Roy Wieselquist

Lance, you're grasping at straws with the "through a gauzy curtain" stuff. Mrs. Roberts was a professional observer; her job demanded it. The curtains then had breaks in them, easy to part and look out. She probably kept those front windows clean as air. Do you think she's going to walk to the window and look through a curtain and not the window?! Never happened, never has happened, never will happen. Earlene Roberts suffered quite a bit for sticking to her guns about what she saw. The path of least resistance is the opposite of what she did. Aquilla Clemons (sp?) suffered way more than ER. She saw TWO men at Tippit's murder, neither looking like Ozzie the Wiz. Police and FBI tried to talk her out of her story. A man with a gun gave her a visit soon after, told her to shut up, or she "might get hurt." AC disappeared not long after that. It is not known, to this day, where she went and what happened to her. Aquilla's ancestors were from Africa, so maybe we shouldn't care about her much. There are a few good threads about AC on Ed Forum. A nation that must harass, intimidate, terrorize, maim and murder its good citizens lest its worst citizens be "embarrassed." Which was LBJ's constant fear, though "embarrassed" to LBJ merely meant exposure of his crimes. That's a Civil War and a Dark Age. There were five civil wars after the aristocrat Senators assassinated the Gracchi brothers and Julius Caesar, thus aborting the golden age that had just begun. It was not until 110 years later in 70 C. E. that Classical Rome experienced another golden age. So the U. S. of A. won't be due for good times again until the year 2078 or later. Is that what you want, Lance? Joe, don't leave us with these purveyors of gauzy smokescreens.

OUCH. Mea Culpa about that (very minor) part of my view of this Earlene Roberts' imbroglio. I am so sorry, Lance. I looked at that photo of the Checker cab for a millisecond then Joe's last (?) post, and then went OFF. Haste makes waste, right? I didn't see those ten-times larger-than-life photos of Whaley and Ozzie, those two good men on the Day the Music Died. Thanks for the correction. So those Checker cab-boats DID visit the low-rent Oak Cliff. BUT that is even more evidence for Joe's position that Earlene was a good witness. Because no one, either ER or Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder, could mistake the Cadillac behemoth for a dowdy DPD pygmy. There's a lot more, but I gotta go to a Xmas party that features the best Silly Santa whatchamacallit in Greensboro. Really, Lance thank you so much for that picture and info about the Checker Ozzie took home. The Wiz was living large his last day of freedom. I'm bookmarking it. But OUCH...

David Andrews, Thanks so much for those videos. Wow. I don't believe I've ever seen them, and all I do on the web is JFK and the Beatles, about 80-20. I culled a few nugs and bits from what I have seen. I plan to go to sleep tonight (this morning) watching the long one. One thing for sure with the Liverpudlians in 1968, they hated them some guns. George often said, "If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn't be a problem." From looking at American Rifleman, John got the idea that it was an orgiastic pleasure for the sadistic gun-worshipper to kill animals, hence the mixture of sex and violence in "Happiness Is a Warm Gun". Also, this is the time Paul stopped, or started stopping, eating "anything with a face." Ringo has some bon mots on the subject. They were all aghast at developments in the States. Oh, in one of your earlier posts you gave me a good larf with your "...the four Beatle portraits included with the LP look like items spilled out an SAS file." I read that at first as SDS file, Students for a Democratic Society. Did you mean SAS? If so, what is that? I figured they looked like the scruffs arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer of '68. They sure do and then some.

Thanks, Doug, for another great find. I have only scanned it yet, and I can see there's gold in them thar hills. The photos alone are worth the price of admission. The one of Kennedy shaking hands with Henry Cabot Lodge in the Senate campaign of 1952 is especially chilling. Who knew then that HCL would later be JFK's ambassador to Vietnam, and ignore the president's communications leading up to the assassination of Diem and Nhu? Is that a pig mask on Lodge? No, that's his real, big, fat, bloated face, snout and all. I guess everyone here knows that William Greer was a chauffeur for the Lodge family before he inexplicably got on with Secret Service. High school dropout, nearly illiterate, Orangeman traitor. Makes you wonder. No, not really because if you have "connections" in supposedly meritocratic A Merry Caca, the sky's the limit. Any p.o.ed drunk can grow up to murder a nation.

Oh by the way, Lance, Earlene Roberts was the salt of the earth. Maybe you've never known someone like her. Wasn't born with a silver spoon, and made a big contribution her whole life. Or do you want to run down housekeepers in general some more? Because she didn't have great vision, you bet she could hear like a bat. That "tit-tit" you can take to the bank. A mockingbird or a tape recorder could not reproduce that sound more accurately. Lance, you trying to muddy the waters about the number of the POLICE CAR won't wash. She said 107 at first but they just kept messing with her because they thought they were better than her. Tippit's car was number 10, so her reporting it as 107, and later AS #TEN corroborates two things: that her eyesight was plenty good enough to know a police car when she saw one (they were one of her daily highlights!), and it was good enough to see that there was more than one police in it. Maybe just another shirt. But I believe that at some point old JD had another officer and a hanging shirt. Jeez, Joe, I see what you mean. It's like talking to a brick wall.

Oh no Martin you missed the memo. Metaphysics is for those who are too plain dumb to understand just plain physics, science, reason, logos. Aristotle around 300 BCE. 2300 years and change ago.

You're knocking me out, D. A., in a good way: 1. so SINISTER is the world... To me, this is too much of a coincidence. When I saw your post, I had just read in Sound Pictures...George Martin, the Later Years, 1966-2016 this statement by GM p. 349, "...there was a sinister motive behind that album." (Do you have this book, David? Or do you have a super-logical, scientific perception that can appear to be almost psychic?) Now, right before then, GM was talking about the B's insisting on two discs in order to satisfy their contract with EMI more quickly. So the casual reader may think that was GM's ONLY reason for finding TWA sinister. (In that case, he would say self-serving or manipulative at the worst, but no.) He hated the album from start to finish. Also there were many other things going on with GM and his work with his "boys." Just a few: he was gone for much of the recording (too many small problems that added up to go into here), he was spread thin with his new AIR studios (a very noble venture), and his other acts were drying up. GM was usually glad to admit it when he was wrong. But he never admitted that the highest-selling double album of all time and the first ever double original (that's excluding anthologies and collections) pop/rock album was a great, even a good, album. He could feel in his bones that there was a sub rosa everything about TWA. And here's a kicker -- the first half of that GM quote above, "This (making TWA a double album) was on the advice of the people governing them and..." GOVERNING them???!!! No, George, sorry, you have it 100% wrong. At that time there was NO ONE governing them. They were free agents, kings of the world. It was George Martin who LOST any governing he had over them at this time. Maybe that chafed GM sub- or unconsciously. 2. "portraits...look like items spilled out of an SAS file." Nailed it. This is a prison or a police state or a war, not anything good. They look like the "rioters" who were rounded up at the Democratic National Convention summer 1968, right when they were in the thick of making the album. "...reflection of the album's contents." Yup, as is it all. As I mentioned before, this old Luddite is having problems finding much on the interweb about this subject, so I'm depending on the primary source, with the context of the times and their lives. I have Googled several combinations of "TWA and JFK." But there are some things there. For instance, there's a book by Aaron Krerowicz, "From the Shadow of JFK: the Rise of Beatlemania in America." Another by Ian MacDonald: "Revolution in the Head." They take an extreme view that the Beatles provided a cosmic bright balance to the dark, apocalyptic atrocity that was 11/22/63. For the Boom Generation. But there is so much resistance to anything along those lines of thinking. The poo-poohing of anything beyond that it was total coincidence, no connection is quite rabid in places. Kinda like the old Lone Nutters back in the day derided the notion that JFKA could have been anything other than Lee Oswald doing all that damage. All the laws of physics took a little vacation that day in Dealey: Ozzie was in many places at once and shooting different guns and it goes on beyond what Superman of the comics could perform. Or could Supe stop time, too? I forget. The Den of Geek website, run by Tony Sokol I believe, has a lot of stuff along the lines I'm looking. Sir Paul was turned down for the score for Rush to Judgment. That was right as they were producing Sgt. Pepper. As Krerowicz says, "So Sgt. Pepper went on to be released without this controversy." BUT that sly Paul slipped one past the censors: "He blew his mind out in a car. He didn't notice that the light had changed." Trans.: "They blew his brains out in a limo. He didn't notice that he was surrounded by his enemies." No one please tell me that it was about some aristocrat in a car wreck; that happens every day. Or that it's a clue in the Paul Is Dead flotsam and jetsam. "A" Day is understatement. Oh BTW, the whole "Paul is Dead" thing is a CIA fantasy. You bet they wanted him dead, maybe still do. They got Lennon. That was easy. JL lived and died in the Ubiquitous Murder States of a Merrycaca.

Sandy, Gosh, you have compiled the best 50, or however many it is, witnessings regarding the right occiputal GAPING wound. Frame that post above, stick a fork in it, because it's done.

Monsieur D. Josephs, Wow, thank you so much for that super summary. Especially the "cut by half and then half again" to arrive at the desired effect. That means, on average, three of four frames were excised at the critical moments. The biggest advantage of this to the plotters doesn't get enough attention: the limo would APPEAR to go four times as fast, esp. when it was practically stopped. I believe they edited extra frames at those points, esp. when Kennedy took the two shots to the head. No telling how many frames were cut out there, or is there? If anyone can figure that out, it will be you and Mr. C. Davidson. All the evidence points to two things: 1) Zappie DID film the limo as it turned onto Elm; the plotters cut that out up to Z133; 2) and then, moving forward, they cut out very selective frames to suit the best possible look with the film. Can you imagine having 1,500 to 2,000 frames, or whatever it was, to mess with? I mean, bravo guys.

David A., So true about layers of meaning in the Beatle lyrics, as in any good poetry. And you put it very well. You and Ron B. and Kirk G. are so helpful pointing in the right direction, giving me new sources. Though, I tell ya, the more I look at different Beatle resources on the web and in books, the more I'm seeing that virtually NO ONE touches on what I see: TWA is all about America's slide into fascism. Oh wait a minute, we're not allowed to discuss things like layers and meanings and spoofs and myth-making because that's like dissecting a rabbit or some other living animal, right Martin Blank? That's what your authority D T Suzuki says. That's what anti-democratic (he stood up for the worst enslavement of working folk and prisoners), anti-Semite (never met a Jew in his life until his privileged self was sent off to college by the munificence of the producers, and then he felt threatened by their intelligence) DTS says. We are not allowed to ponder the beauty of culture. You bet that is what the not-see Nazis want.

(cont.) The White Album: A Treatise on America's Slide into Fascism Side One, Track 3 3. "Glass Onion" Lennon called one of his joke songs. He said it means "not having to think." The man's love of punning is on full display. A homophone for "the bent back tulips to see how the other half lives": the bent back two lips. JL was a maniac for puns. His early In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works (two puns right there, that spanner) are much easier to follow than his last collection Skywriting by Word of Mouth and The Ballad of John and Yoko, which has so many per line that it's very hard to follow. "Trying to make a dove-tailed joint" hah. "Fixing a hole in the ocean" instead of the roof, a nod to and a departure from Sgt. Pepper. "Glass onion" is Brit slang for a translucent globe on a light fixture. So looking through it is sorta like looking through a glass darkly. It's distorted, hard to see. Kinda like dealing with the opposite sex. You can't say she's opaque, but she sure ain't transparent. In Sound Pictures...George Martin (SPGM) author Kenneth Womack calls "Glass Onion" a "strange satirical effusion" p. 342. Again that satire. Page 343 quotes engineer Chris Thomas "... it all became a sort of a factory." Again the rush to get it out for 11/22. Page 348, London Times critic called the song simply "allusive". Lot of allusions there. JL also uses the song to take credit for past subjects: strawberry fields, walrus, Lady Madonna, fool on a hill. In this period, another North Englander, Jeff Lynne of Birmingham (then with The Idle Race), visited the studioS; so did Jim Webb. They were knocked out by the machinery's output. PM played flute superbly, yet satirically. Not much specific to America's slide into fascism in "Glass Onion."

At the top of the list of Characteristics of American (and Roman) Fascism in the previous post should be: * fear and loathing, Hunter Thompson had it right. How many witnesses in the events of 11/22 in Dallas were intimidated, threatened, beaten, murdered? Had their testimony changed or ignored. Everything in a fascist state is calculated to keep us scared, afraid of everything from crime to impoverishment to illness. TWA Side One cont. "Dear Prudence" is another song banged out quickly at the end of August. Ringo still gone. Featuring the gentle giant, Mal Evans, on tambourine. A simple, pretty song, the backbone of which is a fairly simple, pretty acoustic guitar tablature (orderly picking of the strings in a chord). A rare John and Paul collaboration for the time. Everyone knows the story of Prudence the sister of Mia Farrow, and that she wouldn't come out of her hut in Rishakesh, yada yada. As in most Beatle songs, there are puns, double entendres, poetic ambiguity. She's a young beautiful woman, a part of the beauty of nature. But an American woman, and since she's prudent (as in "discretion is the better part of valor"), she's trained to stay in her shell. Look what happened to JFK, MLK, RFK when they went outside. Nowadays most Americans scurry from one metal box to another: home to car to office to store. We mix up the order and think we're free. We're talking about arming teachers, having SWAT at our schools. Before it's over, we won't be able to go out the house without being covered in body armor. And that's only the human health hazards. In the Am. West this summer, large areas' populations were told to stay inside because of tens of millions of acres ON FIRE and belching smoke like Vesuvius. The earth is burning in America. The water is poisoned and "the air's not good to breathe." But still, Prudence (America), come out your shell. Enjoy God's creation, Mother Nature. A maddening coda to Dear Prudence: Mal Evans, the star of the song and a prudent sort himself, was gunned down by trigger-happy LA cops who were probably ex-military. They didn't know that the shaggy Brit was a guy who wouldn't hurt a fly, but oh well. The cops are scared, everyone's scared in the land of fear and loathing.

The White Album: A Treatise on America's Slide into Fascism Side One 1. "Back in the USSR" -- A poke in the eye to America's wasteful Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The jet sound at the beginning is used many times later in other rock songs, most notably in Lesh/Petersen's "Unbroken Chain." "USSR" is a fitting start for the album; George Martin and the Boys liked to start an album and a side with a real upbeat attention-getter. Also, this song's production was pretty much like how they did most of the album: "The individual songwriter took control of the process." (p. 343 in the new Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, the Later Years, 1966-2016 by Kenneth Womack. "If Paul had to come in to put a bass track on one of George's songs, Paul would come in that day, do his thing and then leave. Every song was very much like that." This was a pure McCartney number. He played all the instruments, even the drums because this was during Ringo's extended absence when he felt left out of the group. PM got John and George to double track all the parts, and with good headphones you can hear how sloppy some of that background is, esp. bass and drums. "Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC." JFK flew in (back to D. C.) from Miami and Tampa a mere two days before the Texas trip. If only he had been flying to the USSR like, say a Kruschev, he would have been just fine. Ol' Nikita was eased out quietly by his hawks within two years of the U. S. hawks blowing their commander-in-chief's brains out in a most public fashion. "You don't know how lucky you are, boy" to be going back to a much safer place than America, the murderer's paradise. "Come and keep your comrade warm" made J Edna Hoover squirm in his lace silk panties. The "guitar solo" is ONE NOTE played blistering fast, like a machine gun. Many other artists used this when it fit with the song, most notably Neil Young in "Cinnamon Girl." Paul finished this very quickly. He was on a mission, working on a deadline -- have it all ready to go to pressing by late October for the targeted release date, 11/22/1968. Small Aside: the Characteristics of a Fascist State in Order of Importance for the Am. Brand of Fascism * hatred/despising of labor, both the performance of it and the performer, the worker. Labor unions are especially hated, have died out in Am. since the 1950's. Hatred of fundamental labor (farming, construction, mining, etc. -- outside, dirty work) is now in our blood. For decades, we have been touting "college" as a way "to get a good Job", meaning inside office work. Manual labor is to be shunned at all costs, and ignored -- media reporting on labor acts as if basic production does not exist; it's all about working in an office. This is why housing is so astronomically expensive now (Remember the "Rent is Too Damn High Party"?), because we don't have Americans willing and able to do that labor. *hatred/despising of the other; i. e., non-white, non-Judaeo Christian. But they are welcome to grow our food and build our homes. * marriage of big business and government * overlarge military, our most thriving business (ordnance to Saud to drop on Yemen and kill those unarmed peasants so Saud can have another oil port). Am. spends as much or more as the rest of the world on "defense," but we are only 4.5% of world population. That means we spend 22 times as much per capita as the rest of the world. * empire, perpetual war. The recent death of GHW Bush reminds us of our nearly constant massacring of decent, defenseless "other" people worldwide. * ridiculous, belligerent nationalism. "We're #1." (Old joke: "But you smell like #2.") Our working citizens are worse off than many, if not most, third world nations for health and safety. USA! USA! Isn't it a human embarassment to hear fans at the Olympics screaming this? At a place and time that's neutral good sportsmanship to everyone else. *oligarchy gets richer and more powerful * far-right authoritarian dictatorship. We don't realize it because we're like the frogs boiled slowly. The last election: Oh my who will win? The Republican or the other Republican. The better choice, warmonger Hillary, destroyed the perfectly stable, advancing nation of Libya. Among other warmonger atrocities. America is the old Roman style of fascism, nothing like the German Third Reich brand. The Roman-American brand is a sloppy, greedy way that eventually comes home to roost. Our urban water systems are a study in incompetent, lazy neglect of infrastructure just like the Romans between short-lived golden ages. (Side One continued next. Sorry about all the preamble, just getting terms straight.)

Ron, I re-listened to "Will It Go Round in Circles." Good song. The opening keyboard to the verses is practically identical to "Song for Frisco" put out a year earlier by Quicksilver M. S. The rest is different, I'm sure someone in the music biz knew how much could be borrowed before it became copyright infringement. Funny thing. And it's some tough ivory-tickling to play.

"...on his wedding ring finger..." Lee was married to the Marines. He loved them from an early age, memorized nearly the entire Marine Corps manual. Of course, the bloom was off the rose in many ways later. As he said at his cousin's Jesuit school in Spring Hill that last summer he lived in Nawlins. But he still loved the heroic IDEAL of USMC. Maybe more at the end of his heroic life. He married a girl named MARINE-uh. How's that for coincidence? The irony must have struck him at some time or another.

Yes, I've known that for years and my pre-adolescent brain has giggled over it for all those years, at least a thousand times. I thought it was obvious that I was using the word(s) in her testimony IN YOUR POST as an excuse to... try to be funny? Also to stress an important part of JFKA. Earlene Roberts' phonemic accuracy was the first fact I learned on this long journey. Thanks so much for bringing it up. That whole scene in Oak Cliff 1-2 PM is a sort of Rosetta Stone of JFKA. And ER's tape-recorder-like reproduction of the killer polices' car horn is still hilarious to a 64-year old suffering from arrested development, the mental maturity of a 9-year old. Since everything today is related to JFKA and the Beatles, of course there is a Beatles parallel. In their early song "Girl", instead of singing dih-dih-dih in the chorus like the Motown girl groups did (human parroting of the dot in Morse code), they clearly went, ".......................", you guessed it. It would be immature of me to spell it out.

Mike K., Thanks for that link to the JVB/ J Fetzer blog. The end of the subtitle has it right -- "Lee Harvey Oswald: Patriot, Patsy, and My Personal Hero". Mine too. And down in this article, "...he gave his life trying to save President Kennedy." Nailed it. I've always liked Jim Fetzer. And Judy Baker in this article is spot on.

Vince, OMG, this is my new favorite interview/exposition of JFKA. I listened to it twice, took notes the second time. Then I see the notes below the "play line" or whatever you call it. An economical synopsis, the most you could have squeezed into that space. Your 90 minutes had a lot of words, and not one of them wasted. Wow! And clear as can be. That has to be some kind of record. Random facts that appealed to me: * Emory (not Earlene) Roberts immediately became LBJ's appointment secretary (Dave Powers' old job for JFK) and bodyguard. It was ER with the umbrella over Lyndon and Ladybird at JFK's funeral. Very metaphorical, sheltering the Texas crook from the harsh weather and harsh inquiries. First time an SS agent ever made such a radical job change and kept working for the same government traitor. What cheeses me the most about ER is he was so sanctimonious about JFK's dalliances, but LBJ was a veritable Caligula. At least JFK didn't go after the wives of his closest friends. * The heartbreaking story of Thomas Shipman, Kennedy's real driver, poisoned to death at Camp David (which should have been a sanctuary!), only SSA to die during JFK's thousand days. Family VERY suspicious. * Lisa McCubbin leaving her husband for the also still-married Clint Hill. Hypocrisy, anyone? Maybe old CH sees some of that old Jackie classiness in his amanuensis/ghost-writer/ just plain writer. *Clint Hill burning all his notes in 2005, coincidentally right after one Vincent Palamara was asking perfectly innocent questions. Gerald Blaine and a few other SSA went "mental" around that time too. * SS needed a "hero" to balance out their unprecedented falling down on the job. Enter: Clint Hill who was johnny-on-the-spot once the danger was over and the damage done. * "Dallas was a MOVING CRIME." Apt. Encapsulation. * Thanks for the new book tip, The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination by Christopher and Michelle Fulton. They beat me to it, but good for them. And on and on. Thanks, Vince. It's game over. Point, game, set, match. Stick a fork in it, it's done. BTW, could you ask your friend David V. P., who is an expert on Oswald's "suspicious behavior," "How about the 999 BILLION beyond-suspicious actual actions of the bigshot authorities in and around JFKA?" Please, he listens to you, respects you.

seriously, Ozzie figured he was on a very important mission: stop the slaughter of a president who was for the people and decent in every political way. And if he couldn't do that, shoot the Judas/Brutus/Cassius on the ground who made the coup possible. Hint: he was John B. Connelly, who also coincidentally blew him off when he inquired about righting the wrong of besmirching his heroic service with a dishonorable discharge. Which isn't the kind one gets from gonorrhea.

Good photo, Mike K. Isn't that his beloved Marine Corps ring? Maybe he figured it could be a good luck charm, or just something to show he was one of The Good Guys. The Wizard of Ozzeewaldskovitchnikovsky was very proud of his Semper Fi service, and very hurt by the downgrading of his discharge. Aside: I'm always amazed at the military's fondness for jewelry, pretty geegaws, decorations, fancy accoutrements and accessories in general. Like an idle, narcissistic dowager (rich old woman).

Remember, all, the Wizard of Ozwaldskovitch rode Whaley's taxi two blocks past his roominghouse. That busy corner where he was dropped off may have been a potential place for LHO to meet someone he trusted. AND he could see if he had unannounced visitors lying in wait when passing his house. If he had seen arresting officers there at that time, a few minutes before one, he probably would have ducked down in the front seat and feigned tying his shoe. And he had that two block walk back north to check things out. He had Whaley drive him to the intersection with Chichi's Mexican Restaurant on one corner. What a coincidence, that's where one of the Ozzie lookalikes (I bet Laverne "Larry" Crafard) was sitting in a car around two o'clock with Carl Mather's (J D Tippit's best friend) license plates. Problem is it wasn't Mather's car. It was a late model red Ford Falcon, not an older blue Plymouth family car beater. Too bad for the Nutters that the witness who took down the plate number was a mechanic, T H White. Can't say he couldn't tell a Ford from a Chrysler. Then he told sports reporter Wes Wise, future mayor of Dallas, within a couple weeks when Wes was giving a talk at, guess where, Chichi's. Undeniably, there's a bunch that's hinky about that little stretch of North Beckley in Oak Cliff that early afternoon 11/22/63. What are the odds that the above don't point to a bunch of massive machinations? Absolutely zero. That soft "tit-tit", just by itself, speaks volumes. And what are the odds that a highly skilled and courageous mechanic would witness the faux Ozzie in a car with faux plates? And that an observant and courageous housekeeper would witness something surreptitious from professional surreptitioners? Fairly small odds, but sometimes we just get lucky. The right guy and gal are in the right place at the right time. That quiet "tit-tit" speaks more truth than any average 1,000 words in the WARren COmmissioN RepOrT. I can't get enough of that "tit-tit" because it's so apropos. You have to admit Earlene Roberts was a fairly buxom woman. (Any women offended by that, please send your complaints to Joe Bauer. He started it.)

There are beatings and there are BEATINGS. He didn't beat his child,and any violence to Cynthia was very minor, if any. She stuck up for him his whole life, felt that Yoko made him look the fool many times. Sound like a woman who was physically wounded? Anyway, Lennon was his own biggest accuser on that score with "Jealous Guy." You bringing up "beatings" reminds me of Oswald being accused of being a wife-beater. Sure he had his moments and I believe he did take Marina's ciggie out her mouth ONCE and touch it to her forearm to show her what she was doing to the baby's lungs. He had begged her repeatedly not to smoke around the baby. He was ahead of his time on that score, as he was on so much else. Americans' inability to make fine distinctions, or any distinctions, may be the worst effect of JFKA. A man grabbing a woman's arm to stop her from hurting the children, and leaving a bruise; compared to a man repeatedly punching a woman in the head, disabling her for the rest of her shortened life, all because she put the fork on the wrong side of the plate IS THE SAME, right? Because they're both violence against women, right? Jaywalking is as bad as murder, right? They're both against the law, so they're the same. "Political poseur" OUCH. Hoover and Nixon put Lennon through the wringer because of his opposition to the utterly fascist Vietnam War. Anyone who knows anything about it knows Lennon was a major influence in stopping that rolling atrocity. "a supporter of violence, through donations to groups such as the Black Panthers." You mean like the Panthers' Breakfast Program for impoverished children? What is it you hate, Martin? Breakfast, children, poor children, black children? I await your answer with "braided breath." Is your last name really Boorman or Bormann? Do you feel, as does our Fearful Leader Herr Drumpf, that there were fine people on both sides at Charlottesville? JL also gave to NYPD for body armor.

Aristotle said, "Politics and ethics are opposite sides of the same coin." Macro and micro. State and individual.

In Joe Bauer's first post in this topic, in Earlene Roberts' testimony, she gives the police car number as 107, "and it was in a black car...not an accident car." There are pictures of Tippit's car at the scene of his murder with the prominent number 10 on the side of a black (and some white) car. That's a very low number for a police force of well over a thousand law officers. At one time a DPD spokesman tried to say that JDT could not have been driving No. 10 because that had been retired, left with a dealer who restored and sold DPD's old cars. But then the pictures surfaced. It DOES look like an older, much-used vehicle, paint's a little faded. Could that old #10 have been impressed back into service for that day alone? Because they needed all the cars they could lay their hands on? Roberts was blind in one eye. She saw car #10, Tippit's car. I believe she even said that at one point. You can see in her testimony that they are trying to confuse her. Whether there was another officer in the car with JDT or just a uniform hanging in it or both, we may never know. The boardinghouse owner, Mrs. Johnson, sounds like she came to hate Earlene Roberts only because the housekeeper was so forthcoming with her observations. ER didn't know that the fix was in, or she was too honest to go along if she did. Mrs. Johnson sure did know that the fix was in, and resented that ER didn't sweep it all under the rug with the vast majority of Dallas. Mrs. Roberts was hounded and mistreated the rest of her life, which didn't last long after 11/22/63. The DPD car that stopped at 1026 N. Beckley and went "tit tit" on the horn was probably there for less than a minute. But the occupant(s) probably thought it was three or four times as long as the time they were there because they were in a panic, hopped up on adrenaline, their hearts pounding three beats a second instead of the usual one per. I believe the police shirt hanging in the back belonged to one Roscoe Anthony White, a new cop still on probation. DPD policy at the time was that new members didn't rate their hats, like "Badgeman" behind the stockade fence atop the North (Grassy) Knoll. And it's funny: the "Honest Joe's Pawnshop" van that Jean Hill saw in Dealey was a purveyor of used police uniforms. Maybe RAW took his shirt off and hung it in Tippit's car for two reasons: to go undercover looking for Oswald and to have it there if they found Lee and convince him to wear it "for safety reasons." But the Wizard of Ozzie was way too smart for them.

I'm about to type up a little synopsis of Side One of TWA as a "treatise of America's slide into fascism." If it is not your cuppa, don't read it. Your referring me to the Zen of D T Suzuki is somewhat nettling. You don't know he was an anti-Semitic, fascist freak wrapped in Zen clothing? BTW I brought the Tao of Lao Tzu to Piedmont North Carolina in 1972, for which me former high school mates are still grateful. PS to Martin: maybe you are one of those American chauvinists who cannot bear to see British music getting any kind of spotlight or consideration because you feel it takes something away from our home growns?