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Clint Hill and the SS Agents in Dallas


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Kool-Aid is nothing but water with powdered flavor stirred in it. The powder is bought in packages. Kids like the stuff. I've never met a grownup that drinks it, though maybe there are closet Kool-Aid drinkers.

Pat Speer used this phrase to suggest that Tim Gratz was posting nonsense under the influence. I assumed it had something to do with the consumption of alcohol.

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There is an expression to the effect that someone who falls for something is "drinking the Kool-Aid." I think this may have originated with the story, whether it's true or not, that Jim Jones used Kool-Aid to poison his followers at Jonestown.

Edited by Ron Ecker
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Actually, it's sort of difficult to get past Manchester's contradiction in terms:

This is what William Manchester had to say about the response of the SS agents in Dallas in The Death of a President (1967):

... It was even fathomable that Patrolman James M. Chaney, mounted on a motorcycle six feet from the Lincoln, should think that another machine had backfired. Chaney was an ordinary policeman, not a Presidential bodyguard. [T]he White House Detail['s] ... experience in outdoor shooting was limited to two qualification courses a year on a range in Washington's National Arboretum. There they heard only their own weapons, and they were unaccustomed to the bizarre effects that are created when small-arms fire echoes among unfamiliar structures - in this case, the buildings of Dealey Plaza. ... They were supposed to be picked men, honed to a matchless edge.

So Chaney was "an ordinary policeman" whose experience was not even as impressive as two qualification courses on an indoor range required of a vaunted presidential bodyguard?!?

But, then, that's Manchester (and a host of others) for ya!

There is an expression to the effect that someone who falls for something is "drinking the Kool-Aid." I think this may have originated with the story, whether it's true or not, that Jim Jones used Kool-Aid to poison his followers at Jonestown.
... And here I'd always thought that it had something to do with the '60s "electric Kool-Aid acid tests" made famous by Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead's San Francisco crowd during the Summer of Love!!
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John & Ron,

I'm pretty sure Pat would have been making a reference to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (I believe that was the title) by the same author, Ken Kesey, who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The reference would've most probably meant that someone was drinking Kool-Aid with "acid" (LSD) in it when posting their thoughts.

That makes sense given Tim Gratz's postings.

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I'm guessing this is an American thing, but what exactly is Kool-Aid? It is some kind of fizzy drink?

I haven't heard the term before.

Francesca,

Kool-Aid is nothing but water with powdered flavor stirred in it. The powder is bought in packages. Kids like the stuff. I've never met a grownup that drinks it, though maybe there are closet Kool-Aid drinkers.

Ron

I've never met a grownup that drinks it

Well, we may not have been "grown up", however we consumed it by the truckloads in Central America and in Vietnam.

It was one of those items which was added to the canteen full of water to disguise the iodine taste of the "Iodine Tablets" which were utilized to prevent amoebic dysentery (& other strange diseases) from the local water.

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Drinking the KoolAid is a Jonestown reference, their method of mass suicide. Interesting, I have read theories connecting Jonestown to our favorite agency, one of their mind control experiments gone bad.

Re: adults and KoolAid. In my youth I heard references to a beverage enjoyed by poor folks in the black part of Chicago known as 'Shake and Bake'. It was KoolAid and grain alchohol, bet that went down real smooth.

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There is an expression to the effect that someone who falls for something is "drinking the Kool-Aid." I think this may have originated with the story, whether it's true or not, that Jim Jones used Kool-Aid to poison his followers at Jonestown.

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News uses the expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" a lot. It does trace back to Jim Jones, although actually, as I recall, what they drank was a different brand called Flavor-Aid.

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But I'm sure you do remember the 1950's "bugaboo" over fluoridation of water as a Communist plot.

Not only that, but I remember how our local Southern Baptist congregation ran off our beloved pastor Dr. Wooley because he saw nothing wrong with the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Most Southern Baptists thought that the RSV was a Communist plot.

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Bill O'Reilly of Fox News uses the expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" a lot.

I think that he and Sean Hannity drink it more than anyone else.

Sean would probably drink it right out of one of the Republican boots that he licks.

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Bill O'Reilly of Fox News uses the expression "drinking the Kool-Aid" a lot.

I think that he and Sean Hannity drink it more than anyone else.

Sean would probably drink it right out of one of the Republican boots that he licks.

As opposed to the virulent left-wingers who rule the roost at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, BBC, NPR, NY Times, Wash Post, Google News, all of academia--not to mention this conspiratorial message board? Chill.

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As opposed to the virulent left-wingers who rule the roost at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, BBC, NPR, NY Times, Wash Post, Google News, all of academia--not to mention this conspiratorial message board? Chill.

I don't know who all the roost rulers are at those other networks, but I know who rules it at Fox. Not that it makes a dime's worth of difference, since the media as a whole is a party to the decline of the republic. I don't watch any of that crap on the tube anymore. I get my news from the web. Chill.

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I think it should be recognized that in 1967, Clint Hill was promoted to Chief of the White House Bodyguard. It should also be recognized that his actions in Dealey Plaza were heroic.

Hill was a former member of the Army Counterintelligence Corps before joining the Secret Service in 1958. He graduated from Concordia College, Minnesota in 1954 so his stint with counterintelligence must have happened during those 4 years.

If anyone has any information regarding Clint Hill during the period 1954 to 1958, it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

James

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I think it should be recognized that in 1967, Clint Hill was promoted to Chief of the White House Bodyguard. It should also be recognized that his actions in Dealey Plaza were heroic.

Hill was a former member of the Army Counterintelligence Corps before joining the Secret Service in 1958. He graduated from Concordia College, Minnesota in 1954 so his stint with counterintelligence must have happened during those 4 years.

If anyone has any information regarding Clint Hill during the period 1954 to 1958, it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

James

That's relative, James. Everything the SS did except a belated order to get going and a belated dash by Jackies bodyguard to protect her went the assassins way. A late night, drinking and whatever did nothing to help. Nevertheless he did react and he did move into the danger zone. Perhaps if he was in top form and inder better leadership he would have been the hero he showed he COULDbe, but wasn't, on that day.

In my opinion there were only two heroes in dealey plaza at that instant. Kennedy himself, who already was a hero in many ways, not least in venturing into dangerous places with an agenda that exposed himself very much to what happened.

And Jackie, who despite everything that happened, reacted instinctively, not trained, with total disregard for her own safety, by drawing Kennedy to herself and cradling him, by further exposing herself by foresight in retreiving bodyparts.

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