A World Gone Mad

[Mark Knight]

Like Ahnold.....I believe he'll be back....

[Greg Burnham]

Pessimist.

[Jon G. Tidd]

I hope DVP hasn't abandoned this site. The greatest risk to this site IMO is that it becomes an echo chamber. DVP has served a useful purpose here. I believe.

[David Josephs]

There's always other Forums where those like DVP run amok and decent people wanting to discuss the case are shut down left and right by tautological arguments.

All the DVPs of the world have to work with is the Evidence, just like everyone else... they can see something white and write 100 pages explaining how it's really black and others are simply too stupid to know any better.

Jon - no one needs DVP to explain the WCR - just read it and check the sources yourself. DVP doesn't post evidence but only his opinion of what it says and means...

You're more than qualified to do that for yourself.

When you find over and over and over that the sources do not corroborate the conclusions and in fact usually contradict them instead, maybe you can get a clearer picture of what DVP and those of his ilk are doing.

Open to any page, any section of that travesty and follow the footnotes... HSCA same thing.

All that matters in the end is whether Oswald did it or not - and completely alone at that. If we can prove this was not possible, which we have repeatedly - who did it doesn't really matter as much as who orchestrated the conspiracy.

Davey and WCR apologists will never address that question since it contradicts his conclusion, so what exactly is that "useful purpose" you speak of ???

WCR interpreter?

Edited February 12, 2015 by David Josephs

[Jon G. Tidd]

David Josephs,

No one here can be sure how or why JFK was killed.

DVP challenges orthodoxy here. That's valuable, IMO.

[David Josephs]

No one can be sure the sun will rise tomorrow - but we're pretty confident in the knowledge it will.

Allowing DVP to spoon feed his version of what the evidence says clouds the issue. He does not evaluate and analyze, he spouts an a priori determiination, an axiom which only requires acceptance

without discussion or testing.

The following summarizes the position of the WC lawyers about what it is they, the WCR and by default DVP is doing:

Obviously you've been taken in by the prospect of learning that Oswald did it and the WCR is correct.... Can't have one without the other.

April 27, 1964

Our report presumably will state that the President was hit by

the first bullet, Governor Connally by the second, and the President

by the third and fatal bullet. The report will also conclude that the

bullets were fired by one person located in the sixth floor southeast

corner window of the TSBD building.

As our investigation now stands, however, we have not shown

that these events could possibly have occurred in the manner suggested

above. All we have is a reasonable hypothesis which appears to be

supported by the medical testimony but which has not been checked out

against the physical facts at the scene of the assassination.

Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy,

but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin.

I should add that the facts which we now have in our possession,

submitted to us in separate reports from the FBI and Secret Service, are totally incorrect and,

if left uncorrected, will present a completely misleading picture.

Edited February 11, 2015 by David Josephs

[Jon G. Tidd]

David Josephs,

I've spent my professional life, beginning in the university, examining arguments.

FWIW, I can say with certainty that examining arguments strengthens one's thinking.

For example. one asserts 2 + 2 = 4.

This assertion is true only under two conditions. Either the numbers represent no units or the numbers represent the same units (e.g., apples).

I've learned examining arguments is a good exercise.

DVP says stuff everyone here thinks is false.

I think, even though I believe he's out to lunch, DVP should get a fair response here. To sharpen the thinking of everyone here.

[Cliff Varnell]

I've learned examining arguments is a good exercise.

Conclusions aggressively and endlessly repeated -- how does that qualify as "argument"?

[David Josephs]

Jon, no harm no foul. I've been debating this for almost 15 years with WCR Apologists. You appear new to the scene. You will never convince Mr P using logic and intellect to destroy a point or argument.

There is no ambiguity to the coat, the shirt, and the wound. None. Yet in the ffd of this truth, the SBT is the argument. The SBT is the plausible and possibly alternative.

That's no longer debate, or discussion. That's preaching Faith. A faith which requires no proof or argument.

He has a very good blog in defense of his convictions... And one of the finest collections of evidence. He simply believes more than he examines.

Faith cannot be cross-examined. If you can find the positive in the exchange I applaud you. Enjoy.

DJ

Edited February 12, 2015 by David Josephs

[Paul Brancato]

Jon - you make the statement that no one here can be sure how and why JFK was killed. In general terms I disagree. Specifics are of course lacking in the absence of smoking gun confessions or tapes of the conspirators planning the operation. That we will never have. So we don't know exactly where shooters were standing or how many bullets they fired from what gun. But we do know for a certainty that Oswald did not fire a rifle from the tsbd. We should have stopped trying to prove this decades ago. And we generally know why he was killed too. So I don't think DVP and his ilk do us any favors by keeping our skills well honed. The idea that we are dealing with a mystery has only served to keep us fragmented and powerless.

[Mark Knight]

DVP is a great example of what I hope to never become: smug, with no desire to actually listen to reasonable arguments. In that respect, he serves as a fine negative example, of what we can become if we allow our own ego to run amok.

So in that respect, his presence here is more that valuable, if it causes us a moment of introspection.

[Evan Burton]

The title of this forum is "JFK Assassination Debate."

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "debate" as follows: "(1)To discuss a question by considering opposed arguments.(2) To take part in a debate."

Therefore, David, as a member of the forum you have a right to put forth an argument on any aspect of the JFK assassination just as do all other members.

We are not like a servile Congress such as when the President declared the U.S. must attack Saddam's Iraq because he had weapons of mass destruction and there was no debate and it turned out later there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Healthy debate is good.

Here, here. If someone with an opposing viewpoint is so blatantly wrong then why wouldn't you welcome the chance to demonstrate just how wrong they are? In debates with "Moon hoax' people, I welcome them; I want them to post so I can show exactly why they are wrong and what twaddle they try to peddle. The very last thing I want to do is for them to be silenced. What I want is to show the evidence against their claims is overwhelming. Why wouldn't JFK investigators want to do the same?

What we DO want to stop is abusive, inappropriate language and libelous comments, such as accusing people of being paid shills, etc (unless, of course, it can be proved beyond doubt).

[David Von Pein]

David Josephs said:

DVP doesn't post evidence but only his opinion of what it says and means.

Bull. I constantly "post evidence". Tons of it. The problem, IMO, isn't with "the evidence". The huge problem with the JFK case is the conspiracy believers who are constantly evaluating that evidence in very bizarre ways.

The evidence IS the evidence. And as I've stated numerous times, nobody can possibly deny that the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE on the table today (just as it was in 1963-1964) all points to ONE single individual---and that individual's initials are LHO.

Conspiracists can moan all day and all year about how they THINK that evidence has no chain of custody and has all been faked to frame the alleged patsy -- but not a single piece of the physical evidence in the JFK and J.D. Tippit cases has been PROVEN to be fraudulent or phony or planted or substituted.

A lot of people will argue with me about my last statement above, but that statement will still be a fact regardless of any CTer's protestations.

And the argument I've heard recently on this forum about how the evidence must be subjected to "authentication" in a court of law (or else we have no choice but to look at all of it sideways and suspect the police and FBI tampered with every last piece of it) is, IMO, a silly argument....because if people like Robert Frazier of the FBI told one lie after another in front of the Warren Commission (as forum member Robert Prudhomme has suggested lately), then why on Earth would anybody think the unvarnished TRUTH would have come out of Mr. Frazier's mouth at Oswald's trial?

Do CTers who desire "authentication via cross-examination at a court trial" actually think that if the kind of frame-up against Lee Harvey Oswald existed immediately after the assassination on 11/22/63 (which many CTers think did occur), and if there had been a massive campaign orchestrated by the DPD and the FBI to switch around the evidence in order to pin the two November 22 murders on Mr. Oswald, then the police and FBI officials would have gotten up on the witness stand at Oswald's trial (had there been one) and ADMITTED to the world that the evidence they collected and/or examined had no chain of possession and was fraudulent/fake evidence? (Yeah, right.)

Point being --- If people like Robert A. Frazier were willing to tell many lies about the evidence when questioned by the Warren Commission, then those same officials would certainly have told the very same lies at Oswald's actual court trial.

Quote

When you find over and over and over that the sources do not corroborate the conclusions and in fact usually contradict them instead, maybe you can get a clearer picture of what DVP and those of his ilk are doing.

Once again, I think it's a matter of WHO is doing the evaluating of the Warren Report and of the WC testimony. Based on the CTers I've talked with over the years, there are very few conspiracy theorists who are capable of FAIRLY evaluating the evidence in the JFK and Tippit cases.

Let me cite two examples....

First, the "paper bag" evidence and the testimony given by Buell Wesley Frazier and Linnie Mae Randle:

We all know that Frazier's and Randle's estimates for the length of Oswald's paper bag that he carried to work on the morning of November 22nd, if they were estimates that were spot-on accurate, would mean that Oswald could not have taken his rifle to work that day in the paper sack observed by Frazier and Randle.

But what does a fair evaluation of ALL of the "paper bag" evidence lead to? Does it really lead to Oswald taking a SHORTER (27-inch) paper bag to work that day, with that bag turning up NOWHERE in the TSBD building or anywhere else? Or does a reasonable evaluation of the overall "paper bag" evidence tell us that it's very likely that the bag found on the sixth floor of the Depository (CE142) was, indeed, the SAME brown paper package that Mr. Frazier and Mrs. Randle observed in the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald on the morning of the 22nd of November?

Upon just a tiny bit of common-sense evaluation of the paper bag matter, it's painfully obvious that the "Sniper's Nest" bag in evidence today (CE142) is, in fact, almost certainly the same bag that Frazier and Randle saw Oswald carrying.

The alternative would be to believe that Oswald carried a shorter brown bag into work that day....with that bag vanishing off the planet before the end of the day (did the cops deep-six it? CTers probably think they did, without a granule of proof to back up such an allegation)....and then a LONGER (38-inch) brown bag, with NOTHING in it at all (but Lee's rifle was nearby on the same sixth floor), turns up underneath the spot where JFK's assassin was hiding--and that EMPTY bag happens to have two of LEE OSWALD'S PRINTS on it.

And what about those "curtain rods" that Lee said were in that bag he took to work? That's yet another part of the "paper bag" story that needs to be examined. And there can't be much doubt in any reasonable person's mind that Oswald told the curtain rod lie TWICE to Buell Frazier.

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/curtain-rods.html

So a proper evaluation of the paper bag evidence, coupled with just ordinary common sense, tells us that Frazier and Randle simply were in error when they said Oswald's bag was only about 27 inches long. To believe they nailed the length of that bag, when they had no reason to pay any amount of detailed attention to it whatsoever at the time they each observed it, is not a reasonable expectation, in my opinion.

jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/07/oswald-his-rifle-and-his-paper-bag.html

And as another example of how conspiracists improperly evaluate the evidence, there are the Tippit bullet shells:

There were FOUR shells found by THREE different civilian witnesses near the scene of Officer J.D. Tippit's murder. And two of those four shells did not pass through the hands of Officer J.M. Poe. Those two non-Poe shells have a solid "chain of possession" -- going from witnesses Barbara Davis and Virginia Davis to DPD officers Dhority and Doughty.

CTers sometimes try to argue that those two shells found by the Davis girls are tainted in some manner too. But those CTers are wrong. They are inventing a poor "chain of custody". But the chain is rock solid, with each officer's initials scratched into the respective bullet shells. (See Dale Myers' book for clear pictures of those shells with the proper markings on them.)

But CTers will generally ignore the key overall SUM TOTAL of facts regarding the Tippit shells:

1.) Only ONE gunman was dumping shells out of ONE single gun at the Tippit murder scene on 11/22/63.

2.) Two of the four shells that littered the Davises' yard at the corner of Tenth & Patton were not handled initially by Officer Poe, with those two shells being collected separately later in the day on November 22nd.

3.) Those two "non-Poe" shells were proven to have been ejected from the revolver owned and possessed by Lee H. Oswald.

4.) Oswald still had that revolver in his very own hands when he was arrested after fighting with the police in the Texas Theater just 35 minutes after Officer Tippit was killed.

5.) Several witnesses, including BOTH Davis girls, positively identified Lee Oswald as the gunman who was dumping shells on the ground right after Tippit was slain.

Given the above set of facts, it becomes virtually impossible for Oswald to be innocent of killing J.D. Tippit.

But many conspiracy theorists will simply ignore (or skew) the above set of "sum total" facts regarding the evidence in the Tippit murder. They will, instead, always focus their sole attention on the two "Poe shells", which the CTers will say could have been "switched" by the police because J.M. Poe didn't mark them. Or the CTers will ignore the dozen witnesses near the Tippit murder site who all IDed Oswald as the killer or as the one and only man fleeing the murder scene, with those conspiracists choosing instead to focus attention on the ONE witness (Acquilla Clemmons) who tends to contradict the other witnesses.

We all "pick and choose" our evidence sometimes. LNers do it too. I'll admit that. But the "picking and choosing" done by the conspiracy theorists when it comes to the murder of J.D. Tippit is farcical and downright disingenuous, especially when given the fact that the CTers' favorite "patsy" was caught red-handed with the Tippit murder weapon on him just a half-hour after Tippit was killed.

I'm now hearing some CTers claiming that Oswald didn't pull ANY GUN AT ALL from under his shirt in the Texas Theater. Which would mean, if that were true, that shoe salesman Johnny Brewer must have been a major force in the plot to frame Lee Oswald too (because Brewer has always said that he saw the gun in Oswald's hand as he fought with Officer McDonald in the theater). I mean, how much more "disingenuous" can it get?

So, those are just two examples (among many) of how I believe the conspiracy promoters have made a mockery out of the evidence (and the facts) in the Kennedy and Tippit murder cases.

Quote

All that matters in the end is whether Oswald did it or not - and completely alone at that. If we can prove this was not possible, which we have repeatedly - who did it doesn't really matter as much as who orchestrated the conspiracy.

A conspiracy theorist's BELIEFS and SUPPOSITIONS do not substitute for the EVIDENCE which repeatedly comes back to yield one conclusion---Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK and J.D. Tippit.

Is it possible that Oswald had one or more helpers who aided him in carrying out the assassination in Dealey Plaza? Yes, it's possible. I've been on record for years in saying it's wise not to close the "conspiracy" door completely:

"Let's face it, we can never know with 100% certainty that someone didn't urge Oswald on in the days leading up to 11/22/63. I think it's very unlikely that anyone did aid him in any fashion at all....but, as Ken [Rahn] said, the door should be left open just a small crack, because it's just not possible to prove this particular "negative" to a 100% certainty (mainly thanks to a man named Jacob Rubenstein, who certainly didn't do the world any favors by walking down that basement ramp on Sunday)." -- DVP; July 29, 2007

But given Oswald's actions and movements and the manner in which he transported himself from one place to another on both November 21st and November 22nd, 1963, I think it's highly unlikely that Oswald had anyone at all helping him to plan and/or carry out the assassination of John Kennedy. His actions and movements on those two days in question certainly suggest that Lee Oswald was ON HIS OWN every step of the way in Dallas and Irving and on Beckley Avenue in Oak Cliff and on Tenth Street and on Jefferson Boulevard in front of Johnny Brewer's shoe store and any other place you can name where Oswald was located on November 21 and 22.

To put it another way -- If Lee Harvey Oswald had a helper, that helper was of NO HELP to Lee whatsoever when he needed help the most.

Edited February 11, 2019 by David Von Pein

[David Josephs]

Davey - (yawn) what you did there is called a straw man substitution. We talk JFK, you talk tippit. "almost certainly". Whatever.

Duncan... I spent years there with the likes a of Lamson, May and his many names, and a host of others who would invade threads, derail conversation and all for the fun if It. I have not found that to be the case here or at DPF. We've had discussions related to the lack of moderation...
Maybe that's changed now. I hope so as yours was always the greatest for the images and film work.

OK.. first thread... this is one of 53 items posted to prove Oswald did it... as offered by the Bug....

42. When Oswald left the Book Depository Building within minutes after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, he left his blue jacket behind, the jacket being found on December 6, 1963, in a depressed area beneath the windowsill in the domino room on the first floor.84 Marina Oswald identified the jacket as one of two he owned, the other being a light-colored gray jacket.85 Several brown head hairs found inside the blue jacket had the same microscopic characteristics as a sample of hair taken from Oswald.86 Leaving one’s jacket behind, particularly where Oswald did, can only go in the direction—though certainly not conclusively—of a consciousness of guilt, not innocence.

Vincent Bugliosi
Reclaiming History
The most comprehensive analysis of JFK's Assassination, ever!

And then followed up by blind faith that everything against Oswald doing any of this is OUR RESTRICTIONS as opposed to the impossibility created by the WCR conslusions.

Btw I've shown that Oswald could easily jump through all your timing restrictions but all this is immaterial because Oswald was on the 6th floor from 12 till 12:30.

So xxxx you didn't know about the other Elevator and are covering yourself, hilarious.
But we have now established that Oswald was never in the same place at the same time and easily could have travelled within the building to each of your alleged "sighting positions" and still got to the 6th floor to kill the President

Comnment: Thank you for the entertainment.

Reply: No, thank you, for your honest capitulation.

xxx-
I agree. Oswald's actions following the assassination are consistent with that of the lone shooter (which I believe he was), but for those who believe there was a conspiracy they demonstrate that Oswald must have had knowledge of the conspiracy. He's gone within three minutes of the shooting without even asking what has happened. All the pedantic discussion of witness statements and elevators can't explain away his actions following the assassination as anything other than a person in flight

These are not dicussions or debates... This is a person concluding guilt based on activites unrelated to the event.

Never Oswald's rifle - no problem, he was escaping

Not at the window at the time - no problem, the WCR says he wasn't anywhere else

Dented casings and double firing pin hits - no worries, he said "It's all over, now" in the theater, he must be guilty

34" rifle part in a 26 inch bag - all good, the photo fo the bag in the corner - ooops, uh, they SAID it was in the corner and he made it so it must be, right?

You can go back 10 years, 15 years and the questions are the same, the arguments are the same the denials are the same...

At what point do they finally realize the world is not flat and the sun does not revolve around us... the opposite is true... Faith cannot be countered or debated away...

It just is.

They aint gonna learn what they dont wanna know Duncan. Don't you suppose if a WCR apologist made a concrete and reasonable argument supported by evidence you and I would want to know about it?

Specter couldn't defend his own actions...

The shirt worn by the President also contained a hole in the back about 5¾ inches below the top of the collar and 1-1/8 inches to the right of the middle. It, too, had the characteristics of a bullet entrance hole.
Both these holes are in locations that seem obviously inconsistent with the wound described in the Commission’s autopsy report—placed below the back of the right ear—and illustrated in exhibit 385, which Dr. Humes had prepared.
“Well,” said Specter, when asked about this in his City Hall office last month, “that difference is accounted for because the President was waving his arm.” He got up from his desk and attempted to have his explanation demonstrated. “Wave your arm a few times, he said, “wave at the crowd. Well, see if the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower point. Well, not too much lower on your example, but the jacket rides up.”
If the jacket were “hunched up,” wouldn’t there have been two holes as a result of the doubling over of the cloth?
“No, not necessarily. It…it wouldn’t be doubled over. When you sit in the car it could be doubled over at most any point, but the probabilities are that…aaah…that it gets…that…aaah…this…this is about the way a jacket rides up. You sit back…sit back now…all right now…if…usually, as your jacket lies there, the doubling up is right here, but if…but if you have a bullet hit you right about here, which is where I had it, where your jacket sits…it’s not…it’s not…it ordinarily doesn’t crease that far back.”
What about the shirt?
“Same thing.”
So there is no real inconsistency between the Commission’s location of the wound and the holes in the clothing?
“No, not at all. That gave us a lot of concern. First time we lined up the shirt…after all, we lined up the shirt…and the hole in the shirt is right about, right about the knot of the tie, came right about here in a slit in the front…”
But where did it go in the back?
“Well, the back hole, when the shirt is laid down, comes…aaah…well, I forget exactly where it came, but it certainly wasn’t higher, enough higher to…aaah…understand the…aah…the angle of decline which…”
Was it lower? Was it lower than the slit in the front?
“Well, I think that…that if you took the shirt without allowing for it’s being pulled up, that it would either have been in line or somewhat lower.”
Somewhat lower?
“Perhaps. I…I don’t want to say because I don’t really remember. I got to take a look at that shirt.”

It is difficult to believe that Arlen Specter didn’t take a very close look at that shirt—and that jacket—at the time of the investigation and that these factors didn’t indelibly stick in his mind: Kennedy was one of the best-tailored presidents ever to occupy the White House, and if it is possible—but not probable—that he was wearing a suit jacket baggy enough to ride up five or six inches in the back when he waved his arm, it is inconceivable that a tightly-buttoned shirt could have done the same thing.

Edited February 12, 2015 by David Josephs

[Ray Mitcham]

Even you have observed just "a little bit" of jacket bunching in Dealey Plaza.

You have blown up my "little bit" comment completely out of all reasonable proportion. I didn't MEASURE the amount of "bunching" that we can see in JFK's jacket in the Croft photo. And YOU haven't "measured" it either. It's impossible to measure the degree of bunching from just looking at the photos and films.

So when you continue to post on numerous forums the preposterous argument that my one "little bit" remark somehow means I have admitted that the SBT is completely wrong, you're revealing yourself to be a very silly person.

The bullet holes in the clothes are too low to be associated with the throat wound.

You're displaying your propensity for preposterousness yet again, Clifford. Because only a fool would continue to claim (year after year) that the clothing of JFK somehow trumps the autopsy picture of the dead President which shows precisely where the bullet entered his BODY -- in the upper back.

The only important question is -- what happened to the bullets which caused the back and throat wounds?

There was only one bullet that struck either of those body parts, Cliff. So your use of the plural ("bullets") is not supported by any evidence at all.

I can easily answer your question -- CE399 passed through both bullet holes in the upper back and throat of JFK, and then that bullet went on to hit Governor Connally--which is just exactly what both the Warren Commission and HSCA concluded. No other scenario is even remotely believable (nor supported by any of the overall evidence in this case). And Cliff Varnell's unsupportable claptrap don't qualify as "believable" (or reasonable).

David, in the autopsy photo you display, can you explain the complete blacking out of the back of the head, where all the Parkland witnesses said the wound was?

Bump. for DVP