Proud to be a KENNEDY DEMOCRAT

[Octafish]

President John F. Kennedy's definition of "Liberal" is just one reason why I'm proud to be a Kennedy Democrat.

"...if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties — if that is what they mean by a 'liberal,' then I am proud to be a liberal."

-- John F. Kennedy

Inquisitive. Intelligent. Kind. Brave. Peaceful. Democrats.

Who's with me?

[pacalo]

1. So am I, Octafish, & I'm proud of it!

[Octafish]

6. Thanks, 8_year_nightmare!

Liberals changed the world.

For the BETTER.

[demnan]

2. That's a great picture

is that John Glenn beside him and Schlesinger in the background?
Oh, by the way, count me in. I'm sorry they stopped using Liberal and went to Progressive. To me a progressive is someone who's afraid to say they're a liberal.

[Octafish]

8. Thanks, demnan!

Yes, that's John Glenn, astronaut and the great Liberal Senator from the Great State of Ohio.

Wouldn't be surprised if they were in the company of the great historian.

BTW: The image is one of my favorites. It shows how our dreams can become reality. And if we could accomplish what had been considered impossible -- going to the moon -- imagine what we could do on earth? We could end hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, war. That's Liberal thinking.

[SharonRB]

3. I am, I am!

[Octafish]

12. Hi, SharonRB!

Here's something a Liberal would think:

While he did send advisors and volunteers, President Kennedy said he would never send U.S. draftees to fight on behalf of South Vietnam.

THE SECOND BIGGEST LIE

by Michael Morrissey

The biggest lie of our time, after the Warren Report, is the notion that Johnson
merely continued or expanded Kennedy's policy in Vietnam after the
assassination.

1. JFK's policy

In late 1962, Kennedy was still fully committed to supporting the Diem regime,
though he had some doubts even then. When Senator Mike Mansfield advised
withdrawal at that early date:

The President was too disturbed by the Senator's unexpected argument to reply to
it. He said to me later when we talked about the discussion, "I got angry with
Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely, and I got angry with myself
because I found myself agreeing with him (Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970, p. 15).

By the spring of 1963, Kennedy had reversed course completely and agreed with
Mansfield:

"The President told Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts
about Mansfield's argument and that he now agreed with the Senator's thinking on
the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam.

'But I can't do it until 1965--after I'm reelected,' Kennedy told Mansfield....

After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, 'In 1965 I'll become
one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a
Communist appeaser. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now from
Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do
it after I'm reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected'
(O'Donnell, p. 16)."

Sometime after that Kennedy told O'Donnell again that

"...he had made up his mind that after his reelection he would take the risk of
unpopularity and make a complete withdrawal of American military forces from
Vietnam. He had decided that our military involvement in Vietnam's civil war
would only grow steadily bigger and more costly without making a dent in the
larger political problem of Communist expansion in Southeast Asia" (p. 13).

Just before he was killed he repeated this commitment:

"'They keep telling me to send combat units over there,' the President said to
us one day in October <1963>. 'That means sending draftees, along with volunteer
regular Army advisers, into Vietnam. I'll never send draftees over there to
fight'." (O'Donnell, p. 383).

CONTINUED...

http://govt.eserver.org/gulf-war/jfk-lbj-and-vietnam.txt

BTW, my kid went to State, but I still love her.

[SharonRB]

16. That's really interesting.

I wonder why more people don't know about this.

"...my kid went to State, but I still love her." Does that mean you went to Michigan?

[glitch]

4. I am. nt

[Octafish]

13. Hiya, glitch!

Did you know, President Kennedy ordered the FBI and the Secret Service to hire African Americans as agents?

Love your moniker, BTW.

[glitch]

14. I did not know that! As if my position needed solidifying ;) thanks for that nt

[Octafish]

19. John F. Kennedy on Leadership

President Kennedy had vision and courage.

JOHN F. KENNEDY ON LEADERSHIP

Prelude: June 11, 1963

The Oval Office, just before 8 p.m., EDT.

It was a frustrating end to a very long day.

President John F. Kennedy was seated behind his desk in the Oval Office. Tension was rising because, in just a few moments, the president was scheduled to give a nationally televised address on the emotionally and politically charged subject of civil rights for black Americans (who were then known as Negroes). And he didn't even have a fully prepared text.

This was his own fault. Early that afternoon, he simply declared his desire to address the nation that very night on civil rights, catching his team flat-footed. Not only was there no final text; there wasn't even a rough draft. As soon as the president made his desire known, however, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, his brother's closest confidant; Burke Marshall, the assistant attorney general for civil rights; and Theodore Sorensen, the president's chef speechwriter, closeted themselves in the Cabinet Room to start hashing out exactly what he would say.

The civil rights issue was, in many ways, a distraction the president thought he didn't need. Never very partial to domestic policy, he had devoted a single, ambiguous phrase to the entire subject in his inaugural address, stating that Americans were "unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world." Kennedy strongly believed his main business was overseas. Just that afternoon, he had met with Averell Harriman, the diplomat and former governor of New York, who was about to depart for Moscow to begin negotiations on a treaty for a limited ban on nuclear testing. A successful conclusion to those negotiations, Kennedy believed, would give the hawkish president strong momentum as a "peace candidate" going into the all-important 1964 elections.

The situation was also heating up in a place most Americans were only vaguely aware: Vietnam. That morning, Kennedy had been shocked by a front-page newspaper photograph of a Buddhist monk burning himself to death in the streets of Saigon, the capital of America's ally, South Vietnam. The Buddhists were protesting the policies of the American-backed government of Ngo Dinh Diem, who, like Kennedy, was a Roman Catholic presiding over a mostly non-Catholic country. From Kennedy's perspective, Diem's regime was fast becoming a liability. It was just repressive enough to cause the United States international embarrassment, and seemingly unable to build either a stable domestic order or defeat the increasingly bold communist Vietcong guerrillas. Some sort of firm action appeared to be needed there soon.

Whatever the news from abroad, however, the pressure of events at home was forcing the issue of civil rights to the fore.

SNIP...

The president was personally sympathetic to the plight of black Americans. Despite his own affluent circumstances, Kennedy knew enough about "no Irish need apply" signs and the reality of anti-Catholic prejudice to empathize with those experiencing discrimination. He was also concerned about how the image of denying civil rights to black Americans would play in the international arena of newly emerging African and Asian countries. The Soviet Union rarely missed an opportunity to play up its own supposed racial enlightenment in order to win support from such countries in the United Nations and other world forums.

SNIP...

Caught on the horns of this dilemma, Kennedy had bobbed and weaved on the issue for more than three years. Seeking to keep his options open, he held back from endorsing the idea of using the federal government to guarantee equal rights and opportunities for blacks. Instead, he signed executive orders outlawing discrimination in most federally funded facilities, such as airports. He also signed an order demanding that the federal government adopt "affirmative action" to reach out and hire more black employees. (With the surly assent of J. Edgar Hoover, the first black FBI agents were hired under the Kennedy administration.)

But even in this limited realm, Kennedy held back from committing himself fully. During the 1960 campaign, he had promised to end discrimination in public housing "with the stroke of a pen," yet once in office, he kept finding reasons to delay such action. (Outraged blacks mailed him hundreds of pens; eventually, though, he did sign the order.) When it came to federal judicial appointments in the South, he could not find the courage to nominate even a few racially liberal whites, let alone blacks. Also, the undeniable presence of communists and former communists in the civil rights movement made the president leery of being too closely identified with it.

Black votes, Kennedy and his brother Robert believed, were the ultimate solution to the problem. A sizable bloc of black voters in Southern states, they reasoned, would compel the segregationist politicians of the South to change their tune. But in the absence of federal legislation, the Kennedy Justice Department never moved to protect those trying to register the voters, or the voters themselves, who sometimes lost their farm tenancies or welfare benefits when they weren't physically threatened or attacked. There was a deep and growing sense of betrayal on the part of blacks and Democratic party liberals.

SNIP...

So, on the morning of June 11, with the two black students preparing to register, Kennedy didn't wait on events. He acted to federalize the Alabama National Guard. In the event the guardsmen chose to shirk their duty, he ordered troops at Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand by aboard helicopters and be ready to fly to Tuscaloosa to take control. Kennedy called Republican congressional leaders to the White House that same day and sounded them out on how far they thought he could go on civil rights.

The Kennedy White House held its breath in anticipation of bad news from down south. But the show of resolve in Washington had its intended effect. After a flourish of rhetoric about abusive federal power, Wallace, who was standing at the schoolhouse door, stepped into his car and was driven away. The two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, registered peacefully for classes. Wallace and Kennedy had gone eyeball-to-eyeball—and Wallace had blinked.

By that evening, Kennedy felt he had to say something. All afternoon, drafts had been passed back and forth between the president, the attorney general, and the staff involved in preparing the speech. When the red light finally illuminated atop the camera in the Oval Office, the president still held an incomplete draft in his hand.

While his team had been laboring away, Kennedy had roughed out some of his own ideas to help fill the gaps. Contrary to what many critics believed—that JFK was a mere ventriloquist's dummy who only mouthed the eloquent platitudes written for him by others—he was in fact his own best speechwriter. This was a skill he had honed during his seventeen years in public life, and one that would serve him well in this, probably his greatest single act of public leadership.

The speech could not have been more different from the one he had delivered the previous September at the height of the University of Mississippi crisis. At that time, still in thrall to a romanticized image of the Old South (also evident in his book Profiles in Courage), he recalled (white) Mississippians' martial and even football prowess while avoiding any mention of James Meredith's courage. The speech had deeply disappointed civil rights leaders and had precious little effect on the campus in Oxford, Mississippi. But now, nine months later, Kennedy decided he had given the white South enough breaks. It was time to choose sides.

Following a brief review of the events in Alabama that morning, Kennedy adopted a more philosophical tone and invited Americans to do something that few presidents had ever asked of them before: to examine their consciences.

"This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds," Kennedy said. "It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."

CONTINUED...

http://www.amanet.org/books/catalog/0814408346_ch.htm

Thanks for understanding, glitch.

[shance]

5. Count me in Octafish.

Thank you for all your fantastic posts.

You inspire and inform.

Kudos*

[Octafish]

22. Hiya, shance!

Thank you for your kind words, my Friend!

You caring about what is happening means the world to me.



The links below are on the subject. What makes them great are the contributions of the many good DUers who give a damn.

Know your BFEE Log

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=872755


Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x250447


Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x126094


Know your BFEE: America’s Ruling Gangster Class

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2969845


Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and ''Conspiracy Theorists'' at Ford Funeral

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3029417


Know your BFEE: Robert Gates did more than keep the doors open at BCCI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2810465


Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2591203&mesg_id=2591203


Sink the BFEE: Foley gives us Congress. Condi sends 'em to prison.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2401056


Beat the BFEE: Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2418621


Know your BFEE: Los Amigos de Bush

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2214484


Know your BFEE: Neil Bush hangs out with Russian Mafiya Godfather

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2082945


Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1946852


Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1547206&mesg_id=1547206


Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1366764


Know your BFEE: Lies Are the Currency of Their Realm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1170858


Know your BFEE: Cheney & Halliburton Sold Iran Nuke Technology

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=928662


Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=757860&mesg_id=757860


Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=602016


Know your BFEE: Alito is just another word for Mussolini

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=266685


What the heck, this belongs here, too:

BFEE Turd Daniel Pipes tied to DANISH CARTOONS

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=417774


Know your BFEE: Like a NAZI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=133897


Know your BFEE: The China-Bush Axis

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5333644


Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5280903


Know your BFEE: Libby Is the First Big BFEE Turd to Go Down

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5233814


Know your BFEE: WHIG (White House Iraq Group) made phony case for Iraq War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5077403


Know your BFEE: The Secret Government

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5027094


Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4863411&mesg_id=4863411


Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4813493


Know your BFEE: Killer Businessmen who put Power and Profit before Country

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4401300


Know your BFEE: Nixon Threatened to Nuke Vietnam

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3953519


Know your BFEE: Corrupt Craftsmen Hoover and Dulles

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3908104


Know your BFEE: Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3853409


Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3832033&mesg_id=3832033&page=


Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3743890


Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3699042


Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3627538


Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3601654


Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3571293&mesg_id=3571293&page=


Know your BFEE: War Profiteers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3493251


Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3389867


Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5280903


Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3355939


Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2788428


Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3312956


Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2511192


Know your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2472759


Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315


Know your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2529964


Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2956067


Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2414083


Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2404049


Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2396787


Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incorporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2397004



These aren’t labeled “Know Your BFEE,” but they’re meant in the same spirit:

Poppy Bush Involved in JFK Assassination -- BFEE's Spooked!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3274455


Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3193142


JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5501005&mesg_id=5501005


Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4200507

BFEE Is More than Capable of Bombing Their Own Countrymen

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4045149

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x46709


And for all those in hard-to-reach areas between the ears:

A Short History of Conspiracy Theory

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4086438

[ShortnFiery]

7. I admired John F. Kennedy.

But I thought it was a bad decision to make Bobby his AG.

Now Ted is letting me down with not realizing "The Corporate Bottom Line" with regard to this horrific Immigration Bill that they will SHOVE DOWN the taxpayers' throats next week.

And then there's his nephew, Patrick Kennedy. I feel for his depression and drug additions (that includes alcohol), but I think he should still be in rehab and NOT remain a Representative in Congress.

Finally, I detest all nepotism and dynasties, whether it be British or American Royalty.

Camelot? No they were NOT. :thumbsdown:

[Octafish]

23. Hey-o, ShortnFiery!

I understand how you feel about nepotism, dynasties, royalty and all that rot. I, too, abhor monarchists of all stripes.

And I agree the Kennedys are not perfect. However, I disagree regarding RFK as attorney general.

Robert F. Kennedy was the first AG to stand up to the racist right-wing nutjob J Edgar Hoover and make him go after the Mafia.

http://www.orwelltoday.com/rfkmafia.shtml

Bobby also counseled JFK to find an alternative to World War III during the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Practically everybody else in the Cabinet, Congressional leadership and the Pentagon counseled war.

http://library.thinkquest.org/11046/people/r_kennedy.html

We may not agree on the Kennedy brothers, but i do thank you for giving a damn about what is happening today, ShortnFiery.

[seemslikeadream]

9. Proud to be a KENNEDY DEMOCRAT

You know it's in my blood




http://www.prideofeirehotels.com/famous.htm

People of Importance that came from County Wexford…



and my greatgrandma, Bridget Harper

[Octafish]

25. Your great-grandmother must have been one very special person, seemslikeadream!

...Just like all of your ancestors, Good People.

[Kerrytravelers]

10. My grandparents and my mom worked on the Kennedy presidential bids.

Yep. I was raised by PROUD Kennedy Democrats, from both my mom and my dad's family.

[Octafish]

27. Their work helps us see today how America might one day be again...

...a place where government serves to make life better for ALL Americans;
works to keep the peace by being the strongest and most free nation on earth;
exists to maintain the Constitution and its protections and guarantees for ALL people;
and where our best dreams can one day become reality.

TEXT OF PRESIDENT JOHN KENNEDY'S RICE STADIUM MOON SPEECH

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.

I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation¹s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man¹s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.

Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where the F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the the 40-yard lines.

Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.

We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.

The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.

And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this State, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your City of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next 5 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United Stated, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute.

However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.

I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Thank you.

SOURCE w LINKS: http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm

Once upon a time in America, THERE WAS a President who was the better of two men.

[1776Forever]

11. OK - Here is my story - I quit my church because of Kennedy and I would do it again!

I was 15 years old in 1959 and full of awe about the young man running for President. JFK was so articulate and yes handsome. He said things that made me feel like there really was a Camelot in the United States for everyone! He gave hope and class and really solid ideas to make the country a better place.

But when I wore a JFK campaign badge to the Bible Church I attended I was told that I had to take it off. The reason I had worn it to the church was because the Minister had made up handouts that said that if Kennedy was elected he would do whatever the Pope told him to do among other idiotic things against Catholics. I did not believe this, and thought it was ridiculous that the church would even have a political handout anyway!

I was a half way decent singer in my day and all of the Sunday School class members and I thought I was a shoe-in for the soloist of our Christmas play. But the leader of the class approached my mother and told her that she should be ashamed of me for wearing my Kennedy badge into the church. My mother told her that she had nothing to do with it, and at that the lady turned to me and said, "You will not appear in "my" program if you continue to wear that badge!" I looked at her and my Mom and told them both I was leaving and would not be back. After that I walked home and never belonged to another church in my life. I feel more spiritual then most people ever will because I know that the church and state should be separate, and have lived my life as a dedication to make life more enjoyable for everyone, and I would do it again!:grouphug:

[glitch]

15. Some kids just "get it" very early. It's weird. I guess it's weirder when they don't.

Good story, I hope your Mom was proud of you. I would have been beaming. Belated welcome to DU, btw.

[Octafish]

28. Thank you, 1776Forever!

You got the treatment for telling it how you saw it.
And you didn't back down.
From anyone.
You are the real deal, 1776Forever.

"I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant."

President Kennedy thought the artist to be vital for creating the best of nations.

"I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."

Like you, JFK was a real writer, too:

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda, it is a form of truth."

Here's another one:

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

PS: A most hearty welcome to DU, 1776Forever. Thank you for your oustanding story. I will never forget it.

[Chemical Bill]

17. I'm in.

And thank you for your reminders of how JFK left us under, shall we say, murky circumstances? He was so right in thinking that his brother was the only person in government that he could trust.

Bill

[Octafish]

31. Hi, Chemical Bill! Robert F. Kennedy was the nation's first 'Conspiracy Theorist.'

From DU:

Bobby Kennedy: America's first assassination conspiracy theorist

May 13, 2007
BY DAVID TALBOT

One of the most intriguing mysteries about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that darkest of American labyrinths, is why his brother Robert F. Kennedy apparently did nothing to investigate the crime. Bobby Kennedy was, after all, not just the attorney general of the United States at the time of the assassination -- he was his brother's devoted partner, the man who took on the administration's most grueling assignments, from civil rights to organized crime to Cuba, the hottest Cold War flash point of its day. But after the burst of gunfire in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, ended this unique partnership, Bobby Kennedy seemed lost in a fog of grief, refusing to discuss the assassination with the Warren Commission and telling friends he had no heart for an aggressive investigation. "What difference does it make?" he would say. "It won't bring him back."

But Bobby Kennedy was a complex man, and his years in Washington had taught him to keep his own counsel and proceed in a subterranean fashion. What he said in public about Dallas was not the full story. Privately, RFK -- who had made his name in the 1950s as a relentless investigator of the underside of American power -- was consumed by the need to know the real story about his brother's assassination. This fire seized him on the afternoon of Nov. 22, as soon as FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, a bitter political enemy, phoned to say -- almost with pleasure, thought Bobby -- that the president had been shot. And the question of who killed his brother continued to haunt Kennedy until the day he too was gunned down, on June 5, 1968.

Because of his proclivity for operating in secret, RFK did not leave behind a documentary record of his inquiries into his brother's assassination. But it is possible to retrace his investigative trail, beginning with the afternoon of Nov. 22, when he frantically worked the phones at Hickory Hill -- his Civil War-era mansion in McLean, Va. -- and summoned aides and government officials to his home. Lit up with the clarity of shock, the electricity of adrenaline, Bobby Kennedy constructed the outlines of the crime that day -- a crime, he immediately concluded, that went far beyond Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine arrested shortly after the assassination. Robert Kennedy was America's first assassination conspiracy theorist.

SNIP...

A stunning outburst

Meanwhile, as Lyndon Johnson -- a man with whom he had a storied antagonistic relationship -- flew east from Dallas to assume the powers of the presidency, Bobby Kennedy used his fleeting authority to ferret out the truth. After hearing his brother had died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Kennedy phoned CIA headquarters, just down the road in Langley, where he often began his day, stopping there to work on Cuba-related business. Bobby's phone call to Langley on the afternoon of Nov. 22 was a stunning outburst. Getting a ranking official on the phone -- whose identity is still unknown -- Kennedy confronted him in a voice vibrating with fury and pain. "Did your outfit have anything to do with this horror?" Kennedy erupted.

SNIP...

Kennedy had another revealing phone conversation on the afternoon of Nov. 22. Speaking with Enrique "Harry" Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his most trusted ally among exiled political leaders, Bobby shocked his friend by telling him point-blank, "One of your guys did it." Who did Kennedy mean? By then Oswald had been arrested in Dallas. The CIA and its anti-Castro client groups were already trying to connect the alleged assassin to the Havana regime. But as Kennedy's blunt remark to Williams makes clear, the attorney general wasn't buying it. Recent evidence suggests that Bobby Kennedy had heard the name Lee Harvey Oswald long before it exploded in news bulletins around the world, and he connected it with the government's underground war on Castro. With Oswald's arrest in Dallas, Kennedy apparently realized that the government's clandestine campaign against Castro had boomeranged at his brother.

CONTINUED...

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/383811,CST-CONT-kennedy13.article

Thank you for knowing what's at stake, my Friend!

[Mark_Pogue]

18. Don't you think Gore wouldbe/is like JFK?

[Octafish]

34. I do, Mark_Pogue. I do.

Gore is head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.
Not just in terms of being like JFK,
but in having the right combination of experience, brains, backbone, guts, gravitas, compassion and vision
needed to the job.

In that they are exactly the same.



Archive photos of the Oak Ridge Research Reactor

Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, visit the Oak Ridge Research Reactor on Feb. 24, 1959.
At far right is Sen. Albert Gore, Sr; beside him is ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg.
The man at left is Sam Sapirie of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

ORNL

SOURCE:
http://slideshows.knoxnews.com/index.cfm?start=3&slideshowname=1002or&usetemplate=nobuy

Gore's dad was a special man, too.

[ourbluenation]

20. and I'm proud to be an Irish-American Kennedy Democrat.

:)

[Octafish]

40. Hi, ourbluenation! President Kennedy certainly loved his ancestral home.

And his cousins certainly loved him.



“When my great grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston,
he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty.
I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance.”

Details: http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK+Library+and+Museum/Visit+the+Library+and+Museum/Museum+Exhibits/JFK+in+Ireland+Exhibit.htm

For me, every day is St. Patrick's Day.

[Uncle Joe]

21. I like JFK's definition of liberalism

Thanks for the thread Octafish.

Kicked and recommended.

[Octafish]

41. Me too, Uncle Joe. The NATION says DEMs would be SMART to remember.

BuzzFlash put it succinctly:

"Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Americans are liberal. How long will it take politicians and the media to get that?"

Will the Progressive Majority Emerge?

Rick Perlstein
The NATION article | posted June 21, 2007 (July 9, 2007 issue)

EXCERPT...

Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007, a massive twenty-year roundup of public opinion from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, tells the story. Is it the responsibility of government to care for those who can't take care of themselves? In 1994, the year conservative Republicans captured Congress, 57 percent of those polled thought so. Now, says Pew, it's 69 percent. (Even 58 percent of Republicans agree. Would that some of them were in Congress.) The proportion of Americans who believe government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep is 69 percent, too--the highest since 1991. Even 69 percent of self-identified Republicans--and 75 percent of small-business owners!--favor raising the minimum wage by more than $2.

The Pew study was not just asking about do-good, something-for-nothing abstractions. It asked about trade-offs. A majority, 54 percent, think "government should help the needy even if it means greater debt" (it was only 41 percent in 1994). Two-thirds want the government to guarantee health insurance for all citizens. Even among those who otherwise say they would prefer a smaller government, it's 57 percent--the same as the percentage of Americans making more than $75,000 a year who believe "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person."

It's not just Pew. In the authoritative National Election Studies (NES) survey, more than twice as many Americans want "government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending" as want fewer services "in order to reduce spending." According to Gallup, a majority say they generally side with labor in disputes and only 34 percent with companies; 53 percent think unions help the economy and only 36 percent think they hurt. A 2005 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 53 percent of Americans thought the Bush tax cuts were "not worth it because they have increased the deficit and caused cuts in government programs." CNN/Opinion Research Corp. found that only 25 percent want to see Roe v. Wade overturned; NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard found the public rejecting government-funded abstinence-only sex education in favor of "more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives" by 67 percent to 30 percent. Public Agenda/Foreign Affairs discovered that 67 percent of Americans favor "diplomatic and economic efforts over military efforts in fighting terrorism."

Want hot-button issues? The public is in love with rehabilitation over incarceration for youth offenders. Zogby/National council on Crime and Delinquency found that 89 percent think it reduces crime and 80 percent that it saves money over the long run. "Amnesty"? Sixty-two percent told CBS/New York Times surveyors that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to "keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status." And the gap between the clichés about what Americans believe about gun control and what they actually believe is startling: NBC News/Wall Street Journal found 58 percent favoring "tougher gun control laws," and Annenberg found that only 10 percent want laws controlling firearms to be less strict, a finding reproduced by the NES survey in 2004 and Gallup in 2006.

You suspected it all along. Now it just might be true: Most Americans think like you. Nearly two-thirds think corporate profits are too high (30 percent, Pew notes, "completely agree with this statement...the highest percentage expressing complete agreement with this statement in 20 years"). Almost three-quarters think "it's really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer," eight points more than thought so in 2002.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070709/perlstein

The reason most pols -- especially DEMs fail to realize that is -- they know what happens to politicians who do.

[ellisonz]

24. Vietnam. n/t

:evilfrown:

[Octafish]

42. JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

[DIKB]

26. My screenname is an acronym

of something my mom said about me.

"He's so liberal it's like when he was baptized he was Dipped In Kennedy's Blood."

[Octafish]

46. Hiya, DIKB! ''Not Since Kennedy...''

Here's someone else who gets it.

Not Since Kennedy

by James R. Brett
AmericanLiberal.org
Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 07:00:00 AM CDT

I was a young officer in the Navy on that fateful day in late November forty-four years ago. We had just cleared the entrance to Guantanamo Bay when a crewman's personal radio picked up the base radio station announcing that President John Kennedy had been shot. Those of us not having duty that evening went ashore to the base officers' and enlisted men's clubs with a mission to hear as much as we could, to listen to others speaking and the news as it dribbled in via Armed Forces Radio. Guantanomo was nothing like it is today, of course. It was the home of the fleet training group, those ever so patient men who brought ships of all kinds up to a state of battle or mission readiness. They were a very professional group and hardened in a way that for a young officer just about to make the jump to Lieutenant (junior grade) seemed quite "salty" and quite wise.
JB :: Not Since Kennedy

The talk at dinner and later in the bar was about the Cubans (and had they done it), the Russians (and had they done it), the mafia (and had they done it), but the slow realization settled in fairly early that there was a fundamental flaw in American culture and that may have done it.

When we got back to our home port we immersed ourselves in civilians and listened some more. There was a palpable sense of dread and loss and shame. We had shown the world that we were a rough and tumble society that still assassinated our heads of state. There was, in other words, a strong sense of failure. Our pride and our sense of being a special country had been assassinated too.

There is in the United States today a strong sense of shame, embarrassment, unease, and out-and-out despair. Nothing like this has been felt since Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. The murder of students at Kent State, the murder of Bobby Kennedy, the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the helicopter rooftop evacuation of Saigon, none of these matched the loss of John and none of them come close to the horrible feeling we have creeping across the land right now like a killer fog.

If you read Joel Hirschhorn's essay this week you will have read about a people unready to fight, stuck in their comforts, but nevertheless distraught about the state of the country. If you turn on television news you will hear the bitter ironies framing and gelding the news of corruption and constitutional crisis, both seemingly ignored by oath-taking members of Congress—both houses.

CONTINUED...

http://americanliberalism.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=1073

There's a reason why the Reich couldn't have a real leader in the White House.

He was changing America into what it could be, what it should be, what it deserves to be.

[IChing]

29. Me too, another stupid liberal

that believes in the democratic ideals
of Kennedy and the warnings of Eisenhower
and the military industrial complex.

[lonestarnot]

30. Such a calming OP.

Great leaders. Easy to be a Kennedy dem!

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

32. Hell Yeah. What A Great Quote.

[burrowowl]

33. Amen!

Kennedy was also able to learn from his mistakes!
Unlike idiot Chimpy!

[H2O Man]

35. I am.

"I believe in an America where every family can live in a decent home in a decent neighborhood -- where children can play in parks and playgrounds, not the streets of slums -- where no home is unsafe or unsanitary -- where a good doctor and a good hospital are neither too far away nor too expensive -- and where yje water is clean and the air is pure and the streets are safe at night." -- President Kennedy

[sellitman]

36. Piss off a righty today: Let them know you are a proud liberal

I am.

All the lurking Freepers can lick my left one.

[mondo joe]

37. Beautiful! Thank you.

[noamnety]

38. Howard Zinn on JFK

"John F. Kennedy was cautious on the issue (of McCarthyism), didn't speak out against McCarthy (he was absent when the censure vote was taken and never said how he would have voted). McCarthy's insistence that Communism had won in China because of softness on Communism in the American government was close to Kennedy's own view ..."

"In 1960, the military budget was $45.8 billion -- 49.7 percent of the budget. That year John F. Kennedy was elected President, and he immediately moved to increase military spending. In fourteen months, the Kennedy administration added $9 billion to defense funds, according to Edgar Bottome (The Balance of Terror).

By 1962, based on a series of invented scares about Soviet military build-ups, a false "bomber gap" and a false "missile gap," the United States had overwhelming nuclear superiority. It had the equivalent, in nuclear weapons, of 1,500 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs, far more than enough to destroy every major city in the world-the equivalent, in fact, of 10 tons of TNT for every man, woman, and child on earth. To deliver these bombs, the United States had more than 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 80 missiles on nuclear submarines, 90 missiles on stations overseas, 1,700 bombers capable of reaching the Soviet Union, 300 fighter-bombers on aircraft carriers, able to carry atomic weapons, and 1,000 land-based supersonic fighters able to carry atomic bombs.

The Soviet Union was obviously behind--it had between fifty and a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles and fewer than two hundred long-range bombers. But the U.S. budget kept mounting, the hysteria kept growing, the profits of corporations getting defense contracts multiplied, and employment and wages moved ahead just enough to keep a substantial number of Americans dependent on war industries for their living. "

"When John F. Kennedy took office, he launched the Alliance for Progress, a program of help for Latin America, emphasizing social reform to better the lives of people. But it turned out to be mostly military aid to keep in power right-wing dictatorships and enable them to stave off revolutions."

"He agreed to a tax break for business investment in plant expansion and modernization. He is not spoiling for a fight with the Southern conservatives over civil rights. He has been urging the unions to keep wage demands down so that prices can be competitive in the world markets and jobs increased. And he has been trying to reassure the business community that he does not want any cold war with them on the home front.

. . .this week in his news conference he refused to carry out his promise to bar discrimination in Government-insured housing, but talked instead of postponing this until there was a "national consensus" in its favor. . . . "

[rndmprsn]

39. KICKED!

I'm a Kennedy Democrat too!

(and being a born again dem...i consider myself a Carter Democrat as well)

great image...thats my old Sen John Glenn (D-OH) next to JFK =]

[DemReadingDU]

43. I'm here!

[mod mom]

44. Octafish, did you see Friday night's Hardball w RFK Jr?

If not, here is a link to the video (transcript not up yet):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

In the 1st segment (CIA + family jewels), it is mentioned that (the scoundrel) Richard Helms said it was Bobby who was behind the Castro assassination (kind of remininscent of the republicons crying voter fraud, isn't it ?) Bob Baer says we'll never know about the Kennedy assassination since 20 files are missing.

In the 2nd segment Mathews allows RFK Jr to defend his father, but then places him along side some rw radio talk show host to argue about global warming (unbelievable)

Question: Do you think that this upcoming CIA "family jewel" release might be another rw dis-information crusade? A lot of folks are hoping the truth is on the way, but to me w BFEE still in control, just the opposite is likely, especially with comments like the RFK link to assassination coming out.

PS I hope you will consider posting another one of your excellent background threads on BFEE link to the Kennedy assassination for the newbies and lurkers to read. You, sir, are the one who enlightened me.

[Octafish]

45. Family Jewels aren't the same as the Crown Jewels.

Regarding the family jewels, my prediction:

The biggest of all will be no where to be found.



Different league.

Still, Poppy was in Dallas that terrible day. Thus, the guy's got a lot to answer for.

For starters: What was he doing in Dallas when JFK was murdered?

At least that's what he told the FBI.

In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, ostensible Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Skeptics need not take my word for it, that's what Poppy told the FBI:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?

Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show that was big on show and light on facts.

Recent evidence shows Bush was CIA earlier than he admitted:

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

By Russ Baker and Jonathan Z. Larsen
The Real News Project January 8, 2007

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine's role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

CONTINUED...

http://realnews.org/rn/content/zapata.html

Small world, huh?

Now I don't know if Poppy was a trigger man, was only there to watch what happened or what just happened to be there. I do know Poppy Bush has never explained these memos. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.

Seeing how he would go on to become President, as would his dim son, I believe it's vitally important that we learn the Truth.

Why? The United States and the world haven't been the same since November 22, 1963. And not a single major player in the nation's mass media have stepped up and demanded a real investigation. So, it's up to us, We the People.

Remember, there's no statute of limitations on murder. Or treason.

Thank you for your kinds words, mod mom.



Something's in the works I promise to ping you on.

[Octafish]

47. RFK has been SAID to have gone after Castro.

The facts ARE that Bobby shut down the CIA camps training post-Bay of Pigs guerrillas.

From the Education Forum:

The traditional view is that Robert Kennedy was determined to get Castro. Some people believe that RFK was plotting his assassination while JFK was trying to negotiate with Castro.

William Attwood's book, The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War (1987) provides some insights into this situation. Attwood was probably JFK's most important foreign policy advisor. He was the man who arranged the negotiations between the JFK administration and Castro in 1963.

On April 21, 1963, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, wrote a memorandum entitled "Cuban Alternatives" that made the point, heretofore overlooked, that Castro's death would lead to "singularly unpromising" consequences for U.S. policy, since he would almost certainly be succeeded by his brother Raul. And there was little doubt that Raul was far more likely than Fidel to follow the Soviet script to the letter.

Bundy's memorandum also identified three possible alternatives to continuing futile plots and pinpricks indefinitely: (i) forcing "a nonCommunist solution in Cuba by all necessary means"; (ii) insisting on "major but limited ends"; (iii) moving "in the direction of a gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro."

The last alternative, which grew out of a January proposal from Bundy to Kennedy about exploring the possibility of communicating with Castro, was then accepted by a new committee, the Special Group, which had assumed responsibility within the White House for reviewing and approving covert actions in Cuba. Sabotage had all but ceased early in 1963. Yet in June-the same month Kennedy delivered his famous speech on making the world "safe for diversity"-a sabotage program designed to "nourish a spirit of resistance and disaffection" was approved in the White House, and thirteen major operations planned for the November 1963 January 1964 period.

What could we-or should we-have been doing instead?

Four realities had to be kept in mind, and weren't:

First, Fidel Castro's one-man revolution was improvised, erratic, whimsical at times, but pervasive - and fueled by passionate popular support. Politically, he was an impetuous radical revolutionary - too undisciplined to be the Communists' satrap but not averse to using them and parts of their doctrine, nor to turning to the Soviet Union for the aid and trade he needed to keep going. His avowal in December 1961 that he'd always been a Marxist was believed by no one who knew him well; but his pride compelled him to say he was neither an opportunist nor some wet-behind-the-ears recent convert to Lenin's teachings.

Second, the revolution he'd set in motion could never be reversed after 1959. To turn the clock back, as the exiles hoped to do, would have meant closing schools and clinics, taking shoes away from children, returning most sugar plantations to absentee landlords, reopening Havana's casinos and notorious brothels and denationalizing expropriated firms whose owners had by now fled. There was just no way. The social and economic transformation of Cuba was too far advanced. Even if the revolution was mismanaged, as it was, the Soviets seemed willing to bail out their protégée indefinitely by buying his sugar above market prices and selling him oil below market prices. As a result, Castro has cost them billions of rubles over the past quarter century; but why should this concern us?

Third, the Cuban exile community, augmented annually by Castro's shrewd policy of letting the disgruntled leave-with one suitcase each created a voting bloc in Florida and some northeastern states that soon carried weight with politicians. Denouncing Castro became a ritual for candidates in certain congressional districts, even though there were more brutal and corrupt dictators then in power all over Latin America.

Fourth, the only identifiable U.S. interests in Cuba were to retain our naval base at Guantanamo Bay (which we have) and to prevent Cuba from becoming a center for Soviet subversion of Latin America...

Anyway, on September 5, I was talking Africa with Lisa Howard, an ABC correspondent, who told me she'd recently interviewed Castro in Havana and was convinced he'd like to restore communications with the U.S. She offered to arrange a social gathering at her apartment where I could meet casually and informally with Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's representative at the U.N.

I told her I'd let her know, on the understanding that she would keep all such contacts confidential in exchange for exclusivity if there should be a story to be told somewhere down the road. But her impression reminded me of something Sekou Toure said to me during the 1962 missile crisis: "I'm sorry for Castro. I think he is a nationalist and a neutralist at heart, whatever he sometimes says. But he had neither the intellectual training nor the ideological experience to understand the Communists. I did-in the trade union movement-so I know how they operate. But Castro is naive and has allowed himself to be used by them. Even so, if you are flexible, I think he can be brought back to a neutralist position."

This could be the moment to be flexible, and in Washington a week later I mentioned the possibility of sounding out Lechuga to Averell Harriman, then an assistant secretary of state. He was intrigued and asked me to do a memo on it. Ken Galbraith, back from India and returning to Harvard, told me Harriman, rather than Stevenson, was the man to see in order to get the president's attention.

On September 17, I ran into Seydou Diallo, Guinea's ambassador to Cuba, in the Delegates' Lounge, and he volunteered the information that Cuba's economy was in a slump and Castro would soon be amenable to some sort of agreement with us. "He is salvageable," he said. "Give him another three months." Other Africans I talked to expressed generally the same view.

That day I wrote a "Memorandum on Cuba," based on the premise that the policy of isolating Cuba not only intensified Castro's desire to cause trouble but froze the United States before the world "in the unattractive posture of a big country trying to bully a small country."

The memo went on:

According to neutral diplomats I have talked to at the U.N., there is reason to believe that Castro is unhappy about his present dependence on the Soviet Union; that he does not enjoy in effect being a satellite; that our trade embargo is hurting him-though not enough to endanger his position; and that he would like to establish some official contact with the United States and would go to some length to obtain normalization of relations with us-even though this would not be welcomed by most of his hard-core Communist entourage ...

All of this may or may not be true. But it would seem that we have something to gain and nothing to lose by finding out whether in fact Castro does want to talk and what concessions he would be prepared to make ...
What I am proposing is a discreet inquiry into neutralizing Cuba on our terms. It is based on the assumption that, short of a change of regime, our principal political objectives in Cuba are: i. The evacuation of all Soviet bloc military personnel. ii. An end to subversive activities by Cuba in Latin America. iii. Adoption by Cuba of a policy of nonalignment.

I suggested the time and place for this inquiry were the current session of the U.N. General Assembly and that, having visited Cuba and talked with Castro in 1959, it would be natural for me to meet informally with Lechuga. If Castro was interested, one thing might lead to another: "For the moment, all I would like is the authority to make contact with Lechuga. We'll see what happens then."

The next day, I showed the memorandum to Stevenson, who liked it. "Unfortunately," he said, "the CIA is still in charge of Cuba." But he offered to take it up with the president. Harriman was in New York on the nineteenth, so I gave him a copy too. He said he was "adventuresome enough" to be interested but urged me to see Bob Kennedy, whose approval would be essential. I called Kennedy and got an appointment to see him on the twenty-fourth.

Meanwhile, Stevenson told me he had talked to the president about the Cuban initiative when he came to New York on the twentieth to address the General Assembly, and got his agreement to go ahead. For some reason, Stevenson was not keen on my seeing Robert Kennedy, but I trusted Harriman's instincts. Bob had been deeply involved in our Cuban relations and would expect to be consulted about this gambit; also, he had his brother's ear as did no one else.

I did tell Lisa to organize her cocktail party, and on the twenty-third Lechuga and I found ourselves talking about Fidel and the revolution in a corner of her apartment. He said Castro had hoped to establish some sort of contact with Kennedy after he became president in 1961, but the Bay of Pigs ended any chance of that, at least for the time being. But Castro had read Kennedy's American University speech in June and had liked its tone. I mentioned my Havana visit in 1959 and Fidel's "Let us be friends" remark in our conversation. Lechuga said another such conversation in Havana could be useful and might be arranged. He expressed irritation at the continuing exile raids and our freezing $33 million in Cuban assets in U.S. banks in July. We agreed the present situation was abnormal and we should keep in touch.

On the twenty-fourth I flew to Washington, gave Bob Kennedy my memo, which he read, and told him of my talk with Lechuga the night before. He said my going to Cuba, as Lechuga had mentioned, was too risky-it was bound to leak-and if nothing came of it the Republicans would call it appeasement and demand a congressional investigation. But he thought the matter was worth pursuing at the U.N. and perhaps even with Castro some place outside Cuba. He said he'd consult with Harriman and McGeorge Bundy.

SOURCE:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4604

I don't agree with all they post, but The Education Forum is top-notch in terms of facts and analysis.

The Family Jewels will try to frame a certain picture regarding RFK and Castro.

Unlike a photograph, it is not necessarily based on reality.

[mod mom]

49. Thank you so much for this information.

I just sent it referenced in an email to Chris Mathews (Hardball).

I always look for your informative posts, and use them to spread the truth.

:patriot:

[antigop]

48. Sorry, Octafish -- all due respect, but Ted has not been on our side lately

Take a look at the awful Pension "Protection" Act that Ted was one of the chief negotiators for.

Ted also supports an increase on H1-B visas when many US programmers and engineers have been thrown out of work.

Not sure what's happened to Ted.