I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

[Mark Lawson]

On 10/22/2018 at 2:37 PM, Joe Bauer said:

Regarding what L. Payette stated that:

( for ) "MUCH of the J.F.K. community ... the issue for them really isn't who killed J.F.K. This very large segment of JFK assassination research is essentially a religion driven by liberal ideology." [emphasis added - ML]

I really had to stop and think about this assessment.

L. Payette's postulated connection between religion and "liberal ideology," above, leaves me scratching my head as well.  In any event, your "I went back and recounted where my personal interest in the JFK assassination first began and how...." essay is excellent - and parallels my own background and experience with the subject.  Thank you for posting that, Joe.  ML

[Mark Lawson]

On 10/20/2018 at 5:47 PM, Cory Santos said:

Btw for the healthy non conspiracists, note that Cliff and I are most likely polar opposites politically.

Uhm, just who is it occupying which pole ("Who's on First?")?! <g>

In a separate message thread, Gene Kelly writes: "... I am frequently asked (as the infamous person in the family "into the JFK thing") what are the best books to read.  Joe McBride's book is on my short list...."

What I consider to be a balanced and concise (~200-page) treatment of JFK information available circa 2017 is Jeremy Bojczuk's 22 November 1963: A Brief Guide to the JFK Assassination (original copyright 2014).  Apropos of conspiracy research and this "I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak" message thread, Bojczuk writes:

"... It is irrational to invent a conspiracy to explain every apparent discrepancy in the evidence.  Not every such discrepancy even requires a specific explanation.  Eye-witnesses can be mistaken, technical data can be incompetently assembled and analyzed, and photographs can display unexpected visual effects.  In any complex set of evidence, there are likely to be elements that do not match.  The desire to explain everything, whether to find an elusive smoking gun or to stake one's claim to a particular area of study, is a harmful characteristic of much JFK assassination research.  It has led to cult-like behavior, in which anyone who fails to agree with every aspect of a particular explanation is damned as a heretic...." (p. 166) FWIIW, ML

[Cliff Varnell]

30 minutes ago, Mark Lawson said:

Uhm, just who is it occupying which pole ("Who's on First?")?! <g>

I stand at the left pole, Cory stands at the right.

But that has no impact on my study of the JFKA.

As anyone familiar with the totality of my posts knows (there are tens upon tens of you!) my #1 suspect at the top of the conspiracy is "liberal Democrat" W. Averell Harriman.

Quote

In a separate message thread, Gene Kelly writes: "... I am frequently asked (as the infamous person in the family "into the JFK thing") what are the best books to read.  Joe McBride's book is on my short list...."

What I consider to be a balanced and concise (~200-page) treatment of JFK information available circa 2017 is Jeremy Bojczuk's 22 November 1963: A Brief Guide to the JFK Assassination (original copyright 2014).  Apropos of conspiracy research and this "I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak" message thread, Bojczuk writes:

"... It is irrational to invent a conspiracy to explain every apparent discrepancy in the evidence.  Not every such discrepancy even requires a specific explanation.  Eye-witnesses can be mistaken, technical data can be incompetently assembled and analyzed, and photographs can display unexpected visual effects.  In any complex set of evidence, there are likely to be elements that do not match.  The desire to explain everything, whether to find an elusive smoking gun or to stake one's claim to a particular area of study, is a harmful characteristic of much JFK assassination research.  It has led to cult-like behavior, in which anyone who fails to agree with every aspect of a particular explanation is damned as a heretic...." (p. 166) FWIIW, ML

So when the consensus witness testimony matches the verified medical documents and the bullet holes in the clothes, and the only evidence to the contrary is improperly prepared medical documents -- we're supposed to throw up our hands and say the issue is unsettled?

Again, for anyone who doubts JFK was shot in the back at T3 please demonstrate how you get 2+" of shirt and 2+" of jacket to elevate entirely above the top of the back without pushing up on the jacket collar just above the base of the neck -- show us.

Put up or at long last STFU.

Edited October 24, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Mark Lawson]

 

2 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

I take the left pole, Cory takes the right.

<grin>

3 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

... when the consensus witness testimony matches the verified medical documents and the bullet holes in the clothes, and the only evidence to the contrary is improperly prepared medical documents -- we're supposed to throw up our hands and say the issue is unsettled?

Excellent point, Cliff - and thanks for the reply.  ML

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Put up or at long last STFU.

Or you could just watch this, beginning at the about 39-minute mark:  http://www.veoh.com/watch/v105172340dKhaPjXr

Yes, I know:  The bullet in this recreation emerged below the actual throat wound and bounced off "Connally's" thigh rather than penetrating it.  Still, I found this recreation pretty astonishing.

Yes, I know:  Conspiracy theorists immediately declared the entire documentary to be trash, a sham, yada yada.  Still, I found the recreation pretty astonishing.

Yes, I know:  It is alleged that the shirt/coat experiment had to be repeated "hundreds" of times to work.  I have found no verification of this - but even if true, the fact is that something we're being told is IMPOSSIBLE! is in fact not impossible.  Evidence we're being told is IRREFUTABLE! is in fact not irrefutable.  Moreover, what occurs in the video is precisely what I observed on my own body, with my own shirt and coat, in my own bedroom the first time I tried it.  You don't need a video of me when you have this.

Pretty easy to see why Cliff isn't interested in having his IRREFUTABLE PRIMA FACIE! case (oxymoron though it may be) put to independent testing or submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.  The actual "prima facie" case has been accepted by every panel that has reviewed the assassination.  The burden to show otherwise is on YOU.

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, François Carlier said:

The Harper fragment is parietal bone, not occipital.

How do you know the Harper fragment was parietal? It disappeared, remember?

All we have now is a picture. And we have no idea if the picture is of the Harper fragment or is a fake. Just because someone says it is the Harper fragment doesn't make it so.

Multiple doctors saw the fragment itself and identified it as being occipital.

 

18 hours ago, François Carlier said:

And the Zapruder film is genuine and has never been faked by anyone.
That's the truth, pure and simple.

You're just assuming the Zapruder film hasn't been altered.

So yet again I've explained how the photos could be wrong, but you haven't bothered to answer my question. Tell me how it's possible that more than twenty witnesses saw a rear blowout wound if there was none? Most of them being medical professionals, BTW.  Was it mass hallucination?

 

[Guest]

Here is JFK's shirt showing the Charles Dillon label, so I stand corrected by Mr. Fashion Police on this sartorial issue.  However, the shirt pretty well speaks for itself.  I myself noted that Brooks Brothers had introduced a more form-flattering suit for JFK, but the reality is that no clothing in 1963 was as form-fitting as Mr. Fashion Police would now like to pretend.  There are abundant photos of JFK's jacket bunching up, sometimes to a remarkable degree (see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bunched.htm), which is why Mr. Fashion Police is so insistent that JFK's shirt had to be as have been as tight as a wet suit.  As the photo posted by DVP shows, this simply wasn't the case.  One of the doctors at Parkland commented on what an elaborate brace JFK was wearing and the difficulty in cutting it off, which further cuts against the notion that his shirt was a body-hugger.  With that, I rest my case insofar as the Not So Irrefutable Solution is concerned.  We will never know the precise orientation of clothing and bodies 55 years after the fact, but it's just silly to keep harping on something like this as IMPOSSIBLE! and IRREFUTABLE!

Edited December 26, 2018 by Guest

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

Or you could just watch this, beginning at the about 39-minute mark:  http://www.veoh.com/watch/v105172340dKhaPjXr

 

LOL, oh my gosh!

I urge everybody to watch the video segment Lance has posted here... it's just a minute or so long.

In an experiment supposedly demonstrating the true location of the back wound, a guy JFK's size is wearing a dress shirt and a piece of metal is attached at the correct hole location on the shirt. While wearing a jacket over the shirt, an x-ray is taken, and indeed it shows that the metal piece is at the T2/T3 location. This is with the guy standing.

Next the guy sits down and puts his right arm up the way Kennedy's was when he was shot in the back. This time the x-ray shows that the metal piece is located at THE SAME HEIGHT AS THE MAN'S COLLAR!  Right at the bottom edge of the collar.

So the metal piece supposedly moved up by 4". Ha! 

Unbelievable. A complete farce.

P.S. When I said that the metal piece was attached to the correct location on the shirt, I was repeating what the narrator said, taking him at his word. He said the hole was 4 inches below the shirt collar. But wasn't it actually a little more than 5 inches below? If so, then this video also suffers from garbage-in-garbage-out fraud!

P.S.S. Can anyone honestly believe that the hole could possibly rise all the way up to the bottom edge of the collar? The photo below is useful in trying to imagine that.

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Mark Lawson said:

It has led to cult-like behavior, in which anyone who fails to agree with every aspect of a particular explanation is damned as a heretic...."

And "cult-like behavior" is precisely what I was talking about that seemed to have puzzled you.  This "cult-like behavior" doesn't just occur within the JFK conspiracy community.  It's all around us.  What should be a subject for genuine research and reasoned discussion becomes a dogmatic belief system to be defended with the zeal of a religious fanatic.  Every conspiracy theory that achieves any sort of prominence has its own counterparts to a religion's high priests, elders, holy books, statement of faith, flock of true believers, heretics and all the rest (Lone Nutters, of course, serve as substitutes for Satan and his minions).  There are certainly those who maintain a balanced perspective while provisionally holding to a particular conspiracy theory, but the reality is that the conspiracy community is rife with uncritical true believers.  In the case of JFK, my observation has been that much of this is driven by a left-wing ideology.  JFK was and is a liberal icon, and my observation is there seems to be a psychological need on the part of many people to invest his death with deep meaning; to read events since 1963 back into the assassination; and to explain the fact that America in 2018 is not the liberal utopia they believe it would have become if he had lived by an assumption that the same dark forces responsible for the assassination are still in control.  I certainly didn't suggest that everyone in the conspiracy community does this or that it is pathological.  Joe Bauer insists the profile doesn't fit him, and I take him at his word.  It didn't fit me either when I was a gee-whiz conspiracy believer.  I merely suggested that this is why much more plausible and smaller-scale conspiracies don't generate the same sort of enthusiasm as they seemingly should - they aren't big enough and grand enough to satisfy the psychological needs of those I've described.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Guest

[Sandy Larsen]

54 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

There are abundant photos of JFK's jacket bunching up, sometimes to a remarkable degree (see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bunched.htm),

 

A jacket can bunch up considerably when a person raises his arm. But not a shirt. So there's no point in showing multiple instances of jackets bunching up.

The difference is that suit jackets have a thicker construction. Shoulder pads, for example. In contrast dress shirts are thin and have virtually no "body."

Why don't you show us instances of a shirt bunching up due to the person raising his arm?

 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

LOL, oh my gosh!

I urge everybody to watch the video segment Lance has posted here... it's just a minute or so long.

In an experiment supposedly demonstrating the true location of the back wound, a guy JFK's size is wearing a dress shirt and a piece of metal is attached at the correct hole location on the shirt. While wearing a jacket over the shirt, an x-ray is taken, and indeed it shows that the metal piece is at the T2/T3 location. This is with the guy standing.

Next the guy sits down and puts his right arm up the way Kennedy's was when he was shot in the back. This time the x-ray shows that the metal piece is located at THE SAME HEIGHT AS THE MAN'S COLLAR!  Right at the bottom edge of the collar.

So the metal piece supposedly moved up by 4". Ha! 

Unbelievable. A complete farce.

P.S. When I said that the metal piece was attached to the correct location on the shirt, I was repeating what the narrator said, taking him at his word. He said the hole was 4 inches below the shirt collar. But wasn't it actually a little more than 5 inches below? If so, then this video also suffers from garbage-in-garbage-out fraud!

P.S.S. Can anyone honestly believe that the hole could possibly rise all the way up to the bottom edge of the collar? The photo below is useful in trying to imagine that.

 

Ah, yes, the "complete farce," "garbage-in-garbage-out fraud," "can anyone honestly believe?" defense.  The photo you posted won't open for me, but I assume it shows that what is demonstrated in the documentary is IMPOSSIBLE!!!  The documentary as a whole shows what it shows.  Viewers can decide for themselves what weight should be attached to it.  It does show that Cliff's persistent shrieks of IMPOSSIBLE! and IRREFUTABLE! are nothing more than bluster.  The fact is, we don't actually know the precise orientation of JFK's body and arms or the precise location of the wound.  We don't know precisely what "had to" occur for the SBT to work or precisely what did occur.  The "complete farce," "garbage-in-garbage-out fraud," "can anyone honestly believe?" defense that Cliff and his minions immediately resort to does not, it seems to me, really advance their position.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Why don't you show us instances of a shirt bunching up due to the person raising his arm?

 

Gee, last time I checked you were a Harvey and Lee apologist - and before that, a Prayer Man apologist.  Are you now a Cliff's Irrefutable Solution apologist as well, or are you just kind of a roving Any-Theory-As-Long-As-Its-A-Conspiracy apologist?

Attempting to show a rabid conspiracy theorist anything is like trying to demonstrate a spherical earth to a flat-earther.  There is a "conspiracy answer" for everything.  I simply say again:  If you're so confident about what you say, take the issue to a couple of independent laboratories or attempt to publish a paper in a serious, peer-reviewed medical, forensic or ballistic journal.  Ain't gonna happen, is it?  Just as with your Harvey and Lee nonsense, everything SPEAKS FOR ITSELF! ANYONE BUT AN IDIOT CAN SEE IT!  THE BURDEN IS ON YOU TO DISPROVE IT! WE DON'T NEED TO LOOK ANY DEEPER!  Translation:  We're afraid to look any deeper.

[Sandy Larsen]

20 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

The "complete farce," "garbage-in-garbage-out fraud," "can anyone honestly believe?

Any person with a lick of common sense and no axe to grind would agree with the things I wrote, as quoted here by Lance.

(The GIGO part of what I said is predicated on my recollection that the hole was more like 5" below the collar, not 4". If I'm remembering wrong, then my GIGO claim doesn't apply.)

 

[David Von Pein]

4 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

(The GIGO part of what I said is predicated on my recollection that the hole was more like 5" below the collar, not 4". If I'm remembering wrong, then my GIGO claim doesn't apply.)

ROBERT FRAZIER -- "There was located on the rear of the coat 5 3/8 inches below the top of the collar, a hole, further located as 1 3/4 inches to the right of the midline or the seam down the center of the coat; all of these being as you look at the back of the coat."

ROBERT FRAZIER -- "I found on the back of the shirt a hole, 5 3/4 inches below the top of the collar, and as you look at the back of the shirt 1 1/8 inch to the right of the midline of the shirt, which is this hole I am indicating."

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Any person with a lick of common sense and no axe to grind would agree with the things I wrote, as quoted here by Lance.

(The GIGO part of what I said is predicated on my recollection that the hole was more like 5" below the collar, not 4". If I'm remembering wrong, then my GIGO claim doesn't apply.)

 

The "Any person with a lick of common sense" defense!  This is getting serious.