Bobby Kennedy, Edith Hamilton and Aeschylus — wrongness compounded, perhaps deliberately

Bobby Kennedy's quotation of Aeschylus on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death is probably one of his greatest known moments. It has flickered in and out of my mind through the years, and came to my starker attention recently. On the divine? It's bullshit, really, whether classical Greece's panoply or Aeschylus going henotheistic, on one hand, or Kennedy's Christian god on the other. 

Anyway, here it is:

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

First, per several sites, the Edith Hamilton translation is "despite," not "despair." Aeschylus is slightly less bullshitting than RFK with "despite." The original idea doubles down on "against our will." Bobby's sounds more poignant.

But, neither is true. In the Christian dual-omni god world of Bobby, this runs straight on into the problem of evil, Aeschylus' original or his misremembered version equally so. A god who can't teach wisdom outside of suicides or homicides is either less than omnipotent or less than omnibenevolent.

That said, of course, Hamilton herself mistranslated the last word. In Aeschylus, it's, to give the whole phrase, "the awful grace of the gods." 

For more on that, and other problems with Hamilton's translation, go here. I quote author Tara Wanda Milligan:

Even more than this, it is perhaps Hamilton’s reconstruction of Athenian tragedy, Americanized to focus on individual “poetically transmuted pain,” that appealed to Robert F. Kennedy. Hallett says that tragedy as conceived by Hamilton, a school headmistress with a master’s degree in classics but no further training, “focused intensely on individual suffering, democratic to the extent that it equalizes, and minimizes differences among, individuals who suffer and exult in their suffering.” A man of forty-two who had witnessed both his elder brothers die unexpectedly (Joe Jr. died while fighting in World War II), Kennedy needed solace and founded it in Hamilton’s writing. “Reading the Greeks was Jackie’s idea but something Bobby was ready for,” writes biographer Evan Thomas, adding that Aeschylus’s words “seemed to be speaking directly to Bobby.”

Going past that, the author notes that Hamilton misconstrues Hellenic Greek tragedy in general. Indeed, the Americanization is tragedy as individualized pathos.  

While that's not "the problem of evil," per se, and it's not "theodicy," it is A problem of evil of sorts.

Go back to World War II, where African-American combat deaths, or service short of death, received less valourous recognition than that of Whites. Or look at "Drunken" Ira Hayes. 

But, that issue goes yet deeper.

And I quote her again:

Donald Lateiner, professor of classics at Ohio Wesleyan, says that Hamilton’s notion of Athenian democracy, which overlooks its oppressive and hierarchical qualities and use of slavery, could serve as a sort of justification for American anti-communist foreign policy during the Cold War. That Robert, who served as his brother’s attorney general and enforcer during John’s presidency, found Hamilton’s depiction of Athens inspiring is unsurprising. “The Kennedys found in Edith Hamilton someone who presented a way of conceiving of American power that gave them some cache of the ancient democracy but also found justification for the use of power in the promotion of an ideology of democracy,” Lateiner says. Kennedy, therefore, was an ideal embodiment and champion of Hamilton’s conception of tragedy, and, conversely, Hamilton’s rendering of Athens provided a template for Kennedy to project his longing on—a nostalgia for an existence that never existed, a sort of left-leaning version of the #MAGA moment that took hold of Americans in 2016.

Ouch. Right?

Well, not so "ouch" for those who know the real RFK. That's especially true for those of us who know that in the 1968 primaries, he threw elbows at Clean Gene McCarthy, and also, in California, in a debate shortly before his assassination, opposed moving public housing in Los Angeles out to Orange County, while McCarthy supported it, noted in the link below. It's also not so ouch for those of us who know, re our current geopolitics, that he was a Zionist (contra overblown anti-Zionist conspiracy theories about Jack's assassination).

And, as far as the Kennedy take on Hamilton's take on Greece, another way of putting it is that "the grandeur of the Fourth Rome" was being covered with the lipstick of "the glory of Greece." 

In other words? American Exceptionalism 101. 

Electronic Intifada joins Jeff Morley, Tim Shorrock, Sam Husseini, and other JFK conspiracy theorists

This new piece would be laughable if not sad. And it is sad, because it's conspiracy theorizing. And, as I now see, Jim DeBrosse, "book" and all, is one of the leading pushers of the "Israel did it" conspiracy.

I think JFK assassination conspiracy theories in general are illogical on the rational side and fail Ockham's Razor on the empirical side. But, for one additional reason, the "Israel did it" is even worse. I'll get to that below. 

First, Jefferson Morley is NOT a "respected JFK researcher." He's a conspiracy theorist, even if he claims he's a former one. More on that below. (I've written more than once about him.)

And, Electronic Intifada is suddenly less respected by me than it was a couple of days earlier. 

But, before we go there, we have this:

Signs of Israel’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination have been ignored for more than 60 years by a mainstream media that still clings to the lies and omissions of the Warren Report, the official, but widely discredited, US government investigation into the assassination.

Well, the Intifada is officially in conspiracy theory land. 

Then we jump here: 

For those willing to look at all the facts, there is evidence of a broad conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, led by rogue elements of the CIA, Israel’s leaders and intelligence officials, the national crime syndicate under the leadership of Zionist gangster Meyer Lansky, and the French underground army of assassins known as the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS).

Then we have the allegedly Jewish connection.

A document released in 2023 from the JFK archive reveals that Reuben Efron, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, was reading purported triggerman Lee Harvey Oswald’s private mail years prior to the JFK assassination as part of a closely-held CIA surveillance program.

In reality, per the Times of Israel linked at "document," while he might have been ethnically Jewish, nothing ever says he was working for Mossad or any other Israeli agency. And, if Jeff Morley had the goods on that, he would have said so. 

And, from there, we loop in the CIA's top nutbar, which itself shows how uninformed this piece is:

The program was led by James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s counterterrorism chief and its liaison to the Mossad, Israel’s overseas spy agency. Efron, a Zionist whose mother died in the Holocaust, later emigrated from the US to live in Jerusalem. 

JFK assassination documents released in 2025 show that Angleton used Mossad operatives to spy on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

There you go. 

But, the stupidity doesn't stop there. It continues:

There were certainly motives other than the Zionist ones at play in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. He withheld air support during the infamous “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961, embittering the defeated anti-Castro rebels. There are also indications, in at least one National Security Action Memo, 263, that JFK wanted to withdraw American troops from Vietnam after his likely reelection in 1964.

Wrong, wrong and Not.Even.Wrong.

Here's the reality, as I've written, about NSAM-263. And more here, if that's not enough.

But, that's not enough for Jim DeBrosse at the Electronic Intifada, because now he gives us the "sekrut real world" of Jack Ruby:

Ruby – Oswald’s killer – was by no means the small-time pawn of organized crime dismissed by the Warren Commission. By way of the Teamsters Union and the Chicago underworld, he rose to the top of the Dallas area mob. In the early 1950s, Ruby – who used his original surname Rubenstein at the time – befriended Lewis McWillie, the manager of Lansky’s casino operation in Havana. Several months after Castro’s takeover in 1959, Ruby made an unexplained six-day visit to Cuba, where some believe he secured the release of mob boss Santos Trafficante from a Cuban detention camp.

There's no fucking way the Mob would ever have actually trusted wannabe, and Andy Warhol 15-minutes-of-fame seeker Jack Ruby that much. So, I consider that a flat lie, because it IS a flat lie. "Conveniently," DeBrosse has no links, not even to a less than fully reputable site, to try to substantiate that.

But, me? I have Gerald Posner, who explains the reality behind the increase in Ruby's phone calls in mid to late 1963. He also notes the obvious — if Oswald were the actual shooter but a "controlled" patsy, he wouldn't have been allowed to stay alive to three days and possibly spill some beans. 

And, don't go into plagiarism claims. If everything he plagiarized is factual, he still wrote facts. Second, I've never heard that claim laid against "Case Closed." That said, it IS funny that Mark Lane, yes, THAT Mark Lane, was his plagiarism attorney. 

But why stop there? Let's go into Bobby Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory too!

Lansky was connected to two gangsters closely involved in the JFK assassination plot. The first of these was Jack Ruby, who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald before the supposed killer of JFK could testify. “I’m just a patsy,” Oswald had famously said after his arrest. 

The second was Eugene Hale Brading (aka Jim Braden). An ex-convict with known ties to a group of hitmen, Brading was also a suspected courier for Lansky. He was stopped by Dallas police for suspicious behavior in a Dealey Plaza office building minutes after the JFK assassination. Brading, who used numerous aliases and had a long criminal history, was taken in for questioning but released. 

On the night Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was killed, Brading was once again found in Los Angeles just a mile from the hotel where the younger Kennedy was gunned down. RFK was not only JFK’s brother, but his attorney general.

Oof. 

It's me, boys, I did it, even if I lied, denied and waved my hands later. 

First, Oswald lied as much as Sirhan Sirhan, to get at both conspiracy theories. 

Second, to get at the reality of Sirhan Sirhan, in this case, Zionism IS involved, namely that Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy because he rightfully thought RFK was a Zionist. THAT is the "one additional reason." And, yes, Sirhan Sirhan did it, period and end of story.

Second, Brading is so nuts he doesn't even get his own Wiki page. See the Wikipedia entry for the document "Gemstone File." 

The article goes on to call Jim Garrison a "hero" while at the same time, in referring to CIA and other documents, use the word "imply" regularly.

Jean Souetre? His actual name would be Jean-Jacques Susini, I think. Under the first name, his alleged involvement comes from the febrile mind of E. Howard Hunt.

OK, Shorrock is dealt with in that NSAM-263 link. He's great on Korean Peninsula issues, wrong and a Camelot true believer wrong, on JFK. He's not specifically, AFAIK, a Zionist conspiracy theorist.

Jeff Morley? I didn't believe him when he claimed he was no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Sam Husseini, referenced above? Anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist.

Angleton? Paranoid about CIA infiltration, especially the Nosenko case, which badly damaged the Agency. 

The rest of the piece is the usual "throw shit at the wall and see if it sticks." 

Not.Even.Wrong., per my 2023 thoughts on the 60th anniversary of the assassination. 

The worst part, beyond the conspiracy theory itself, is that it actually gives reputable ammo to Zionists trying to morph anti-Zionism into antisemitism. 

And with that, I have removed Electronic Intifada from my blogroll. 

And been banned by Libertarian Meme on Reddit for calling the last paragraph of their post on this idiocy full-on antisemitism. (They're Mises Mice fucktards, including openly calling for an end to democracy.)

==

Update, Nov. 4, 2025: Asa Winstanley and compadres at Palestine is Still the Issue have joined Electronic Intifada in "platforming" Jim DeBrosse's nutbar conspiracy theory.

I have unfollowed it on Substack after calling it out, including the issue that Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby for being a Zionist! 

 

I shot the JFK, but I did not shoot the LBJ

Riffing on Bob Marley and the Wailers, it's another anniversary of one of Merikkka's dumbest and most ill-informed, yet non-charmingly endearing conspiracy theories.

In reality, besides the buttloads of physical evidence? If one looks at the history of actual and attempted U.S. presidential assassinations, Lee Harvey Oswald is nowhere outside the norm on either being a nutter or on acting for actual or alleged political reasons. I addressed that on the 60th anniversary.

That won't stop the David Talbots, Jefferson Morleys and other nutters from continuing with their nuttery, of course.

And, with Donald J. Cheeseburger re-entering the White House in two months, it will all ramp up more, starting with Jan. 20, 2025.

That said, Trump head-faked Morley et al in his first term and didn't release "everything." THAT said, Morley has claimed to know what files he's not getting, in one of the biggest-ass cases of circular reasoning I've ever seen. Of course, he also lied about no longer being a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Reminder: I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. 

JFK Assassination at 60: Various thoughts

Just dropping tidbits here, including parts of my editorial column from last week for starters.

First, it's "lovely" that NY Mag's Intelligencer is platforming a conspiracy theorist in Scott Sayare. And, the tiny bits of loose thread of Jeff Morley that he pulls on further than Morley does are hilarious. That said, it's funny that Rick Atkinson, when an editor at the WaPost while Morley was a staff writer there, found his research to that point "boring." That said, NY Mag already platforms a Russiagate conspiracy theorist in Jon Chait, so, while this is "lovely," it's not surprising.

Related? I covered Morley's most recent bouts of idiocy, including about George Ioannides, not quite a year ago.

Second, I've already covered James Robenalt's co-authored book with Secret Service agent Paul Landis as well as noting that I don't get why Gerald Posner hasn't followed up on Robenalt. That said, given that Posner's a full-on Zionist to the point of hasbara, at the current time, I have no desire to visit his Substack to see if he has anything new on this issue. Sadly, Fred Litwin, considered the doyen of assassination researchers by many, has nothing on his site about the book, and his Twitter shows he's as much an in-the-tank Zionist as Posner, so no desire to engage him, either.

Third? I found a better conspiracy theory than any I've seen before: Mossad whacked Jack over Dimona. 

Third, part 2 (update): Contra the snark of the above, no, contra Jim DeBrosse, in what's stupid even in the conspiracy theory world, Israel did NOT whack Jack.

Fourth? Snippets from my editorial column last week. (My newspaper group still doesn't have a website.) 

For a summary, there’s this, first on the conspiracy theories, and second on other assassinations. 

Castro? When he heard what had actually happened, he thought, per Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s desire to do similar to Nicaragua in 1981, that the U.S. would bomb Cuba into a parking lot.

Khrushchev? The USSR thought Lee Harvey Oswald was nuts from the day he got on their soil.

LBJ? The man was, if not as depressed as in the summer of 1961, still too depressed to have either the willpower or the organizational level to pull it off.

As for Oswald being a nut? Most actual or attempted presidential assassins were, even if not clinically insane.

The insanity defense didn’t exist in the 1830s, but a man who tried to assassinate President Andrew Jackson, Richard Lawrence, was sent to an asylum after being found guilty. Specifically, he was at St. Elizabeths, later famed as the home of John Hinckley.

John Wilkes Booth was a megalomaniac, at minimum. (I don't think he was more than that, as far as mental instability.) This was also the first politically driven presidential assassination or attempt.

Charles Guiteau, President James Garfield’s assassin, thought that a minor political service on behalf of the Republican party merited a diplomatic appointment or something similar.

Leon Czolgosz, William McKinley’s assassin, was so mentally unstable that Emma Goldman, herself an anarchist like him, distrusted him. Also an actual political assassination, like Booth and unlike Guiteau.

John Schrenk, the 1912 would-be assassin of TR? Found not guilty by reason of insanity, but clearly not politically driven in his insanity.

The Puerto Rican nationalists who tried to kill Truman? Clearly political, and stone cold sober on sanity. The exception that "proves" the rule here.

Squeaky Fromme, one of the two women who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford, was one of “Charlie’s girls.” That's enough to be clearly a nutter, and arguably a twisted-sense would-be political assassin. Sara Jane Moore had some weird ties to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, President Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley, was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and got decades in an institution.

Outside of presidents? Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy because Bobby was a Zionist. (No, not just because Sirhan thought Bobby was a Zionist, which he rightly did, but because Bobby was a Zionist.)

So, Oswald was far from an outlier. He was part of the pack. 

Reality of JFK's administration? Ditch Camelot and learn the reality about NSAM-263 before being an idiot in public. 

JFK Assassination at 60: Mossad did it over Dimona??

We need a new conspiracy theory! And I have one!

Israel whacked Jack because he knew too much about Dimona!

No, seriously, within the warped thinking of conspiracy theorists, this one is totally sane. Per the National Security Archive website, Jack warned Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1963 that failure to be able to inspect Dimona would jeopardize US-Israel relations. Seriously:

Beginning in April 1963, Kennedy insisted that the Israeli leadership accept regular bi-annual U.S. inspections, or in diplomatic language, “visits,” of Israel’s nuclear complex at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, tried to evade and avoid inspections, but Kennedy applied unprecedented pressure, informing them bluntly, in a near ultimatum tone, that Washington’s “commitment to and support of Israel “could be “seriously jeopardized” if it was thought that the U.S. government could not obtain “reliable information” on the Dimona reactor and Israel’s nuclear intentions.

And, per that piece, Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, did all they could to stall Jack out.

And, the timing fits:

In early 1963 American concerns resurfaced. In January, Kennedy received a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that highlighted the weapons potential of Dimona. It pointed out that the Dimona complex was likely to be operational later that year. According to the NIE, once Dimona was operating at full power, Israel might be on its way to produce enough plutonium for one or two weapons a year.

Boy, oh boy.

Gets better:

Ben-Gurion was expected to respond to Kennedy’s request on Dimona during his next meeting with Barbour, but he was not ready for a direct showdown with a determined U.S. president. Nor was he ready to accept Kennedy’s goal of semi-annual visits; that would have ended Dimona as the embodiment of Ben-Gurion’s existential insurance policy. Instead, he tried to avoid a confrontation by diverting Kennedy’s attention.

"Diverting" Kennedy, eh? What's the ultimate diversion?

But, it would have been Eshkol to have done that, as Ben-Gurion soon resigned. But Kennedy wouldn't let him off the hook.

Surprised by Kennedy’s tough demands on Dimona just days after taking office, Eshkol’s first response was to ask for more time for consultations. Only on 19 August, more than six weeks after he received the letter, did Eshkol come up with a response, which at times was vague. Under Kennedy’s pressure, Eshkol reluctantly assented, in principle, to allow regular visits by U.S. scientists to Dimona. Nevertheless, he did not agree to an early visit and avoided making a commitment to the bi-annual U.S. inspections that Kennedy sought.

Aug. 19, eh? Tight frame, but three months for an organization as skilled as Mossad, which had pulled off the Adolf Eichmann kidnapping just three years earlier? Not a problem.

Since Mossad had nabbed Khrushchev's famous de-Stalinization speech, it likely had eyes on Lee Harvey Oswald when he went to the USSR, and again when he came back to the US. Oswald's attempt to infiltrate the DRE would have been seized on as the opportunity to use him. 

Mossad agents would have been able to play up Oswald's leftist sympathies and brainwash him. He would be disposable as an assassin and untied to them. In case he were arrested, Jack Ruby, being Jewish, would be a perfect "cut-out" to take out Oswald. After all, he admitted to Earl Warren himself during Warren Commission investigation that he was being controlled:

Ruby could well have been paying off an IOU the day he was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Remember: "I have been used for a purpose," the way Ruby expressed it to Chief Justice Warren in their June 7, 1964 session.

There you go. Not the mob, but Mossad, was the Shin Bet, not Cosa Nostra, to whom he owed a debt.

Finally, this explains everything LBJ.

He knew early on the Mossad background, because he got hints sent to him. The Warren Commission was created as a cover-up. And, with those "hints," this is why he never pushed Israel on Dimona the same way Jack did. And I haven't even mentioned the USS Liberty.

Top blogging of September

Started this a couple of days late, but here we go. Again, these are not all from September, but the top 10 by viewership for the month. Old posts will be indicated as such.

No. 10? I called out British Army leadership warmonging on Ukraine, especially as doubled down on by warmonger Timothy Garton Ash.

No. 9? I called out BlueAnon for trying to prematurely apply the 14th Amendment to Trump.

No. 8 was a Texas Progressives roundup with Ken Paxton and Bryan Slaton news.

No. 7 was about the Texas Senate, "the best little whorehouse in Texas" in the Paxton trial.

No. 6? An oldie from 2021 but still true, as "Breath" is still classist and elitist New Age bullshit.

No. 5? Ralph Nader jumping the lesser evilism shark.

No. 4 was my review about Michael Kazin's bio of William Jennings Bryan, and Kazin portraying him overly glowingly and a Dem sheepdogger 100 years or so prior to St. Bernard of Sanders. See my sidebar / spinoff on Substack more explicitly about the history of Democratic sheepdogging.

No. 3 is about the new JFK assassination conspiracy theory book. (I'm willing to be harsher than Gerald Posner, who looked only at Paul Landis and not his coauthor, James Robenalt.)

No. 2, speaking of conspiracy theorists, is about RFK Jr.s deliberately leaked plans to run not as a Democrat but as an independent.

No. 1 is John Anthony Castro being a JAC-off.

Texas Progressivs talk Paxton, politics

Off the Kuff documents the conclusion of the Paxton impeachment trial, and then reacts to the verdict. (My own take on the verdict is here.)

SocraticGadfly offers up reviews of two politics-tinged books: William Jennings Bryan as the original Bernie Sanders and Secret Service agent Paul Landis' new conspiracy-theory tinged JFK assassination book.

Wingnuts don't really care about raising good children. 

Climatemonger Joe continues to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic rather than real action.  (He then throws Palestinians under the bus again.) Ask me why I'm not voting for him, #BlueAnon?

Stace looks at a recent snapshot of Houston Latino voters and how it affects representation. 

 Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said that we must accept the reality of the threats to democracy.

The Fort Worth Report takes a deep dive into the segregated history of the city's public pools, and how they could be recovered. 

The Dallas Observer contextualizes the latest JFK assassination revelation. 

 CultureMap advises you on getting the most for your Texas State Fair dollar this year. 

The Current marks the first-ever successful birth of the rare Oklahoma cave crayfish in captivity.

A new JFK conspiracy theory and book (updated)

Secret Service agent Paul Landis, releasing a book eight years after he first decided to talk to ONE person, former Secret Service director Lewis Merletti about allegedly finding an "extra" bullet from the JFK assassination, has sparked Vanity Fair's James Robenalt into conspiracy theory.

There's many problems, to expand on what I said on Twitter.

First, the framing. "Camelot" didn't exist; if you accept that premise, you're less likely to believe in conspiracy theorists.

Second, Ockham's Razor. The idea that Landis wouldn't have had said SOMETHING to some other SS agent and then have them play "telephone" and say something before 2015? Let alone something of this leaking, not from Landis necessarily, but from Parkland engineer Derrell Tomlinson or someone else. And, in reality, contra Robenalt, claims about Tomlinson are full of problems, per Fred Litwin. In addition, the issue of whether that bullet was CS 399 or not, and what Tomlinson identified as such, leads conspiracy theorists to trip over their own untied shoelaces.

In addition, the idea that Landis' memory, self-admittedly PTSD-influenced, would still be pristine 51 years later when he finally decided to talk to Merletti? Questionable. As is the idea of how such a bullet would be the real "pristine" or "magic" bullet (I see what I did there) and stay in place on the top of the back seat of the Kennedy limo while hauling ass to Parkland. As is the idea of how it would "jump" from Kennedy's stretcher to Connelly's (I see what I did with that), that's not explained.

Related? We have ethical problems. The Cleveland paper reports Robenalt helped write the book; not spelled out in Vanity Fair.

And, per Peter Baker at the NYT, given Landis' PTSD, an even bigger problem:

James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and author of several books of history, has deeply researched the assassination and helped Mr. Landis process his memories.

I smell a conspiracy theory rat, or to be more polite, if not a full believer, then a "fellow traveler." Robenalt does call himself Landis' "confidant" at Vanity Fair, but says nothing more — despite the NYT story being linked. (Frankly, that comes off as a pro forma linking, once VF heard the NYT was doing a piece.)

And, the ethics problems aren't entirely Robenalt's. They're Vanity Fair's, too.

Beyond that, per the NYT, I'm with Posner on this, on the memory issues, even if they weren't "processed":

Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” a 1993 book that concluded that Oswald indeed killed Kennedy on his own, said he was dubious. While he did not question Mr. Landis’s sincerity, Mr. Posner said the story did not add up. 

“People’s memories generally do not improve over time, and it is a flashing warning sign to me, about skepticism I have over his story, that on some very important details of the assassination, including the number of shots, his memory has gotten better instead of worse,” he said. 

“Even assuming that he is accurately describing what happened with the bullet,” Mr. Posner added, “it might mean nothing more than we now know that the bullet that came out of Governor Connally did so in the limousine, not on a stretcher in Parkland where it was found.”

Posner has MUCH more at his Substack. Additional details there that lead me to further question this book.

One, Landis HAS BEEN interviewed before, more than once, and Robenalt never mentions that in the Vanity Fair piece.

Two, per what Landis told the NYT, he has weird theories about how bullets can operate, even for conspiracy theorists.

Three, he notes Landis gets the "two gurneys" idea wrong, along with the timeline of when JFK's body was being removed from Parkland and more. He also notes that, as he said in "Case Closed," that Kennedy's and Connolly's stretchers were never side-by-side in Parkland. He notes that Tomlinson bumped into one of two gurneys, either Connolly's or one next to it that was NOT JFK's.

Four, Posner speculates that is looking for his slice of fame. One thing I think Posner is missing is that Robenalt might be looking for HIS slice of fame.

Five, Posner has more, elsewhere on his Substack, in an interview with Michael Smerconish. He talks about "a kernel of truth" but rejects the "embellishments."

He also tells Smerconish that he heart Clint Hill interviewed by NBC. Hill said there are "inconsistencies and problems ... contradictions" in the book.

Posner also adds, in a reply to another commenter, this:

author Gerald Posner Sep 10 Author Hi Laura, I was thinking about your dad and how utterly horrified he would have been to think that a Secret Service agent might have found a bullet in the presidential limo, and that instead of immediately notifying his superiors, he put it in his pocket and then later left in on an empty gurney at Parkland Texas has a new law as of Sept 1 that eliminates the statute of limitations for tampering with evidence in a murder case. It’s meant to help resolve decades old cold cases. I don’t think Landis is aware of that law.

I'm sure neither Landis nor Robenalt is aware of that.

What else is there to say?

Third (on main thread numbering) other details? Per "Case Closed," it is not "conjecture" that people were hit by concrete fragments. It's reality. So is the idea that the it was the first bullet that missed, from Oswald rushing his first shot. With that, there's plenty of time for Oswald, trained at Marine "marksman" level, to have fired as he did, "pristine-Landis" bullet aside. (Robenalt's claim that Oswald couldn't have fired as fast as he did itself seems to be aside from Landis' extra bullet claim and is just wrong.)

Fourth, referencing the autopsy as though it were pristine, yet wrong? No. Everybody knows it was botched and rushed because it was done at Bethesda at Bobby's insistence.

Fifth, living in the Metromess most of the 2000s, as in 2000-aughts. I've been all around Dealey Plaza. I've been up to the museum. I've been to Dealey Plaza on a Nov. 22 and seen representatives of different conspiracy theories trying to evangelize each other. That's how I know this would not have been THAT hard of shooting for Oswald, the man who had previously almost killed Gen. Walker. 

Sixth, to another angle on Ockham's Razor? If you believe Oswald was one of the shooters, why would an outside conspirator use him, unstable as he was, with another shooter? And, Lee certainly didn't start a conspiracy himself.

To me, it sounds as if "processing memories" might involve exploitation. Robenalt has not been on my JFK conspiracy theory radar screen, but I'll have to google more.

Robenalt sounds a bit more sketchy, gullible, or something, on one other big issue, per his Wiki page, namely this:

Together with John W. Dean, President Richard Nixon's White House Counsel, Robenalt created a continuing education program on the national level called "The Watergate CLE."[3] This continuing legal education program, which was launched in Chicago in June 2011, has Robenalt teaching legal ethics and the representation of an organization under new Model Rules 1.13 and 1.6. John Dean plays the role of a fact witness while Watergate is used as a case study.

I personally think John Dean's ethics and honesty vis a vis Watergate smell like three-day-old dead mackerel on a sidewalk. And I speak from previous experience reading Dean write about Watergate. (I will add that it is possible an older Robenalt eventually repented of younger-age gullibility about Dean.)

And, related to that, Posner did say "kernel of truth," but he was focused on Landis, not Robenalt. I'll keep the header as I have it, from what I said about Robenalt quite possibly seeking new fame as well.

Update: The Dallas Observer has a decent weigh-in.

Overall? I stand by the title. Landis may not be an active conspiracy theorist, but per Posner, he has mentioned people running around the grassy knoll. That, added to this, leaves him open to the charge, at a minimum, even if that's not his primary motivation.

And Robenalt seems ethically sketchy overall, even if I can't find anything in his past to nail him down as a conspiracy theorist.

But, re-reading Peter Baker's piece, he sure walks, talks and quacks like a conspiracy theory duck. And, on journalistic ethics? There's a failure by Baker to push him more on what he meant by "processing" Landis' memories and other things.

The CIA got Tucker Carlson fired!

Or maybe it was mobsters on a grassy knoll! Or the ghost of LBJ! Or any Castro scions running around Cuba!

Contra Jefferson Morley channeling David Talbot, JFK conspiracy theory mongering had nothing to do with Cucker Tarlson getting fired. Also via there, contra Counterpunch, no, Cucker was not fired for talking about US troops possibly fighting in Ukraine (he's not the first to make that claim) or related. And, contra Jonathan Cook there channeling Glennwald, Tucker is only on a new path of populist pandering.

This is yet another chance to remind you that, three years ago, Morley claimed he was no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist. And he said that with a straight face!

The fact that he could tell bullshit like that only further undercuts the credibility of any and all JFK conspiracy theory pronounciamentos he has made since then — and he's made many of them.

Kyrie Irving's antisemitic roots: Do they go back further?

This very interesting and in-depth profile by New York Magazine has me wondering about that and more. Let's start here:

In early 2017, Irving’s teammates Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson created Road Trippin’, a podcast they’d record while flying on the team plane. Irving regularly joined in, providing the wider world with an unfiltered window into his free-associative mind. He riffed on the possibility of a faked moon landing and noted that JFK’s murder took place just days after he tried to “end the bank cartel.”

I'm not saying that IS antisemitic, but it's a short hop from there to "they" control all the banks.

NOTE: Contra nutters on Reddit, where I posted the story link, I totally reject all forms of JFK conspiracy theory, which is why I added the "JFK Assassination" tag. Whether they will eventually focus on possible early roots of Kyrie's "lizard people" thinking, I don't know.

Especially when you then go to:

In one podcast episode, Jefferson and Frye began debating the Illuminati. Another host, the sideline reporter Allie Clifton, tried to change the subject, but Irving stopped her. “It’s okay, this feeling you’re getting in your stomach,” he said.

Well, there you go. And "there" is where Allie Clifton seemed to see Irving going.

But, the weirdness goes beyond possibly deeper antisemitism than I first knew, or other issues like the flat-Earthism.

Like "Anthony Browder." He's one of those "Black Egypt" types. One who believes Egyptian genius is behind much of the modern world.

Then there's Frances Cress Wilding, going quasi-Freudian with her ideas on a sport's ball size and color vs. White vs Black skill levels. Alert Larry Bird and Tiger Woods.

I already thought Dallas trading for him was idiotic. This just adds to that. 

Then we get to the Black Hebrews film fallout.

“Was I surprised that he tweeted out a random antisemitic documentary? Yeah, a little bit. Then again, if you know the YouTube or Instagram algorithm, what kinds of things get fed to a conspiracy-minded guy like him …,” said one team front-office figure, who happens to be Jewish. “I feel like the antisemitism thing is such a footnote to the whole Kyrie story, another example of him spouting off on things he doesn’t know about. He thinks he’s discovered something nobody else knows.” 

Before returning to the Nets, Irving offered an apology during a televised SNY interview. When he had claimed he couldn’t be antisemitic because “I know where I come from,” he said, he wasn’t referring to a lost tribe of Israel. He said he meant suburban New Jersey.

OK, now we're into an allegedly deep thinker telling a lie and a laughable one.

From there, the piece looks at the history of Jewish-Black tensions, Jewish friends of Kyrie's childhood and more.

Then it moves to his narcissism as a player:

At his first press conference as a Dallas Maverick, Irving seemed to characterize his time in Brooklyn as a success. “I left them in fourth place. I did what I was supposed to do,” he said. (The team went 5-9 in games that Durant missed.) “I was incredibly selfless in my approach to leading.”

More reasons the Mavs shouldn't have made the trade, at least not at the price they did.

And finishes with a cold assessment of his psyche:

There’s another way to look at Irving too. He’s often treated as a Neptunian, but many of his qualities are, at heart, pretty familiar for a 30-year-old American who spent much of the pandemic staring at a screen: a borderline solipsistic obsession with his identity, a vague distrust of the country’s political Establishment, a radicalization on matters of social justice. ... Off the court, at least, Irving is far from unknowable. In his own way, he can even be considered — and here’s a word no one has ever used to describe him — ordinary.

I agree. And, for Kyrie, that last cut — being called "ordinary" — is surely the coldest of all.

More JFK moronity from Jefferson Morley

THIS:

The CIA holds documents that show presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in an intelligence operation before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a prominent Kennedy assassination reporter alleged Tuesday.

Is laughable. And, as the story goes on, an argument from silence hybridized with circular reasoning, all mashed up in the echo chamber of Morley's own mind.

Surprising, though? Not at all, if one knows Morley's past history. The biggie is that two and a half years ago, Morley claimed he was no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist. He didn't fool me. And, now, it must be like crack cocaine for him.

As for George Ioannides? It is true (that's Wiki's page) that he was connected to funding Cuban exiles tied to Oswald. The "plausible deniability" smokescreen conspiracy theory's been around since the start.

The argument from silence, etc? He's been suing over Ioannides' papers for years, and all along claiming he knows they have specific information. ....

Uhh, how do you know if you haven't seen them? And, if you actually DO know? How do you even know for sure it's 44 documents, as you claim? Show your homework already? Speaking of homework, the Daily Least (opening link) apparently can't be bothered to do a modicum of it. 

If they did, like me at my link, they'd know Morley is full of Camelot crap, too. Jim Lippard, who has "liked" other stuff by him, and strikes me as more and more of a pseudo-skeptic, should know that too.

Also, contra that "suing" piece, from USA Today, it's really not "perplexing that Oswald first tried to join the DSE before launching his one-man "Fair Play for Cuba." It's easy to see him thinking he would worm inside the group and become a mole.

Sidebar: I love all the conspiracy theory sites that talk about JFK dying "in a hail of gunfire." Since when did three shots become a "hail"?

There's NOTHING "shocking" in the new JFK/Oswald document dump

That's contra the breathlessness of this piece (and surely others) and the claim that, per Elizabeth Lea Vos, Seth Rich conspiracy theory promoter, Greenwald is also a JFK falser, per screengrab:

What? Greenwald is a fucking JFK conspiracy theorist now, too? Since .@ggrenwald has me blocked and I'm told .@ElizabethLeaVos limits Tweet viewing, I don't know if this is true about Glennwald, or just her spinning. See screengrab. pic.twitter.com/KCb5gqbUri

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) December 15, 2021

OK, on to reality.

So what if Oswald met a KBG agent in Mexico City. We already knew he visited the Soviet embassy there, and ALL Soviet embassies have KGB agents. Just like Russian ones today have FSB agents. Just like US embassies then and now have CIA agents. NOTHINGBURGER.

An anon caller Down Under said the Russkies would finance a hit? Australia and the CIA considered another call, also in Australia, a crank.

Castro loomed large in the CIA investigation? Really? Fidel actually knew about Operation Mongoose and was afraid the US would use JFK's death as an excuse to invade.

JFK's still dead; Oswald still did it; NSAM-263 is not a smoking gun

I knew what today's date was. I had thought of Tweeting one of many blog posts on this issue today.

I decided not to, until I saw the #CIAKilledJFK hashtag, and then I did.

But, I wanted to update one of my more recent posts, realizing I'd not talked enough about what is a "smoking gun" for many of the conspiracy theorists. That would be the claims that a memo shows Jack was going to pull out of Vietnam. 

Wrong!

Jack had no secret plan to leave. He had a public plan to leave AFTER it was clear South Vietnam could survive on its own. That's what's NSAM-263 indicates and it's no "smoking gun." And, to make sure that the US could leave sooner rather than later, it calls for military incursions into Laos. Shades of Nixon!

Beyond that, NSAM's basis, per Wikipedia, is itself laughable. McNamara, the computer man who focused the war on body counts, and Kennedy consigliere Max Taylor were either ignorant as hell, lying their asses off, or a mix of both about how well South Vietnam was doing. The ignorance angle could be backed by MACV commander Paul Harkins lying HIS ass off. And, it's arguable that the top pair was engaging in self-deception over the likelihood of a coup against Diem when, at the same time, Ambassador Lodge said it was gaining steam. Had Jack dodged the post-Diem fallout enough to be re-elected in 1964, whether he would have stuck by his desire not to insert combat troops in numbers would have been open for debate. He was an ardent Cold Warrior, he had had "failures" on his watch so far, and looking ahead to 1968, he would have been trying to thread needles on this issue not only for himself, but assuming the Old Man would have been pushing for it, the election of Bobby in 1968.

(Also, as the end of Wiki's piece on NSAM-263 notes, further undercutting the conspiracy theorists, is that LBJ reaffirmed it in December 1963 with NSAM-273. That should make even more clear that NSAM-263 was ultimately an aspirational document.)

Even had Jack avoided the insertion of massive new troops, he surely would have put in limited numbers after his re-election, or maybe earlier, had he faced the same Tonkin Gulf incident as LBJ did. He  undoubtedly would have engaged in the same bombing campaigns as LBJ did. Bombing in Laos would have accompanied other "incursions." Like Tricky Dick, JFK might have dropped a few in Cambodia, too.

Dear Tim and Bob: "I did it. Here's the receipts." Yours, Lee.
Oh, Tim and Bob? "If you're wondering, yes that's me."

On Oswald? The evidence is clear, starting with the fact that there is no such thing as a "magic bullet." In fact, per Wittegenstein, except to reference-quote it to refute it, I refuse to use the phrase.

But, that leads to reason two.

Tim Shorrock, who was the subject of that most recent previous post, appears to believe the myth of Camelot. And, myth it was.

This is laughable, if not tragic because Shorrock believes it.

At its most essential level, “Murder Most Foul” marks the collapse of the American dream, dating from that terrible day in Dallas, when a certain evil in our midst was revealed in ways not seen for a hundred years—a day that, for Dylan, myself, and others of our generation is forever seared into our collective memory. The murder and the hidden machinations behind it, he tells us, robbed us of Kennedy’s brain, a symbol for the positive, forward-looking American spirit that he represented.

First, "hidden machinations" certainly seems to imply conspiracy theory. So, even as Shorrock is wrong, IMO, in claiming Bob Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" isn't about conspiracy theory itself, he certainly seems to be about it on his own.

Shorrock knows — and if he doesn't, fellow Nation contributor Rick Perlstein could tell him — that JFK had no such positive spirit, definitely not on Vietnam.

Nor was JFK (or brother Bobby) a positive, forward-looking American on civil rights. Martin Luther King knew that. In fact, the best thing Jack ever did for civil rights was get himself killed so LBJ could make him into a martyr.

As noted above, that's Lee Harvey Oswald, with the same Mannlicher-Carcano he had used to try to shoot Gen. Edwin Walker.

The conspiracy theories, including the CIA one? Thoroughly debunked, as I discussed three years ago at the 55th anniversary.

"But Oswald was a nut!"

And?

All of our presidential assassinations were less than fully on the beam, and all of the assassinations had political overtones, too.

John Wilkes Booth? Megalomaniac, and one of the less flighty of this bunch. Thought he could inspire a Last Riseup of the Lost Cause.

Charles Guiteau? Mentally unstable, and beyond the courtroom definition of legal insanity, possibly walking in the shadowlands of sanity. Shot Garfield because he thought he deserved a consular service appointment which he had done nothing to earn and that Arthur, representing another branch of Republicanism, would be different.

Leon Czolgosz? So unstable that Emma Goldman distrusted him. Assassinating McKinley was "anarchism of the deed."

Oswald? Well documented on the mental instability and on, in his mind, the political angle — "Fair Play for Cuba." (Don't forget that a non-insane, and arguably pretty stable, Sirhan Sirhan shot RFK as a political assassination five years later.)

Recent attempted assassinations reflect this.

Squeaky Fromme is still alive and still mad for Manson. Arguably a political angle. Sarah Jane Moore was not totally nuts, but had a Patty Hearst obsession. John Hinckley's attempted assassination had no political overtones, just schizophrenic obsession with Jodi Foster.

And, two presidential assassinations between Lincoln's and Kennedy's, plus the degree to which anarchism was in the U.S. air in 1901, would seem to undercut Shorrock there. He's 13 years older than me, and no doubt JFK's assassination seemed shocking to a 13-year-old. But, he's not 13, and he's an investigative journalist. If he can't move beyond?

Hot take on uncritical leftists supporting Jimmy Dore Thought

As regular readers here know, I've done several blogposts about uncritical, nonskeptical leftists peddling, and drinking themselves, the Kool-Aid of Xi Jinping Thought.

Now it's time to turn domestically and look at Jimmy Dore Thought for the first time.

I just do not get why Greens like David Bruce Collins think Jimmy Dore is a good dood, ignoring that his political framing on Force the Vote was likely wrong, and all of Dore's other issues.

Oh, yes, all those "other issues."

Per Rational Wiki, with which I do NOT fully agree on what is conspiracy and what is conspiracy theory, Dore is:

A JFK conspiracy theorist;

A 9/11 falser;

A Seth Rich conspiracy theorist.

This ignores his bromance with/whitewashing of the Boogaloo Bois, which DBC also ignores. That said, elsewhere, DBC ignores Caity Johnstone's past support of red-brown alliances in trumpeting her calls for "unity" on the left.

Sidebar: Dunno about Dore, but Greenwald is also a sexist, which DBC may not know. Glennwald has sexism going back 25 years, and yes, gays, despite bigotry against them, can be sexist — in fact, some of the most vociferous sexism I've run across has been from gays.)

Given that many people, like Bob Fisk at Douma, have pointed out realities otherwise, Rational Wiki is full of shit in saying that claims that Assad didn't do every chemical weapons attack attributed to him is a conspiracy theory. And, sometimes Rational Wiki is not just wrong, it's full of shit, and there's no other way to put it. I've done an editing note, similar to ones at Wikipedia, and we'll see if it sticks. (That said, this and related issues, such as whether OPCW has internally lied about some of this or not, is in many ways a cesspool.)

And, if people claim I'm hypocritical? No, based on how I know how to use evidence and critical thinking, I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. So, both conspiracy theorists and Rational Wiki can go get stupid.

Tim Shorrock: another allegedly outside-the-box steno, stumbles, this one over Dylan, JFK and Camelot

Tim Shorrock writes a paean to Bob Dylan's new song about the JFK assassination, "Murder Most Foul."

There's two main things to note from the piece.

One it that Shorrock claims Dylan is NOT promoting JFK assassination conspiracy theories:

The effect of the song, with its pointed lyrics about treachery and betrayal, are similar to the sound Dylan captured in 2012 on Tempest. … (T)here is little joy to be heard in this recording, where the subject is dark and unfathomable: President Kennedy “being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb” by unseen men seeking to collect “unpaid debts” who killed “with hatred and without any respect.”

But, contrary to some of the hot takes you may have read about it, the point of the song is not to publicize JFK conspiracy theories or take us on a nostalgia tour of the 1960s.

Really? Let's look at the lyrics.

Twas a matter of timing and the timing was right
You got unpaid debts and we’ve come to collect
We’re gon’ kill you with hatred and without any respect
We’ll mock you and shock you, we’ll grin in your face
We’ve already got someone here to take your place
The day that they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly - so quick by surprise
Right there in front of everyone’s eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
Wolfman, oh wolfman, oh wolfman, howl
Rub a dub dub – it’s murder most foul.

That right there has "conspiracy theory" written all over it.

And if you think that doesn't, this does:

What is the truth and where did it go
Ask Oswald and Ruby - they oughta know …
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head
I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline.

Dear Tim and Bob: "I did it. Here's the receipts." Yours, Lee.
Oh, Tim and Bob? "If you're wondering, yes that's me."

Wow.

And, what's also sad is that Shorrock can make his claims in the face of such clear evidence. And, the evidence is clear, starting with the fact that there is no such thing as a "magic bullet." In fact, per Wittegenstein, except to reference-quote it to refute it, I refuse to use the phrase.

But, that leads to reason two.

Shorrock appears to believe the myth of Camelot.

This is laughable, if not tragic because Shorrock believes it.

At its most essential level, “Murder Most Foul” marks the collapse of the American dream, dating from that terrible day in Dallas, when a certain evil in our midst was revealed in ways not seen for a hundred years—a day that, for Dylan, myself, and others of our generation is forever seared into our collective memory. The murder and the hidden machinations behind it, he tells us, robbed us of Kennedy’s brain, a symbol for the positive, forward-looking American spirit that he represented.

Shorrock knows — and if he doesn't, fellow Nation contributor Rick Perlstein could tell him — that JFK had no such positive spirit, definitely not on Vietnam.

Nor was JFK (or brother Bobby) a positive, forward-looking American on civil rights. Martin Luther King knew that. In fact, the best thing Jack ever did for civil rights was get himself killed so LBJ could make him into a martyr.

Nor was he a positive forward-thinking American on the Cold War, other than the test ban treaty. He blew Cuba out of proportion after ignoring early warnings about what Khrushchev was doing. He did trade missiles (in Italy as well as Turkey) for missiles. He did so without ever telling LBJ this, which may have had a small part in LBJ being so tough on Vietnam. He talked about a phony missile gap in the 1960 election campaign. He was an unrepentant friend of McCarthy. Please, Tim. If Dylan doesn't know all of this, I know you do. Stop.

He had this, much earlier:

Like Kennedy’s murder in 1963, the federal government’s utter failure to protect the people in 2020 is a collapse of biblical proportions. 

Uhh, wrong!

There was no "collapse of biblical proportions." LBJ did escalate Vietnam, but Jack had no secret plan to leave. He had a public plan to leave AFTER it was clear South Vietnam could survive on its own. That's what's NSAM-263 indicates. And, to make sure that the US could leave sooner rather than later, it calls for military incursions into Laos. Shades of Nixon!

Beyond that, NSAM's basis, per Wikipedia, is itself laughable. McNamara, the computer man who focused the war on body counts, and Kennedy consigliere Max Taylor were either ignorant as hell, lying their asses off, or a mix of both about how well South Vietnam was doing. The ignorance angle could be backed by MACV commander Paul Harkins lying HIS ass off. And, it's arguable that the top pair was engaging in self-deception over the likelihood of a coup against Diem when, at the same time, Ambassador Lodge said it was gaining steam. Had Jack dodged the post-Diem fallout enough to be re-elected in 1964, whether he would have stuck by his desire not to insert combat troops in numbers would have been open for debate. He was an ardent Cold Warrior, he had had "failures" on his watch so far, and looking ahead to 1968, he would have been trying to thread needles on this issue not only for himself, but assuming the Old Man would have been pushing for it, the election of Bobby in 1968.

Even had Jack avoided the insertion of massive new troops, he surely would have put in limited numbers after his re-election, or maybe earlier, had he faced the same Tonkin Gulf incident as LBJ did. He  undoubtedly would have engaged in the same bombing campaigns as LBJ did. Bombing in Laos would have accompanied other "incursions." Like Tricky Dick, JFK might have dropped a few in Cambodia, too.

One a JFK conspiracy theorist, always one?

Jefferson Morley, proprietor of the JFK Files, fits the bill to a T. Morley admitted, or claimed, a few years ago he was no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist, though he did use the word "reluctantly" or similar as part of the announcement.

Unfortunately, as with claiming that the Saudis hacked Bezos' phone and doubling down on a two-month old claim, indirectly, this week, EVEN THOUGH Bezos' girlfriend's brother has admitted he contacted the Enquirer's parent company and it has been stated without denial that was was paid in advance, no less, and by no less a personage than AMI President David Pecker himself, he doesn't seem immune from conspiracy theories himself. Or, if he truly is, he's way behind in news reading and therefore has lost credibility for  that reason.

But, back to the header.

In addition, for someone who claims he's no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist, it's "interesting" that he's touting a book about JFK that makes untruthful claims of the like that fuel conspiracy theories.

 That's not the first time he's done that, either. Not too long ago, he touted this older book which, per my review, is full of it going by the editorial blurb alone.

==

 Update, Nov. 27: He has a new eBook out, "Morley v CIA," which a former FB friend and friend of the late Leo Lincourt, and a Skeptics™ groupster four-starred. Unfortunately, because Jim Lippard never does reviews, only ratings, I don't know why he gave it that, unless Morley steers totally away from conspiracy thinking.

Update, Nov. 28: Per a piece on Counterpunch reviewing "JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story," he still spins Camelot bullshit myths, too. And, by way of "just saying," peddles more conspiracy theory bullshit, too. He's still a conspiracy theorist, no matter what he claims.

Once more, I present the thin-skinned conspiracy theorists of Consortium News

Dunno who's running its Twitter feed, but after two years of @-ing it from time to time, I actually got a response to this Dec. 1, after visiting its website for the first time in a few months:

I guess Consortium News doesn't want people posting URLs in comments because they don't want readers to be exposed to anything outside the party line. Right .@Consortiumnews? Is that part of the real "security issues"? pic.twitter.com/xxLn3guykt

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) December 1, 2019

And from that? We were off to the races, until Consortium News did a selective exit.

CN has never reported Rich is the leaker. We interviewed people who think that on our webcast but also had on Michael Isikoff who certainly doesn't believe that. Read our site & see there are no "conspiracy theories." We debunked one of the biggest: Russiagate.

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) December 1, 2019

I of course couldn't let that go, so:

Depends on how you define "Russiagate."

And, you bit like a cheap dog on the Forensicator nonsense. Have Binney and McGovern ever admitted with Drake (and I) said that they were chasing their own "Curveball"? So, no, you HAVE reported some conspiracy theories.

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) December 1, 2019

And, of course, to remind the readership of just what I'm talking about, let me link to that.

Right here.

And note that CN has never, ever, cleaned up this Patrick Lawrence mess, even though The Nation DID clean up  Lawrence's mess. (CN has actually run more pieces by Lawrence.)

CN's Twitter Whisperer then said:

Thanks for accepting that you lied about us regarding links in the comments.

— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) December 1, 2019

Nope. No lie. Rather:

My comment about links was posed as a rhetorical question. No lie.
But, it was based on the fact that you've blocked at least 1 of my email addresses from commenting, over a year ago.
Will you accept I have good reason for saying what I did?
Since I'm getting so much response ...

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) December 1, 2019

I didn't expect to get any more response after that.

And didn't.

Crickets again, on both the being blocked and on the Forensicator bullshit. Waited more than 12 hours, overnight, just in case whoever's running the account had checked out.

So, the next morning, I Tweeted the Forensicator link, then one other, noted in the next paragraph.

The background is that I deblogrolled Consortium News 18 months ago. The reasons why are described in detail here, but are above all it going downhill after Robert Parry's death, above all with the addition of Caitlyn Johnstone. I also note that I didn't know Bob himself gave plenty of signs of being a JFK conspiracy theorist, and definitely gullible about the myths of Camelot.

As for "Russiagate"? Like Aaron Maté and others, CN by early 2018, mainly driven by Ray McGovern, was clearly going down the road of twosiderism, which I noted four months before the de-blogrolling.

Update, Dec. 9, 2020: The fact that RNC computers as well as DNC ones were hacked undercuts the Seth Rich leaker thing right there. Unfortunately, for a while, I listened too much to bullshit artists like Aaron Maté (you ARE, on this, Aaron, shut up!) who said "cloud computing" and "mirrors" etc. were no substitute for the real thing. Well, when you use cloud servers, Aaron, that IS the real thing. If you're that much of a gasligher, you too can go fuck yourself along with Ty Clevenger. If you're that much of an idiot, again, shut up. Ditto for anybody else repeating that nonsense.

Dropping by once every month or two has led me to see that CN, on a reasonably generous estimate, has about one-third decent to good posts, one-third meh, and one-third crap. And, since I found a place like LobeLog that has a far broader reach on general foreign policy issues, though not diving as much into intelligence establishment issues, that covers half of CN's good stuff or more? I don't really miss it.

As part of that, while not technically conspiracy theorizing, every CN piece about presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is analysis-free hagiography.

Also, going yet more downhill recently, 20 monthsafter adding Caitlyn Johnstone? Elizabeth Lea Vos of Petulant Media, a feeder of the Forensicator bullshit, is a contributor there. And, since that is a conspiracy theory ...

And contra CN's Twitter Whisperer, everybody who knows anything knows that the Forensicator bullshit, and the Adam Carter behind it, is connected to Seth Rich conspiracy thinking. So, CN, maybe you didn't directly report it. Maybe you interviewed Isakoff (though you've not given him space to write on there, have you? Oopsssss...) but you haven't reputiated, or cleaned up after, Patrick Lawrence, unlike The Nation, and you have, indirectly, thus perpetuated the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

And?

YOU KNOW THAT. Somewhere, if only in Bob's son's or whoever's unconscious.

Finally, CN and fanbois? As I told the Twitter Whisperer, I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. Better than Bob laid it in his piece, since he's a JFK conspiracy theorist.

So, to summarize and swing a full meat-axe? CN lies directly, then further lies by omission and by editorialese (the journalistic equivalent of legalese).

CN's Twitter Whisperer (maybe Vos is running that?) claims it doesn't run conspiracy theories. Refudiation:

• Forensicator;
• Bob Parry himself with JFK.

Claims it doesn't promote Seth Rich conspiracy theorizing. Indirect refutation:

• Forensicator tied to Seth Rich conspiracy theorizing; 
• Never, in its Assange writing, pointing out him as the apparent first promoter of it.

And, so, continues to go downhill.

Texas progressives talk JFK assassination issues with wishes of happy T-day and real green chile burgers

The Texas Progressives hope you have a happy Thanksgiving and safe travels through what looks like it could be a nasty weather system in West and North Texas.

I personally wish any shutterbugs, and chain gangs, who still have to work Friday Night Lights, or Saturday games, a day as safe, warm, dry, and perspective adjusted as well as possible.

And, let's dig in.


Dallas/JFK

SocraticGadfly, with Nov. 22 falling last week, has a twofer, first writing about the irony of Jackie's JFK Camelot legend  actually reflecting Kennedy reality beneath the legend, then, looking in part at Jack's assassination, noting — with examples —  how to distinguish conspiracies from conspiracy theories.

In the wake of another (fading?) JFK assassination anniversary, Texas Monthly takes a look at how much the Sixth Floor Museum is about capitalism (an area where Texas exceptionalism really IS No. 1) as much or more than it is about history.

There's also a live Dealey Plaza webcam, so that, if you don't believe me, you can see just how easy of a shot (relatively speaking) Oswald had. The cam also shows how Bugliosi and Posner are right in pointing out one Warren Commission error. Oswald's FIRST shot was surely the one that missed, with him firing slightly before JFK's limo had fully cleared into his line of fire, and so, Oswald hit a thin tree branch and his high-velocity Mannlicher-Carcano bullet was slightly deflected.

At the same time, Earth Cam's description of the cam is kind of weaselly:

This is the view from the window from which an assassin fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Governor John Connally as the presidential motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. The Sixth Floor Museum, located on the sixth and seventh floors of the building, explores President Kennedy's life, death and legacy.

No "Lee Harvey Oswald," but yet, "the window from which an assassin fired the shots." OK, got it. 

Conspiracy theory nutbar author Robert Groden got married at the plaza. Jim Schutze has the story.


Houston

What? A Burger? vs. In-N-Out? There's better alternatives for a green chile burger, just not in (what really should and should not be) Texas.

Brains has his take on Houston runoffs.

HISD teachers' union sues TEA over its takeover of the district. (Marlin ISD teachers be thinking: We were a small district, poor, and not unionized. Damn!)

Off the Kuff has some thoughts on the planned effort to try again on a Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.

Mike McGuff shares the trailer for the documentary about legendary former Houston rock and roll station KLOL.

Want to find out if (or maybe better, how much) Houston police officers have been engaged in racial profiling on low-level drug arrests? Here you go. By officer name, too.


Texana and politics

TEA loses a lawsuit filed by a fired whistleblower. Interestingly, Kash blew the whistle on a no-bid special education contract in 2017. Nine months or more and counting since TEA settled with the feds on special education issues in general, many parents allege it's still not doing enough.

Many borderlands landowners are refusing to sign "build the wall"-related permissions agreements with the feds.

Statewide food news: Can Luby's survive? Read that in-depth piece for a take on what it's done wrong, and what's gone wrong, in the past 20 years.

The TPA wishes Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora all the best in their new media venture as they go bowling for pink-themed sponsorship dollar or whatever. No, seriously, they may not be doing that, since their new gig isn't the Texas Tribune. But maybe they will be doing that? And I still don't get how the hell Ramshaw got from Focus Daily News to the Trib's top editor spot. Or even to her level at the Snooze. Oh, I do now. Family background, which gave her exposure, and even privilege, per this story. THAT, in turn, leads me to wonder why the hell she was working for Marlon Hanson's rag in the first place. That said, Robert Wilonsky, before HE jumped the Observer ship to jump the Snooze shark, slightly p'wnd her and very much did the Trib, with this brief.


Austin/politics

East Austin gentrifies. The Texas Observer reviews the book documenting it.

EMILY's list endorses ConservaDem Shannon Hutcheson, the Austinite equivalent of Wendy Davis.

The Texas Signal notes Greg Abbott's loss of affection for Chick-fil-A now that they have pledged to stop giving money to anti-LGBTQ groups.

Better Texas Blog tells the untold stories of the Texas budget.

RG Ratcliffe explains how to win Texas in 2020.


National

Brains looks at the carnage from the fifth Democratic debate.

What all Texans, besides Tricky Ricky Perry and Ken (Slimeball) Starr, who says he sees an impeachable offense (big deal, he's a Never Trumper but still a wingnut) are connected to Ukraine? Click the link.

Therese Odell was all over the Fiona Hill hearing.