W. Niederhut

I wonder if JFK's stoicism/resignation about being assassinated (or having a whiskey glass thrown at him) was an outgrowth of his lifelong struggles with spinal pain and serious health problems. From what I have read, he seems to have developed a kind of stoical indifference (perhaps denial?) about illness and personal danger from an early age. He was a true hero in WWII, but his indifference to personal danger may have also played an indirect role in his murder in Dallas. He, obviously, knew that he was in "nut country" on November 22, 1963. And JFK must, surely, have known about the 1963 assassination plot in Chicago--unless the details were not reported to him. Yet, it didn't deter him from flying to Texas in November. His brother Joseph seems to have been similarly stoical about death-- even volunteering for a suicide bombing mission over Belgium in WWII.

Getting back to James Moore, for a moment, has anyone published anything about CIA involvement in the British media that is comparable to Udo Ulfkotte's expose about CIA involvement in the German media? (And, BTW, Ulfkotte's book -- which sold 1.5 million copies in Germany--has never been available in English on Kindle, and costs $30 at Amazon for the October 2019 English translation, in paperback.) Confession from the profession: ‘Presstitutes’ in the service of the CIA Confession from the profession: ‘Presstitutes’ in the service of the CIA – People's World

My question. Is the CIA paying Alexander Lebedev's UK newspaper, The Independent, to publish this crap? Why else would a billionaire Russian oligarch, and former KGB officer, promote this kind of disinformation about JFK's assassination?

Ron, There are reports that pianist Gene Taylor may have frozen to death in his Austin apartment last week. He played keyboards with T. Bone Walker, Canned Heat, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and others over the years. 68 years young. Quite the boogie woogie pianist-- with a proverbial "left hand like God." Have you heard anything about this one? Gene Taylor, Austin pianist with Fabulous Thunderbirds and more, dies (austin360.com)

I'd be very surprised if Senator John F. Kennedy did NOT vote for Mansfield's proposal. My guess is that it was opposed by most Republicans and Dixiecrats.

Here's a related factoid. In 1956, Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Montana) proposed establishing a joint Congressional committee to oversee the activities of the CIA. Mansfield's proposal was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 59-27. The Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, voted against it. Item 048.pdf (hood.edu)

Benjamin, French historian Laurent Guyenot has written about the co-opted CIA false flag theory of the JFK assassination. Not sure I buy it. The CIA and Joint Chiefs had ample foreign and military policy motives for killing JFK in 1963, beyond (false flag) pretexts for invading Cuba. James DiEugenio's January 14, 2021 essay is an excellent summary. Deconstructing JFK: A Coup d’État over Foreign Policy? Deconstructing JFK: A Coup d'État over Foreign Policy? - CovertAction Magazine

Clarence Thomas is a disgrace-- especially for his vote in the Shelby v. Holder case, which crippled enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He's a man who stood on the shoulders of Civil Rights giants, then took a leak on their heads.

Interesting article that brings up a lot of issues for me about the history of Progressive politics in the arch-conservative Rocky Mountain West, where I grew up. For example, JFK invoked Teddy Roosevelt's (and Gifford Pinchot's) magical code word, "Conservation," in his 1960 visit to Great Falls. (Gifford Pinchot was Mary Pinchot Meyer's paternal uncle.) Western Robber Barons have always despised Roosevelt and Pinchot's radical, "progressive" push to establish and protect our National Forests (and National Parks) from extractive and commercial industries. It's a conflict that has characterized Western political history for more than a century-- from T.R. and Pinchot down to the era of Dick Cheney and Trump's leasing of wilderness preserves to extractive industries. Andrew Prutsok is probably much more familiar with the political situation in Montana nowadays, but a terrific history of T.R.'s struggle with Weyerhauser, Rockefeller, and the Robber Barons in Montana and the Pacific Northwest is Timothy Egan's, The Big Burn. I can't recommend Egan's book highly enough, for anyone interested in the history of our National Forests. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America: Egan, Timothy: 9780547394602: Amazon.com: Books

I've always enjoyed reading Hunter S. Thompson's prose. There's nothing quite like it. At his funeral up in Aspen some years ago, they blasted his ashes out of a cannon. 🤪

We have periodic power outages here in my Denver neighborhood from tree branches knocking down the power lines during snow storms in the spring and fall. One trick I have learned over the years is to cook on our gas grill, and to heat the house with a gas log fireplace. The problem is that some gas log fireplaces can only be turned on with electronic ignition switches, so I had to replace my old fireplace with gas logs that can be turned on even during electrical power outages. It's a way to keep the house (and water pipes) from freezing. Fortunately, we have a well-regulated public utility company here, called XCEL, that does an excellent job of managing our grid, an increasingly difficult task as a result of catastrophic climate change-- hotter summers, increasingly erratic cold spells, and more frequent, destructive hail storms. (Every house in my neighborhood has had roof repairs at least once in the past few years from hail damage.)

Champagne for me-- if, and when, justice finally catches up with Don Mar-a-Lago. I'll believe it when I see it.

Ah, yes... I had forgotten... I, too, remember trying to smoke the inside of a banana peel with my friends back in the day, with lousy results. The only thing worse was the time we tried to smoke some Rocky Mountain kinnikinnick, after someone told us that the Native Americans used it in their peace pipes. 😬

No airline engine parts on my lawn today, Kirk. Glad I don't live anywhere near Denver International Airport! As for electrical bills in Texas, the NYT has a headline this morning that reads like something out of the National Enquirer. His Lights Stayed on During Texas’ Storm. Now He Owes $16,752. His Lights Stayed on During Texas’ Storm. Now He Owes $16,752. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

I read somewhere that the quote about "breaking the CIA into a thousand pieces and casting it to the wind," was something that JFK told Senator Mike Mansfield. Can't remember the source.

Incidentally, to go further out on this tangent about Hurdy Gurdy Man, here's a tune from the pre-punk rock era played on an actual hurdy gurdy-- a Medieval string instrument played by rotating a circular bow.

Ron, Did you catch the Ed Orgeron interview on 60 Minutes last summer? It was a bit of a shocker when he mentioned that many of his football players at LSU had already tested positive for COVID.

Jimmy Page played a subdued lead guitar part on Donovan's original Sunshine Superman recording from way back when. (Nothing as Led Zeppelin-esque as the Hurdy Gurdy Man tracks.) I only know that because I found a YouTube clip of an Albert Hall concert featuring old Donovan and Jimmy Page with white hair.

My wife bought me a thing called an "Echo Star" speaker for Christmas, with a three month subscription to Amazon Music. I'm a Luddite who never really made the leap from vinyl and CDs to IPOD and streaming music, so this has been an interesting toy for me. It's like having a Juke Box where you can ask "Alexa" to play obscure old songs that you haven't listened to for over 50 years because you never bought the record or CD. Like, "Alexa, play Sukiyaki." 🤥 Anyway, one of my older sisters had a Donovan Leitch record back in the 60s that I used to listen to before she went off to college in the late 60s. So I asked Alexa to play, "Hurdy Gurdy Man." I was immediately impressed with the drumming and lead guitar playing on the recording. So I looked it up on Wikipedia. Donovan wanted Jimi Hendrix to record the song, but he ended up recording it in the spring of '68 with three studio musicians-- Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones-- shortly before they formed the band Led Zeppelin. In other words, this is, more or less, the first Led Zeppelin recording in history, sans Robert Plant.

The Daily Mail is a sensationalist rag with a penchant for posting bikini pics, (including one of Goldman Sachs "investor" Heidi Cruz in Cancun today) but I have to give them credit for publishing a lot of things that get filtered by the U.S. mainstream media. Texans see electric bills surge as high as $17,000 after storm knocked out power and caused 300-fold surge in demand: State also faces 'health catastrophe' with 14M struggling for clean water Home | Daily Mail Online

I'm truly sorry, Ron, to hear about what your family and many people in Texas (including my in-laws) are experiencing this week. I read that El Paso and parts of the Texas Panhandle that are on the national (Western) grid have not suffered from the statewide power outages. What really sticks in my craw is the way that Governor Greg Abbot, Rick Perry, John Cornyn, Fox News, and the oil industry have tried to blame the utility failures in Texas on windmills. What a crock. How many more historic failures of deregulated, laissez faire capitalism will it take for American citizens to finally realize that there is no "invisible hand" optimizing the public good, in the absence of rational governance? I believe in free market capitalism, but not without appropriate regulation in the public interest. Utilities are a classic example. (So is healthcare.)

Kirk, But wouldn't you agree that none of us will, ultimately, escape the ravages of catastrophic climate change? I'm thinking of California's (and Colorado's) historically horrible forest fires last summer. And now flyover country is under ice, in another strange latitudinal shift of the polar vortex. The situation reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, Fire and Ice. Fire and Ice by Robert Frost Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

Benjamin, I don't want to turn this thread into a 9/11 Truth thread, but let me mention a few critical points about the validity of 9/11 conspiracy theories. The Swiss historian Daniele Ganser correctly pointed out several years ago that, "All theories about 9/11 are conspiracy theories." No one believes that 9/11 was the work of a Lone Nut. A. The official Bush-Cheney-Zelikow 9/11 "conspiracy theory" about Osama Bin Laden has been definitively debunked by multiple lines of evidence. 1) The steel WTC skyscrapers (WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7) were demolished by pre-planted, steel-liquefying, concrete pulverizing explosives-- not trickling jet fuel. That is a scientific fact, well documented by the research of the M$M blacked-out Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth | WTC Twin Towers and Building 7 (ae911truth.org) 2) FBI Director Robert Mueller and Dick Cheney, themselves, told Congress and Zelikow's 9/11 Commission, respectively, that they had never found a scrap of evidence linking Osama Bin Laden to 9/11. Yet, blaming Bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" for 9/11 was Bush and Cheney's pretext for starting the Afghan and Iraq Wars! B. There is ample circumstantial (and largely suppressed) evidence that 9/11 was a joint military false flag op of the U.S., Saudi, and Israel governments. 1) Saudi Prince Bandar "Bush" and the Saudi government have been linked to the funding and training in the U.S. of the alleged 9/11 hijackers (Hanjour, Atta, et.al.) And we know that Louis Freeh's FBI and the Bush-Cheney administration repeatedly ignored multiple FBI field reports in 2001 warning about these Muslim pilots-in-training. 2) The FBI also quietly released the five Israeli Mossad agents arrested at the Holland Tunnel on 9/11 (after witnesses reported that they were filming and celebrating the WTC demolitions.) They were employed prior to 9/11 by a Mossad agent named Dominick Suter at a company called Urban Moving Systems, in Weehawken, New Jersey. (Suter fled to Israel after the five were arrested on 9/11.) But the entire affair was completely blacked out of the U.S. mainstream media for the past 19 and 1/2 years, other than a lone article in a Bergen County newspaper on 9/11! Thus, it appears that the U.S. and Israeli governments closely collaborated on the 9/11 op (along with the Saudi government.) 3) Cui bono? Who benefitted from the 9/11 op? The U.S. military-industrial complex, (including Halliburton, Blackwater, big oil) the Saudis, and Israel, who perceived Saddam Hussein (along with Iran and Syria) as dire existential threats.