W. Niederhut

The outrageous behavior that Trump gets away with never ceases to amaze me. He's like a petulant, conduct-disordered 5th grader who constantly breaks the rules and tests limits. Two anecdotes about Trump's childhood (and adult) character pathology come to mind. According to his former elementary school classmates, young Donald would never admit that he had done something wrong-- even when it was painfully obvious to his teachers and peers. And he once punched his music teacher in the eye, after shouting that his music teacher, "(didn't) know anything about music." Very similar, in a sense, to Trump's latest inaccurate, insulting attacks on Judge Engoron.

Indeed, Leslie, and it is also a fact that RFK, Jr. has assiduously avoided criticizing Donald Trump-- the sociopath who not only perpetrated the Big Lie that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen, but conspired to organize slates of False Electors in several swing states, and incited a violent mob to obstruct the Congressional certification of Biden's election on January 6th. Those Trump crimes against American democracy are serious and unprecedented. No meritorious candidate for public office in the U.S.-- including RFK, Jr.-- should deny or remain silent about Trump's historic crimes. Our democracy and Constitution are betrayed by such silence. And, shockingly, a high percentage of Trump's fans today still believe his Big Lie about the 2020 election, and also believe that violence against the U.S. government is justified. It's a proto-fascist American crisis. Coincidentally, the biggest RFK, Jr. booster on this forum is a guy who has repeatedly denied that Trump engaged in a seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, while calling Trump's violent J6 mob attack on Congress a "scrum."

Steve, Back in the day, I studied the history of religion in America with Brown University Professor William McGloughlin-- a protege of the late, great Harvard historian, Perry Miller. One thing that many people don't know is that the (liberal) American Baptist church in America --founded in Providence, Rhode Island by Roger Williams in the early 17th century-- split with the "Southern Baptist" church over the issue of slavery in the 1850s. In effect, the American Baptists were Abolitionists. (The Ante-Bellum rift between American Baptists and pro-slavery Southern Baptists persists even today.) Roger Williams had actually abolished slavery in Rhode Island in his original 17th century charter for the colony, and he was also the first American colonial leader to establish freedom of religion and separation of church and state in his colony-- more than a century before Jefferson and the Bill of Rights. (The oldest synagogue in the U.S. is the Tauro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.) Roger Williams-- a Cambridge grad and friend of the English poet John Milton-- was also the first person to translate Biblical scriptures into a Native American language-- Narragansett-- and to publish a Native American dictionary in English, his 1643 opus, A Key Into the Language of America. A Key into the Language of America - Wikipedia Roger Williams believed in respect for Native Americans, and the acquisition of Native American land only through legitimate and fair purchase. He was well liked and respected by Native Americans in Rhode Island. I mention these things partly because I was raised in the (liberal) American Baptist church and graduated from Brown, (where the graduation ceremonies are still held in Roger Williams' First Baptist Church in Providence.) So, needless to say, I always cringe when I hear people associate Protestantism with slavery, racism, Native American genocide, and Manifest Destiny. Sadly, that association is accurate for many "Evangelical" Protestants in U.S. history, and today. But there is also a "liberal Protestant" tradition in the U.S., which, among other things, played an important role in the 19th century Abolitionist movement to free the slaves. When I was a teenager, I also participated in a successful movement in which the American Baptist Church in the U.S. divested itself of all stocks in the armaments industry during the Vietnam War. We were "libs."

Honestly, I agree with the oracle, David Axelrod, on this one. LBJ didn't announce that he wouldn't seek re-election until late March of 1968, so there is still ample time for Biden to retire and allow some younger Democratic leaders to compete for the nomination.

Interesting information from your Lt. Col. friend, Pat. In his memoir, The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush's former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld had asked him as early of January of 2001 about contingency plans for funding a U.S. invasion of Iraq. And we know that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the Neocons involved in the Project for a New American Century had proposed invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein prior to Dubya's GOP nomination in 2000. We also know that General Wesley Clark was briefed in late September of 2001--shortly after 9/11-- about the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Pentagon agenda of invading Iraq. Dubya's official Iraq invasion public relations committee was chaired by Karl Rove, beginning in 2002-- information that emerged during the grand jury investigation of Rove and Scooter Libby's involvement in the Valerie Plame affair. The committee's job was to sell the American public on the necessity of invading Iraq.

Sandy, As I said a few weeks ago, these redundant, "RFK. Jr.-Will-Release-the-Records," threads remind me of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah. I have no objection to forum members beating a dead horse, but how many times do people need to repeat the same trope? It's an interesting topic, but the repetition starts to sound like a political campaign jingle. For single-issue voters, the JFK records may be a centrally important issue but, in reality, Presidential elections determine multiple, important policy issues-- Supreme Court appointments, tax policy, healthcare policy, climate change policy, EPA enforcement, public health policies, etc.

The more I have studied the history of Hamas and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lately, the more hopeless I feel. There doesn't seem to be a feasible solution to this historic conflict. Fortunately, I've been able sit out in the garden this weekend, enjoying the unusually warm weather, and listening to great songs by Phish-- including, "Everything's Right, So Just Hold Tight." Any Phish-heads around here? What an incredibly live band. Their virtuosity and preference for live, improvisational concert jams reminds me of Jerry Garcia and the Dead. Here's Phish last February, in concert on the "Mayan Riviera." (The only large concert I ever attended on the Mayan Riviera was at Xcaret.)

RFK Jr. Would Halt Infectious Disease Research November 4, 2023 at 10:44 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a conference that if he is elected president, he would have the National Institutes of Health move away from covering infectious disease outbreaks like Covid and measles, NBC News reports. Said Kennedy: “I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all. Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”

It's a highly controversial subject but, honestly, I agree with Congresswoman Tlaib's criticism of Biden. Biden and Blinken should have taken a stronger stand against Netanyahu's massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. More than 3,700 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza during the past month. And Biden and Blinken vetoed the UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Satellite data now shows more than 1,000 bomb craters in Gaza-- associated with the widescale demolition of residential neighborhoods, schools, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals. Israel has even bombed south Gaza, after telling the Palestinians to evacuate to the south. There have also been widespread, homicidal attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. Basically, it has been open season on Palestinian civilians since October 7th-- accompanied by public calls for wiping out the Palestinians by Bibi Netanyahu, an Israeli MP, and some Orthodox rabbis.

I've always envied you baseball fans. Denver didn't have a major league baseball team when I was a lad, and my father, brother, and I never watched or played baseball-- other than some informal, neighborhood games in the local park. The detailed, encyclopedic knowledge of the sport by many American baseball fans-- including guys on this forum-- has always amazed me. "So-and-so injured his elbow in the bottom of the 7th inning in 1963," etc. It's America's game, but it was never my game.

Congratulations to your intrepid Texas Rangers, Ron... They were 11-0 on the road in the post-season. Obviously, beating the reigning world champion Astros was the hard part. Now they should host a celebration wth those famous old Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call-- aka Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

Pope Francis is walking in St. Augustine's footsteps here, in describing the proper relationship between Catholic theology, comparative religion, and scientific knowledge of the natural world. In the 4th century A.D., Augustine had advised Catholic theologians to eschew assertions contradicted by science, to avoid "scandalizing the faithful" by their ignorance. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church ignored St. Augustine's sage advice for centuries. This historical issue was discussed in detail by Brown University biology Professor Kenneth Miller in his outstanding book, Finding Darwin's God. Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (P.S.): Miller, Kenneth R.: 9780061233500: Amazon.com: Books

William Saletan has long been one of my favorite op-ed journalists in the U.S. Republicans Are Rationalizing Cruelty Toward Gaza November 1, 2023 at 11:00 am EDT By Taegan Goddard William Saletan: “I’m Jewish. I believe in Israel, and I’m aghast at what Hamas did to so many innocent people on October 7. I strongly support the use of force against the killers.” “But as thousands of innocent people die in Gaza—not as targets, but as victims of relentless bombardment in a war they didn’t choose—I can’t accept the bigotry, zealotry, and callousness these candidates are espousing. They aren’t standing up against ruthless religious violence. They’re promoting it.”

I'm re-printing this for non-subscribers. Thanks to the CIA, we might never know the full truth behind JFK’s assassination By Jefferson Morley October 31, 2023 Jefferson Morley is vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and editor of the JFK Facts newsletter on Substack. What does the Central Intelligence Agency know about the reasons for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that it won’t tell the American public? As the 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination approaches, the CIA has gained control of the historical record. As a result, the most important Kennedy files might never be seen, leaving unanswered the question of the exact nature of the agency’s interest in Lee Harvey Oswald. Was the CIA merely incompetent in dealing with the itinerant Marxist Marine, or did it use him for some still-classified purpose? Or is there another explanation for its unwillingness to share all it knows? The clandestine service is no longer under any obligation to answer such questions. When it comes to the Kennedy assassination files, the CIA has won the battle over full disclosure. The 1992 JFK Records Act was supposed to lay ongoing questions to rest by mandating the release of all government files related to the shooting of the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The law, passed by a unanimous Congress (including then-Sen. Joe Biden), created an independent civilian review panel that declassified almost 320,000 documents starting in the 1990s. Although these documents did not yield proof of an assassination conspiracy, they detailed the CIA’s monitoring of Oswald between 1959 and 1963. They revealed that the CIA station in Miami did not believe Oswald acted alone. And they generated sworn testimony about Kennedy’s autopsy, all of which undermined the official story that a “lone gunman” killed the president for reasons known only to himself. The released records showed that former CIA director Allen Dulles compromised the Warren Commission’s investigation by shielding the agency’s operations around Oswald from scrutiny. Counterintelligence chief James Angleton sought to “wait out” the commission by denying it key cables about the alleged assassin. And then-Deputy Director Richard Helms testified, falsely, that the agency had only “minimal information” about Oswald before Kennedy was killed. In fact, the pre-assassination Oswald file, partially released in the 1990s — but not fully declassified until this past April — confirmed that the CIA’s information on him was extensive, detailed and up to date. The agency opened a file on Oswald in November 1959 after he traveled to Moscow and declared his allegiance to communism. Counterintelligence officers intercepted and read his mail. When he moved to Minsk, in present-day Belarus, and married a Russian woman, they collected reports on his movements from the FBI, the State Department and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Upon Oswald’s return to the United States in June 1962, the CIA’s interest deepened. The agency funded his enemies among anti-Castro Cuban student exiles. In September 1963, top officials at the agency’s headquarters in Langley were notified of Oswald’s arrest for fighting with CIA-sponsored students in New Orleans who had generated propaganda about the ex-defector’s pro-Castro activities. CIA surveillance teams in Mexico City took pictures of the Soviet Embassy, which Oswald visited in October 1963. By the time Kennedy left for Texas on Nov. 21, all this information was known to a small group of senior officers at Langley. The agency has acknowledged that it engaged in a Kennedy coverup. In a partially declassified 2013 journal article, in-house historian David Robarge conceded that the CIA had concealed relevant information from the Warren Commission. Robarge insisted, however, that the deception should not call into question the “lone gunman” theory. In his Orwellian formulation, the CIA had merely engaged in a “benign coverup.” In 2017, President Donald Trump let the JFK Records Act’s 25-year deadline for full disclosure slip. While proclaiming that the Kennedy files had been released, Trump acquiesced to the agency’s demand to keep portions of more than 11,000 documents secret. In 2021, President Biden did the same, while giving the CIA another year to release additional information. The National Archives now says that all Kennedy assassination files have been released — with the exception of no fewer than 3,648 documents that still contain redactions. No one knows when the American people will see these records, if ever. A CIA-authored Transparency Plan, approved by Biden in June, effectively guts the records act by eliminating presidential oversight, the only lever that has ever compelled the agency to obey the law. The CIA has repeatedly concealed aspects of the Kennedy story. For example, in a June 1961 memo, presidential adviser Arthur Schlesinger made the case for reorganizing the clandestine service. Sixty-two years later, the agency asserts that this ancient policy proposal is a threat to national security today. The CIA has redacted more than a page of Schlesinger’s memo — and Republican and Democratic presidents have approved the censorship. That’s real power. The agency has dodged accountability and fortified its position in the capital’s constellation of power. But this has come at a cost. As the plausibility of the “lone gunman” theory has deteriorated, suspicions of the CIA have increased. We don’t know whether the agency is maneuvering simply to prevent revelations of its own incompetence, or whether it’s concealing an undisclosed psychological warfare program to manipulate Oswald and discredit pro-Castro forces, or whether it’s merely acting out of some bureaucratic instinct for secrecy that is its own justification. But as long as it fails to practice full disclosure on this story, public suspicion will endure. As former president Harry S. Truman wrote in The Post one month after Kennedy’s assassination, the agency’s actions have turned it into “a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue.” And they contribute to a broader mistrust of the federal government, which has grown steadily since the Warren Commission report was published in 1964. Doubts about the “lone gunman” theory have mutated into distrust of all aspects of government activity, including public health, voting and elections. After 60 years, nothing does more to encourage the notion that a domestic “deep state” operates beyond the reach of democratic institutions than the CIA’s continuing stonewalling on the Kennedy assassination. Its “victory” on the full release of the assassination files is a loss for democratic self-government.

Let me guess. Will our forum's favorite, Orwellian propagandist, Michael Griffith, also claim that the CIA and their mainstream media propagandists didn't work to systematically smear Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone? Geez... It's all about the CIA and the military-industrial complex "controlling the past"-- the false historical narrative. Michael Griffith reminds me of those government-employed propagandists in the novel, 1984, who spent their work days writing false copy about historical and current events in order to manipulate the masses. This isn't rocket science. If the American public learned the truth about history-- e.g., about JFK's murder, and PNAC's 9/11 "New Pearl Harbor" op-- would the military-industrial complex still be able to control the present and future? Doubtful. As GHWB said, toward the end of his life, "If the American people knew what we Bushes had done, they'd lynch us in the streets." And the Leo Straussian Neocons (Wolfowitz, Feith, et.al.) always believed that the ignorant American masses had to be manipulated to support PNAC's expensive military objectives. The same thing was true in the case of killing JFK in order to escalate the U.S. wars against communism in Vietnam, Indonesia, and throughout the Third World. Griffith is working as a verbose salesman for U.S. military-industrial mythology.

Netanyahu declares a Holy War of Annihilation on Civilians of Gaza, Citing the Bible (juancole.com)

Ron, My wife's cousin from Dallas was so sick of the heat wave in Texas this year that he and some friends came up to Estes Park, Colorado on Thursday, to spend a few days at my father-in-law's cabin. Then it snowed last night, and it will get down to 14 F tonight, with a high of 23 F today. Life isn't fair.

Addendum: It looks like my response (above) to Sandy's question got buried at the bottom of the page within one minute of my post. So, I want to remind people that we have a tree and a forest here. Griffith's Tehran conference claim is his latest tree. The forest is the 30 year U.S. government defamation campaign to create a false impression that Prouty was not an honest, credible witness of U.S. Deep State history.

Sandy, What evidence has Michael Griffith presented to support his claim that Chiang Kai-shek and/or his delegates did not meet, secretly, with Stalin in Tehran? On the contrary, Prouty, himself, flew the delegates to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar. Griffith's timeline has been debunked, in which he claimed that Chiang and his delegates could not have met with Stalin en route to Karachi from Cairo. Meanwhile, the larger picture in this Tehran debate is that Griffith has posted a redundant series of false, defamatory claims about Prouty on the forum during the past year-- apparently, for the purpose of promoting the false impression that Prouty was not an honest, rational witness of CIA and U.S. military ops. This 30 year-old Prouty defamation campaign is similar to the well known U.S. government defamation campaigns attacking the credibility of Prouty's associates, Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone.

So, Dubya strutted out to the mound, smiling, tonight and threw the first pitch into the dirt in front of the catcher. Then it hit me. Things have been so bad in the Trump era that, despite all of Dubya'sserious policy mistakes-- tax cuts, Afghanistan, and Iraq-- he's an affable model of mental stability compared to Donald Trump. I read somewhere that, after listening to Trump's Inaugural Address in 2016, Dubya turned to someone sitting next to him and said, "That was some weird sh*t right there."

Thanks, Don, Jr. I needed a laugh today. It all makes sense now... 🤥 Tucker Carlson and Fox were fluffing RFK, Jr. as a "Democratic plant" to undermine Trump. Don Jr. Says RFK Jr. Is a ‘Democrat Plant’ October 27, 2023 at 11:09 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 91 Comments Donald Trump Jr. told Iowans while volunteering for his father’s 2024 presidential campaign that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy is just a Democrat ploy, The Messenger reports. Said Trump Jr.: “It legitimately always felt like it was a Democrat plant to hurt the Trump thing. He wouldn’t be there if the Democrats didn’t want him.”

77 year-old George W. Bush will be throwing the first pitch in Game One of the World Series tomorrow in Arlington. Dubya sold his share in the Texas Rangers franchise prior to the 2000 Presidential primaries. Rangers pick historic figure to throw out first pitch in Game 1 of World Series (msn.com)

I posted the archived NYT cable indicating that Chiang Kai-shek had been officially invited, in Cairo, to meet with Stalin in Tehran. I also debunked your timeline claiming that Chiang and his delegates could not have conferred with Stalin in Tehran, en route to Karachi. Your other defamatory claims about Prouty have been repeatedly debunked during the past year, after you joined this forum. But at least Greg Kooyman is cheering for your bunk, while dodging Paul Brancato's question.

Question for the mods. If a guy like Michael Griffith keeps repeating debunked claims, ad infinitum, is there a point where the Education Forum finally says, "No mas?" Griffith has now posted pages and pages of redundant, defamatory McAdams-type disinformazia about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty and JFK's 1963 Vietnam policy decisions. Whenever the subject, or honest questions, arise, Griffith simply re-posts the same debunked McAdams talking points. It's not a debate. It's like trying to converse with a television broadcasting the same Swift Boat Vet ads.

Geez...what a pathetic choice for Speaker-- hardly less objectionable than Jim Jordan and the other Trump J6 co-conspirators. Perhaps even worse. As for his theology, does this MAGA yahoo think that God put Hitler and Mussolini in office?