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!!!!!!"
sen john mccain r AZ has a big mouthand he is a liar. He needs to get his head out of his ass. I don't care that he is a military vet and was a POW, neither of those excuse and make it mandatory we tolerate his ignorance or his penchant for lying. Consider his really stupid and false comments on Ebola in America. This from +PolitiFact .....
"We were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States."
— John McCain on Sunday, October 12th, 2014 in comments on CNN's "State of the Union"
By Lauren Carroll on Sunday, October 12th, 2014 at 4:22 p.m.
On CNN's "State
of the Union," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, “We were told there
would never be a case of Ebola in the United States.”
Early Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a second person had contracted Ebola in the United States.
The patient is a female nurse in Dallas, who had treated the first
patient diagnosed in the United States -- Thomas Eric Duncan, who came
into contact with Ebola in Liberia, fell ill in Dallas and died there
Oct. 8. The CDC believes the nurse, who had been taking CDC-mandated precautions, was exposed to Ebola because of a "breach in protocol."
The new case is fanning the fears of those who think the government
is not doing enough to prevent an Ebola outbreak in the United States --
despite the CDC’s repeated assurances that it is highly unlikely the
disease would spread here.
In light of the news, the Sunday talk shows shifted from their scheduled topics to discuss the case. On CNN’s State of the Union,
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- invited on the show to talk about U.S.
military activity in Iraq -- said it’s not obvious to the public that
anyone in the government is taking charge over Ebola.
"Americans have to be reassured here," McCain said on Oct. 12, 2014.
"I don’t think we are comforted by the fact that we were told there
would never be a case of Ebola in the United States, and obviously
that’s not correct."
At a press conference Sunday,
CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said there’s a risk that the Dallas
area might see additional cases in coming days because of this possible
"breach in protocol." However, the organization remains "confident that wider spread in the community can be prevented."
We decided to look back and see if any official said that a case of
Ebola would "never" come to the United States. Although many media
outlets and health care officials have urged people not to panic about
Ebola, we could not find a single instance where someone said it would
"never" get here.
As far as we can tell, the CDC
and the President Barack Obama’s message has been the same throughout
the epidemic, which began in Africa in December: It’s possible a case
might make its way to the United States, but a full-fledged outbreak is
highly unlikely.
(We reached out to McCain’s staff, but they never got back to us.)
The administration’s reasoning: America’s health system is much
better prepared to fight diseases like Ebola than those in places like
Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the disease has been spreading.
Here’s some of the CDC’s statements:
July 28, after two Americans contracted the disease in Africa:
"There is no significant risk in the U.S. While it is unlikely that the
disease would spread if imported into the United States, the recent
infections in U.S. health care workers working abroad highlight the need
for vigilance."
(The CDC has issued periodic updates on
Ebola since March, but this was the first one we could find that
addressed the disease spreading to the United States.)
Aug. 13, press release: "A
disease threat anywhere in the world is a threat everywhere in the
world, and CDC is preparing for any possibility, including that a
traveler might become ill with Ebola while in the United States.
Although Ebola poses very little or no risk to the U.S. community at
large, CDC and health care providers in the United States need to be
prepared."
Sept. 17, testimony at congressional hearing:
"We do not view Ebola as a significant public health threat to the
United States. … It is possible that infected travelers may arrive in
the United States, despite all efforts to prevent this; therefore we
need to ensure the United States' public health and health care systems
are prepared to rapidly manage cases to avoid further transmission."
The White House:
July 31, press briefing by Press Secretary Josh Earnest:
"The CDC has concluded that there is no significant risk in the United
States from the current Ebola outbreak. And while it is unlikely that
the disease would spread if the virus were detected in the United
States, the CDC is taking action to alert health care workers in the
U.S. and remind them how to isolate and test suspected patients while
following strict infection control procedures."
Sept. 16, Obama’s remarks at the CDC:
"First and foremost, I want the American people to know that our
experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the
chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely
low."
Oct. 8, Obama’s statement to state and local officials, after Duncan (the first Dallas patient) died:
"Because we’ve got a world-class medical system, because we’ve put in
place tough safety measures, because of the work that many of you have
done in conjunction with organizations like the CDC and dealing with
infectious disease generally, and because of the nature of Ebola and the
fact that it’s not something involving airborne transmission, the
chance of an Ebola outbreak in the United States remains extremely low. …
I’m confident that so long as we work together, and we’re operating
with an appropriate sense of urgency that we will prevent an outbreak
from happening here."
The common refrain in all those comments? A widespread outbreak is
extremely unlikely in the United States. But individual or isolated
cases were possible, hence the need for the CDC to be ready. Our ruling
McCain said, "We were told there would never be a case of Ebola in the United States."
Based on public statements, Obama and CDC officials have repeatedly
said there’s a chance an Ebola case could appear in the United States,
but the possibility of an outbreak is extremely low. We found no
instance in which an official said Ebola would "never" make it here --
rather, it has always been acknowledged as a possibility.
We rate McCain’s claim False.
On Tuesday,
the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the
first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States; the infected patient
was a man who traveled from Liberia to visit family in Texas. It's the
latest development in the ever-worsening outbreak of the virus, which so
far has sickened more than 6,500 people and killed more than 3,000. The
United States government has pledged to send help to West Africa to
help stop Ebola from spreading—but the main agencies tasked with this
aid work say they're hamstrung by budget cuts from the 2013 sequester. [READ MORE]
These
days, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's presidential dreams are hanging by a
thread as he battles for reelection against a political neophyte whose
only previous electoral campaign was a self-financed 2012 run for the
local school board. Why is he vulnerable? Walker devoted his first term
to ramming through a chunk of the modern conservative agenda: He
limited collective-bargaining rights, slashed taxes on the wealthy,
enacted new voter ID requirements, boosted funding for vouchers at the
expense of public schools, curtailed abortion access, and weakened
environmental protections.
Mary
Burke, Walker's opponent, is running as a McKinsey moderate, the
anti-politician with business savvy who will jump-start the state's
economy and heal a divided Wisconsin. She believes her pro-business
message can win over those key undecided voters. In a nonpresidential
year when turnout could decide the election, Burke's strategy is a
gamble—and it just might work. [READ MORE]
Ebola made its way
to the United States this week, with the bad news that the patient,
though he came from Liberia, was released from the hosptial and came
into contact with several children. A humanitarian aid worker in Syria got frustrated with ISIS and tweeted the coordinates of one of its bunkers, leading the group to go on the offensive. Protests in Hong Kong has exploded in the last week. And the United States happens to be fighting pirates off the west coast of Africa.
Meanwhile, social conservatives are mad at the GOP for supporting two gay candidates, while Mitt Romney came up with new, crazy excuses for his 47 percent remarks. New Mexico's attorney general is looking into Susana Martinez's missing emails, and police departments across the country toldMother Jones about their (failing) efforts to return surplus military equipment like tanks and grenade launchers to the Pentagon. [READ MORE]
THERE will be a host of conspiracy theorist, doomsday preppers and right wing fanatics that will seen this case of Ebola in the U.S. as a government plot orchestrated by Obama to wipe out the elderly, the vets, the poor, and to distract from the economic and political problems of the nation and an illegal war in Iraq and Syria. I bet there is already a hot time on the internet tonight. And stupid people will believe some or all of their rants and ramblings and pass them on adding to fear and near panic in some communities. For those who want to know what is actually going on consider these from +NPR and the +PBS NewsHour .....
A patient at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in
Dallas has a confirmed case of Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention says. He is being treated and kept in strict isolation.
LM Otero/AP
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that the first case of Ebola has appeared in the U.S.
A man in Dallas has tested positive for the virus, the agency said.
The man flew to the U.S. from Liberia, arriving on Sept. 20, NPR has
learned. He wasn't sick on the flight, and had no symptoms when he
arrived.
He first developed symptoms on Wednesday, Sept. 24, according to
the CDC, and first sought care on Friday. On Sunday, he was placed in
isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Health
officials have already started reaching out to people who may have come
into close contact with the man. The virus is spread only through
direct contact of bodily fluids, and it isn't contagious until a person
starts showing symptoms. Update at 7:15 p.m. ET. Handful Of People Exposed
A "handful" of people may have been exposed to the virus, the CDC's Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday at a news conference. These include several family members of the man and a few people in community, Frieden said.
The man could have passed Ebola to these people during the four days when he was sick but not yet isolated.
But passengers on the plane with the man were not exposed to
Ebola, Frieden said. "There is zero risk of transmission on the flight.
He was checked for fever before getting on the flight."
The CDC
has been planning for an Ebola case in the U.S, Frieden said. And the
agency, together with state health departments, has successfully dealt
with similar viruses — Lassa and Marburg — on five previous occasions.
"The
bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this
importation, or case of Ebola," he said, "so that it does not spread
widely in this country." Our Original Post Continues:
This
isn't the first time somebody has been treated for Ebola in the U.S.
Several American aid workers in recent months caught the virus while
working in West Africa and were flown back to the U.S. for treatment.
But
it's the first time the disease has been diagnosed in a person in the
U.S. The CDC is sending a team to Dallas to work with state and local
health officials.
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to grow rapidly. As of
Thursday, there have been more than 6,500 cases across Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea. More than 3,000 people have died of the disease, the
World Health Organization says.
Specialists
studying infectious diseases have predicted for weeks that a few Ebola
cases would likely turn up in the U.S. And hospitals around the country
have been preparing to diagnose and treat such cases.
Because
Ebola only spreads through body fluids, officials say that any case like
this will likely be quickly identified and contained, and not lead to a
widespread outbreak like the one happening now in West Africa.
Watch Tuesday’s CDC news conference discussing the first diagnosed U.S. case of Ebola
The first ever case of Ebola in the U.S. has been diagnosed in Dallas.
Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden confirmed the diagnosis in a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
The
patient, only identified as a male, traveled from Liberia and arrived
in the U.S. on Sept. 20, but did not start showing symptoms until four
days later. The patient was later admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian
Hospital Dallas on Sunday, Sept. 28, and put under isolation and
treatment.
The patient had traveled to Texas to visit family members living in the U.S., Frieden said.
There
was no other information released as to the identity or the status of
his conditon, other than that he was critically ill at this point and
under intensive care.
While all other patients treated for Ebola
have been sent to Emory University in Atlanta, Frieden said there were
no plans to transfer the most-recent patient from the Dallas hospital.
The
CDC, along with Dallas County Health and Human Services, will now
follow procedure for contact tracing in order to identify all possible
persons who may be at risk for Ebola infection because of direct contact
with the Dallas patient.
Since the patient did not start
exhibiting symptoms until four days after flying to the U.S. on a
commercial airliner, Frieden said there was “zero risk of transmission
on the flight.”
“Ebola is a scary disease because of the severity
of the illness,” Frieden said. “At the same time we are stopping it in
its tracks.”
This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science
A
colorized, magnified electron microscope image of the Ebola virus
growing out of an infected VERO 46 cell. Image by National Institute of
Allerfy and Infectious Diseases
This post was originally
published on Aug. 21 and updated on Sep. 30 to reflect the latest
numbers from the World Health Organization.
As of Sep. 30,
the Ebola virus had killed more than 3,000 people in the West African
countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, according to the
latest numbers released by the World Health Organization. As
the virus spreads and medical workers feverishly battle to contain it,
we wanted to know, how exactly is this virus transmitted from human to
human? What is Ebola?
Illustrations by Ruth Tam
Ebola is one of the world’s most virulent diseases. It comes from an extended family of viruses called Filoviridae,
which also include the deadly Marburg virus. It is a swift and
effective killer, known to kill up to 90 percent of those it infects.
And it is a “hemorrhagic fever virus,” which means it causes fluid to
leak from blood vessels, resulting in a dangerously low drop in blood
pressure.
Understanding Ebola requires an understanding of viruses
and how they work. “Viruses,” science writer Carl Zimmer writes in his
book “A Planet of Viruses”,
“can replicate themselves, despite their paltry genetic instructions,
by hijacking other forms of life. They… inject their genes and proteins
into a host cell, which they [manipulate] into producing new copies of
the virus. One virus might go into a cell, and within a day, a thousand
viruses [come] out.”
All viruses contain “attachment proteins,”
which, as the name suggests, attach to host cells through the cells’
“receptor sites.” This is how they invade healthy human cells. While
some virus particles are shaped like spheres, the particles that make
up Ebola are filament-like in structure, giving them more surface area
to potentially attack a greater number of cells. Each Ebola virus
particle is covered in a membrane of these attachment proteins, or
glycoproteins.
“[The virus] has a tremendous number of
glycoproteins, which can increase its ability to affect cells,” said
Richard Cummings, chair of Emory’s Dept. of Biochemistry and director of
the National Center for Functional Glycomics. “It’s extremely
infectious in that regard.”
Imagine Ebola’s glycoproteins as giant
oak trees with branches and leaves, said Erica Ollmann Saphire, a
structural biologist at the Scripps Research Institute. The Ebola virus
has its own critical receptor site, which lies beneath these branches
and leaves to avoid detection from the immune system. Each glycoprotein
can attach itself to a host cell in a number of different ways, but once
its branches fasten themselves to a host cell’s molecules, that host
cell pulls in the attachment protein, slicing off its leaves and
branches and exposing the trunk, the virus’s receptor site.
“The
previously hidden receptor rearranges itself and spring loads like a
spear fishing rod,” said Saphire. “It uncoils, springs forward and
penetrates the membrane, driving itself into the cytoplasm.”
The cells then internalize the virus, and Ebola’s race against the human immune system begins. How Ebola moves from person to person
Ebola
spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or tissue.
The virus can be transmitted when an infected person’s vomit, blood or
other fluids contact another person’s mouth, eyes or openings in their
skin, said Dr. Ameesh Mehta, an infectious disease doctor at Emory
University.
Even after a person has died, the virus persists. In
West Africa where funeral rites include washing, touching and kissing
corpses by family members, putting the dead to rest can be just as
deadly as caring for a living patient.
“Contact with any aspect of it is considered very dangerous,” Cummings said. “Any physical contact.” Ebola’s
sucker punch is its speed of replication. At the time of death, a
patient can have 1 billion copies of the virus in one cubic centimeter
of blood. In comparison, HIV, a similar virus, has the same rate at the
time of death. But unlike HIV, which only infects two types of immune
cells, Ebola first infects white blood cells that disable the body’s
ability to destroy foreign substances, then seizes nearly every cell
type.
“It’s a systemic viral infection throughout your body as
opposed to an infection of just your immune system,” Saphire said.
“Patients may die before they’re able to mount much of an immune
response.”
This process takes anywhere from two to 21 days (though
it’s typically between four to 10 days). When the immune system begins
breaking down, the symptoms begin to show.
Patients experience
fevers, headaches and fatigue early on. After the virus overwhelms
healthy cells, they burst, causing a chemical release leading to
inflammation. Their remains are taken over by other cells, perpetuating
the virus. As the symptoms worsen, patients suffer from bloody diarrhea,
severe sore throat, jaundice, vomiting or loss of appetite.
Infected
cells that haven’t yet burst carry the virus through the bloodstream to
invade different parts of the body like the lymph nodes, spleen and
liver. When infected cells attach themselves to the inside of blood
vessels, it weakens them, causing fluids to leak. This triggers the
uncontrollable bleeding for which Ebola is known, though it only happens
for about 50 percent of patients and occurs mostly inside the body.
In
fatal cases, blood pressure plummets after blood vessel damage, and
death from shock or multiple organ failure occurs within six to 16 days. The path ahead
Saphire
is part of a large, multi-site team made up of 25 laboratories that’s
mapping Ebola’s glycoprotein to better understand and defeat the virus.
Among the potential strategies they’re studying is an antibody cocktail
called ZMapp, an experimental drug that drew media attention after its
use on two U.S. aid workers and three Liberian doctors. First developed
by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases a
decade ago, this “Ebola serum” potentially works to neutralize the virus
by preventing its rearrangement and flagging it for destruction by the
immune system.
Clinical trials for ZMapp are set to begin in 2015,
but according to Saphire, doses for “experimental compassionate
therapy,” treatment provided to critically-ill patients before the drug
has been approved, could be ready in three months.
“The central
dogma of molecular biology is that sequence dictates fold, which
dictates function,” Saphire said. “But Ebola does more with less. While
the human genome has 20,000 kinds of genes, Ebola has seven, and by
rearranging its protein structure, it can carry out far more than seven
functions.”
Ebola,
Saphire explained, remodels its molecules “like a Transformer: those
toys that unfold and refold to change between a robot and a truck,” she
said. “We don’t typically expect molecules in biology to do that. We
expect proteins to have one particular form – just the robot. If you
didn’t know that the Ebola robot would also refold into a truck, you
would design all your drugs against the robot structure.”
In addition, due to its extreme nature, there are far fewer human studies on Ebola than other similar viruses.
“Ebola
patients are often too sick to consent to research,” Mehta said. These
cases are occurring in poor environments where it’s hard to collect the
samples to really understand the pathogens. But hopefully science
catches up with the clinical phenomenon.”
While the recent
outbreak is not expected to reach far beyond West Africa, researchers
like science writer Richard Preston fear the beginning of a more deadly
and longer-lasting epidemic if the virus finds its way to metropolitan
areas like Lagos, Nigeria, which has a population larger than the state
of New York.
Despite Ebola’s pervasive spread, Cummings says the
biggest misconceptions are that Ebola is easily transmitted and that the
outbreak in West Africa could reach global levels.
While one
should still exercise caution, Cummings says the requirement of
transmission of fluids makes the disease more difficult to get if you’re
not directly treating patients.
“It is more controllable than people realize.”
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.
While
some virus particles are shaped like spheres, the particles that make
up Ebola are filament-like in structure, giving them more surface area
to potentially attack a greater number of cells. Each Ebola virus
particle is covered in a membrane of these attachment proteins, or
glycoproteins.
Ebola’s
sucker punch is its speed of replication. At the time of death, a
patient can have 1 billion copies of the virus in one cubic centimeter
of blood. In comparison, HIV, a similar virus, has the same rate at the
time of death. But unlike HIV, which only infects two types of immune
cells, Ebola first infects white blood cells that disable the body’s
ability to destroy foreign substances, then seizes nearly every cell
type.
