Well, what Eleanor Roosevelt says anyway.

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

That wouldn't concern me. Plus, it's pretty expensive to "play" in an airplane.

Heck, Id be happy to have the Republican out of the office.

Which is weird, seeing how J Edgar Hoover and the FBI reported they found no connection between the two.

Gee. I wonder if Hoover lied about anything else in regards to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?

JFK assassination conspiracy: David Ferrie was linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw in New Orleans

By John Pope
NOLA.com | The New Orleans Times-Picayune, Nov. 15, 2013

EXCERPT...

In 1993, the PBS program "Frontline" acquired a group photograph showing Ferrie and Oswald at a Civil Air Patrol cookout in 1955. While it does cast doubt on Ferrie's claim that he never knew Oswald, Michael Sullivan, the show's executive producer, said it doesn't prove that the two were together in 1963 or were part of an assassination conspiracy.

Ferrie, who was an avowed anti-Communist, became involved with anti-Castro organizations in New Orleans in the early 1960s. He also started working for Guy Banister, a private investigator who had been an FBI agent and assistant superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department. The two worked with the lawyer of reputed Mob figure Carlos Marcello in an attempt to block Marcello's deportation to Guatemala.

Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, said Ferrie and Oswald visited Banister's office frequently in 1963, according to Anthony Summers' book, "Not in Your Lifetime." However, the House Select Committee on Assassinations termed her statements unreliable.

Garrison was convinced that New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw was a leader of the assassination plot. In an application for a warrant to search Shaw's French Quarter home, Ferrie was listed as a guest at meetings there, along with Oswald, to plan the conspiracy. Shaw denied that such meetings occurred.

Rumors about Ferrie swirled after the assassination, most notably the one that he had been hired to fly gunmen out of Dallas after the shooting. Ferrie told the FBI that he did, indeed, go to Texas that day, but he said that he drove to Houston, not Dallas, to inspect an ice rink there and look into the feasibility of opening one in New Orleans. From there, Ferrie told The States-Item, he drove to Galveston and Alexandria.

The FBI picked up Ferrie for questioning, but he was released because there was no evidence of his involvement in the assassination. According to a source quoted in a 1967 article in The Saturday Evening Post, "The FBI squeezed Ferrie dry, found nothing there and discarded him."

CONTINUED...

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/11/jfk_assassination_conspiracy_d_1.html

Dripping sarcasm.

My favorite truth about Hoover is that for years and years he swore up and down that there was no such thing as organized crime. Like one of the usual suspects bloviating about conspiracies theories...until they are proven, then that one is dropped and onto the next one with the same howl that CTs don't exist.

They would be less obvious if they actually agreed that indeed yes, some people to conspire, but I guess abstract thought is out of their reach.

Not so shocking, considering...

What's really evil is what came later...



These are fascinating facts hidden to much of the public -- but not DUers.

Funny how Nixon and Poppy both could not tell reporters where they were on that day.

http://www.surftofind.com/mob

His source was the White House tapes: Nixon OK'd assigning a murderous Secret Service agent to protect Sen. Ted Kennedy. The agent chosen had told Haldeman that he would "kill anyone on your or the president's command" to "watch over" Ted Kennedy.

You can hear Nixon and Haldeman discuss it, about 40 minutes into the HBO documentary "Nixon by Nixon." While I had read the part of the transcript available years ago, and wrote about it on DU, almost no one I know has heard anything about it.

Why does that matter? The Warren Commission, and the nation's mass media, never heard about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro until the Church Committee in 1975. You'd think that would be a matter of concern to all Americans, especially considering how then-vice president Nixon was head of the "White House Action Team" that contacted the Mafia for murder.

This is the sort of information citizens of a democracy shouldn't have to search the Internet to learn. It should be taught in school, or at the least, discussed in the nation's mass media. Thank Elvis for DU and you, Rex!

The only adults involved were supervisory positions. It was a good experience for her.

She enjoyed learning about planes.
On weekends they did community service (festival car parking at the Peach Festival etc.)
They were always available for search and rescue.
She got to experience a KC135 refueling an F-16.
She got to ride in a glider.
She got to fly in a Cessna up to Mackinac Island from Alpena and back again.

No cigarettes were smoked.

It was very productive. I think it depends on the wing. She was proud to be a cadet commander.



http://www.macombdaily.com/article/MD/20120812/NEWS01/120819937

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Air_Patrol



Because SAR missions and disaster relief are nothing more than a "smoke break." Do you feel the same way about Red Cross volunteers?

He was a great guy, and devoted to helping kids better themselves and learn about flying. He died of cancer recently, and I attended his funeral. He was a great guy, and never used it to "get out and play".

but I wish I had.

is a somewhat bitter hater. By emphasizing that his co-worker is a "die hard repub" and calling it a "smoke break" and "just another way to waste time and not actually do anything productive." sound like both ignorance and jealousy to me.

The CAP has found many missing people where I've lived. It's a good organization. Sounds like your dislike for this particular person is coloring your view, which doesn't appear to be based on anything else.

Provides needed services, but a hater can always find or invent an example of waste--because heaven forbid anyone should ever get anything good in exchange for service.

And hey, bonus if he has to move! OTOH not all CAP persons are created equal. It's like pretending all soldiers are clones. You've got your shitbags and your sterlings in every organization.

Maybe you just need to find a hobby of your own.

This is nothing more than a "smoke break", just another way to waste time and not actually do anything productive

Umm... CAP does search and rescue, emergency response, disaster relief, and free aerospace education. It's exactly a good example of government in daily life.

My mother was a commander and my father was also in. I attended up until I was eighteen as did my brother and two sisters. I found it more beneficial compared to my time in JROTC in high school. We did a lot of community service and nothing beats the thrill of getting a call at three in the morning because a distress signal is coming from a plane.

work was in charge of the local CAP in Dayton Ohio.
They asked me to join and I was going to but my older brother talked me out of it saying it was too military like. The CAP kids mostly acted as crowd control at the Dayton air show and wore blue uniforms similar to the Air Force. They also learned to fly and soloed as kids. I loved planes back then and went to the Air Force museum almost weekly.
I kick myself now for listening to my brother. I most likely would have tried to become an Air Force pilot. Back then I never thought for myself.

It actually involved quite a lot of effort, first to qualify, and then to do the actual SAR missions. And it's as creepy as heck when you actually find a crashed plane - I was on the crew that found this one: http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001208X05909&ntsbno=CHI96FA184&akey=1

We found it lying upright in a tamarack bog, with the tail and a wing torn off and four dead people inside. I'll never forget that sight.

CAP does some serious work. With better GPS navigation there is less demand for lost airplane searches but they still do valuable work in the cadet program and helping with disaster relief. We flew a lot of trips to deliver people and equipment for flood relief.

Your co-worker isn't playing.

I saw very little lounging around.

I just resigned after 20+ years in the CAP.

It's like almost anything else...the organisation has noble aims but once reality (personalities) start getting in the way, then it can really suck.

I was in several units in two states (wings); in all three types of units - composite (mix of cadets and seniors), senior (adults only) and cadet (mostly cadets; however, some cadet squadrons can be hard to distinguish from composite squadrons).

The good bits? The first squadron I was in for six years. I earned my Observer (navigator) rating there, attained the rank of Captain and was eventually Deputy Commander. Also, some of the kids that become cadets are really go-getters. My first unit produced a Spaatz Award (the highest award a cadet can attain) cadet. The camaraderie can be good, depending on the unit.

The bad bits? POLITICS. CAP has an entrenched good ole' boy/girl network, where if you don't suck up to the right person or kiss the right arse, you can go nowhere, which is eventually what happened to me. Also, depending on unit, the membership tends to lean VERY heavily Republican. I heard so much Obama (and Clinton) bashing it was unreal...and when Bush was in he was treated as some sort of "saviour." Also, the connection with the Air Force is MUCH less than what it was when I first joined...CAP is now only the AF Auxiliary when it is on an Air Force Assigned Mission. Most of the rank-and-file AF don't even know what CAP is, and every now and then you hear an apocryphal story about a CAP officer trying to force an Airman to salute (which they're not entitled to), and then the Air Force puts more restrictions on CAP. CAP used to wear an almost-identical uniform to the AF until in the early '90s a National Commander promoted himself to Major General...the AF responded by taking away metal grade insignia and the blue epaulettes marked "CAP" and replaced them first with horrible looking maroon, and then grey, epaulettes.

I finally met the end of the road when I realised I would progress no further in the programme. I have my own health issues, and my wife is recovering from breast cancer, which meant I couldn't be there as much as others. Two years ago I submitted paperwork for promotion to Major, and it was denied on that basis. I had put in what time I could over the past two years, but for the squadron commander it just wasn't enough, so finally I said "see ya."

It wasn't an easy decision to make...but one does have to have priorities in life, and there are some in CAP who think that when you're not at work, in the bathroom or asleep you should be busting it for CAP.

That worked when I was young, single and healthy...but not now.