the event Klayman was hoping for. He wanted millions of
people who would camp out in DC until President Obama resigned. (If he
had an idea of the mechanism that would impel the President's
resignation, he never shared it publicly.) But, even as he was promoting
a massive, multi-day event, he knew he wasn't going to get millions and
they weren't going to be staying overnight. According to the permit
issued by the National Park Service, he expected 500 attendees, the
demonstration would last from 10 am to 5 pm, and there would be no civil
disobedience.
Livestreaming courtesy of the right-wing group Patriots Ride - Reclaim America is available here: http://www.ustream.tv/...
A few photos courtesy of @RightWingWatch
Despite their awesome show of force, I will make a bold and risky
prediction: This event will not cause President Obama to resign from
office. There. I said it. You can quote me. This is what I fervently
believe.
Edited to add: As several commenters have noted, this event took
place in a national park. While these hypocrites were whining about the
evils of socialism, they were lapping up the benefits of it, spewing
their seditious blather on prime real estate within shouting distance of
the White House.
JMG reader Steven sends us the above from the Facebook page
of Christian American Patriots Militia. Note the hundreds of shares and
the date of November 19th, which was the day of Larry Klayman's call
for the beginning of "the second American revolution." From their
Facebook page:
These rogues and thugs are in fact
supplanting our Constitution with a communist Oligarchy of corrupt
political and legal elites. Christian American patriots, this is no time
to be silent nor to sit. (Romans 1:16) We must NOW RISE and FIGHT
VIGOROUSLY to protect our nation and our posterity. Your children,
grandchildren and great grandchildren depend on you. We need no further
evidence that those we trusted are not honoring their oaths: Their oaths
are not sacred to them---abusing us and disobeying God. Therefore, it
is time that we remove them from their duties. It is time to act; and we
pray that God give us guidance as we do.
Everest Wilhelms
M.e. Danuser
Wesley Burnside
Tom Bauder
Travis Collins
Nat Tucker
Richard Robbins
Charles Krementz
Cameron Tracy
Bernard Shrewsbu
Larry Brant
James Keith Harwood II
Lindy Adams
John Major
Paul Rainey
Alan John
Scott Lundquis
Joshua Vinson
Taylor Walker
Randy Roddy
Rob McNally
Gregory Thomas
Stephani
Jason Harris
Brad Childres