W. Niederhut

Doug, I just read two good, scholarly articles on this subject at The Conversation. Supreme Court says only Congress can bar a candidate, like Trump, from the presidency for insurrection − 3 essential reads (theconversation.com) The Constitution sets some limits on the people’s choices for president - but the Supreme Court rules it’s unconstitutional for state governments to decide on Trump’s qualifications (theconversation.com)

Doug, My take on this is that the SCOTUS punted on the issue of whether Trump is disqualified by the 14th Amendment from holding public office. Instead, they ruled on the issue of whether an individual state has the right to interpret and enforce the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Is that correct?

Well, Ron, one thing that we can all agree on is that the WCR's Lone Nut theory doesn't even come close to qualifying as a valid theory of the JFK assassination. It's invalidated by a plethora of contrary facts. But, if a Deep State/M$M tree falls in the forest-- without any mainstream media coverage-- has it been felled? I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan's favorite Republican trope-- "Perception is reality." 🙄

Yeah, Ron, and do people realize how HUGE this fire in the Texas Panhandle is? Currently, it's bigger than some U.S. states.

Incidentally, anyone who has studied science and the philosophy of science in any depth knows about the logical characteristics of valid hypotheses and theories. Valid theories, by definition, must explain all of the established facts, without being refuted by any clearly established facts. It's a high bar, indeed. Any hypothesis or theory can be invalidated by a single, established fact which clearly refutes the hypothesis. Then, it's back to the drawing board.

So, I'll play along. Who called C.D. Jackson (and/or Henry Luce) to promptly buy and sequester the Zapruder film? Who arranged for the prompt CIA alterations of the Zapruder film? Who told Dan Rather to lie on CBS about the trajectory of JFK's head on the Zapruder film? Who arranged for the "Secret Service" personnel to confiscate witnesses' film in Dealey Plaza? Who arranged for the seizure of JFK's corpse, and the sham Bethesda autopsy-- apparently attended by military brass? Who arranged for the limo to be promptly scrubbed and removed from Dallas? Who told J. Edgar Hoover to shut down an FBI investigation of JFK's murder? Who told Ruby to kill Oswald?

Shame on the NYT for this nonsense! Their reputation has been in the toilet lately, in any case. I read the NYT for 40 years, but cancelled my subscription in 2017 after I learned the details about their 2016 sabotage of Hillary Clinton's Presidential candidacy.

So, Robert, perhaps the JFK assassination is like the proverbial elephant being described by a group of blind men. One man grasps the leg, and declares that the elephant is like a tree. Another grasps the trunk, and declares that the creature is like a python. A third feels the elephant's side, and declares that it is like a wall. And they are all correct.

Paul, Have you ever read Prouty's writings about CIA special ops, Dulles's "secret team," Vietnam, and the JFK assassination? Prouty explained, from an insider's perspective, the back story of the McNamara/Taylor Report, NSAM 263, and the reversal of JFK's Vietnam policy following the JFK assassination. He also described his suspicions about the faulty security arrangements in Dealey Plaza, and the apparent international mainstream media psy op immediately labeling Oswald as a lone assassin, within hours of the event.

And LBJ? The question of LBJ's putative involvement in the JFK assassination scheme has often reared its ugly head on this forum. Phillip Nelson and Robert Morrow have been two major forum proponents of the LBJ Did It school. I have the highest regard for James DiEugenio's encyclopedic knowledge of the JFK assassination, and I have noticed that JD has been generally reluctant to implicate LBJ in the assassination plot. So, I have been tempted to start a poll about Education Forum members' opinions regarding LBJ's putative involvement in the plot. Was LBJ a "mastermind" of the plot? Was he otherwise complicit? Was he a mere passive bystander? We all know that LBJ was a sociopath who signed off on the reversal of NSAM 263 shortly after JFK's murder, then appointed Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission. He was also close to J. Edgar Hoover, who promptly stifled a bona fide investigation of JFK's murder.

Well, shucks. I was interested in Robert's list, and had a number of questions. Foremost was a request for more information about his sources. I was also surprised to see Col. L. Fletcher Prouty on Robert's list of participants in the mainstream media cover up of the JFK assassination op. My impression, for several years, has been quite the opposite-- i.e., that Prouty was a rare Deep State insider who tried to make the public aware that JFK had been murdered by a Deep State conspiracy involving the CIA and others at the highest levels of the U.S. government and media.

Democratic Progressives are the only people in the U.S. who have been correct about Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing of Gaza since October. So, naturally, AIPAC is determined to drive them out of the U.S. Congress. AIPAC Uncorks $100 Million Against Progressives March 3, 2024 at 9:24 am EST By Taegan Goddard 53 Comments “AIPAC is expected to spend $100 million across its political entities in 2024, taking aim at candidates they deem insufficiently supportive of Israel,” Politico reports. “The strategy has taken on new urgency this election season from donors animated by the Israel-Hamas war.”

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Yeah, Cliff, I wonder if MAGA Ben is even aware that, back in the Smedley Butler days, Butler famously protected America's greatest Democratic progressive President from a right wing Republican coup attempt. That coup attempt was allegedly organized by right wing Republican billionaires, including the DuPonts and Prescott Bush. For that matter, does MAGA Ben know which party, and POTUS, passed a massive tax cut for corporations and billionaires in December of 2017? One thing I'll say for Ben is that he does try to keep us up to date on the latest propaganda tropes from the MAGA-verse. (I hear about Ben's MAGA tropes on a sports forum with a large contingent of Trumpsters.) For example, Townhall.com and a few other MAGA propaganda sites have been attacking BlackRock this week for their ghastly, woke ESG (Environmental-Social-Governance) initiatives, which have, allegedly reduced corporate profits! And, right on cue, MAGA Ben updated us on this dastardly Democratic, woke BlackRock nonsense.

Kirk, I have studied the history of genocide for years. UCLA Professor Jared Diamond has approached the subject from the perspective of the biological history of Homo Sapiens and our closest biological relatives-- chimpanzees. Both Homo Sapiens and chimps are inherently tribal and genocidal. (See The Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs, and Steel.) Diamond has listed Stalin's Soviet genocide as the worst in history-- at 20 million. The Nazi Holocaust is second-- at 6 million. The Khmer Rouge killed 2 million Cambodians. All three were perpetrated by atheistic governments that, essentially, declared, "God is dead." Dostoevsky anticipated Nietzsche by asking, (In the Brothers Karamazov) "If God is dead, will everything become lawful?" Put differently, would the Soviet and Nazi genocides have happened if God had lived, so to speak? No doubt, some religions have played a role in wars throughout history, but is there a bona fide sense in which Christianity-- in its unadulterated, Orthodox form-- Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism have ameliorated our inherently genocidal tendencies? Let's recall that the pagan Romans killed people for sport in their Ludi, and Holy Russia eschewed capital punishment. (The Tsars sent convicted criminals, like Lenin and Stalin, to Siberian dachas, to repent.) I raise these questions because most modern intellectuals don't realize that the worst genocides in history have been committed by atheists. As for church attendance, Evangelical Protestantism has largely become unrecognizable to the original Orthodox Church. Where is the love for humanity? Non-violence? Charity? Forbearance? Evangelical Trumpsters are not Christians, as I understand the term. In any case, the modern world has become, essentially, post-Christian.

Exactly.

Record high 95 F temperatures in Dallas this week, with the largest wildfire in Texas history in the Panhandle. We have also had some wildfires on the front range up here in Colorado, including one at the U.S. Air Force Academy. My wife and I have been in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park this week, and the wind was so high recently that it actually blew a wooden Adirondack chair off of our neighbors patio, down the hill. Texas wildfire becomes largest in state history, "critical" fire weather threatens www.axios.com/2024/02/29/texas-wildfire-largest-state-history-forecast March 2, 2024

Hmmm... Not a single comment about the vast array of evidence debunking small-scale conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination op? This is somewhat surprising, since many people here on the Education Forum are quite knowledgeable about the Secret Service, the Bethesda autopsy fraud, the purchase and manipulation of the Zapruder film, the aborting of the FBI investigation, the history of the Warren Commission cover up, and the 60-year mainstream media psy op promoting the false Warren Commission narrative. Does anyone believe that David Atlee Phillips and the Cubans managed these multi-year Federal agency ops?

Most read article at WaPo this morning, which confirms some of our impressions of RFK, Jr.'s character flaws. How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s hiring of a bird egg smuggler threw Riverkeeper into turmoil - The Washington Post

The problem with small-scale JFKA conspiracy theory scenarios-- involving a few actors-- is that they fail to account for the evident, higher-level aspects of the JFK assassination and cover up, involving multiple Federal (and local) agencies and the U.S. mainstream media moguls-- e.g., Henry Luce, C.D. Jackson, William S. Paley, et.al. Technical aspects of the shooting are trees. The larger black op and 60-year M$M psy op is the forest. These issues have been raised in previous Education Forum discussions about "small-scale" conspiracy hypotheses. Some of them are questions that Col. L. Fletcher Prouty raised in his musings about the JFK assassination. For example, 1) Who controlled and orchestrated the "Secret Service" agents in Dealey Plaza and at Parkland Hospital-- i.e., the mysterious men who confiscated film, intimidated witnesses, and seized JFK's corpse from the coroner at Parkland? 2) Who controlled the motorcade route and arranged for Oswald's job at the TSBD? 2) Who had the authority (and foresight) to destroy evidence-- e.g., scrubbing the limo, getting rid of the Mauser, etc.? 3) Who had the authority to orchestrate the sham autopsy at Bethesda? (Certainly not David Atlee Phillips!) 4) Who had the authority to orchestrate the FBI's aborting of an investigation? 5) Who had the authority to appoint Allen Dulles and the Warren Commission to cover up the crime? 6) Who had the authority to orchestrate the 60-year cover up psy op in the U.S. mainstream media? 7) Who had the authority to orchestrate the systematic murders of numerous key witnesses? If we look at the forest-- beyond the assassination mechanics in Dealey Plaza-- it's obvious that the JFK assassination conspiracy and multi-decade media cover up involved a coalition of people at the very highest levels of U.S. (and local) governance, in addition to corporate media moguls-- including the White House, (LBJ) the CIA, the U.S. military, (e.g., Bethesda) the FBI, and critical assets in Dallas (Earl Cabell, the DPD, et.al.) So, I agree with Peter Dale Scott's recently posted commentaries about a broad "coalition" being involved in the assassination conspiracy and cover up. Prouty believed as much. Prouty's own hypothesis was that technical aspects of the hit team probably involved the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans who were re-directed from Castro assassination ops to Dealey Plaza-- but that there was evident high-level involvement in the assassination op and multi-decade cover up.

The problem with these small-scale JFKA conspiracy theory scenarios is that they fail to account for the evident, higher-level aspects of the assassination and cover up, involving multiple Federal (and local) agencies and the U.S. mainstream media moguls-- e.g., Henry Luce, C.D. Jackson, William S. Paley, et.al. Technical aspects of the shooting are trees. The larger black op and 60-year M$M psy op is the forest. These issues have been raised in previous Education Forum discussions about "small-scale" conspiracy hypotheses. Some of them are questions that Col. L. Fletcher Prouty raised in his musings about the JFK assassination. For example, 1) Who controlled and orchestrated the "Secret Service" agents in Dealey Plaza and at Parkland Hospital-- i.e., the mysterious men who confiscated film, intimidated witnesses, and seized JFK's corpse from the coroner at Parkland? 2) Who controlled the motorcade route and arranged for Oswald's job at the TSBD? 2) Who had the authority (and foresight) to destroy evidence-- e.g., scrubbing the limo, getting rid of the Mauser, etc.? 3) Who had the authority to orchestrate the sham autopsy at Bethesda? (Certainly not David Atlee Phillips!) 4) Who had the authority to orchestrate the FBI's aborting of an investigation? 5) Who had the authority to appoint Allen Dulles and the Warren Commission to cover up the crime? 6) Who had the authority to orchestrate the 60-year cover up psy op in the U.S. mainstream media? 7) Who had the authority to orchestrate the systematic murders of numerous key witnesses? If we look at the forest-- beyond the assassination mechanics in Dealey Plaza-- it's obvious that the JFK assassination conspiracy and multi-decade media cover up involved a coalition of people at the very highest levels of U.S. (and local) governance, in addition to corporate media moguls-- including the White House, (LBJ) the CIA, the U.S. military, (e.g., Bethesda) the FBI, and critical assets in Dallas (Earl Cabell, the DPD, et.al.) So, I agree with Peter Dale Scott's recently posted commentaries about a broad "coalition" being involved in the assassination conspiracy and cover up. Prouty believed as much. Prouty's own hypothesis was that technical aspects of the hit team probably involved the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans who were re-directed from Castro assassination ops to Dealey Plaza-- but that there was evident high-level involvement in the assassination op and multi-decade cover up.

Sandy, If you and Kirk are interested in the subject, you should study the Talmud-- the collected wisdom and scriptural exegesis of the Jewish sages. It is important, and authoritative, for Orthodox Judaism, including many devout, Likud Party aligned Israelis. That said, most Jewish people in the U.S. are Reform or Conservative-- a generation or two removed from Orthodoxy. And most are modern secularists. But the Israeli demolition experts who are reciting Hebrew prayers while blowing up mosques in Gaza are, almost certainly, Orthodox. For them, and for Netanyahu, destroying the Goyim in Israel appears to be a Talmudic, religious mission.

Kirk, Educating you about the true history of Christendom would be difficult task, indeed, especially since you have a nasty habit of misconstruing people's arguments, then mislabeling them as "silly." Can you even name the three major branches of world Christianity? I'm not an apologist for the genocidal sins of the post-Schism Roman Catholic Papacy and derivative Western European Protestantism. Sir Steven Runciman hit that nail on the head in his definitive history of the Roman Catholic Crusades, when he pointed out that the Roman Popes completely perverted the traditional theology of the original (Orthodox) Church, by declaring that Roman Catholic Crusaders could get into heaven by murdering Muslims! A History of the Crusades: The First Crusade; The Kingdom of Jerusalem; The Kingdom of Acre: Runciman, Steven: Amazon.com: Books In contrast, during the 1,000 history of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire-- the "greatest" civilization in history, in the opinion of British historian Arnold Toynbee-- soldiers who killed a Muslim in battle had to do a year of penance (epitimia) before they could set foot in an Orthodox Church! This was always the true theoria and praxis of Christ and His Apostles. Contrast this with the Latin American genocide of Roman Catholic Conquistadors and the Native American genocide of Protest "Manifest Destiny" in North America. In contrast, again, the Russian Orthodox incorporated Native American Aleutians and Tlinglit people into their empire and (Orthodox) Church as equals. Native American Alaskans ascended to the ranks of bishops and admirals in the Russian Empire, and they are overwhelmingly Orthodox (and pious) to this day. I have attended their liturgies. St. Innocent: Apostle to America: Paul D. Garrett: 9780913836606: Amazon.com: Books As for the dark, largely untold, history of atheistic 20th century genocides, you have much to learn. Much of this happened in closed totalitarian societies, behind a veil of secrecy. Have you read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, or Russian Orthodox literature (e.g., by I.M. Andreyev) about the Soviet persecution of the Church after 1917? About the systematic NKVD murders of Patriarch Tikhon and thousands of priests and hierarchs of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union? About Solovki and the Soviet concentration camps for Orthodox priests and bishops? The Gulag Archipelago - An Experiment In Literary Investigation - Nobel Prize Winning Complete Three Volume Trade Paperback Set by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn with a forward by Anne Applebaum: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Amazon.com: Books Russia's Catacomb Saints : Lives of the New Martyrs: I M Andreev, Ivan Andreyev, Hieromonk Seraphim Rose: Amazon.com: Books Have you studied the occult, anti-Christian, neo-pagan history of the founders of the Nazi Party? Hitler's admiration of Ibsen? The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas: 9780814730607: Amazon.com: Books Amazon.com: Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist, and the Plot for the Third Reich eBook : Sage, Steven F: Kindle Store