Russ Baker's Latest Op-Ed About RFK, Jr.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Joe Bauer RFk Jr is trying to rebuild his father's coalition that included conservatives as well as anti-war liberals.

If all RFK Jr's campaign does is force Biden out of the race, then that is a victory for the country. we cant afford to have Harris or Trump become president. There are plenty of good democrats who could run if Biden steps down.   

[James DiEugenio]

7 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Steve Bannon was encouraging RFK Jr. to run?

Steve Bannon?

No brainer there.

Bannon wants a third party candidate to run that will divide the Democratic vote.

RFK Jr. wouldn't get one Republican vote...but he would draw away millions of Democratic party voters.

Kind of a reverse Ross Perot kind of thing.

Bobby repudiated this on Twitter. 

It was part of the MSM trying to kill his candidacy in the crib.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@James DiEugenio In the 21st century, we dont kill candidates anymore. Instead, they engage in character assassination. this is what they're doing to RFK Jr. 

I suggested to russ baker and @W. Niederhut that if they were truly open-minded people and legitimately interested in learning what RFK Jr's real views are without being filtered/altered by the DNC media hit teams, all they had to do was to listen to his 3-hour interview with Rogan. I'd geninuely be interested in their reaction to that interview.

@W. Niederhut RFK Jr. was right about mercury and vaccines.  He does make a big issue about the rise of the incidence of autism since 1989. I heard this might be from a change in how it is now diagnosed. If you have more information about this, please  share.  

[Matt Allison]

29 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

RFK Jr. wouldn't get one Republican vote...but he would draw away millions of Democratic party voters.

Outside of a few Dems on this board, all support for RFK Jr is coming from Republicans.

He won't draw away millions of Democratic voters, IMO. He will draw away a large number of potential Trump or DeSantis voters though.

He would have stood a better chance of winning a nomination if he'd run as a Republican.

[Matt Allison]

32 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

just like if the north vietnamese had left but they didnt and it tore our country apart.

No, actually, it's nothing like that at all. You know that.

There are no American troops in Ukraine.

The closest analogy to this is when the U.S. gave equipment to England after Hitler attacked them.

In fact, that is the perfect analogy to what is now occurring.

[Matt Allison]

18 minutes ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

character assassination. this is what they're doing to RFK Jr. 

That would mean people are lying about his views.

If that is the case, and you want to be helpful, you should point out exactly what stances of his are being reported on in error.

Or you can just realize that while some people like myself agree with him on a number of things, there are a number of things we don't agree with him on at all.

Running for President isn't for the meek-hearted, and every candidate eventually has to discuss stances on things they'd much rather avoid.

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Matt Allison listen to his three-hour interview on Rogan where he goes into his views in detail. I'd be interested in your reaction.

Your analogy to  England is fair but Ukraine is not England. and Vietnam started with advisors. then we got a president who felt he had to show his tougness and gave into the generals. Biden is looking more and more like LBJ. I'm hoping RFK Jr plays the role of Gene McCarthy. 

I would imagine that running for President must be extremely healing for RFK jr. He was with his father when he died. Must be a terrible wound to have lived with coupled with the thought that the real assassin was not pursued by his own government.  

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Matt Allison i dont know the politics of folks on this website. I'm a right-leaning independent though in my younger hears I was a dem who worked for McGovern, Brown, Hart and Gore.  I think RFK Jr has a chance to win the suburban voters and white middle class voters in the primaires who supported Trump in the general election. He is hoping to rebuiild his Dad's coalition. Nobody gave McCarthy or his father a chance in 68, McGovern in 72,  Clinton in 92 or (gulp) Trump in 16. That's the fun thing about campaigns.  Never know what will happen.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Honestly Larry,characterizing other people criticizing RFK Jr. is so "Fox". They started the "Trump Derangement Syndrone"

Neither of you has addressed a single point in  Baker's article about Rfk Jr.

Tell me Larry , do you think bringing these  quotes up from RFK Jr. in this Rogan interview that you are endorsing is an example of "RFK Jr. Derangement Syndrone?"

 

RFK Jr. says here the U.S. has spent 8 trillion on the Ukraine War so far?

This is just plain garbage! He pulled this figure completely out of his ass!

It's more like a couple hundred billion. Though I can understand some might think we should pay nothing at all.

It's been estimated that the entire cost of the War in Afghanistan over 20 years was 7 trillion!

This is like his figure that 300,000 Ukrainians have died and 30,000 Russians.

He also said here that the increase in food costs to Americans are being used to fund the war. These are 2 completely different phenomena.

Inflation was first  caused by natural factors but has been exacerbated by corporate greed mark ups. RfK Jr. and the Democrats should use the term "greedflation" and take them on, but this assertion is absurd!

 

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

@James DiEugenio In the 21st century, we dont kill candidates anymore. Instead, they engage in character assassination. this is what they're doing to RFK Jr. 

I suggested to russ baker and @W. Niederhut that if they were truly open-minded people and legitimately interested in learning what RFK Jr's real views are without being filtered/altered by the DNC media hit teams, all they had to do was to listen to his 3-hour interview with Rogan. I'd geninuely be interested in their reaction to that interview.

@W. Niederhut RFK Jr. was right about mercury and vaccines.  He does make a big issue about the rise of the incidence of autism since 1989. I heard this might be from a change in how it is now diagnosed. If you have more information about this, please  share.  

Gee, Larry, thanks for your expert Dr. Joe Rogan medical reference.  We should all get our medical opinions from talk radio.

I don't know how I ever got admitted to Harvard Medical School back in the day without such judicious medical advice from an NYU lawyer.

Did you and RFK, Jr. ever study microbiology, virology, or immunology during the course of your law school educations?

What you guys are doing is known in medical circles as giving bad medical advice outside of your area(s) of expertise.

As for RFK, Jr.'s idiotic claims about antidepressants and America's gun homicide epidemic, it's a subject that I understand in considerable detail, having spent a great deal of time during my 40-year psychiatric career treating mood disorders and, at times, evaluating and assessing homicide risks.

RFK, Jr.s mental health concepts seem to be based on Scientology disinformation.

All of the best multi-factorial analyses of our sky-high U.S. gun homicide rates have shown that the basic problem in America is the prevalence of guns.

RFK, Jr.'s solution is to assure his Fox News/Joe Rogan fan club that he, "will not take away their guns."  Terrific.

Meanwhile, since you persist in calling Putin's invasion of Ukraine a "proxy war," let me ask.

Do you also conceptualize the American Revolutionary War as a "proxy war" (e.g., between Britain and France?)

It, certainly, wasn't viewed as a "proxy war" to the American colonists who were fighting for independence!

As for your racist slur (above) about Vice President Harris, it's beneath contempt.

 

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Michael Griffith]

On 6/19/2023 at 10:04 PM, W. Niederhut said:

I've been a fan of investigative journalist Russ Baker ever since I read his great book, Family of Secrets, about the "untold history" of the Bush family.

He is a Deep State critic, and a JFKA Truther.

In recent years, Baker has run an independent news site called Who What Why.

He has recently published a series of op-eds about RFK, Jr.'s candidacy.

Since the JFKA forum has become a site for Ben Cole's daily threads about RFK, Jr.'s 2024 Presidential candidacy, here is this morning's Russ Baker op-ed.

If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Were President, How Safe Would We Be? - WhoWhatWhy

I think some of Baker's criticisms are valid and some are either wrong or exaggerated. 

My main concern about RFK Jr. is that he would be weak on national defense and would pressure Ukraine to make unreasonable and risky concessions to get Putin to halt his brutal invasion. I fear that China would see his election as a green light to attack Taiwan and to take control of key Asian shipping lanes.

Still, I would take RFK Jr. over Biden.

[Greg Doudna]

26 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think some of Baker's criticisms are valid and some are either wrong or exaggerated. 

My main concern about RFK Jr. is that he would be weak on national defense and would pressure Ukraine to make unreasonable and risky concessions to get Putin to halt his brutal invasion. I fear that China would see his election as a green light to attack Taiwan and to take control of key Asian shipping lanes.

Still, I would take RFK Jr. over Biden.

Since its basically inevitable that China will one day take over Taiwan, wouldn't it be less costly on all levels to simply announce a date Y some decades out ahead after which the US will no longer be defending Taiwan, and simultaneously (starting now) invite any Taiwanese who wish to do so immigration and resettlement assistance to the US? After date Y, any Taiwanese who chose to remain there would be on their own for defense alliances.

Do you really think a continuation of the current Ukraine war and a future US vs. China military showdown over a Chinese move into Taiwan, both threatening global centuries-long holocaust, is the better alternative?

What is the endgame to this?

Its either the superpowers respect each others' respective Monroe Doctrines (in which Taiwan is at the mercy of China, and Cuba and Latin American countries are at the mercy of the U.S.); or a permanent war footing with every year being another Russian Roulette roll of the dice (current status quo); or negotiated international arrangements in which disputes between nations become settled in courts rather than by war, and a unified multinational military command like the Star Trek "federation" idea.

What do you see as the endgame among those alternatives? Or do you not think that far ahead to endgame, focusing only on short-term horizon of this or next year?

Three alternative endgames:

• gangster-turf model with respect for other gangsters' turfs 
• gangster-turf model with takeover of other gangsters' turfs, biggest, meanest, baddest on the hill model aka warmongering model.
• gangsters negotiate toward a federation model and centralized military command along analogy of the American colonies' federalizing, with wired-in checks and balances and bills of rights, built upon that document almost all nations in the world have already signed as a benchmark, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It sounds like you are wired into the second of the three above? Am I right? What odds do you give that a hundred years of that will not go nuclear catastrophically on a world scale wiping out every grandchild's future? Maybe as high as all the way up to maybe fifty percent? What do you think? Better that than serious pursuit of the third option (which is not being seriously pursued)? 

[Michael Griffith]

21 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Since its basically inevitable that China will one day take over Taiwan, wouldn't it be less costly on all levels to simply announce a date Y some decades out ahead after which the US will no longer be defending Taiwan, and simultaneously (starting now) invite any Taiwanese who wish to do so immigration and resettlement assistance to the US? After date Y, any Taiwanese who chose to remain there would be on their own for defense alliances.

Do you really think a continuation of the current Ukraine war and a future US vs. China military showdown over a Chinese move into Taiwan, both threatening global centuries-long holocaust, is the better alternative?

What is the endgame to this?

Its either the superpowers respect each others' respective Monroe Doctrines (in which Taiwan is at the mercy of China, and Cuba and Latin American countries are at the mercy of the U.S.); or a permanent war footing with every year being another Russian Roulette roll of the dice (current status quo); or negotiated international arrangements in which disputes between nations become settled in courts rather than by war, and a unified multinational military command like the Star Trek "federation" idea.

What do you see as the endgame among those alternatives? Or do you not think that far ahead to endgame, focusing only on short-term horizon of this or next year?

Three alternative endgames:

• gangster-turf model with respect for other gangsters' turfs 
• gangster-turf model with takeover of other gangsters' turfs, biggest, meanest, baddest on the hill model aka warmongering model.
• gangsters negotiate toward a federation model and centralized military command along analogy of the American colonies' federalizing, with wired-in checks and balances and bills of rights, built upon that document almost all nations in the world have already signed as a benchmark, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It sounds like you are wired into the second of the three above? Am I right? What odds do you give that a hundred years of that will not go nuclear catastrophically on a world scale wiping out every grandchild's future? Maybe as high as all the way up to maybe fifty percent? What do you think? Better that than serious pursuit of the third option (which is not being seriously pursued)? 

This is exactly the kind of spineless, appeasing mindset that led Europe to stand by and do nothing about Hitler until it was too late. It is also the same tragically misguided mindset that led America to do nothing about Stalin until it was too late. 

No, it is not inevitable that China will take over Taiwan. As long as we remain strong enough to defend Taiwan, and as long as China is convinced that we will come to Taiwan's defense, China will not attack Taiwan. It is no more inevitable that China will take over Taiwan than it is that Russia will regain control of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. When dictators fear that the price of aggression will be too costly, they refrain from aggression.

Would you have abandoned Afghanistan to Soviet rule after the Soviets invaded? Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan, to their great credit, chose to send large amounts of weapons to the Afghani resistance, and the Afghanis, largely because of the arms we provided, were able to inflict so many casualties on Soviet forces and destroy so many Soviet planes, helicopters, and tanks that the Soviets decided to withdraw eight years after invading.

It is a miracle that Ukraine has done so amazingly well in fighting off the Russian invasion. Now, they just need enough offensive weapons to take the offensive to force the Russians to leave their country.

What is there to "negotiate" with Putin? He invaded a peaceful, liberal democracy, in violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia promised to respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine. Although I wish Biden had done more earlier on, I applaud his sending of massive arms shipments to Ukraine and his recent approval of fighter jets for Ukraine. 

Why is it that so many liberals seem incapable of learning the basic lesson of history that weakness and appeasement invite aggression and war? 

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Since its basically inevitable that China will one day take over Taiwan, wouldn't it be less costly on all levels to simply announce a date Y some decades out ahead after which the US will no longer be defending Taiwan, and simultaneously (starting now) invite any Taiwanese who wish to do so immigration and resettlement assistance to the US? After date Y, any Taiwanese who chose to remain there would be on their own for defense alliances.

Do you really think a continuation of the current Ukraine war and a future US vs. China military showdown over a Chinese move into Taiwan, both threatening global centuries-long holocaust, is the better alternative?

What is the endgame to this?

Its either the superpowers respect each others' respective Monroe Doctrines (in which Taiwan is at the mercy of China, and Cuba and Latin American countries are at the mercy of the U.S.); or a permanent war footing with every year being another Russian Roulette roll of the dice (current status quo); or negotiated international arrangements in which disputes between nations become settled in courts rather than by war, and a unified multinational military command like the Star Trek "federation" idea.

What do you see as the endgame among those alternatives? Or do you not think that far ahead to endgame, focusing only on short-term horizon of this or next year?

Three alternative endgames:

• gangster-turf model with respect for other gangsters' turfs 
• gangster-turf model with takeover of other gangsters' turfs, biggest, meanest, baddest on the hill model aka warmongering model.
• gangsters negotiate toward a federation model and centralized military command along analogy of the American colonies' federalizing, with wired-in checks and balances and bills of rights, built upon that document almost all nations in the world have already signed as a benchmark, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It sounds like you are wired into the second of the three above? Am I right? What odds do you give that a hundred years of that will not go nuclear catastrophically on a world scale wiping out every grandchild's future? Maybe as high as all the way up to maybe fifty percent? What do you think? Better that than serious pursuit of the third option (which is not being seriously pursued)? 

Yup, agree, though many agree with Michael generally. Amazing how many posters here are part of the mass formation supporters of permanent war. I’m glad you mentioned Monroe Doctrine, because it’s a better way to view the geopolitics of Russia and China. Your suggestion of a Taiwan solution is very clever and original. 
as for Russ Baker I’m completely in agreement with Jim D - Baker’s Bush book is best viewed as a limited hangout. I bought it years ago with great expectations, but was so completely disappointed. So it doesn’t surprise me that he is trashing RFK Jr. I’ve actually listened to hours of him on various podcasts and even with Elon Musk, and his positions, rather than being confusing and contradictory are in fact very nuanced. 
William - couldn’t help but notice the bashing of Cynthia McKinnon for blaming 9/11 on Zionists, and then attaching that to RFK Jr as if he stated it. And Jim D is right that RFK Jr set the record straight on Steve Bannon’s attempts to take credit for his candidacy. Not than anyone else here, or any of my non forum friends, noticed. 
As long as you allow ‘experts’ and talking heads to inform your views rather than going to the source and doing your own deep dive, you will be subject to the mass indoctrination that now surrounds us here in America and elsewhere. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by Paul Brancato

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Michael Griffith and others.

NATO created the Ukraine problem when it extended its membeship easterly to the Russian border. When James Baker negotiated the removal of nuclear weapons from Ukraine, he promised the Russians that NATO would not extend itself eastward. NATO broke that promise.  The Russians have always been paranoid about enemies to their west.  One does not have to be a Kremlin-expert to know what would happen if we poked the bear.

This situation is beginning to creep towards a Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushev wanted to send a message to JFK about the missiles surrounding his  country so he put missiles 90 miles away from us. There were several times where a miscalcuation could have triggered a nuclear war such as when our destroyers were depth charging a soviet submarine. their captains were authorzed to fire their missiles while under attack (i dont think we knew that at the time).a different captain on the submarine could have been provoked. If you want to read about other near-misses, the recent book "The Declassification Machine" has lots of scary examples.

Since NATO created this problem, the unfortunate solution has to be negotiating restoration of a buffer to assuage the Russians. That my friends would be eastern Ukraine. 

I know you raised Munich but the difference is now there is a European Union, not individual weakened countries like in 1939. They can respond to any further aggression. 

we have a record level of debt that is going to impact future generations of our citizens. We cant keep sending billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine. Indeed, i question if Ukraine has the political infrastructure to absorb this aid. They had corruption problems before and I dount those have all be weeded out. It is time to force Ukraine into a settlement in exchange for its entry into NATO. 

Query- why is NATO even necessary anymore. there is an EU.