W. Niederhut

As I was just studying this Walczak video (above) from Portage Pass, I suddenly recognized the tiny harbor town of Whittier, Alaska down below -- on the Cook Inlet of Prince William Sound. My wife and I stopped here in Whittier on an Alaskan cruise (Norwegian) in the summer of 2005. Middle of nowhere. We rented a kayak in the harbor that day and rowed around Cook Inlet for a couple of hours. A very wild place, like most of Alaska-- miles and miles of undeveloped wilderness. I had no idea until this evening that Hale Boggs' plane had disappeared in the vicinity. Below: Whittier, Alaska/Cook Inlet

This weekend I got to thinking about Congressman Hale Boggs in the context of the recent forum thread about alleged "Democratic cowardice" in challenging the Warren Commission Report, and I found this fascinating Education Forum thread from 2016. This commentary by Dr. Nick Begich, whose father disappeared in the plane with Boggs, is the first I had heard about Boggs allegedly wanting to re-open the Warren Commission Report prior to his death. It also reminded me of an article I read a few years ago in my Harvard Alumni Monthly magazine. It was an interview of Al Franken, in which Franken talked about his belief that his friend, Senator Paul Wellstone, had been murdered by Dick Cheney and the CIA in October of 2002. Franken said that Wellstone had a very disturbing meeting with Dick Cheney prior to his death, in which Cheney had threatened Wellstone about his vote against authorizing military force against Iraq. (The Iraq vote was held in the Senate two weeks before Wellstone's plane went down in Minnesota, and Wellstone was one of very few Senators-- along with Ted Kennedy-- who voted against authorizing military force in Iraq.) Wellstone had also voted against the military intervention in the Persian Gulf War. And he was 11 days away from being re-elected to the U.S. Senate when his plane crashed on October 25, 2002. (The subsequent election was won by Wellstone's Republican opponent-- Coleman.) Did Hale Boggs get Paul Wellstoned by the CIA, for wanting to re-open the Warren Commission investigation?

Teddy Roosevelt advocated universal health insurance back in the day, almost a century before Obama signed the ACA in 2009. As for Michael Griffith's notion that JFK would have been appalled by an alleged leftward shift in liberalism today, it's absurd. It sounds like an anhistorical meme from the Breitbart/Fox MAGA-verse. If anything, the American political spectrum has shifted dramatically to the right since the days when Eisenhower denounced Prescott Bush and the right wing Republican plutocrats who wanted to abolish Social Security and roll back the New Deal. Since 2009, that Eisenhower era extreme right wing Koch agenda has become mainstream in the GOP. Nixon helped create the EPA, but subsequent Republican presidents spent the past 40 years trying to abolish it. Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) and other Republican Koch-sters are currently pushing a roll back of Social Security. And Paul Ryan's Koch/Tea Party House actually passed two House budget bills after 2010 that would have abolished Medicare as we know it for Americans born after 1959, converting Medicare into an inadequately funded "Voucher Care" program. If anything, JFK would have been shocked and appalled by the marked rightward shift in the American political spectrum, including the SCOTUS, after 1980.

Ron, Kirk was right about the Beatles eclipsing Elvis in '64, but it's still a thrill to watch Ann Margret in Viva Las Vegas, especially compared to reading Ben's nightly MAGA dispatches from Thailand. 🤥

Addendum: On the subject of alleged Democratic "cowardice" about the JFK assassination, let's recall that Hale Boggs, the Democratic House Majority leader, was always skeptical about the FBI's Warren Commission evidence, as was Richard Russell. In fact, Boggs caused quite a stir in April of 1971 when he denounced J. Edgar Hoover on the House floor, after learning that Hoover had long been spying on Warren Commission critics. Boggs' airplane disappeared en route from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska in October of '72. I read somewhere that, prior to his death, he claimed to have some shocking news about JFK's murder.

Good analysis, Mark. I will only add the observation that the U.S. mainstream media did, in fact, play a well-documented role in getting Trump elected in 2016, by their relentless "coverage" of Hillary's Email-gate nothing burger. And the James Comey/FBI "October Surprise" also played a critical, well-documented role in Trump's improbable Electoral College "victory." In other words, as Cliff Varnell, and others, have pointed out on this monster thread, far from sabotaging Trump, the powers that be (corporate M$M + FBI) played a decisive role in putting Trump in the White House.

Excellent points by Ron Bulman and Pat Speer. I would add that those suspecting CIA and FBI involvement in JFK's murder must surely have feared Murder, Inc. Jackie Kennedy didn't want Bobby to run in '68, because she feared he would be murdered. And look what happened to Hale Boggs.

I'm waiting for Ben to start posting about the latest MAGA-verse Trump-as-Victim-of-the-Deep-State trope-- "Release the Affidavit!" 🤥 It looks like the MAGA-verse has abandoned the "Planted Evidence" trope, and the "Trump De-Classified the Files" trope.

Well, here you are, Joe. Elvis, allegedly wanted to marry Blackman during the filming of Blue Hawaii in 1961. People might say we're off topic, but let's be honest. We're all fixated on the early 60s around here. 🤥 Elvis wanted to marry Blue Hawaii star during 'passionate affair' but she turned him down https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/1427790/Elvis-Presley-girlfriends-Blue-Hawaii-film-star-Joan-Blackman-Priscilla-wife-Anita-Wood

Are you referring to all of the people on film who ran up to the Grassy Knoll after the murder, rather than running to the TSBD? 🤥 As for the video game, anyone who thinks the fatal head shot was fired from the TSBD is living in a fantasy world where Newton's laws of motion have been suspended.

Secret Service knew of threats against Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence for days before the Capitol riot: CREW www.businessinsider.com/secret-service-knew-threats-nancy-pelosi-before-jan-6-riot-2022-8

This video game looks like a Warren Commission/CIA fantasy version of the JFK assassination. Does the game have a more realistic version, with the assassin standing behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll?

Yeah, Ron, Dusty Hill was always a big Elvis fan, as I learned from watching that recent documentary on Netflix about ZZ Top. Coincidentally, I've been watching a bunch of old Elvis flicks on HBO Max during the past week. They take me back to my childhood, when I first watched some of them at our neighborhood theater. My favorite is Viva Las Vegas, from 1964. There's a lot of Americana in that film-- including footage of the Vegas Strip and the Grand Prix race over the Hoover Dam. But the best scenery in the film is Ann Margaret!

Ben, Trump, certainly, made a fuss about his passports, while playing the victim and firing up his base. But he's not a victim. He mishandled U.S. government property, then he refused to comply with a subpoena. The search warrant would never have been necessary if Trump had simply obeyed the law, right?

For those who haven't heard it, the young Canadian crooner, Michael Buble, does a great cover of this Sinatra/Count Basie classic. Not an easy song to sing.

Not sure how many times I've posted the facts for Ben about how the New York Times colluded in sabotaging Hillary Clinton's candidacy in 2016 but, incredibly, Ben still seems to think that the NYT was promoting Hillary's 2016 candidacy! It wasn't about occasional op-eds. It was about the weekly headline stories, typically based on anonymous "leaks," about the Hillary Email nothing burger-- right up until Election Day (and Comey's FBI/Weiner Laptop "October Surprise.") NYT Editor-in-Chief Dean Baquet also explicitly put the kibosh on any pre-election NYT stories about Trump's ties to Russia, as NYT readers learned in 2017. As a daily reader of the NYT in 2016, I watched the whole baffling charade unfold in the summer and fall of 2016. It was obvious to me, and other NYT readers, that the NYT was sabotaging Hillary. My theory at the time was that it was about money-- tax policy differences between Trump and Hillary. The Columbia Journalism Review, and other academic analyses (e.g., the Harvard/Berman Klein Institute) clarified the skewed media coverage of Hillary's Emails in detail, ex post facto. Study: Hillary Clinton’s emails got as much front-page coverage in 6 days as policy did in 69 - Vox Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media. - Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org)

More Orwellian Double Speak from Mango Mussolini-- "We need to put out the fire (while burning down the FBI.") It reminds me of Trump's Ellipse speech on January 6th-- "We need to march peacefully to the Capitol (to fight like hell.")

To quote MacBeth, "If it were done... 'twere well it were done quickly." Trump is using the uncertainty surrounding the investigation to incite threats and violence against a judge and law enforcement officers. He leaked a copy of the warrant to Rupert Murdoch (WSJ, Fox News) and Breitbart, before it was unsealed by the judge on Friday, in order to promote a false, pre-emptive narrative of himself as a victim of DOJ/FBI overreach. Classic Trump public relations sleaze.

Remember when Reality Winner leaked an NSA document to The Intercept proving that Trump and Putin were lying about Russian hacking of our 2016 election?

I envy you for living in Antwerp. My wife and I had a chance to visit Antwerp about 20 years ago. Charming city. Have you heard the English musician Sting's new song about Antwerp, The Bells of St. Thomas? There must be a church dedicated to St. Thomas there, with a painting by Rubens. I remember seeing some paintings by Paul Rubens in Antwerp, but don't recall which church.

Some have suggested that Garland is requesting that the court unseal the warrant in order to call Trump's bluff. Trump has until 3 PM tomorrow (Friday) to request a delay in unsealing the warrant. I don't foresee Trump passing up the opportunity to continue playing the victim, and fund raising off of the Mar-a-Lago raid, by blocking his fans from seeing the warrant.

My question. At what point does this seditious rabble rousing by Republican politicians and pundits constitute a crime?

Kirk, I beg to differ. If I recall correctly, the CIA issued an Orwellian executive order in (?) 1964 ordering all agency personnel to do whatever was necessary to promote public acceptance of the Warren Commission Report. Was the order ever rescinded? And we all know, since the Church Committee/William Colby revelations, that the CIA has had a very powerful, pervasive influence on the U.S. mainstream media. Your point about the expansion and diversification of social media sources is a good one but, at the same time, there has been a major consolidation in ownership of mainstream media syndicates. And it, certainly, looks like the mega media corps are still suppressing the truth about the JFK assassination. The absurd Washington Post "coverage" of JFK Revisited during the past year is an obvious example.

This is deeply concerning stuff, but it's reassuring to know that the President is, at least, listening to historians. It reminds me of that old story about Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. asking JFK what he was supposed to do as a White House consultant. JFK told Schlesinger that he would be one of his most important advisors.