Gil Jesus Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 A look at the atmosphere in the city of Dallas leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/nut-country.mp4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 (edited) 4 hours ago, Gil Jesus said: A look at the atmosphere in the city of Dallas leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/nut-country.mp4 As usual that is very nice, Gil Jesus. But the question I have for you (and everyone else) is: if Dallas was such a well-known, notorious cauldron of right wing radicalism: WHY WAS LYNDON JOHNSON IMMEDIATELY BLAMING THE DEATH OF JFK ON A COMMUNIST? https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/search?q=kilduff Was this some sort of a deflection by LBJ? And weren't LBJ's good friends H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, Sr. and especially D.H. Byrd the kind of super wealthy, hard right wing Dallas businessmen who would CELEBRATE the death of John Kennedy? And wasn't JFK being slurred as some sort of a "communist" by these types of people? So, how does Lyndon Johnson, with his legendary political ken, immediately deduce with his paranormal abilities that it was a “communist conspiracy” within mere minutes (or seconds) of his finding out (1:20PM) that JFK was deceased and a full 30 minutes before patsy Oswald was arrested at 1:50PM in the Texas Theater? Didn’t Lyndon Johnson himself have a nasty experience with Dallas’s Mink Coat Mob in the 1960 presidential campaign? A mere one month before Adlai Stevenson had been assaulted by a crowd of right wing radicals in Dallas: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,875296,00.html Because of that Adlai Stevenson had in fact personally implored JFK to not go to Dallas. Not only that, a Dallas citizen Nelle Doyle had written JFK and begged him not to come to Dallas because of fears over his safety in the far right Dallas atmosphere. Go to the 11 minute mark of this very important Mac Kilduff interview (11-22-91): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSpw9w5GGYk Mac Kilduff was filling in for JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger who did not make the Dallas trip. LBJ left Parkland Hospital at 1:26 PM. U.S. intelligence agent and patsy Oswald not arrested until 1:50PM. LBJ’s comments to Kilduff were made sometime just after 1:20PM when he found out JFK was deceased. 1991 MAC KILDUFF INTERVIEW: MAC KILDUFF: It was interesting to note in retrospect what his reaction was, Bob. You will recall that Adlai Stevenson had been to Texas a few weeks before that. And we had the far political right was very active in General Walker … and Adlai Stevenson had been belted with rotten eggs in Dallas. So we all though this was some sort of you know right, far right activity. Lyndon Johnson was very cool. He said, “Well now Mac [he said] before you make that announcement we don’t know what kind of a communist conspiracy this might be.” He was thinking a communist conspiracy. INTERVIEWER BOB HENSLEY OF WTVQ:: “He is saying that it was a conspiracy. He wants to know who was involved.” MAC KILDUFF: That’s right. But he [LBJ] thought said ”this could be a communist conspiracy. And I think the best thing for me to do is get back to Air Force One before you make that announcement.” I said “alright.” He [LBJ] said then “We will wait back there. For whatever you are going to to. And then to go back to Washington.” So with that we left the trauma room with Johnson, went out the emergency exit of the hospital, put him in his car and he took off for Love Field, to go back to Love Field and Air Force One. Lyndon Johnson to Malcolm Kilduff, after Kiduff asked if he could make a statement that the president was dead: "No, wait. We don't know if it's a communist conspiracy or not. I'd better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?" [Sam Johnson's Boy, Steinberg, p. 606, published in 1968] QUOTE When they reached the hospital, Johnson jumped out of the car and held his left bicep with his right hand while he rushed indoors with five Secret Service agents, leaving Lady Bird with Yarborough. Rumors spread that he had been shot, that he had suffered a heart attack. Once inside the hospital, Johnson and the agents were ushered to the rear of the Minor Medecine area, where between deep sniffs from his nasal inhalator, he said repeatedly, “The International Communists did it!” …Nor had Salinger’s chief assistant Andrew Hatcher, gone to Texas, because Kennedy had been considerate of the anti-Negro bias in that Southern state. This was the reason Malcolm Kilduff, another assistant press secretary, was present at the hospital and became the first person to call Johnson “Mr. President.” Kilduff had come to Booth 13 to ask his permission to make a statement that Kennedy was dead, but Johnson barked at him, “No, wait. We don’t know whether it is a Communist conspiracy or not. I’d better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?” UNQUOTE [Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, pp. 605-606, published in 1968] Pierre Salinger: JFK’s Cabinet on 11/22/1963 had the almost unanimous opinion the JFK had been killed by a militant right-winger from the lunatic fringe of Dallas QUOTE It seems now, looking back, almost sacrilegious to have played poker at such a time. But if there had not been that game, it is hard to tell what would have happened on that plane, so high were the emotions. After a while, however, the poker game could not keep our attention, and some of us slowly drifted forward to Secretary Rusk’s cabin. There, the topic of conversation was what kind of a man would kill President Kennedy. I remember now that there was almost unanimous opinion at the time that it would have to be a militant right-winger from the lunatic fringe of Dallas. The messages kept coming off the wire service machine and finally one started grinding out the story of Lee Harvey Oswald and his previous life in Russia and his membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This went against all the preconceived theories we had established. UNQUOTE [Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, pp. 27-28, paperback edition, published 1966] Edited March 8 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 8 Share Posted March 8 (edited) One Kennedy aide riding back to DC on Air Force Two ( or another plane ? ) with staffers for both LBJ and JFK later reported her disgust at how undisturbed several of the LBJ people seemed to be with some even light-hearted cheerful on that flight. Reminds you of the big smiling, congratulatory wink Texas Republican Congressman Albert Thomas gave LBJ when LBJ turned away toward him right after his swearing in on Air Force 1. Thomas's smiling wink was so happy-minded animated, it was as if LBJ had just kicked the last second winning field goal for their beloved Texas U. football team over Oklahoma! ATTA BOY LYNDON ... YOU DID IT BABY! AHA...YIPPEE KI YAY! That Thomas celebratory wink and smile was so contrary to the otherwise somber mood scene it was perverse. Like someone leaping about and laughing during a grieving family funeral service. You know you are going into the most right wing JFK hating nut country when just weeks before even fur wearing high society dames are attacking JFK representing Adlai Stevenson with rotten egg throwing, protest sign swinging, ugly cursing and even spitting. Dallas in 1963 was JFK hate central with the JBL, Minute Men headquartered there along with a large KKK presence amongst law enforcement and even city government. Even extreme right wing commie threat obsessed General Edwin Walker lived there! The man RFK had involuntarily committed to a nut ward for his instigating action in Oxford, Mississippi during the college integration riots there on September 30th, 1962. A general that was removed from his command for his extreme right view indoctrination antics with his own troops. Talk about entering a den of venomous and hateful snakes. Edited March 8 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Jesus Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 16 hours ago, Joe Bauer said: Reminds you of the big smiling, congratulatory wink Texas Republican Congressman Albert Thomas gave LBJ when LBJ turned away toward him right after his swearing in on Air Force 1. Thomas's smiling wink was so happy-minded animated, it was as if LBJ had just kicked the last second winning field goal for their beloved Texas U. football team over Oklahoma! ATTA BOY LYNDON ... YOU DID IT BABY! AHA...YIPPEE KI YAY! That Thomas celebratory wink and smile was so contrary to the otherwise somber mood scene it was perverse. Like someone leaping about and laughing during a grieving family funeral service. Talk about entering a den of venomous and hateful snakes. Especially when it was the testimonial dinner for Thomas in Houston the night before that lured Kennedy to Texas. According to Wikipedia, Thomas was a protégé of Texas Senator (later President) Lyndon B. Johnson but maintained a generally conservative voting record. Thomas was planning not to run for another term in Congress because he had cancer. The dinner was to convince him to stay on. After the assassination, he decided to stay on, dying of cancer while in office on Feb. 15, 1966. There are FBI reports that said that as early as 1961, people who visited Dallas, upon returning home, were commenting that if Kennedy ever went to Dallas, they would kill him. And Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't even in the country at that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 Bill Moyer, back right with glasses; STILL ALIVE TODAY 3/9/2024 as far as I know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 Who is the person immediately behind Jackie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 6 hours ago, Joe Bauer said: Who is the person immediately behind Jackie? The white haired man who you can barely see is LBJ hack Cong. Homer Thornberry. Don't know the young dark haired man, man of right is LBJ hack Cong. Jack Brooks. Hidden behind Jack Brooks is JFK mistress and Jackie press secretary Pamela Turnure who said Jackie turned to her and said "Lyndon Johnson did it." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 (edited) On 3/8/2024 at 4:25 AM, Gil Jesus said: A look at the atmosphere in the city of Dallas leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/nut-country.mp4 Given the notorious Ultra Right Wing atmosphere that permeated Dallas in 1963: WHY WOULD LYNDON JOHNSON BE IMMEDIATELY BLAMING THE JFK ASSASSINATION ON A COMMUNIST?: which LBJ was already doing while at Parkland Hospital. Peter Pringle in 1993 on the Dallas right wing: Peter Pringle essay on Dallas 1963, The Independent 11-20-93: “We’re heading into nut country” ‘We’re heading into nut country’: President Kennedy said this to an aide as he began his fatal visit to Texas thirty years ago. Here Peter Pringle evokes Dallas as it was then, a hostile place which cared very little for the dream that died there [“’We’re heading into nut country,’” Peter Pringle, The Independent, 11/20/1993] Web link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150725235153/http:/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/were-heading-into-nut-country-president-kennedy-said-this-to-an-aide-as-he-began-his-fatal-visit-to-texas-thirty-years-ago-here-peter-pringle-evokes-dallas-as-it-was-then-a-hostile-place-which-cared-very-little-for-the-dream-that-died-there-1505387.html Original web link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/were-heading-into-nut-country-president-kennedy-said-this-to-an-aide-as-he-began-his-fatal-visit-to-texas-thirty-years-ago-here-peter-pringle-evokes-dallas-as-it-was-then-a-hostile-place-which-cared-very-little-for-the-dream-that-died-there-1505387.html QUOTE Dallas, 20 November 1963, two days before the arrival of President JF Kennedy. Four thousand, nine hundred and eighty yellow roses - all the yellow roses in California, according to the evening newspaper the Times Herald - arrived at the airport in preparation for the presidential visit. It was a typical, expansive Texan gesture, part of an effort to turn a rebellious city with the highest homicide rate in the union and a growing reputation for hating Democrats into a festive, reasonable place for a day. Texans knew it was an impossible task; the flowers would be ceremonial, nothing more. By his third year in office most people in Dallas disliked Kennedy. Now a Republican stronghold, Dallas had voted 62 per cent for Nixon in 1960. A staggering 53.5 per cent of the city's wage earners were white-collar professionals. They could not have been less interested in Kennedy's New Frontier with its plans to desegregate schools and its civil rights bill. They longed for a return of the values of the Old Frontier and had concluded from the start that Kennedy could never fit the image of a plainsman. As for his fancy liberal ideas about foreign largesse, such as the Peace Corps, it seemed to Dallas citizens that these encouraged socialism. They opposed funding backward nations in Latin America that then turned into ideological enemies. And while they appreciated Kennedy's determination to put a man on the moon, they didn't want to pay for the exercise - unless it helped to fight the Communists. Dallas in those days was a town of 750,000, mostly Anglo-Saxon native Americans who kept a clean, God-fearing and relatively corruption-free city. They had kicked out the prostitutes and were prosecuting the new sellers of pornography. The city was playing its part in the record number of banks opening across the US; more had opened in 1963 than any previous year. Personal income nationwide had risen by dollars 3bn in October to a record annual rate. New money from oil was replacing old money from cotton. The city was expanding with newcomers from rural Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. All were politically and socially conservative. These people thought Kennedy was doing the country a disservice by being too soft on Communism. 'We can annihilate Russia, and we should make that clear to the Soviet government,' the venerable owner of the Dallas Morning News, Ted Dealey, had told Kennedy at a dinner at the White House. What was needed, said Dealey, was 'a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the South-West think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle'. Kennedy was not amused, but held his fire. Texans were angered by the latest talk from Moscow about the Russians being able to 'wipe out whole states' and Khrushchev's boast that the new Soviet anti-missile system could 'hit a fly in the sky'. In Dallas, people thought Kennedy let the Soviet leader off too lightly. By that last week, almost everyone was joining in the anti-Kennedy chorus. The American Bible Society placed an advertisement in the newspaper urging vigilance against the march of 'Godless Communism'. They added a quotation from Theodore Roosevelt warning of a 'lapse into paganism' to the point where America would perish like Assyria and Babylonia. There were many backers. The advertisement was sponsored by the First National Bank of Dallas, two funeral homes and a florist, among others. In some cases the attacks were directed personally at Kennedy and his family. The Dallas Morning News ran a column headlined, 'Why do so many hate the Kennedys?' It was a vicious gripe about the Kennedys being 'new rich' and having money that 'still stinks'. (Never mind that much of Dallas money was even newer.) The writer was AC Green, editor of the newspaper's editorial page, which followed a sort of Kit Carson and Daniel Boone line. It had been writing in a mocking code about liberal causes, referring to Franklin Roosevelt's 'Queer Deal', the 'American Swivel Liberties Union' and the 'Judicial Kremlin' (the US Supreme Court). Even so, it was the most respected voice in Dallas, and everyone read it. People in Dallas, wrote Green, disliked the Kennedys because their lifestyle has 'a touch of vulgarity' about it. He complained particularly about Bobby Kennedy being 'ambitiously dictatorial', and noted how people couldn't forget the Kennedy family links with the 'Frank Sinatra-Hollywood-Las Vegas axis'. The bleached-blonde dowagers of Dallas, who went to debutante balls and coffee mornings, and worried whether they had the latest kitchen gadgets, played a game in which you had to list the Kennedys you hated the most. The correct answer was Bobby, Jack, Teddy and Jackie, in that order. Many Dallas women would die rather than admit it, but they almost all copied Jackie's dress and hairstyle. It was the fashion. This was a time when few southerners were ready to give the vote to Negroes, as they still called African-Americans, or let them drink at the same water fountains. But they were ready to share sports. The problem was, where would the Negroes change their clothes? As Harold Bradley, the University of Texas basketball coach, explained in the Dallas Morning News: 'It's going to be hard to get a Negro boy down here unless the housing is integrated.' He added: 'There's no question Negro basketball players are outstanding. You take the top 100 boys in the country and 60 of them will be Negroes'. Times would soon change, he forecast, because, 'Negro boys are hungry players'. At the University of Houston, they were willing to admit 'qualified Negroes' without specifying what that meant. The church played a significant part in the life of the city. Most of its inhabitants were of Scottish-Irish stock and Protestants. They resented the Kennedys' Catholicism. It didn't help the strained relationship when the Catholic bishops spoke at their annual conference in that last week about the first step toward racial harmony being 'to treat all men and women as persons'. Most southerners simply didn't agree. George Wallace, governor of Alabama and the supreme segregationist, came to Dallas that week, too. He arrived from Louisiana in a plane with Confederate flag markings. Asked by reporters about his stand against desegregation, he claimed he had never made an unkind remark about Negroes. 'It's just mixing the races that causes trouble', he said. 'We resent Washington telling us how to run our schools. Why, they've had to build extra bridges across the Potomac just for the people leaving Washington since they integrated the schools there'. Wallace said that with all the trouble in Washington, 'we Alabama people ought to be telling them how to run their schools'. That was also the prevailing feeling in Dallas. The latest Capitol Hill scandal was free liquor in a contraband bar in the Senate basement. And at least one senator was accused of having call girls on his payroll. Life magazine reported that Washington was a place where 'a man needs a guide to distinguish wives from mistresses, and mistresses from hired prostitutes. It is a world devoted to the cynical manipulation of government influence and government largesse'. The Dallas Morning News was in the front line of outrage against the nation's capital, suggesting it was inhabited by 'an unknown number of subversives, perverts, and miscellaneous security risks.' But the real security risk was the President's visit. Dallas already had a reputation for roughing up Democrats. In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Byrd, were spat on by a group of housewives. A month before Kennedy's arrival, the UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, was assaulted in a crowd. Kennedy had been advised against the visit by several aides, unsolicited Dallas residents and by the Texas governor, John Connally, who said people in the city were 'too emotional'. In that year, a kind of fever lay over Dallas, wrote William Manchester in his book Death of a President. People carried huge billboards calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, Earl Warren. Cowboy-booted executives placed 'KO the Kennedys' bumper stickers on their cars. Jewish stores were smeared with swastikas and Kennedy's name was booed in classrooms. The Dallas city council rushed through an ordinance banning attacks against visiting speakers, but many still feared the worst, especially in a town where guns could be bought without a licence or any kind of registration. There was more than gunfire. The day of the assassination, 22 November 1963, the Dallas Morning News printed a full-page advertisement, ominously bordered in black, accusing Kennedy, again among a long list of other complaints, of being a Communist patsy. It was signed by the American Fact-finding Committee, which eventually was identified as a group of right-wingers led by Nelson Bunker Hunt, of the oil-rich Dallas family. It was this advertisement that prompted Kennedy's remark: 'We're heading into nut country today'. Kennedy had come to raise funds for his 1964 re-election campaign and to try to heal rifts in the Texas Democratic Party, which was in its usual mood: loving as a nest of alligators, as the Times Herald put it. His approval rate in the state was just over 50 per cent, as opposed to 59 nationally, and down from 76 in 1962. In three years Kennedy had failed to make headway on the important initiatives of his administration - the first civil rights bill, a foreign aid bill and a pre-election year tax cut. He and Khrushchev had come within a button-push of blowing up the world over the Cuban missile crisis. And he left blacks seething over civil rights. Yet by the mid-Eighties most Americans would remember him as the finest ever President. The ugliness of Dallas and the rest of the South would be replaced by a memory of what Norman Mailer and others called an age of innocence; an imaginary Kennedy era that afforded economic exuberance and a happier and more secure America rudely shattered by the assassins bullets. The best explanation for this cognitive dissonance is that those who recall only the bright, shining moments of Kennedys presidency and manage to blot out the rest still cannot accept that a psychotic jerk with a cheap Italian carbine brought his life to a sudden close. Without such an end the staying power of the Kennedy legend would never have been so great. UNQUOTE Edited March 13 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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