JFK and the Impossible

[Octafish]

The expression on Moonwatcher, a 4 million year old Australopithecus who starred in 2001, just about says it all for me.



When President Kennedy set the nation on a course to go to the moon, he made clear to history that the free world would be first to accomplish what had for millenia, if not eons, been considered the impossible. For that's what the moon shot was, accomplishing what had been thought fantasy -- lunacy -- for as long as human beings had the imagination to wonder.

The idea that we could go to the moon also meant that we could do anything we wanted to on earth. Provided we approach the problems with a can-do attitude, financial resources and national commitment, we could tackle and beat homelessness, joblessness, poverty, ignorance, preventable disease and most anything else. Most important, we could also tackle the ages old question of war and peace.

And peace in our time is the most important thing to remember President Kennedy for. When Congress, his Cabinet and the Pentagon were screaming for war with the Soviets over the missiles in Cuba, Kennedy kept the peace.

Otherwise, had the U.S. attacked the missile bases, things would have immediately escalated to nuclear conflagration with the Soviet Union left a pile of glowing rubble and the United States from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York and down to Miami likewise.

Do you think Junior Bush or Poppy Bush, Ronnie Reagan or Tricky Nixon were president in 1962, they would have held back? Gen President Eisenhower himself said that if there were only two Americans left and one Soviet, "We won!"

No, it is bigger than the Apollo Program. The greatest thing President Kennedy did was to keep the the peace during his time as President. How many since can make the same claim? In fact, it seems like the United States has not accomplished much in the last 40 years, since the space program. And wars are all around us.

[babylonsister]

1. It's really sad to me that JFK missed this outcome.

Having said that, I don't want to go to Mars now, because it might be doable. I don't want to go because of the expense.

We've got problems that need to be solved. In its own way, health care could be a very big deal. It needs to be done.

[Octafish]

2. The New Frontier

Kennedy wanted to use space as the new ocean of exploration. When Spain financed Columbus, they may've thought they were going to find a shortcut to markets in China and the Spice Islands. Instead, they found two continents and plundered the gold of empires.

Kennedy made NASA a civilian agency and all its research and operations public. That way, people would benefit from the returns on the investment. You and I are enjoying one at this second -- the computers we use to communicate and learn. To make the moon landing, rendezvous with the Command Module, and return to earth possible, we had to figure out how to miniaturize computers. Now integrated circuits are in products that practically everyone in the west uses daily.

Most importantly, Kennedy had offered an olive branch to the Soviets in 1963 when he said we could go to the moon together. Rather than than fighting each other on earth, with the attendent costs to the Treasury and national psyches, the world could explore the moon and planets in harmony. Who knows what treasures we might have gained?

[David Zephyr]

3. NIce thoughts.

I'll always be a big fan of JFK. He and Bobby kept us from World War III when the generals around him were itching to go after the Soviets. They backdoored peace and so your post is right on the mark in so many ways.

[Octafish]

4. Dulles and CIA foisted the Bay of Pigs on Kennedy

Nixon must've thought he had the 1960 election sewn up. Dulles and Nixon came up with the Bay of Pigs exile landing as a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. They had their war plan ready to go and fully expected to be in positions to implement them. Fortunately for humanity, Kennedy won the election. And he kept the peace then, too.

Thank you for understanding what it is our nation has lost, David Zephyr. The "vision thing" is what made America great. It's also that which can make America great again.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. a frickn men on that one....you might want to pop back in at the bottom of this thread, btw:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6104319&mesg_id=6104319

[Octafish]

10. Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal

Here's something well said that deserves to be well known:

Murdering Apollo: John F. Kennedy and the retreat from the lunar goal (part 1)

by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 30, 2006

What if John F. Kennedy had lived? Would he have canceled the Apollo program, or at least slowed it down? That is a powerful question, and one for which we will never have an answer. However, it is possible that clues to the answer currently exist on an audio tape held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Unfortunately, that tape will probably not be released for many years to come.

During a September 20, 1963 address before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations Kennedy made a startling proposal:

Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity—in the field of space—there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries—indeed of all the world—cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

Considering that the two nations had been to the brink of nuclear war only a year before, this was a rather startling attempt at rapprochement. It followed a similar proposal that Kennedy had made a month before to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.

What led to Kennedy’s decision to make this proposal in the UN at that time? Unfortunately, the paper record is insufficient to answer this question. During a March 1964 interview, Kennedy advisor Theodore Sorensen was asked about what motivated Kennedy’s offer to the Soviet Union. Sorensen replied that the high costs of Apollo may have been a factor. “I think he was understandably reluctant to continue that rate of increase. He wished to find ways to spend less money on the program and to cut out the fat which he was convinced was in the budget. How much that motivated his offer to the Russians, though, I don’t know.” But Sorensen admitted that he was not very familiar with the issue.

Echoes of a distant past

The answer to the question of why Kennedy made his overture may exist in the form of a tape recording of a meeting between Kennedy and NASA administrator James Webb two days before Kennedy’s speech before the UN. That tape is recording number 111/A46 in the Kennedy Presidential Library (a log of the recordings in the library can be found here.)

We know that such recordings can shed substantial light on Kennedy’s thinking on space because of another tape that was released five years ago and gained a surprising amount of media attention in the sleepy month of August 2001. That recording, number 60 in the Kennedy Library, concerned a November 1962 meeting between Kennedy, Webb, and several other top White House and NASA officials to discuss the NASA budget. During that meeting, Kennedy made the comment that “I’m not that interested in space…” explaining that he supported the lunar program because it was a race against the Soviets: “the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that’s why we’re doing it,” Kennedy explained. (In 2002 I assisted NASA in transcribing and analyzing the meeting.)

Many people who thought that Kennedy was a space enthusiast were surprised by that tape, and it offers fascinating insight into the deliberations over Apollo at the senior levels of the administration at that time. The tape recording of Kennedy’s September 1963 discussion with Webb could be similarly revelatory.

Unfortunately, presidential libraries operate in an unusual legal environment. These audio recordings were originally turned over to the Kennedy Library by the Kennedy family in 1976, and significant numbers of them have been released in the last three decades. Unfortunately, the recordings are not subject to normal review and declassification like other government records, nor can scholars who possess top security clearances listen to them at the library. Apparently, only those scholars who have a special relationship with the Kennedy Library (which usually means a special relationship with the Kennedy family), can gain access to the recordings outside of the normal processing and release schedule.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/735/1/index.htm

Thank you for the heads-up, Gabi.

[omega minimo]

6. REC -- a perfect Eclipse post.

[Octafish]

8. Jethro Tull for a serious soundtrack...

Columbia as seen from Eagle, Apollo 11.



For Michael Collins, Jeffrey and Me

Watery eyes of the last sighing seconds,
Blue reflections mute and dim
Beckon tearful child of wonder
To repentance of the sin.
And the blind and lusty lovers
Of the great eternal lie
Go on believing nothing
Since something has to die.
And the apes curiosity --
Money power wins,
And the yellow soft mountains move under him.
Im with you l.e.m.
Though its a shame that it had to be you.
The mother ship is just a blip
From your trip made for two.
Im with you boys, so please employ just a little extra care.
Its on my mind Im left behind
When I should have been there.
Walking with you.

And the limp face hungry viewers
Fight to fasten with their eyes
Like the man hung from the trapeze --
Whose fall will satisfy.
And congratulate each other
On their rare and wondrous deed
That their begrudged money bought
To sow the monkeys seed.
And the yellow soft mountains
They grow very still
Witness as intrusion the humanoid thrill.

-- Jethro Tull

Only people can make it real for other people.

[stray cat]

7. JFK would have been condemned on DU for the majority of his presidency

[Octafish]

9. If so, it's because people just don't know about the guy.

In order to diminish his legacy, President Kennedy has suffered continuous assaults on his character, ideas, and vision.

The Posthumous Assassination of JFK

Judith Exner, Mary Meyer, and Other Daggers

By James DiEugenio

Current events, most notably a past issue of Vanity Fair, and the upcoming release of Sy Hersh’s new book, extend an issue that I have dealt with in a talk I have done several times around the country in the last two years. It is entitled “The Two Assassinations of John Kennedy.” I call it that because there has been an ongoing campaign of character assassination ever since Kennedy was killed.

SNIP...

The Right and the Kennedys

There can be no doubt that the right hated the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. There is also little doubt that some who hated JFK had a role in covering up his death. One could use Secret Service agent Elmer Moore as an example. As revealed in Probe (Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 20-21), Moore told one Jim Gochenaur how he was in charge of the Dallas doctors testimony in the JFK case. One of his assignments as liaison for the Warren Commission seems to have been talking Dr. Malcolm Perry out of his original statement that the throat wound was one of entry, which would have indicated an assassin in front of Kennedy. But another thing Gochenaur related in his Church Committee interview was the tirade that Moore went into the longer he talked to him: how Kennedy was a pinko who was selling us out to the communists. This went on for hours. Gochenaur was actually frightened by the time Moore drove him home.

But there is another more insidious strain of the rightwing in America. These are the conservatives who sometimes disguise themselves as Democrats, as liberals, as “internationalists.” This group is typified by men like Averill Harriman, Henry Stimson, John Foster Dulles and the like. The common rubric used to catalog them is the Eastern Establishment. The Kennedy brothers were constantly at odds with them. In 1962, Bobby clashed with Dean Acheson during the missile crisis. Acheson wanted a surprise attack; Bobby rejected it saying his brother would not go down in history as another Tojo. In 1961, JFK disobeyed their advice at the Bay of Pigs and refused to add air support to the invasion. He was punished for this in Fortune magazine with an article by Time-Life employee Charles Murphy that blamed Kennedy for the failure of the plan. Kennedy stripped Murphy of his Air Force reserve status but — Murphy wrote to Ed Lansdale — that didn’t matter; his loyalty was to Allen Dulles anyway. In 1963, Kennedy crossed the Rubicon and actually printed money out of the Treasury, bypassing that crowning jewel of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve Board. And as Donald Gibson has written, a member of this group, Jock Whitney, was the first to put out the cover story about that Krazy Kid Oswald on 11/22/63 (Probe Vol. 4 No.1).

Killing off the Legacy

In 1964, author Morris Bealle, a genuine conservative and critic of the Eastern Establishment, wrote a novel called Guns of the Regressive Right, depicting how that elite group had gotten rid of Kennedy. There certainly is a lot of evidence to substantiate that claim. There were few tears shed by most rightwing groups over Kennedy’s death. Five years later, they played hardball again. King and Bobby Kennedy were shot. One would think the coup was complete. The war was over.

That would be underestimating these people. They are in it for the long haul. The power elite realizes that, in a very real and pragmatic sense, assassination isn’t enough. You have to cover it up afterwards, and then be ready to smother any legacy that might linger. The latter is quite important since assassination is futile if a man’s ideas live on through others. This is why the CIA’s Bill Harvey once contemplated getting rid of not only Castro, but his brother Raul and Che Guevara as well as part of single operation. That would have made a clean sweep of it. (In America’s case, one could argue that such an operation was conducted here, over a period of five years.)

The smothering effect afterward must hold, since the assassinated leader cannot be allowed to become a martyr or legend. To use a prominent example, in 1973, right after the CIA and ITT disposed of Salvador Allende and his Chilean government, the State Department announced (falsely) that the U. S. had nothing to do with the coup. Later on, one of the CIA agents involved in that operation stated that Allende had killed himself and his mistress in the presidential palace. This was another deception. But it did subliminally equate Allende’s demise with the death of Adolf Hitler.

The latter tactic is quite prevalent in covert operations. The use of sex as a discrediting device is often used by the CIA and its allies. As John Newman noted in Oswald and the CIA, the Agency tried to discredit its own asset June Cobb in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. It did the same to Sylvia Duran, Cuban embassy worker in Mexico City who talked to Oswald or an impersonator in 1963. In Probe (Vol. 4 No. 4, p. 9) we have seen how journalist (and CIA-applicant) Hugh Aynesworth and the New York Herald Tribune tried to smear Mark Lane with compromising photographs. If one goes to New Orleans, one will still meet those who say that Jim Garrison indicted Clay Shaw because he was himself gay and jealous of Shaw’s position in the homosexual underworld. And we all know how the FBI tried to drive King to suicide by blackmailing him with clandestinely made “sex tapes.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr997-jfk.html

I was alive when President Kennedy was alive. The country was a different place. Most of the people who've led the nation since have done all they could to erase the guy's memory, works and leadership.

[saltpoint]

11. What we most admire in others was greatly manifest in John Kennedy.

I miss him.

[Octafish]

15. The man stood up to the War Party.

He really did do the impossible: Kennedy kept the peace when all around him shouted for war.

Nixon said that nothing better could be said about a person than "He was a peace maker."

[fujiyama]

12. It's the best example I can think of

a leader actually publicly setting a lofty goal and inspiring a nation to follow course and achieve it within that time. Well a positive goal anyways.

[omega minimo]

14. Can't get much "loftier" than space!!

:think::hi:

[Octafish]

16. If you live in a place where you can see the stars at night...

...look for the Milky Way. What you see is the interior disk of the galaxy, on edge to us.
That is what JFK got us exploring.



That and kept the world from being turned into a radioactive slag heap. Not bad for a thousand days.

[omega minimo]

19. I've seen it faintly, never that dramatic. Wow

:bounce:

[Octafish]

17. Contrast that with Poppy's inaugural speech: ''We've got more will than wallet.''

That was his excuse -- his perfect rationale, his plausible deniability -- for scuttling what remained of the New Deal and Great Society. We can't solve society's problems because we don't have the money."

No. They had the money, Bush didn't have the will -- the vision, the character, the integrity -- to do the right thing. The did have the will to try and destroy Medicare and Social Security. The fact they haven't is one of the happy mysteries of life.

There're sad echoes of those empty bank vaults today. Back then, too, the control fraud cronies needed a hand. Poppy found a trillion to bail out the S&Ls that his cronies looted.

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit

Know your BFEE: Goldmine Sacked or the Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One

[omega minimo]

13. ONLY 3 RECS!!!!!!!!!!!! 11111!!!!!11!!! 11!!!!!

:wtf:

[Norrin Radd]

18. k and I'd rec if the window of opportunity were still open.

[MagickMuffin]

20. All of JFK's speeches

http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/Renka/Modern_Presidents/kennedy_speeches.htm

Here's one of his last big speeches before coming to Fort Worth, where he spent the last night of his life alive.


Remarks at the Dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center
President John F. Kennedy
San Antonio, Texas
November 21, 1963



Mr. Secretary, Governor, Mr. Vice President, Senator, Members of the Congress, members Of the military, ladies and gentlemen:

For more than 3 years I have spoken about the New Frontier. This is not a partisan term, and it is not the exclusive property of Republicans or Democrats. It refers, instead, to this Nation's place in history, to the fact that we do stand on the edge of a great new era, filled with both crisis and opportunity, an era to be characterized by achievement and by challenge. It is an era which calls for action and for the best efforts of all those who would test the unknown and the uncertain in every phase of human endeavor. It is a time for pathfinders and pioneers.

I have come to Texas today to salute an outstanding group of pioneers, the men who man the Brooks Air Force Base School of Aerospace Medicine and the Aerospace Medical Center. It is fitting that San Antonio should be the site of this center and this school as we gather to dedicate this complex of buildings. For this city has long been the home of the pioneers in the air. It was here that Sidney Brooks, whose memory we honor today, was born and raised. It was here that Charles Lindbergh and Claire Chennault, and a host of others, who, in World War I and World War II and Korea, and even today have helped demonstrate American mastery of the skies, trained at Kelly Field and Randolph Field, which form a major part of aviation history. And in the new frontier of outer space, while headlines may be made by others in other places, history is being made every day by the men and women of the Aerospace Medical Center, without whom there could be no history.

Many Americans make the mistake of assuming that space research has no values here on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as the wartime development of radar gave us the transistor, and all that it made possible, so research in space medicine holds the promise of substantial benefit for those of us who are earthbound. For our effort in space is not as some have suggested, a competitor for the natural resources that we need to develop the earth. It is a working partner and a coproducer of these resources. And nothing makes this clearer than the fact that medicine in space is going to make our lives healthier and happier here on earth.

I give you three examples: first, medical space research may open up new understanding of man's relation to his environment. Examinations of the astronaut's physical, and mental, and emotional reactions can teach us more about the differences between normal and abnormal, about the causes and effects of disorientation, about changes in metabolism which could result in extending the life span. When you study the effects on our astronauts of exhaust gases which can contaminate their environment, and you seek ways to alter these gases so as to reduce their toxicity, you are working on problems similar to those in our great urban centers which themselves are being corrupted by gases and which must be clear.

And second, medical space research may revolutionize the technology and the techniques of modern medicine. Whatever new devices are created, for example, to monitor our astronauts, to measure their heart activity, their breathing, their brain waves, their eye motion, at great distances and under difficult conditions, will also represent a major advance in general medical instrumentation. Heart patients may even be able to wear a light monitor which will sound a warning if their activity exceeds certain limits. An instrument recently developed to record automatically the impact of acceleration upon an astronaut's eyes will also be of help to small children who are suffering miserably from eye defects, but are unable to describe their impairment. And also by the use of instruments similar to those used in Project Mercury, this Nation's private as well as public nursing services are being improved, enabling one nurse now to give more critically ill patients greater attention than they ever could in the past.

And third, medical space research may lead to new safeguards against hazards common to many environments. Specifically, our astronauts will need fundamentally new devices to protect them from the ill effects of radiation which can have a profound influence upon medicine and man's relations to our present environment.

Here at this center we have the laboratories, the talent, the resources to give new impetus to vital research in the life centers. I am not suggesting that the entire space program is justified alone by what is done in medicine. The space program stands on its own as a contribution to national strength. And last Saturday at Cape Canaveral I saw our new Saturn C-1 rocket booster, which, with its payload, when it rises in December of this year, will be, for the first time, the largest booster in the world, carrying into space the largest payload that any country in the world has ever sent into space.

I think the United States should be a leader. A country as rich and powerful as this which bears so many burdens and responsibilities, which has so many opportunities, should be second to none. And in December, while I do not regard our mastery of space as anywhere near complete, while I recognize that there are still areas where we are behind--at least in one area, the size of the booster--this year I hope the United States will be ahead. And I am for it. We have a long way to go. Many weeks and months and years of long, tedious work lie ahead. There will be setbacks and frustrations and disappointments. There will be, as there always are, pressures in this country to do less in this area as in so many others, and temptations to do something else that is perhaps easier. But this research here must go on. This space effort must go on. The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know. That much we can say with confidence and conviction.

Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall--and then they had no choice but to follow them.

This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it. Whatever the difficulties, they will be overcome. Whatever the hazards, they must be guarded against. With the vital help of this Aerospace Medical Center, with the help of all those who labor in the space endeavor, with the help and support of all Americans, we will climb this wall with safety and with speed-and we shall then explore the wonders on the other side.

Thank you.



Thanks Octafish for caring so much about our last progressive President, John F. Kennedy

Personal request: Could you PM me whenever you start a thread?!?!? As I don't always catch them, and yours are some of the best on DU! And I certainly would K&R them :evilgrin:

[bobthedrummer]

21. "to the moon, Alice-all the way to the moon!"...kick...