Good enough for you?

The nuns were so upset. They had us on our knees for hours praying. It was a rainy Friday. It was horrible! My whole world came to an end. I really think I had a small nervous breakdown. Stayed in my room reading Life magazine with photos of Jackie in that Pink Chanel suit. I will never forget the feeling.

Why yes, I am.

One of my grandfathers was a rocket engineer. Bits of metal he made are on the moon and in the Smithsonian. I have a few bits of metal he made that orbited the moon.

My covert Irish Catholic and very heretic grandfather was an Army Air Force Officer during World War II, looking after scientific and technical people much more eccentric than himself, but deemed essential to the war effort. On his bad days he carried on as a handsome officer with a driver and big black military car carrying a "get out of jail free card" for his people caught up in gay bar raids, brawling, technical people picked up running down the street naked, important Hollywood war bond selling stars, Italians and Spaniards smuggling Nazi technology, and other very sordid business. My grandfather had some fascinating friends. His wife's sister, my grandma's sister, married a few of them.

On his favorite days, rare days I suspect, my grandpa solved engineering problems. When you are in the military you do what you they tell you to do. Joining the military as a young man, before Perl Harbor, he was simply fascinated with airplanes and needed a job. The Army Air Force gave him a job. Before that my grandma's mom, his wife's mom, was just about ready to kill him. (I'm the child of very strong and ancient matriarchy. My great grandmas were all absolute rulers of their domains.)

World War II over, the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us all about kicked my grandfather to the curb, in favor of a few amoral Operation Paperclip actual fucking Nazis and other MIC favorites..

Then JFK said we would land men on the moon so my grandfather, in spite of his many personal eccentricities, including a socialist bat-shit insane brother, was determined by higher powers to be useful once again. Post-Sputnik was the only career my grandfather ever talked about. He was among those who landed men on the moon, and yes, he kept current of the various JFK conspiracy theories.

I don't idolize my grandfather, he was deeply flawed man in many ways. He boycotted my own Big Catholic Wedding, having previously calling my wife a "Mexican girl." Men in his White Wild West U.S.A. simply did not marry Mexican girls. To his credit he did get past that, but not without much friction, diabetic blindness, and a minor stroke. Not bad for someone in their nineties.

The last of his type IMO.

Or did he let the CIA continue the shit they pulled under Eisenhower?

LBJ got stuff DONE.
Civil Rights.
Voting rights.
Great Society.

Vietnam destroyed him though.

Kennedy then fired Alan Dulles, architect of the shit the CIA pulled under Eisenhower.

Johnson got stuff done no doubt about it but the big question was Vietnam.

Kennedy decided the answer was no in the face of overwhelming pressure from the military and Washington conventional wisdom. With Johnson the answer was yes.

LBJ accomplished much with such a majority congress such as Medicare, Medicaid, environmental initiatives, public broadcasting, Endowment for Humanities and Arts, Head Start, food stamps, liberalized immingration standards, the Civil Rights Act, in fact appointed first African American justice to Supreme Court. Continued Kennedy's NASA initiative and preside over the first manned flight to the moon with Apollo 8.

But unfortunately he will always be remembered for escalating the Vietnam War.

Kennedy's accomplishments were fewer, but many of Johnson's programs were a product of Kennedy initiatives. After all he was his VP and set the first 100 days to fulfill Kennedy's legacy.

http://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/03/05/the-first-100-days-lyndon-johnson-fulfilled-kennedys-legacy

was trying to keep his options open on Vietnam until after the 1964 election. IOW , he had not decided yet between escalation and withdrawal.

but he felt he couldn't move too quickly in that direction until after the 1964 election because he had to worry about being called "soft of Communism" and that could have cost him reelection.

He also butted heads with CEOs and bankers and the Treasury. He had very powerful enemies both foreign and domestic, but we will never know whether any of them factored into his demise.

As far as your post about LBJ getting things done-well, the three things you listed are on life support thanks to an America that has lost it's soul. If those had been JFK's legacy, it would be the same thing whether he was murdered or not.

Clueless about where these themes are coming from.

I suppose it was inevitable that JFK would be next.

RFK will be jettisoned shortly, and Carter as well.

Only corporate Democratic presidents - or wannabee presidents - may now be praised. Which leaves only three "Democrats" fit to be mentioned or remembered. THOSE are the new rules.

And the change that has come to pass in the last year has made DU basically unrecognizable to me.

What was once a forum for more than a little serious discussion has been turned, in large part, into Tiger Beat crossed with a junior-high lunchroom with the nastiest kids in ascendance. Serious minded people are swamped by snarkers, hounded by alert gunners and sniped at constantly. So much deterioration, so quickly accomplished.

To what end, I must wonder.

and that will be your answer as to what happened.

as it always is. The answer is blindingly obvious.

go back to Eisenhower for the initial involvement in Vietnam

As for the philandering - that was Jackie's problem to deal with, really none of our business. It isn't like he set himself up as a family values, paragon of virtue.

3 is as much gossip as it is factual.

is that he voted for Reagan.

Go figure.

Maybe he saw what Reagan has done to this country and has changed his ideas on what works for ordinary people. I doubt if he were a mole here that he would openly admit to voting for Reagan.

and in his admission for voting for that brain dead turd, he had the nerve to disparage Jimmy Carter.

But then again, I was talking to Jay.

don't expect you can control everyone who posts. Although I have noticed that some of you do expect to be able to do that. Censorship is the first tool of fascists.

I wasn't talking to you.

That's the last I have to say about it. Have a good day.

Back then people understood politicians' private lives had nothing to do with their ability to govern, and the media was less concerned with tabloid style journalism.

the women they had. Seems odd when you get a wife like Jackie that you'd cheat. Other men would be glad to have her and be faithful.

Eleanor was another matter; still a very special woman; weird he could not be satisfied with her. He made a great choice of wife so why did he need more? Odd.

Last edited Mon Nov 23, 2015, 05:51 PM - Edit history (1)

often bedridden as a child, I've read that after his service in WWII, he was always in pain -- Addison's Disease. As far as women and fidelity went, he had a terrible example in his philandering father, Joe, who actually once brought his mistress into the family home to live for awhile. He said he felt sorry for his mother but found the fact that she put up with it frustrating.

That seems much more like a Repig sort of concern. If it walks like a duck.....

That is where the whole 'Camelot' in the White House started.

Anyway I recall reading that the Camelot theme started after the assassination when Jackie told an interviewer that Jack had liked to play the LP.

It's about love and betrayal, but most of all it's about Idealism -- something a lot of us felt during the Kennedy administration.

"Camelot" was the description that Jackie began using after JFK's death. There are zero references to "Camelot" before his death.

Never heard him mention anything about it.

"He certainly did."

Truman sent advisers to the French as they struggled to deal with the post-war consequences of Ho Chi Minh having declared independence after the fall of Japanese control.

Eisenhower sent a few dozen military advisers to Vietnam. JFK escalated that. Then LBJ went full out.

This National Security Action Memorandum ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 US military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1963.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Action_Memorandum_263

as he surely would have been, his plan was to get all Americans out of VN by the end of 1965. He told this to both Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Powers, his two closest aides other than Bob. Both stated this to multiple historians.

But that's considered "woo" around here.

For French cooperation on NATO.

Do you feel better now?

Jimmy Carter was the last American statesman.

I'm not agreeing, but I'm also not missing the chance to use that word.

Nader. Must be true.

They are multiplying like rabbits.

When John Kennedy was assassinated there were only a handful of military advisers in
Viet Nam. It was Johnson who ginned-up the Gulf of Tonkin excuse to steadily escalate
the conflict to epic perportions, causing over 282,000 US military deaths before it was over.

Besides that JFK was planning on dismantling the CIA, one of the other main reasons JFK
was assassinated was he had wised-up as to the futility of a sustained ground-war in VN
and was planning to pull out US advisers, much to the chagrin of the PTB in the Pentagon
and CIA.

American troop strength in Vietnam was 760. By 1963 that number had risen to 16,300. In 1968 we had 536,100 American troops in Vietnam. Source: www.americanwarlibrary.com/vietnam.

my point is 16,000 men is not a "handful" of advisors. That is equal the strength of an entire infantry division. The majority of those troops were Army Rangers and Special Forces. They actively patrolled with RVN units and engaged in combat against the VC and NVA. It would appear to some that it was slowly becoming an American war.

Last edited Mon Nov 23, 2015, 10:32 PM - Edit history (1)

As for whose war it is, I feel this is very germaine ... I hold the view that the fact that JFK was planning on
phasing US troops OUT of Viet Nam -- along with his stated intention to decimate the CIA -- helps explain
why he was assassinated. Johnson, who hated Kennedy, was more than happy to gin-up the Gulf of Tonkin
incident and escalate the war, once Kennedy was out of the way.

were 16 Thousand, not 16 hundred. But that is considerably more than when Ike was President. And a little more than an handful of troops in almost every ones view. Imagine the uproar on this form if the President decided to send 16,000 more troops to Iraq. Yes, there is evidence that JFK was considering a withdrawal from Vietnam, but that would not take place until after the 64 elections. He did not want to give the Republicans a "soft on Communism" talking point for the Presidential elections the following year.

to immediately reduce the 16,000 by 1,000, and execute a complete withdrawal within the next 2 years. The ink had hardly dried on NSAM-263, before JFK was assassinated.

Ho was a friend during WWII. Roosevelt promised him that the US would back Vietnam independence from the French at end of the War. Truman was listening to the Cold War crowd and betrayed him.

We remember John for the the hope he inspired, the vigor of youth he embodied, and the promise his public words and deeds conveyed that the world was on course to a better, brighter future.

It was only later, largely in retrospect and somewhat at the hands of gossipmongers, that his feet were shown to be clay, his principles situational, and his virtues tarnished.

The revelations, however, have proved inadequate to tarnishing the memories. The dream survives because it was so vivid. The promise prevails because without it life would prove too empty. And the hope remains because it has been with us from the beginning -- spawned by Jefferson, reaffirmed by Lincoln, restored by Franklin Roosevelt. From that hope we can generate anew the dreams that will carry us into the future, a future that grows increasingly bright if we but know how to focus on the promise of the light . . .

compliments!

Call him foolhardy if you must but he died in service to his country.

Kennedy's: Joe, JFK and RFK. I weep if I let myself think about it too much or for too long.

And to say this crap on this day is trollish.

'Tis always thus with cowards and shit-starters.

If we're all human, and Kennedy was as human as we are, we are allowed to nod 'Yes' to the eulogy for JFK from Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury:

“Thinking of him, we all see so vividly what we admire in a human life, and what are the great causes we care about. The impact of his example will help and inspire men and women for time yet to come.”


We're allowed to be respectful to an inspiring human being.

Or of FDR.

Every single person, man or woman, has flaws and makes mistakes.

and how many people they inspire.

Mull that over.

Fallout 4 wouldn't be a video game, but an approximation of everyone's day to day existence.

and didn't have to earn his money through unseemly activities like writing books and giving speeches. Plus he's male so it's okay that he was super rich. Women who make even a fraction of that kind of wealth are unacceptable because they exceed their rightful place in life. We see the same adulation of FDR, John Kerry and one percenters like Al Gore. But Clinton having a few million bucks is a crime against huMANity.

Sarcasm aside, I think it's because for many here he represents their youth, a time when they still believed in the United States and its government as a source of good. It certainly isn't that administrations, including JFK's, didn't engage in imperialistic activities abroad, but people didn't pay much attention or even know about it.It was also a time when the white middle-class prospered, men especially. Those are the good old days that some here openly long for. Of course it was also a time of Jim Crow and the denial of rights to women and LGBT.

This is the Noam Chomsky JFK, a cold warrior lionized after death for his luck in love but really no different from the rest, including his 1960 rival Richard Nixon. Well, I think Chomsky is wrong here. Kennedy was different. Here's his 1960 campaign book, based on speeches going back to his first days in Congress:



The strategy of peace was Kennedy's campaign theme, and structuralism notwithstanding, he had an anti-establishment vision of world peace that Nixon lacked, and he actively pursued it. And by all accounts people were abundantly aware of the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion he refused to support, and Vietnam, which was on every pundit's lips at the start of the 1964 campaign as Kennedy perceived that his intention to pull US advisors out was a vulnerability and was trying not to make it official until after the election. Well, he never got a chance. Convenient eh?

Presidents say all kinds of stuff, much of it bears little relation to reality. JFK was a Cold Warrior, and like all of his era ran clandestine operations and wielded the carrot and stick over Latin America. Chomsky is right. If one is critical of US foreign policy, there is no conceivable reason to exempt Kennedy. Trying to overthrow the government of Cuba is no minor thing. Funding brutal dictatorships in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua is not minor. They are part of the ugly legacy of American empire. Then there is Vietnam, for God's sake. He increased the US presence there.

The only thing convenient about JFK's death is that it has prompted people to call him a martyr.
If he were alive today you and your friends would skewer him. He lowered taxes on the rich. The Eisenhower tax rate that Bernie talked about in the debate--JFK got rid of that.

The tendency to see political figures as idols or villains requires abandoning evidence for a faith/emotion based view. When the facts don't fit the idea that JFK or Bernie is perfect or Clinton evil, people create conspiracy theories to accommodate their own inability to understand the complexity of history, society, and life. I have no patience for it.

of June 1963. That speech was his death warrant.

Kennedy's "not a Pax Americana" speech, announcing among other things his nuclear test ban treaty and touching on his favorite theme, "the most important topic on earth, world peace":

convinced Khrushchev that he and JFK could do serious business together in bringing peace and defusing the Cold War. The missile crisis scared him as badly as it did Kennedy. Even Castro was impressed as were European allies.

With that speech JFK signed his own death warrant. The MIIC could not allow what he proposed to actually happen.

and turned from Cold Warrior to working for peace.

Lot of unhappy people in the MIC when he did that.

JFK held the positions that the repeated recessions of the Eisenhower years (that triggered huge Democratic mid-term victories in 54 and 58) were caused by high marginal tax rates. His 1962 tax cuts lowered the top marginal rate from 91% to 70%. It was a cross the board tax rate cut because the bottom tax rate was cut from 20% to 14%.

It was one of the few legislative victories that JFK had because he did not have much sway over the solidly Democratic House and Senate. He and his White House advisers were never able to "steer" Congress (and thanks to RFK) were marginalizing the Vice President (LBJ).

The two best presidents of the last sixty years skilled at having their way with persuading Congress to act were LBJ and Reagan. JFK and Carter were very ineffectual with Congress.

Do you have to make EVERYTHING about HC?

But the contradiction is inescapable. Clinton is unfit to be president because she is in the 1 percent. JFK was exponentially more wealthy, and he is idolized.

amazing how much space a man will get for being good looking!

they are elected repeatedly to high office. Diane Feinstein is worth about 44 million bucks, Pelosi 29 million give or take, Rep Suzan Del Bene is worth about 38 million, ex Microsoft exec. It goes on like this.

It take some sort of privilege to have a large number of vastly wealthy persons in very high office and wallow in rhetoric claiming their wealth makes them unacceptable. Pelosi has been in office since I think 1987. Diane Feinstein in the Seanate for 23 years after being Mayor of SF. 44 million, 23 years and you get to say 'unacceptable'?

Oh. I get it. You are making this about Hillary. Jesus fuck.

She lives in Atherton (Rich Snob Central).

June 11, 1963:

Not Kennedy

Did you watch the 14-minute address?

Good god, now we're taken to task for presuming to remember the assassination of one of our own.

This is getting ridiculous.

JFK had inherited Eisenhower's plan on Bay of Pigs. Could he have put the kibosh on it? Probably. But he was a new President and listened to the Pentagon. He didn't make a similar mistake over the Cuban missles, which would have been much worse.

That said, was he a liberal? Well, he was the candidate of the liberal party, but I don't think he was any liberal. He did, however, do the right thing in getting MLK, Jr. out of jail and the Interstate Commerce Commission and was working on the Civil Rights Act, all of which has benefited the nation and the Party ever since.

Also, he was a real war hero and died way too soon serving his country.

Salon:

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/22/inside_the_plot_to_kill_jfk_the_secret_story_of_the_cia_and_what_really_happened_in_dallas/

--on the murder of John Kennedy in Dallas.

It's a discussion board. OP asked a question to stimulate debate. Even if OP doesn't personally like JFK, it doesn't mean OP is not a democrat.

I think it's a great thread.

Archae compared discussing the assassiantion of President Kennedy to "beating a dead horse."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024158313#post18

That bothers me personally, as a Democrat and as a DUer.

Even decades after they have absolutely discredited, old accusations are still regurgitated and run with, over and over.

I see the same thing with Clinton conspiracies, Franklin Roosevelt and Pearl harbor conspiracy theories, and just today I've seen not one but TWO different posters citing kook web sites to "prove" a Jewish conspiracy theory from 9-11.

How silly, you cannot be serious.

He wasn't a bad president. He made mistakes, like the Bay of Pigs, but he showed a real capacity for learning on the job. The Missile Crisis was handled about as well as could be imagined and the pushes for the moon shot and the Test Ban Treaty were very good moves. He outmaneuvered George Wallace on the integration of the University of Alabama and he was able to end the blockade of Berlin without bloodshed. These are good things to have on a presidential resume.

He couldn't move legislation to save his life. The centerpiece of his legislative agenda was a tax cut. It didn't pass until LBJ was president and used his understanding of the Congress, particularly the Senate, to make it happen. The Civil Rights Act as we know it was dead in the water. It's safe to say that it would not have passed under JFK because his staff didn't understand Congress (see the Kenny O'Donnell-LBJ phone call in summer 1963 for an example). He let his brother wiretap everybody and his brother (most of the wiretaps approved by RFK would be removed by LBJ). He bears some responsibility for the murder of Diem, which was the destabilizing event that led to the later buildup. These are not good things to have on a presidential resume.

He's been lionized because of circumstances at the time and later. I think it's similar to Lincoln, where a story of what-might-have-been was created both because of the situation when he was killed and the bad things that happened later. You can see the similarities when you consider the commonly told stories that Reconstruction wouldn't have happened under Lincoln and that Kennedy was going to pull out of Vietnam. Supporters of these stories point to speeches (some speeches, anyway) and documents to make their case(s), but it rings hollow to me. What if Lincoln was faced with the armed southern resistance that appeared in the months after his death? What if JFK had to face, like LBJ, a South Vietnam that was spiraling out of control in the spring of 1964? Would they really have made different decisions than their successors? Would they have had more choices than their successors? We'll never know, but it's dishonest to claim that they would have acted differently without ever considering the situation.

Again, he wasn't a bad president. He was trending toward good in the months before his murder. It's unlikely he'd have ever reached great because greatness in a president relies a lot on the ability to move legislation. A president's legislative agenda is passed in the first few months after inauguration or it doesn't get passed. While exceptions do exist, like FDR and Lincoln, it's important to recognize that they are both exceptions and the exceptions tend to occur with great presidents. Generally, presidents tend to react to Congress after the first few months, not actually move it forward.

I think the JFK story is really a story of our feelings toward the last 50 years or so, not actually the story of him. We project a host of wishes onto him, whether or not they're close to the reality of him. It's not that America fundamentally changed because of his murder, it didn't, but that a horrible act occurred that couldn't be whitewashed by a prim social consensus of "what was proper." It happened. The later assassinations (Medgar, Malcolm, RFK, MLK) would likewise be difficult to whitewash. It's hard to believe that everything is fine and can just be fixed if you just act in the proper way when the greats of your age are getting killed left and right. I think that comes close to why JFK is treated as a bit of a demi-god. His murder removed the veil for yet another generation to get a glimpse of the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be.

and insightful. Should be read by EVERY MEMBER of DU!

Can you run for President?

Your adversary can prevail over you simply by causing you to waste your time.

his country - and it happened in our living memory. He was young, had a wife and two little kids. He was a Democrat..........

It's a funny question to ask on DU.

... or a deep, dark, dysfunctional, and very disturbed skeptic.

I'm a deeply scarred skeptic.

Would you like me to share a little PTSD life experience with you?

Yes, JFK is background in my own life, I was just a kid when he was assassinated, but I've never felt comfortable in U.SA society in spite of the fact my ancestors have been here a long time.

My last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't like sharing a husband and ran away.

The CIA went ahead with the Bay of Pigs even though JFK had told them he wouldn't be sending in air support. They thought they could stick him in a position where they would have to back up their anti-castro army. They also thought that the minute they landed, the Cuban people would rise up against Castro, greeting them as "liberators" (hmm, where have we heard that before?)

The Bay of Pigs debacle was squarely the fault of Allen Dulles, not JFK.


As for Vietnam, it is arguable that Kennedy could have figured out sooner where the whole thing was heading, but many make a fair case that he was leaning towards withdrawl and if he had made it into his 2nd term he would have ended US involvement instead of going "all in" with escalating it, as LBJ did.


Philandering is an issue between him and his wife, why what a President does as a consenting adult is the greater public's business didn't make any sense to me in 1998 and it still doesn't now.

Richard M. Nixon. People don't want to remember that. But it IS true, as reading any decent history of the period will reveal.

And CIA Director lied Kennedy into signing off on it. "He sat here and lied to my face." was JFK's quote re Dulles and the BoP.

Kennedy wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds" because of the BoP

his efforts to thaw out the Cold War. There's ample new evidence that JFK was back-channel negotiating with Khrushchev and Castro to improve relations and to avoid another stand off that would obliterate the planet the way the Cuban missile crisis threatened to do.

Hardliners in the Pentagon (who were pushing for nuclear war with Russia) and in the Kremlin weren't appreciative and both Kennedy and Khrushchev were sacked in one way or another for their efforts.

As with this history, there are other ways of seeing what happened with the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, but it requires not swallowing everything you're spoon fed.

He wasn't a saint and he apparently had a serious and debilitating illness and popped pills. But the man deserves credit for doing a lot more good than those who enjoy assassinating his character over and over give him.

during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So, there's that . . .

who are purging all the non-corporate real Democrats from the history of the party.

There was nothing before Clinton. Nothing. No Democrats existed before Wall Street's BFF, Bill Clinton.

You some kinda counter-revolurionary running dog, Taz?

No, no, I love Hillary and Wal Mart and fracking and wars without end. I'm a good little prol. Honest.