Ideas like that will get you shot.

[Scuba]

[Tom Rinaldo]

1. "wherever evil needs an adversary"

That is indeed government at it's finest, that is its role. I still mourn this man.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. So will outspoken support of Israel...

if you're unlucky enough to cross paths with an unhinged Palestinian nationalist with a gun. (Which is what actually happened.)

[seveneyes]

7. A very often overlooked fact. /nt

[DanTex]

9. Even that is attributing too much cause and effect.

RFK was shot by a nut with a gun (who happened to be an unhinged Palestinian nationalist who objected to RFK's support of Isreal).

[Niceguy1]

26. who probably

Wiuld have shot him if he wasn't an unhinged Palestinian nationalist..... guns don't turn people into nuts...

[Ace Acme]

30. Except the fatal shot was behind the right ear and fired from about 3 inches away

... (says the coroner). All of the bullets that hit RFK came from behind.

[PeoViejo]

34. And Sirhan Sirhan had a 22 cal pistol

but RFK was killed by a 9mm sized projectile.

[Recursion]

10. There's that, too (nt)

[merrily]

16. Outspoken support of Israel was not rare among US politicians at that time.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Or this time.

Just making an observation.

[merrily]

19. This time is not relevant to RFK's assassination, though.

[1monster]

27. The bullet that killed RFK was at close range to the back of his head. Sirhan, while definitely

a shooter that night, was in front of Kennedy and not closer than six feet.

[Rex]

3. The country has never been the same after his assassination

well his, his brother, Dr. King and Malcolm Little. At least that is what I hear the baby boomers say and I believe them.

[Ikonoklast]

5. We went numb. It was like unrelenting hammer blows. It was an awful time in this nation.

Many finally came to know and realize knew that murdering their political opponents was now an accepted tactic and would be freely used by those that stood to gain the most from it.

[jwirr]

6. He was my last great hope. I almost stopped voting except for my mother who told me we had to

keep fighting to protect what we had. And that is what we are still doing.

[Ikonoklast]

12. It's funny this came up, I was at my parent's Sunday for dinner.

Dad is a devout Kennedy backer from when Jack first ran for office.

He sent JFK five dollars for his senate campaign, (Dad only made $25 a week back then) and in return received his picture, signed by John F. Kennedy himself, and a letter personally thanking my father for the donation.

That picture and letter has hung in a place of honor in every home my father has had.


After John was murdered, he backed Bobby with all his heart, and it damn near killed my father when they murdered him, too.


Anyway, we always talk politics after dinner over tea, and Dad said that killing Bobby was the best way to stop us from ever finding out who killed his brother, and he said when it happened he finally realized that this nation was not so much different from any other nation where assassination of your political opponents is accepted practice to further your agenda.

[jwirr]

14. Your dad and I grew up listening to news about a South American assasination all the time. That is

not happening so much now but then it was often the only way to take over the government. I remember being glad we had regular elections. So much for Democracy!

[Ace Acme]

32. RFK would have been president had he lived.

He would have ended the Vietnam war, and reopened the JFK investigations.

RFK had to die and George Wallace had to be paralyzed by a bullet--both those had to happen if Nixon was to get into the White House.

[truedelphi]

39. The shootings no longer happen here - but beware of being liberal, charismatic and

A viable political figure, and of riding in small planes.

JFK Jr - his plane goes down, with GPS signalling device. The local airport staffers in Cape Cod, (where John Jr, his wife and sister-in-law were to have landed), told other Kennedy family members that there was no flight plan for the plane, and they shouldn't expect him. (There was a flight plan.)

No one would go looking for that plane. No One! Then the next morning, Teddy called Bill Clinton at the WH, 7Am EST, and Bill got the Coast Guard involved.

However, they spent hours roaming around the ocean. Pilots on planes searching for JFK's Jr's plane were diverted far from the route the plane had been on. And remember - this was a decent and fully equipped aircraft, even equipped with a GPS signal!

Finally the plane was found, basically on the coast, on an approach to the airport.

Less than a decade later, Paul Wellstone's fully equipped plane, staffed by not one but two pilots, went down, right outside the approach to the Everett MN airfield where that plane was expected to land.

Although the weather was in the high thirties, with some light rain, the weather was presenting so little of a problem that the airfield manager got into his plane and went out looking for Wellstone's craft.

However, CIA-news media Talking Head, Wolf Blitzer (Who just happened to be in the area!) ran out onto the airfield and grabbed the microphone out of the hands of the local radio reporter, as she was explaining to the audience that weather was not a factor. Blitzer bellowed into that mike that the weather had brought the plane down.

The plane burned from the time after it crashed, around 11:15 Am, until almost 6Pm. I have shown the NTSB's charts and analysis to a friend who was an excellent airplane pilot - he was amazed that such an aircraft burned so long.

Remember, this plane had been in radio contact with the airport at the time it went down. But the air field staff lost track of it two minutes or so before it crashed. If weather was a factor, then the radio contact would not have been affected. If a flock of birds hit the plane's engine, then radio communication would not have been affected.

At the time of the crash, microwave power anomalies serious enough to affect at least one resident's garage door were reported. Prior to the crash, October 2003, many police departments were starting to have microwave transmitter capabilities of affecting speeding cars. It is plausible that our CIA and black op people have the ability to target small air crafts with microwave pulses, that zap out the electronics and send the plane into a tailspin.

[dflprincess]

42. Just a small correction Wellstone's plane was on its way to Eveleth, MN

and went down 2 miles from the airport there. (I don't believe there is an Everett, MN (though there is a lake by that name.).

When I was watching the coverage that afternoon either CNN or CBS broadcast a live interview with a local who swore he saw a flash from the back of the plane. It was the one interview I did not see replayed that day.

[truedelphi]

46. Thanks for the correction.

You are right. However I am so very dyslexic, and once I think of something being named something, the new information only sticks so long.

Also, your report on a resident who saw a flash at the back of the end of the plane, very interesting. And of course, it wouldn't be played again.

[Samantha]

44. Your Dad was right (n/t)

[truebluegreen]

29. +a zillion

Metaphorically speaking, they had us on the ropes by then, but that was the knockout punch.

[heaven05]

41. Malcolm X was killed

because he had, while in Mecca, seen muslims of all shades of the skin pigment rainbow praying together with no discord among them and knew that hating because of skin color was wrong, in this case the 'whitedevil, preached by black muslim, elijah muhammad. He was gaining power with this line of thinking and I do feel that is why he was killed by elijah muhammad. That whole decade had hammer blow after hammer blow against people who tried to get us together as americans. Look where we are now. More racial discord and poverty than ever. Tea nazis and RW idiots standing in the way of true progress. Sad indeed that money trumps racial harmony and financial parity. But then again that dog eat dog capitalism for you.

[wilsonbooks]

4. Some of us still remember when

the Democratic party stood up for the working and middle classes in this country.

[loudsue]

15. Reagan & the republicans made it their life's mission to infiltrate the democratic party...and they

were successful. The DLC got all the corporate funding.

[bvar22]

23. Yep.

[font size=5]
The DLC New Team
[/font]
(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

[loudsue]

24. They left out LIEberman.

Asshole that he is, and the one Obama claimed was his mentor.

[Lifelong Protester]

8. Still miss him and Paul Wellstone

His death was a terrible blow, and as someone said here, one in a series of what seemed relentless blows.

Changing the status quo will never be easy. But we need to keep on fighting.

[merrily]

17. We need to change the ways we fight, though.

[truedelphi]

40. + 1 very broken hearted human.

[hue]

11. I still mourn for Him!! Respect! Thanks for the reminder of who we are!

[rustbeltvoice]

13. The Day Bobby Died

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2013, 03:57 PM - Edit history (1)

from an old post of mine:

Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Day Bobby Died


The day Bobby died, 6 June 1968, was an extremely tragic moment for America and, therefore, the world. Thomas Carlyle had a theory of history, that, history was shaped by the great men and their actions. No more momentous turning point of change, has there been in my lifetime, than, that which, occurred in the last generation, that of the death of Robert Francis Kennedy.

For one of many things, Bobby would have defeated Nixon. Life without Nixon, would have brought the Vietnam war to an end, years and lives earlier. The US would have enjoyed a better place in the eyes of the world and a better economy. The social problems that eat away at this country would have been lessened by great degrees. The Republican hegemony would not have happened. Bobby would have been president for eight years.

No Nixon, would have meant that G.H.W. Bush would have been sent to obscurity and his progeny would not have beleaguered the world. The current war would not be! Kennedy as president would have made Latin America a more peaceful and successful place. Oscar Romero would have lived and there would have been no Iran-contragate, for there would have been less need of revolt and bloodshed and the criminality and the extra-constitutionality of Watergate would not have been precedents for further erosion of law and justice.

One doubts that Ronald Reagan would have been able to mount a successful campaign in 1976. The Republican desire for the revenge for the failed Nixon would not have existed. The Iran situation would have been different and could not have been exploited by Casey for Reagan, as it was in 1980, and, that alone, gave him victory.

The greed of the Reagan-Bush minions would have been kept in check. Communism would have fell in 1989 anyhow, for Reagan and the role of the US were peripheral and minor and just economically costly.

The cause of the working man and the minorities would have advanced and without the ugly resistance caused by the Republicans, their corporate sponsors and ignorant followers. In such an environment NAFTA would not have come, Walmart would not have been able to get away with its tricks. Disparities in income would reflect western Europe and not the third world.

What sort of Republicans would there have been? So much of their apparatus would have been quashed. Would they have been a respectable and moderate party instead of the fascists, that, they are?

With the death of Bobby, the Catholic moment of US history and culture failed to come. The social and religious emphasis of Cesar Chavez, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and the martyred religious of Latin America [in fact the US aided their assassins and trained some of them] did not advance here, neither has the views of the last or current pontiff. The Sermon on the Mount has a very small audience since that black, black day.

Don McLean sang of the day the music died in '59* in the aeroplane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly and his companions. It was more than bad news on the doorstep, the day democracy died, when the bullets took the life of Bobby.

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence." -- spoken 6 June 1966 Capetown

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." -- from his last speech
______________________
*date corrected

[Stainless]

22. Catholicism also gave us the Dark Ages

And Buddy Holly died in 1959 not "57". The USA has taken a sharp right turn and progressivism and liberalism have taken a beating. Religious dogma is the problem not the solution.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

45. Unless you want to say that Catholicism caused the fall of the Roman Empire

Your statement about it causing the Dark Ages is false.

Moreover, "Dark Ages" is a specifically British usage, referring to the period between the evacuation of the Roman army from Britain in 406 and the Norman Conquest in 1066. In France, the period up to about 1000 is designated Haut Moyen Âge, which is succeeded by the Bas Moyen Âge of 1000-1500. Most confusingly, the Germans apply Hochmittelalter to the 11th-13th centuries, but have it preceded by a Frühmittelalter of ca. 500-1000 and followed by a Spätmittelalter of 13th-15th centuries.

[truebluegreen]

31. well said.

[SoapBox]

20. Ughhhhh....

And I spent the holiday listening to bitching about O-bama endlessly...then last night they started yapping about wiping MA off the map, so that any trace of "Kennedy" would be gone.

WTF is wrong with people.

[rustbeltvoice]

25. and Massachusetts had three senators

Tom Lehrer used to write and perform his political folk song parodies, and on occasion he pointed out Massachusetts' superiority, the only state with three US senators. Bobby Kennedy represented New York state at the time.

Yes, i remember now, and years ago, at work how some people absolutely reveled in their revile for anything Kennedy. Some were Republicans, but i worked labor, most were anti-Catholic bigots of some kind, and of course some had the unhappy co-incidence of being both; and after Reagan, i have encountered many Catholics that hate the Kennedys, of course they are all Republicans.

When i grew up, many of the people like myself, would make the point, "the Democrats care about the poor, and the Democrats care about labor". The response i often got, was "Republicans care about all Americans", or something similar. Now, we so often hear disparaging remarks against the very existence of Massachusetts, and California especially. Of course, there are Democrats who make similar remarks against groups, creeds, or locations of people; but the candidates do not run on the point.

[underpants]

28. I know where that came from

And I get it now- O'Reilly had a 5 minute segment on his show raving about liberal Massachusetts then had Scott Brown (who was elected there no less) to confirm how horribly liberal Mass is.

I see a pre-writing of history to damn Obamacare success before it happens.

Btw I was at my folks so Fox News is always in the channel rotation.

[ancianita]

21. Good thing that once the idea is out there, you can't kill it, though you can try killing all the

people who believe it. The OP idea can be suppressed, but gun users will never kill off ideas.

[Doctor_J]

33. I thought hate radio declared the Kennedy family were actually conservatives

doesn't sound like it to me

[Ace Acme]

35. Not just hate radio. Mainstream media had my Mom convinced that JFK

... was an aggressive Cold Warrior who got us into Vietnam.

[Scootaloo]

36. Well... he DID get us into Vietnam...

Just as Carter got us involved in Afghanistan.

Since both events happened towards the end of the president's time in office they're usually erroneously attributed to the next guy (Johnson and Reagan, respectively.)

It applies even with more recent presidencies - Ask 100 people "who got us involved in Somalia?" and i'll bet over half will answer with "Bill Clinton," since Bush dumped us in that mess after he lost the election.

[Ace Acme]

37. We were already in Vietnam before JFK took office.

In September 1960, the Communist Party of North Vietnam called for the liberation of the south from American imperialism.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent11.htm

[Scootaloo]

38. Fair enough

Most people measure from the "troops on the ground" (I grit my teeth at that term) phase, starting in 1961. But, you're right, we got started in the mess seven years prior to that.

[ailsagirl]

43. In December 1963, JFK had planned to start withdrawing troops from Vietnam

It was official. Then, what-do-you-know, when LBJ took office, that plan was quietly dropped.

Interesting.