Sunday, October 20, 2013

Joe Klein Loses It: Blames Baby Boomers for "Current Political Mess" in 'TIME' Tirade

Neolib hack Joe Klein, in his latest TIME column ("Apocalypse Now", Oct. 21, p. 18) goes even further off the deep edge of pseudo-journalistic lunacy than he did back in the spring. Recall at that time, Klein put those of  us who challenged Obama on the Chained CPI issue (for Social Security) in the same "extremist" league as the NRA - which had recently mounted a counter-legislative initiative to shoot down a weak gun control law.  Klein had responded to a letter by Howard Dean’s brother who had sent out a letter headed ‘Disgusted’ with the subtitle: ‘President Obama’s Budget Has Left me Disgusted’. I had asked at the time if Klein was nuts or just plain stupid.


Now he's one-upped that display of stupidity with his latest broadside against the Boomers. He actually puts them in the same class as the Tea Party, if one can believe it, using the dubious basis that both were into "street theater, bombast and showtime" and yeah - we were "every bit of solipsistic" as the Tea Baggers. Jeebus! So Klein actually gets paid good money to write this bollocks?  In fact, we were a damned sight more educated than the Tea Bag crowd, and far more idealistic. We didn't carry "Don't Tread on Me" signs and wear funny hats but we did actually mount enough large demonstrations to be one major agent that brought an end to the illegal Vietnam war.

As for "solipsistic", uh, no, Joe! We went out into the world to express and manifest our idealism, such as volunteering as Peace Corps volunteers to actually help vulnerable, developing nations set up agricultural projects, effective health assistance and educational consolidation. We didn't march into streets bearing real loaded guns because we didn't approve of a health care law, or try to shut the fuckin' government down!

Klein, to his minimal credit does admit:

"I am not saying the baby boom generation caused the government shutdown, but we've presided over an era during which public trust in government has been demolished. We've allowed the influence of concentrated money to corrupt our democracy."

But Klein has the wrong bad guys. In fact, I can show it was the government itself - at the time just after the Kennedy assassination (the pivotal event from which most polls disclose trust seriously  plummeted) that incepted the most profound public cynicism and distrust in the government. This government was mainly dominated by the "greatest generation" and it was they - the likes of LBJ, Earl Warren, Arlen Specter, Gerald Ford, David Belin et al who by their dastardly cover up of the crime of the century - led to our current political morass and descent. The concentrated money? JFK had plans and proposals to limit that influence, but the gangster state didn't want it and murdered him. The cover up in the wake ensured no one would be any the wiser, but most of the American people were and saw beyond the façade

But specific  examples are needed to show this. And there's no better place to start than the lies,  deceits, and shenanigans of the Warren Commission itself. Perhaps no other judicial confection or whitewash has done more to irreparably damage public trust in government than this politically-appointed entity whose job was to cover up the real actors in the assassination of one of the most beloved presidents - who also threatened the establishment.

Let's examine in detail Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford's own specific role in upending history by concealing the truth. This is visible in the draft shown below wherein he altered key words, sentences to mislead on the bullet to Kennedy's back:
Photo: Altered description of events by Gerald Ford

The initial draft of the report had  stated:


"A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine."

Ford altered it to read:

"A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."



A comparison of the above, deliberate change (referencing a wound in the back of the neck)  to the photograph below from the autopsy,  shows clearly Ford sought to lie, since the bullet hole had clearly been marked in the back. Ford intentionally wanted the document to conform with the single bullet myth! Ford is one part of the thousands of reasons the public came to mistrust government in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Because if we couldn't trust government to perform this task, the faithful and judicious investigation of the slaughter of a sitting president, then it wasn't worth diddly spit or squat. And if it lied in its investigation-  to cover up the truth, then it couldn't be trusted!
Photo: JFK actual back wound marked at Parkland Hospital

Actual photo from Kennedy autopsy (but with rear of skull cosmetically replaced by mortician's plaster)  shows Ford is an inveterate liar.


Worse for Ford,  assassination eye-witnesses, including at least one Secret Service Agent in Dealey Plaza and several FBI agents (present at the Bethesda autopsy), placed the president's back wound exactly where the mute testimony of the president's jacket and shirt (and the above photo)  showed: six inches below the collar line.

The original autopsy sheet, including the placement and description of the back wound, was signed and verified by Admiral George Gregory Burkley, personal physician to the president who directed the autopsy at Bethesda. He verified the back wound placement on November 24th. That death certificate revealed the back wound to be, in the Admiral's own words, at the president's "third thoracic vertebra.”  The neck has seven CERVICAL vertebrae, and this observed and verified wound was described as three THORACIC vertebrae lower than the neck itself.

Let’s bear in mind that it was Gerry Ford  (who was no baby boomer!)  who originally suggested that the panel change its initial description of the bullet wound in Kennedy's back to place it higher up in his body. He knew, as did the others (including Arlen Specter, the author of the single bullet malarkey) that such changes were needed to make it fly and "disprove" conspiracy. Oh me, oh my, perish the thought of any conspiracy! We couldn't have the American people believe we were just another Banana Republic!


The final report then read: "A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of his spine." Ford insisted this was “a small change, …intended to clarify meaning, not alter history”. But alter history is exactly what it did! For by altering the original autopsy report, Ford and his cohorts succeeded in conferring a measure of validity on Specter’s single bullet theory. This is despite the fact that analysis of the resulting trajectory doesn’t even conform to basic laws of Newtonian dynamics! Alas the only mention ever made of this perfidy was in the back pages of The New York Times nearly 33 years after the event.(See below)
Photo: Article in NY Times on What Ford did

But the change - though described as "ever so slight" in terms of wording, altered the whole basis for the Warren Conclusion! The Ford editing documents, on which the Times snippet was based, were made public by the Assassination Records Review Board. This agency had been set up by Congress (under the JFK Records Act) to compile all available evidence in the Nov. 22, 1963, murder. The documents had been part of the personal files of the late J. Lee Rankin, the Warren Commission's general counsel. If not for The JFK Records Act, we’d have never known about Gerald R. Ford’s tampering with the autopsy report in order to force it to show what he wanted, as opposed to the truth needed.


It’s sad to think that yet another of our sitting Presidents had a hand in deforming history, but the evidence is there and it’s not pretty! A year later, Ford produced his  own whitewash book Portrait of the Assassin, which was one of the most noisome put–up jobs ever, attempting to single out Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole perpetrator. But what would you expect of a lying scumball and one of those I blame for destroying public trust.

Which, by the way, he compounded when he pardoned Richard Milhous Nixon in 1974 - allowing the scumball who defiled the Constitution to walk free without impeachment - and doing it under the obvious nonsense of "preserving our national unity" when instead, it emboldened others to pursue even more arcane conspiracies and treachery  - such as the Iran -Contra conspiracy of Reagan.

Trust? Baby Boomers responsible for destroying public trust? Take your head out of your ass, Klein, and look at the numerous examples of how our own esteemed public "servants" spat upon their duty to truth, the Constitution and law and then tell me about destroying public trust.

The actual original description of the back wound placement was described thusly:


"in the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula there is a 7 x 4 millimeter oval wound. This wound is measure to be 14 cm from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process."


Which conforms to the location shown in the autopsy image. (
This wound placement - as described in the autopsy report reference (above) and shown in the photograph, is also clearly deduced by reference to the detailed anatomical diagrams in Gray's Anatomy.) 

 
All of the above, mean that the position reported by the Warren Commission (and engineered by Gerald Ford's alterations)  was intended  to mislead the public  as to the placement of this crucial wound, so as not to undermine the entire underpinning of the single bullet theory. It was this poppycock and malarkey on which Oswald's guilt was predicated along with the other deceptions, including fake FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) handbills as reported by John Newman (Oswald and the CIA)


Worse, it discloses that the autopsists themselves may have been complicit, i.e. lied, to make the single bullet theory work. This claim is reinforced by the fact that on their original Autopsy Body Chart, they did correctly identify the location - not in the base of the neck (as their WC  testimony averred) but six inches lower (as depicted in the diagram  above). Thus, either they falsified the facts in their testimony, or the Warren Commission itself did, to make them compatible with their single bullet nonsense. Added cogency comes from knowing that one of the Warren-appointed autopsists, Dr. J.J. Humes, burned his original autopsy notes[1].  Humes was also the only one who claimed to have detected a bullet wound in the rear of JFK’s head

As for John Connally, he is clearly hit at two different times, around Z236, where he is seen dropping his right shoulder and puffing out his cheeks[2], and still with Stetson in right hand (so no wrist bullet could have entered by then) . Later, at about Z328, when the hat is no longer held (since the wrist has been hit). Connally's wife, Nellie, the lone limo survivor - also bears this out in a diary retrieved from that fateful day, in which she pointedly notes two shots - separately to her husband and JFK (prior to the fatal head shot)[3]



This totally refutes the Warren Commission's egregious 'magic bullet'  theory. While Mrs. Connally still accepts their 'lone gunman' conclusion, this diverges logically from her own observations of 2 separate bullets - since if one disposes of the 2-for-1 shot compression, a de facto 'minimal' conspiracy scenario materializes - as there are now too many shots in the allowed time frame. This was the reason the Warrenites needed the artifice of the  'single / magic bullet' theory to begin with.


 
In effect, if one rejects the Warren Commission's 'magic bullet' theory they also (logically) must reject its 'lone gunman' conclusion, whether they realize that or not.


Reinforcing this is the fact that, had Gov. Connally been hit at frame 230 (as single bullet adherents posit) he would have had to continue holding his heavy white Stetson for about another second and a half,  AFTER being shot in the right wrist. Anatomically, this is nonsense. Close examination of the key frames discloses he firmly retains his grip on his Stetson between right thumb and forefinger.

It is the ulnar nerve which permits this apposition. But any bullet fired  into the wrist (i.e. at Z-230) would have severed that nerve, making any  grasp of his Stetson totally impossible. Hence, lone nut adherents are asking that we subscribe to a physically impossible situation.

As for the usual lone nut rejoinder that he 'suffered a delayed reaction'. this is also nonsense. Stretching the laws of physical, anatomical nature just as violently as the single bullet lunacy tortures the Newtonian laws of physics into deformed caricatures. These caricatures become subservient to political agendas rather than natural laws.

The honest inquirer is left to ask: Why are these biological/neurological and mechanical laws being so desperately convoluted and deformed? To serve a politically expedient solution and a contrived whitewash that seeks to dismiss the real evidence and replace it with a plausible sounding substitute which is totally fictitious .

If Joe Klein really wants to know the exact point at which public trust in government dissipated let him re-examine the follies and fraud of the Warren Commission and its Report which deliberately lied to the American people regarding the slaughter of a sitting president - and which offal and decay has carried forward to our present because it's never been honestly addressed.  Until this festering wound on the body politic is finally examined rigorously and honestly, with the motives of the assassination courageously exposed, the corruption in our system will only get worse. You don't survive a gangrenous wound by ignoring it, or "looking beyond it" (as Larry Sabato suggested in his recent CBS Early show interview) but by confronting it, dealing with it and hopefully healing it!
 


 
 


[1] High Treason, p. 73.

[2] Groden, op. cit., p. 27.


[3] TODAY show interview, aired November 19, 1998.

 
 

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