Today is the 60th aniversary

We're never going to know the truth. Maybe Oswald did it along, maybe there was another shooter, maybe it was an orchestrated plot. We'll never know.

They just released an incredible VR experience that puts you in Dealey plaza as it happened.

It was like Time Travel. And based on my own research and the evidence presented in this, I say Oswald acted alone. He was insane and obsessed with Communism. He had the means and the motive. All of the witness in the plaza that day were pretty sure the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository.

I was going to start a thread tonight about the fact this event has been almost completely ignored today.

I was born in the 60s. The anniversary of his assassination was always observed growing up. I’m Canadian and this was a big deal even here. There are many people my age and older who were impacted by this, but he is forgotten, even on this 60th anniversary. I don’t quite get it. He and his family were beloved.

Such a calamitous moment in US History. And the first real watershed moment for TV News. Cronkite taking his glasses off, looking at the time and telling the world Kennedy was dead. Taking a second to compose himself, glasses back on and on with the rest of the info on the wire. Incredible.

Kennedy had such a magnetic quality. All of his speeches were noteworthy and delivered in that Massachusetts drawl but in a way that gave hope and evoked the erudite everyman. Both he and Bobby should have been President for 8 years each. This country would be so much the better for it. Even those who disliked him knew just how solemn a moment it was for the country as a whole.

I doubt that the death of any President nowadays living or dead, in office or out of office would evoke such collective grief.

I remember it was a Friday afternoon and we were dismissed from school. It just came out of nowhere, the last thing you would expect. Like everyone, I was completely shocked.

I'm another one who believes Oswald acted alone. As Vincent Bugliosi observed, only in an upside world would there be 53 articles of evidence pointing to his guilt without him being guilty.

Walter Cronkite. Back when newscasters were real pros. Now we have the likes of fucking Jeanine Pirro.

Sean Munger explains the assassination

Part 1

Part 2

Good God you folks are stupid. Voting for Trump, no doubt. I'd love you mental midgets to explain the magic bullet. The people masquerading as Oswald leading up to the assasination. Ruth Paine. A gunshot wound to Kennedy's throat.

[quote] alne by himself

[quote] Maybe Oswald did it along

It was Barzini all along.

There is no one hosting a news type program today who was even born in 1963.

Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, George Will, Ted Koppel, etc. rarely even appear on television anymore.

Larry King would be hosting a JFK assassination 60th anniversary special program this evening.

Ruth Paine is the first person speaking in the trailer for the VR experience. She had nothing to do with it.

And the magic bullet theory has been proven time and again. It hit Kennedy in the back, exited out the throat on a downward trajectory and hit Connally in the wrist. Experts testified that this was how it happened. The bullets matched the gun found in the snipers nest. The gun belonged to Oswald. His prints were on it as well as on the boxes in the nest.

He acted alone.

[quote] Voting for Trump, no doubt. I'd love you mental midgets to explain the magic bullet.

Funny, but I compare the assassination conspiracists with election deniers Every effort over the years - yes, every single effort - to raise the so-called magic bullet to argue for a conspiracy has rested on a deliberate misplacing of JFK & Connally in the limo. Always placing Kennedy directly behind Connally. Never acknowledging Connally sat in the jump seat. The manufacturing of evidence, the intellectual dishonesty, presaged Trump & his acolytes.

lol.

No, the CIA whacked him, with their mobster henchmen.

^Asserted with as much confidence - & corresponding lack of evidence - as a true MAGAt.

MAGAts and Q nuts think JFK Jr is still alive. Best to avoid.

Our sexiest POTUS.

Growing up in the late 1960s-early ‘70s, I was only a little over a year old with no memory of the event, I do recall however Kennedy’s assassination and space program promotion like overhead shadows that framed our younger history education years especially.

And through the years I followed the assassination documentaries, interviews, articles and films some, but especially because it was still the “Kennedy Dynasty” era during the late 20th century, when the event’s surviving family members and politicians still cast their Camelot stardust and presence on everything.

But I’ll say that it really took 9/11 to give me a more mindful appreciation, for lack of a better immediate word, of that event being my late baby boomers’ and subsequent generations’ “I remember exactly where I was when that happened!” moment that those older witnesses fully able to recollect JFK’s killing must have always carried with them. I mean, that the man left for a campaign trip on a plan one day, and then returned in a coffin the next — and also leaving behind 2 young children he’d just last said goodbye to plus a wife who witnessed and became covered with the remnants of his surprise explosive assassination right next to her — what a horrible nightmare, including for sole-surviving immediate member Caroline who loves the realization that she lost all those 3 immediate relatives so relatively young (including mom Jackie, by today’s aging standards. ,

Yes Jackie died at 64, which is quite young by today's standards.

Is that the new weird childish slur? Oh you're MAGA?

I honestly think DL is full of CIA/MIC punk itches. As weird as that is to say about an obscure gay anonymous board.

On every political topic you get this kinda crap. If you deviate from the approved line, you're a Trumpist.

If it really was Oswald acting alone, why does the government still refuse to release every document regarding the investigation? Anybody actively involved are long since dead in any case. I think Oswald did it but he had help.

... lol *bitches

I’m a punk itch.

De plan! De plan!

[quote] If it really was Oswald acting alone, why does the government still refuse to release every document regarding the investigation?

If there was anything material pointing to the guilt of someone else or others, does anyone seriously believe that Trump would have kept it close to the vest?!

Not the biggest piece of evidence pointing to Oswald's guilt, but I was always impressed by Robert Oswald's take on Lee when he saw him in custody the night of the assassination. Lee, he knew all too well, was, like their mother, always wont to play the victim. Yet that night, having been charged with the murder of the president, Lee, he said was remarkably calm. No outrage that he had been wrongfully charged, no protestations about being a patsy. Initially hoping against hope that his brother, who carried their family name, as did his own children, was innocent of this gravest of charges, he reluctantly came to the unshakeable conclusion that Lee was a guilty man.

Why did Jolly West go and interview Jack Ruby after his assassination of Oswald?

Who was Jolly West?

Pearl Harbor, JFK, 9/11. What’s next?

M.K. Ultra!

Valiant Thor!

What do you mean, r32?

Make your point clearly.

r10 must be young. When you're young, you start getting into conspiracy shit. Then you get older, look at the evidence again and realize that you were wrong.

Occam's razor.

I also think the MAGA movement is proof of how conspiracies are born. Look at all the idiots who still think the election was rigged and that now all these judges and lawyers are conspiring against Trump to keep him from running.

I mean, accusing people who don't believe in conspiracies of being Maga is pretty much showing yourself to be a damn weirdo. But go on, believe what you want, despite the lack of evidence.

You do know that evidence was accumulating that the Warren report was complete bullshit way back in the 70s, right?

Where was MAGA then? In Trumps balls?

It's not just MAGAland that has doubts.

^ And polls show Trump winning. Americans are not very smart.

Motherfucking Christ we can't have any kind of political discussion without the obsessive freaks inserting Trump into it.

JFK AND HIS ASSASSINATION HAD FUCK ALL NOTHING TO DO WITH FUCKING TRUMP.

Let it go, you freaks!

R38 ... because smart Americans know Kennedy was killed by Oswald alone with a single magic bullet

how do "magic bullet" and Occam's Razor fit together? "Magic" is the simplest answer?

Polls show Gen Zers are more likely to believe Oswald acted alone.

[quote] It's not just MAGAland that has doubts.

I have doubt.

[quote] how do "magic bullet" and Occam's Razor fit together? "Magic" is the simplest answer?

It’s called the magic bullet, but there was nothing magic about it.

"I swear I have an alibi!"

R42 show me those polls

Nobody has shit to say about Jolly West?

Doesn't strike anyone as...

FUCKING WEIRD?

I liked this article about the coffin used to transport Kennedy's body from Dallas to DC. It was well written and detailed drama the funeral home owner had with the government and then how the coffin was dumped into the sea.

JFK was my president for two days.

[quote] [R42] show me those polls

I’m happy to! People often tell me I’m as smart as they are.

I beg to differ. In my opinion, it wasn't Oswald acting alone. I definitely believe he was part of it. He had a role in it, but he didn't do it alone. I have studied this for years. I believe my theory is as valid as anything else out here. It was a Mafia hit, and they used CIA contractors to do it. (The Mafia guys became acquainted with CIA contractors during the Bay of Pigs and other attempts to assassinate Castro. ) There were three shots. The weapon that everyone agrees was Oswald was a mail order rifle. Bolt action with a sighting mechanism. Even the most accurate sharp shooter could not get off three shots from a bolt action rifle in the time those shots were fired. I believe it was 6 minutes. The gun had a faulty sighting mechanism. Every time the gun was fired, you had to readjust the sighting mechanism because it would slip. This was not an automatic weapon. It was a cheap, ($21.99) mail order rifle. It was physically impossible. The doctors who attended the President said the wound in his throat was an entrance wound that came out his back. And the shot that blew part of his head off could not have come from the school book depository because the angle was all off.

And to think all we have left of the Kennedy political dynasty is Shoeless Robert Kennedy, Jr.

One more thing, the fact that they ID'd Oswald as a suspect so quickly and went up to the Depository and found the rifle and they had all this evidence pointing to him, tells me he was definitely a patsy, set up to take the fall. At the time I don't think the Federal government wanted it widely known that the CIA was involved in clandestine attempts to assassinate Castro and was in cahoots with the Mafia. My god, once he was POTUS, Kennedy didn't even want to be seen with Sinatra when he went to Palm Springs, because of his associations with the mob. He ended up staying with Republican Bing Crosby, the "Super Catholic," squeaky clean, child-abusing alcoholic.

The fact that Kennedy and Sam Giancana were fucking the same woman was also a problem.

Oswald was the biggest patsy in the history of patsies.

He SAID SO OUT LOUD before they murdered him.

As a total fucking patsy.

r48 thank you for posting that article. Fascinating.

I watched a documentary where a researcher explains what he found diving through the archives. JFK , with his brother Bobby as the attorney general, campaigned on being "the good guys", the guys ready to expose any corruption and prosecute the guilty, even the ones at the top. After maneuvering on the mob, arresting and jailing many of the higher ups, the mob was pissed at him. Then the bay of pigs disaster, he had found out that the whole thing was created by American corporations and that wanted to go in to steal a bunch of land, but he stops it right before it stops, that angers the warmongers, the corporations and the parasites that make their money off of war. He refused to start the war in Vietnam, so the CIA was pissed at him.

All the powerful people around him were corrupt and he was ready to prosecute them to fullest extent of the law. Unfortunately, he didn't realize the jeopardy you are placed in when you piss off powerful people and threaten their power.

They had 8 gunman shooting at him because they COULD NOT miss. That's why you hear of multiple places where gunshot are heard; the grassy knoll, the grass patch that popped out of the ground near one woman, the curb piece that came flying at one man (all from bullets that missed).

Really interesting stuff, it even explains how Marilyn was killed!!

On her latest weekly episode out today, Linda Moulton Howe reveals why JFK was really killed. It starts at 1:12 =

Puma Punku!

Göbekli Tepe!

Thank you r59 for your...

Important

... contribution

r7: COLINNNNN!!!!

True r7. Nobody today is even close to Cronkite.

"Even the most accurate sharp shooter could not get off three shots from a bolt action rifle in the time those shots were fired."

You left out the part where several expert shooters have done it from the exact location to show it can be done.

Also, Oswald was the suspect because he had logged into work that morning and right after the shooting, they locked the SBD down because the crowd below HEARD the shots coming from there. Upon lockdown, every single employee was accounted for...except Oswald who had fled.

The Kennedy conspiracy theorists are like the 9/11 people. They state their suppositions as if they are irrefutable facts.

[R64] You are right, these things are murky, but that's the point.

You aren't honestly saying that the people in power wouldn't commit a crime like this? Wouldn't cause a false flag to start a war? Wouldn't kill its own president, people?

Have you ever taken a history class? They have been doing these things since the beginning of civilization. And they are banking their safety on people like you who label anyone who questions their narrative in a negative and stigmatizing way so it shuts them up.

Lol what r65

Yet 60 years later we are still talking about it.

[R66] Exactly. Turn off that dumb drag show and go pick up a book. It, at least, will help you with sounding so lost... oh! Is this because you can't read what I wrote? Jeez! Sad.

Underneath a sunny bright November sky

We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive

We're shooting for the moon as

Smiling Jackie's drivin by

We wave,Goodbye

Conspiracy theories make stupid people feel smart and smart people a lot of money.

^ and have for 60 years.

Oswald had no motive. He was not an attemtion seeker Of course it was conspiracy Ruby was not a conspirator. He wouldn't hav eleft his beloved dog in the car if he planned on killing that day.

waz kinnidy prez before or after lincoln

We all know it was Ted Cruz's father

r72, John Hinkley Junior tried to assassinate Reagan so that Jodie Foster would notice him.

Crazy doesn't always have a motive that makes sense. Oswald was an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder and a devout Communist. Perhaps he just wanted to make a statement against Capitalism.

You know what? I'm going to say what we're all thinking. Oswald could GET IT, HUNTY. Rowr. Always have thought he was sexy.

[quote]I remember it was a Friday afternoon and we were dismissed from school.

Me too, r5. I was in the 4th grade.

It was too early for the bus drivers to be there, so we all had to walk home. Imagine it: a couple hundred crying elementary school kids walking home.

R23

That is silly not everyone who has an unpopular opinion here on DL is seen as a trumpster. Not even close.

A German frau, a Russian or someone from China whose native tongue is not English, the silly morons have lots more than one theory for those of you who deviate from the expected and required norm.

But we will hunt you down and do that reporting blocking thing because people who post here should not have to be triggered by reading people who have different opinions. That does not fly in 2023.

[quote] Even the most accurate sharp shooter could not get off three shots from a bolt action rifle in the time those shots were fired.

Anyone who's been to the scene of the crime will tell you what an easy shot it was for Oswald, dealing as he was with a motorcade going 10 miles an hour.

[quote] Oswald was the biggest patsy in the history of patsies.

I guess he was a patsy, too, regarding the shooting of Gen. Walker & the murder of Tippit.

[quote] One more thing, the fact that they ID'd Oswald as a suspect so quickly and went up to the Depository and found the rifle and they had all this evidence pointing to him, tells me he was definitely a patsy, set up to take the fall.

Contemporaneously, the overwhelming view was that the shooting took place from the TSBDB, where, immediately, it was determined that Oswald was the only employee missing. When you think of this as the true crime that it was, the quick id of Oswald isn't surprising in the least.

Why would Oswald, with his interest in politics, flee the scene of the shooting of the president?! An innocent Oswald would've stayed in the area to soak up the historic experience.

The three things all Marines learn at boot camp—-how to make a rack, how to stand on yellow foot prints, how to shoot.

Shooting is like a religion to them,

Who was behind the shooting——I have not a clue. The killing of Oswald has no reasonable answer IMO except as a planned hit.

The gunshot through the throat was made from the front to the back, and the head shot was also from the front, according to the Parkland Hospital doctors who attended to JFK . Also, recent scientific analysis of the physical placement of the building, the location of the limo at the time of the shot, and the position of where JFK and Connally were sitting makes the single bullet theory scientifically impossible. In all likelihood the shots came from the overpass and/or the grassy knoll areas. Oswald probably didn't even tough the rifle, he was very much the patsy who was the fall guy and set up as the lone suspect who was conveniently eliminated.

John Hinckley Jr was mad that his family was being investigated by the Reagan administration and thought they'd get better treatment from the Bushes. He'd been a George W. Bush campaign volunteer. As for Jodie Foster, well Hinkcly head a book about faking mental illness in his apartment.

r4 you are correct because at that time people had respect and understood that the President was president for all people and not just one side. He had also kept a cool head and saved us from war and didn't rush into to Cuba to take all their resources.

The country was united and people actually seemed more intelligent then.

R86

Much of the country hated Kennedy. When the minister came into the hospital ward to announce that Kennedy had died there was cheering by some. BTHT

And there was a lot of shit going on with the cia and Cuba and a planned invasion etc etc etc. And as soon as Kennedy died my friend who was in training said all in that secret unit——they were ALL Hispanic in that training unit —-were sent home within hours.

Yes it was Kennedy was a more innocent time but it was not Camelot.

Then I am going to go with perceptions were different. The whole country did mourn though. No one expected our President to be killed.

R87, There was a report that a classroom of Texas students broke into cheers when told JFK had been killed.

His reelection in 1964 was in peril, hence the trip to Texas, which he won by a very slim margin in 1960.

Who was hotter? Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wilkes Booth?

R90, Definitely JWB.

Curtain rods.

A what if moment in history.

"'Dallas Times Herald' photographer Bob Jackson was in the motorcade following President John F. Kennedy ... when three shots rang out. The president was hit. Jackson saw a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository window but was changing a roll of film and missed the photo. Within minutes, the president was dead."

Two days later, Jackson would later win the Pulitzer Prize for photography for his photo of Ruby shooting Oswald.

[quote] Oswald was the biggest patsy in the history of patsies. He SAID SO OUT LOUD before they murdered him.

R55 also believes Trump weighs 215 lbs. He SAID SO OUT LOUD.

Oswald would not have shot JFK for Communism because LBJ was VP. DUh.

Texas is the reason, that the president's dead

I would give up on the conspiracy theories if it wasn't for Ruby killing Oswald which just seemed all too convenient.

Hey boss, the guy who owns the local titty bar is here, he's packing heat, should I let him in?

R97, what do you make of the fact that Ruby was in Oswald’s presence that Friday night, yet let him live until Sunday morning? Thus, enabling him to talk to his heart’s content during this interval.

R95, you impute far too much reason to Oswald. Kennedy was the one in his midst & his Oswald’s disturbed mind took advantage of that. Time & opportunity.

I always think this when the topic is brought up.

[quote] Our sexiest POTUS.

With the smallest penis.

r99 might not have been worried that he would talk. Waiting for orders maybe.

^ Leaving a LOT to chance there.

Kennedy wasn't on his mind. Indeed, they claim he shot at General Walker. who was prosecuted by the Kennedys for insurrection.

The sound of the drums played during his funeral procession was imprinted on my brain.

And this...

R63 we have been told officially that Oswald acted alone. He was served up to us within 48 hours of the assassination. Killed on live TV so there'd be no further investigations, no trial, no evidence introduced. Neat, tidy, tied up with a bow. So of course every thing will point to LHO. marksmen re enacting the shooting, etc. I don't believe that for a moment. And LHO was no sharpshooting marksmen. But all roads lead to him...officially. I never said Oswald wasn't involved. I believe he was. I also believe he was probably promised some $$ for his trouble.He probably may have fired that gun. Of course he ran. In a conspiracy, especially one involving CIA contractors, and not Mafia goons, a lot of those CIA contractors were ex military, were mercenaries, etc. Tactically if you want to assassinated someone in broad daylight with high security and mobs of people you distract. Shots are fired from different locations. So people turn. They point to the school book depository. And your contractors disappear from where ever their nest was where the real shooter perched. And I know with some of the conspiracy theories we often imbue them with some grandiose purpose, but at the end of the day, as I said, I completely believe it was a mafia hit. Nothing grand about it. The Mafia was pissed off at JFK and Bobby for a lot of reasons, going all the way back to the primary campaigns and the election.

R65 what was the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster?

You can go google it and pretend you knew, but you don’t know. I’ve forgotten more about history than you’ll ever know.

The funniest thing about the conspiracy theorists is their touching belief in the diabolical efficiency of “secret elites.” They think the evil powers who rule us are always coming up with Moriarty-like cunning plans and then MUA-HA-HAing it up when no one can hear.

Anyone who’s been close to power or observed government or industry at a high level knows that it’s actually a painfully incompetent affair, start to finish, top to bottom. And keeping it all a secret! Oh my GOD!

R108

So the man who qualified as a sharpshooter in USMC boot camp and was awarded for that was not a sharpshooter in your eyes?

He was not a trained sniper. Very few are. But he could shoot as well as a Marine sharpshooter.

Assassinations are complicated things. There have to be plans. Oswald was incapable of planning even the simplest things. The CIA botched most of their plans and the mob was not the efficient organization people like to think. But General Walker ran assassination squads behind enemy lines in WWII. He had connections with the OAS.

And let’s not overlook that one needn’t have been a sharpshooter to successfully gun down a practically sitting duck in close range.

[quote] Assassinations are complicated things.

Except when they are not. What they all are are true crimes. Oswald had learned of the motorcade route &, when his last-ditch efforts 11/21/63 to reconcile with Marina were dashed, he took the opportunity to be the somebody this lifetime nobody always wanted to be.

A man in a building shot a man in a car. Get over it.

[quote] I was going to start a thread tonight about the fact this event has been almost completely ignored today.

I think it got a LOT of attention at the 50th, now we have a fair number of people that were adults at the time and could remember the event dying off. The impact will probably continue to diminish in years to come.

November 22, 2023 (Wednesday) “It all began so beautifully,” Lady Bird remembered. “After a drizzle in the morning, the sun came out bright and beautiful. We were going into Dallas.” It was November 22, 1963, and President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were visiting Texas. They were there, in the home state of Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, to try to heal a rift in the Democratic Party. The white supremacists who made up the base of the party's southern wing loathed the Kennedy administration’s support for Black rights. That base had turned on Kennedy when he and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had backed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in fall 1962 saying that army veteran James Meredith had the right to enroll at the University of Mississippi, more commonly known as Ole Miss. When the Department of Justice ordered officials at Ole Miss to register Meredith, Mississippi governor Ross Barnett physically barred Meredith from entering the building and vowed to defend segregation and states’ rights. So the Department of Justice detailed dozens of U.S. marshals to escort Meredith to the registrar and put more than 500 law enforcement officers on the campus. White supremacists rushed to meet them there and became increasingly violent. That night, Barnett told a radio audience: “We will never surrender!” The rioters destroyed property and, under cover of the darkness, fired at reporters and the federal marshals. They killed two men and wounded many others. The riot ended when the president sent 20,000 troops to the campus. On October 1, Meredith became the first Black American to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

The Kennedys had made it clear that the federal government would stand behind civil rights, and white supremacists joined right-wing Republicans in insisting that their stance proved that the Kennedys were communists. Using a strong federal government to regulate business meant preventing a man from making all the money he could; protecting civil rights would take tax dollars from white Americans for the benefit of Black and Brown people. A bumper sticker produced during the Mississippi crisis warned that “the Castro Brothers”—equating the Kennedys with communist revolutionaries in Cuba—had gone to Ole Miss. That conflation of Black rights and communism stoked such anger in the southern right wing that Kennedy felt obliged to travel to Dallas to try to mend some fences in the state Democratic Party. On the morning of November 22, 1963, the Dallas Morning News contained a flyer saying the president was wanted for “treason” for “betraying the Constitution” and giving “support and encouragement to the Communist inspired racial riots.” Kennedy warned his wife that they were “heading into nut country today.” But the motorcade through Dallas started out in a party atmosphere. At the head of the procession, the president and first lady waved from their car at the streets “lined with people—lots and lots of people—the children all smiling, placards, confetti, people waving from windows,” Lady Bird remembered. “There had been such a gala air,” she said, that when she heard three shots, “I thought it must be firecrackers or some sort of celebration.”

The Secret Service agents had no such moment of confusion. The cars sped forward, “terrifically fast—faster and faster,” according to Lady Bird, until they arrived at a hospital, which made Mrs. Johnson realize what had happened. “As we ground to a halt” and Secret Service agents began to pull them out of the cars, Lady Bird wrote, “I cast one last look over my shoulder and saw in the President’s car a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the back seat…Mrs. Kennedy lying over the President’s body.” As they waited for news of the president, LBJ asked Lady Bird to go find Mrs. Kennedy. Lady Bird recalled that Secret Service agents “began to lead me up one corridor, back stairs, and down another. Suddenly, I found myself face to face with Jackie in a small hall…outside the operating room. You always think of her—or someone like her—as being insulated, protected; she was quite alone. I don’t think I ever saw anyone so much alone in my life.” After trying to comfort Mrs. Kennedy, Lady Bird went back to the room where her own husband was. It was there that Kennedy’s special assistant told them, “The President is dead,” just before journalist Malcolm Kilduff entered and addressed LBJ as “Mr. President.” Officials wanted LBJ out of Dallas as quickly as possible and rushed the party to the airport. Looking out the car window, Lady Bird saw a flag already at half mast and later recalled, “[T]hat is when the enormity of what had happened first struck me.” In the confusion—in addition to the murder of the president, no one knew how extensive the plot against the government was—the attorney general wanted LBJ sworn into office as quickly as possible. Already on the plane to return to Washington, D.C., the party waited for Judge Sarah Hughes, a Dallas federal judge. By the time Hughes arrived, so had Mrs. Kennedy and the coffin bearing her husband’s body. “[A]nd there in the very narrow confines of the plane—with Jackie on his left with her hair falling in her face, but very composed, and me on his right, Judge Hughes, with the Bible, in front of him and a cluster of Secret Service people and Congressmen we had known for a long time around him—Lyndon took the oath of office,” Lady Bird recalled. As the plane traveled to Washington, D.C., Lady Bird went into the private presidential cabin to see Mrs. Kennedy, passing President Kennedy’s casket in the hallway. Lady Bird later recalled: “I looked at her. Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked…with blood—her husband’s blood. She always wore gloves like she was used to them. I never could. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights—exquisitely dressed and caked in blood. I asked her if I couldn’t get someone in to help her change and she said, ‘Oh, no. Perhaps later…but not right now.’” “And then,” Lady Bird remembered, “with something—if, with a person that gentle, that dignified, you can say had an element of fierceness, she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack.’”

^ Those posts are from Heather Cox Richardson ^

Not true R113. He ran to get away with it. He had no thought of being captured.

[quote]All those conspiracy theories are wrong. Lee Harvey Oswald did it alne by himself.

Thank you! It's good to have this tremendous controversy finally resolved after all these years, based on your say-so!!!!

[quote] He had no thought of being captured.

Ever?!?

Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who jumped on the trunk and pushed Jackie back into the limo, is now 91 and on oxygen.

R120, Oswald wasn’t go to make it easy on the man by confessing. He was counting on a big show trial, with the world’s continuing attention on him.

He became a huge alcoholic, r123. He’s lucky to have made it to this age.

[quote] He became a huge alcoholic

So was Malcolm Kilduff mentioned at R118. He’d publicly speak about his addiction. Kilduff died relatively young though.

It happens, R125.

In basic training, if you're a decent shot you get your marksman badge. Yes shooting is like religion., and it's competitive, etc. But it's highly unlikely Oswald was at the very top of the game, because if he had been it would have been reflected in his rank. They might even have moved him up to a tour of duty consistent with his skills. And how ironic that he was a "Castro supporter" according to the official version. And honestly the difference between being marksman level, and being a sniper is a world away. What was needed for the assassination of one person in a moving car sitting next to someone else, surrounded by people, was not a guy who was probably an occasional shooter with a defective mail order rifle shooting from the 6tth floor of the SBD. You'd need snipers.So, IMO, It was an undertaking performed by people with military background as mercenaries, and it was set up that way. No mafia goombahs.

As I think of the actual assassination itself, it is a miracle Jackie survived. She was "this close"

R116 Lady Bird and LBJ were so devastated that a year later they forced Bobby Kennedy to ride in the same limo his brother was murdered in. LBJ was a sicko. Bird was the bride of Frankenstein.

^ Is Bobby rubbing his head to see if it's still there?

I don’t think that’s true r130. Although the vehicle was returned to service months later, LBJ did not want to ride in it (understandably). He rode in a different car that was basically the same as the Kennedy limo.

So close to Thanksgiving?

R106 Same. I was 4 years old. I remember turning all 3 channels trying to find cartoons. I will never forget the drums and the horse that had boots in backwards in the stirrups. I also remember adults being upset. Not that anyone was crying but the mood was different. I vaguely sensed that.

R118 Does anyone know what happened to the dress Jackie Kennedy was wearing?

R132 It's true .It is the rebuilt Lincoln SS-100X the same limo used in Dallas. LBJ used it in appearances to support RFK's senatorial campaign in NYC in 1964. Johnson just had a fixed bullet proof glass top put on re- painted black not blue.LBJ rode in all the time including his 1965 inauguration. It was used by later by four other presidents. The car is the same one in the Henry Ford Museum. Another shot of Bobby in obvious discomfort. Do some research dimwit.

R129 The shooter was an expert marksman.

R118 Legally it's Caroline's but she gifted it to the National Archives and it's kept in a temperature/humidity sealed box. Caroline's only stipulation was that it not be made public until at least the year 2100.

R137

Sharpshooter not Expert. Expert being higher.

A wizard did it.

r40 / r44, that is a FAILURE. It's called the MAGIC bullet because it went various different ways within the body. There is NOTHING Occam's Razor about that.

No, R140, every effort to spin this fantasy of a “magic bullet,” one that went in various directions, is informed by a willful displacement of where Kennedy & Connally were seated. When you place them where they actually sat, the bullet did not engage in the various gyrations the conspiracy-mongers would have you believe.

R138 I consider the shooter to be an expert since Jackie was in JFK's face and she didn't get hit.

R142, everyone who first visits the crime site will surprisingly comment on how compact the area it is. Couple that with the fact the presidential limousine was moving at a snail’s pace & you realize the gunman didn’t have to be some expert shooter.

r141, watch this and then get back to us.

Ready for the challenge, R144. That animated depiction makes my case, as that does not accurately represent where Kennedy & Connally were positioned in the car. No jump seat?! Hmm. Someone’s playing loose with the facts.

R144, the depiction in this video accurately represents where the two were seated. Notice how very different it is in the model you offered. Not only does it recognize that Connally was - in fact - in the (lower) jump seat, but he wasn't even seated directly in front of Kennedy, but to his left. There's been a cottage industry of the intellectually dishonest deliberately misrepresenting the facts to advance their own arguments.

[quote]which totals up to seven entry/exit wounds in both men.

THAT's Occam's Razor? WTAF??!

I was in reading group in elementary school . Very weird but I remember this guy Sheldon Lefkowitz had his hand down his pants .

The PA announcement was very precise by announcing it was an assassination ATTEMPT. I can picture where I was sitting exactly . So weird

Is this the Sheldon who had his hands down his pants?

Judy and JFK.

Oswald's military qualifications were so long before as to be irrelevant. The gun was new and he did not get enough practice.

R151

Are you speaking as a former USMC sharpshooter who lost your own shooting skills thru non use ?

If so you would be the first friggin Marine I know of who has ever made that public claim.

Such nonsense R152

R153

A brilliant response as far as not answering the question.

“Such nonsense” is a nonsense response for people who have nothing to add.

I am guess no yellow footprints for you

New arrival in heaven asks God the one burning question, "Who killed JFK?" Oswald, God says. "Wow," the questioner muses, "even God is part of the conspiracy."

R 149:

That could be the Sheldon of whom I speak . Haven’t seen him since the 2nd grade

[quote]I'm another one who believes Oswald acted alone. As Vincent Bugliosi observed, only in an upside world would there be 53 articles of evidence pointing to his guilt without him being guilty.

Your second sentence does not prove your first. Nobody is arguing that Oswald didn't take shots at Kennedy. Everyone in the world thinks that.

The argument is over whether someone else did as well.

IMO Oswald's killing, in the same city, by someone with Mob connections and live on TV just beggars all belief. Only in America could that not be considered suspicious beyond words.

Something else that to me suggests conspiracy is that Jackie was not meant to be in the car. She was meant to be too pregnant to fly, but as we all know the baby died premature. I do not believe Oswald was capable of looking at Kennedy's schedule months in advance and thinking, "This is perfect. Kennedy will be in the South at a time when there's no risk of Mrs Kennedy getting in the way of a shot." But I do believe both the spooks and the Mafia (who hate involving innocent family) would have had early access to the schedule if they wanted it, and would have thought about that months out from the day. Yes, Oswald could have just made the decision on the spur of the moment and taken his chances: on the other hand, this was the exact moment a conspiracy would have chosen, for this reason.

[quote] Nobody is arguing that Oswald didn't take shots at Kennedy. Everyone in the world thinks that.

What are the chances, then, in the very small DL community - in this very thread, no less! - we have the one(s) who believe Oswald was an innocent "patsy"?!

[quote] IMO Oswald's killing, in the same city, by someone with Mob connections and live on TV just beggars all belief. Only in America could that not be considered suspicious beyond words.

Fortunately - still - in our criminal justice system, suspicions are not enough to convict, let alone charge, someone. Anyone who has studied Ruby - or Oswald, for that matter - would realize that this unstable man was not the kind of man the conspiracy bosses would entrust with taking out the president's killer. But, assuming for argument's sake, that Ruby WAS their hit man, why would he wait nearly 48 hours after Oswald's capture to rub him out? Forty-eight hours in which Oswald could have sung to his heart's delight? Why would Ruby not take him out Friday night when he was in the same room as Oswald? No, if there was a giant conspiracy, Oswald would never have escaped the Texas School Book Depository alive.

[quote] Something else that to me suggests conspiracy is that Jackie was not meant to be in the car. She was meant to be too pregnant to fly, but as we all know the baby died premature. I do not believe Oswald was capable of looking at Kennedy's schedule months in advance and thinking, "This is perfect. Kennedy will be in the South at a time when there's no risk of Mrs Kennedy getting in the way of a shot." But I do believe both the spooks and the Mafia (who hate involving innocent family) would have had early access to the schedule if they wanted it, and would have thought about that months out from the day. Yes, Oswald could have just made the decision on the spur of the moment and taken his chances: on the other hand, this was the exact moment a conspiracy would have chosen, for this reason.

The baby was born 5 1/2 weeks early, on August 7; the trip was not announced until September 25.

[quote]Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who jumped on the trunk and pushed Jackie back into the limo, is now 91 and on oxygen

This is a lie! I watch Oxygen every day and have never seen an ancient man.

[quote]Something else that to me suggests conspiracy is that Jackie was not meant to be in the car. She was meant to be too pregnant to fly, but as we all know the baby died premature. I do not believe Oswald was capable of looking at Kennedy's schedule months in advance and thinking, "This is perfect. Kennedy will be in the South at a time when there's no risk of Mrs Kennedy getting in the way of a shot." But I do believe both the spooks and the Mafia (who hate involving innocent family) would have had early access to the schedule if they wanted it, and would have thought about that months out from the day. Yes, Oswald could have just made the decision on the spur of the moment and taken his chances: on the other hand, this was the exact moment a conspiracy would have chosen, for this reason.

I don't understand, why do you feel that the risk of killing Jackie along with JFK would have deterred Oswald? Can we expect that someone who could kill a President would have enough morals to think to himself, "Oh, but I simply CANNOT take the risk of killing Jackie, because she seems to be a nice lady and everyone loves her?"

[quote] Can we expect that someone who could kill a President would have enough morals to think to himself, "Oh, but I simply CANNOT take the risk of killing Jackie, because she seems to be a nice lady and everyone loves her?"

But Richard Pavlick, who stalked Pres.-elect JFK with the intent of assassinating him, "changed his mind [in Palm Beach] after seeing Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and the couple's two small children. Pavlick said, "I did not want to harm her or the children."

In this day and age when, if someone assassinated Trump, you better believe one or more of his followers would try to off the assassin.

Some people felt that way about Jackie and Jack during that time period. Ruby was one of those idiots and he simply did what someone today would do if given the chance to "avenge" Trump. That he had some Mafia ties is irrelevant.

"In the year prior to the Kennedy visit, his mental state was changing. In a paranoid state, Ruby's behaviour was driven by a belief that there was an anti-Jewish conspiracy behind the killing of the President. In addition, his use of dietary amphetamines increased. Ruby's trial, followed by his time in prison until his death several years later, was characterised by increasingly irrational utterances that were filtered through his Jewish identity. A review of the evidence shows that organic factors affected his mental state. Ruby's killing of Oswald reflected aspects of the American Jewish migrant experience, his dysfunctional personality, abuse of amphetamines and the probably effect of a silent brain tumour."

[quote]why would he wait nearly 48 hours after Oswald's capture to rub him out? Forty-eight hours in which Oswald could have sung to his heart's delight? Why would Ruby not take him out Friday night when he was in the same room as Oswald?

Oswald was talking to the Dallas police, who were in on it too. How do you think Ruby was able to get so close to Oswald when he shot him? The Dallas police weren't going to tell the public anything that went against their beloved lone gunman story.

Ruby was mobbed up and Jolly West scrambled his brains after the fact to cover things up

I can't even begin to imagine how traumatized Jackie was. As my father said at the time "That poor girl." He meant girl in an affectionate way.

Supposedly Jack Ruby was injected with a lab created radical chemical that triggers aggressive cancer cells in 1966, just months before he was due to testify in a new trial. He stated this himself just before he died.

Interesting:

WHAT THE MOB KNEW ABOUT JFK'S MURDER By Ronald Goldfarb March 14, 1993

IT WAS ODD to read the brief obituary on March 2 and to see that old man's face and eerie stare. What a sad irony, I thought, that in the same year America will mourn the 30th anniversary of the murder of President Kennedy and the 25th anniversary of the death of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, Carlos Marcello died at home of natural causes at the age of 83. Though there is reputable suspicion that the long-time Louisiana mob boss helped mastermind the JFK assassination, he has finally eluded his legions of persistent investigators. His death should not, however, close the file on the mob and JFK's murder.

The link between Marcello and the murder of John F. Kennedy is based on much more than idle speculation. Robert Kennedy's chief and abiding interest as attorney general was organized crime. As soon as he took office, he sought legislation and resources to wage an unprecedented legal war on racketeers. He set up a special organized crime section in the criminal division and recruited an elite staff of lawyers to fight the battle.

As part of our strategy, we developed a list of the top 40 racketeers (a list that grew considerably over the years), and each of us was assigned responsibility for a person or area of the country. If not the Mafia boss, Marcello certainly was one of the top bosses. John Diuguid, a young member of our new group, was assigned several Southeastern states, including Louisiana. At one of our first regular morning meetings, Kennedy questioned Diuguid about the status of the Marcello investigations and his long-pending deportation case.

[quote] Oswald was talking to the Dallas police, who were in on it too.

The numbers of people involved in this "conspiracy" beggars belief.

There were basically three groups that worked together for the assassination in Dallas. Rogue CIA persons, people in or connected to the Mafia, and anti-Castro group. Prior considerations for taking out JFK were during his trips to Chicago and Miami.

F168 Most of the people involved in the conspiracy were actually after the fact. Their job was in silencing witnesses and those who were investigating or had some valid information that did not fit with the lone gunman theory.

I do believe LHO killed him, but I also believe others were involved. Didn't Bobby also believe that as well?

Robert F. Kennedy had his own suspicions regarding the assassination of his brother, President John F Kennedy, in 1963, and may have felt partly responsible.

He also uttered the prophetic words “I knew they’d get one of us, I thought it would be me.”

Not the first to make this observation, not even the first in this thread, but the belief in a widespread Kennedy assassination conspiracy -with any number of tentacles - rivals anything QAnon has advanced. Congrats, folks, you're in august company!

r169 link please

Joe Biden has now been president longer than JFK.

WFAA TV Station in Dallas uploaded online yesterday their first hour live broadcast of events after the tragic event happened on that fateful day. (At link)

Everytime i see footage from that era, im reminded how well-groomed, well-dressed, and how thin people were at that time compared to nowadays.

Deanne Stillman, author of "American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and his Mother," writes “Lee Harvey Oswald & Marguerite Oswald inadvertently formed a conspiracy of one. They mounted a desperate campaign to matter.”

^ Some journalist who had contact with Marguerite noted that to know her was to have some sympathy for Lee.

R177:

What was she like? Did she smother and spoil him or was she abusive?

Mother Oswald was some piece of work.

[quote]The numbers of people involved in this "conspiracy" beggars belief.

I'm sure Oppenheimer wondered the same thing about the THOUSANDS who worked at Los Alamos (and the Univ. of Chicago, and Oakridge, TN, and Northern California, etc.). All it takes is one person to snitch. And yet...

... no one snitched.

Read Don DeLillo’s “Libra” for an amazingly inventive reinvention of that period.

Apples to cinder blocks, R180.

FAIL, r182.

Do better than Don "Stupid" DeLillo, a terrible writer if there ever was one. Read Mevin Belli's book on the prosecution of Jack Ruby to understand what Dallas was really like.

Fascinating article about Jack Ruby.

Texas History Who Was Jack Ruby?

How a small-time strip joint operator ushered in America’s age of violence.

R180

So you count giving our nuke secrets to the Russians a form of snitching ? Or was that something else?

r186, that was long after the Manhattan Project got its start. Again, there were THOUSANDS working on the Manhattan Project for YEARS in NUMEROUS locations. The JFK assassination probably had dozens, by the time you include Oswald and several other shooters, a dozen or so in the Dallas police dept., several mafia guys and MIC guys planning the whole thing. And Dallas was likely planned over several weeks, not years.

And don't forget, R187, Oswald's employer at the TSBD , the Paines, in arranging for Lee to get the job, LBJ, etc.. The list goes on & on & on.

The secrecy underlying the Manhattan Project is quite inapposite to the JFK assassination. The secrecy only was needed for a discrete time & was enforced, at penalty of treason, among similarly situated people, not a dissimilar group of characters.

r189, that "discrete time" went on for YEARS, not weeks.

[quote]at penalty of treason

And you DON'T think the penalty for snitching on the JFK assassination was severe?? See the attached link for people involved in some way who died mysteriously.

[quote]among similarly situated people, not a dissimilar group of characters.

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Some were paid, some wanted to line their own pockets. Ultimately it was only $$$ they gave a rip about.

[quote] And you DON'T think the penalty for snitching on the JFK assassination was severe??

Huh?! The government would prosecute these snitchers?! When the vast majority of its people thought there WAS a conspiracy?! Surely you cannot be serious.

[quote] See the attached link for people involved in some way who died mysteriously.

Thank God, Mark Lane & Oliver Stone were spared for their heresy.

r191, READ the link in r191. These people DIED because of their involvement in the JFK assassination. That's a pretty high price to pay for snitching or potentially snitching, dontcha think?

r192, they weren't involved in the assassination. They reported on it, and they were greatly ridiculed for talking about it. The same people who tried to debunk their aguments are the same people like you - paid to go online and rebuke anything contrary to the official lone gunman story.

The key is understanding the shooter. I'm under the impression Oswald was a Cuban hitman.

[quote] The same people who tried to debunk their aguments are the same people like you - paid to go online and rebuke anything contrary to the official lone gunman story.

Ha. My check must be in the mail.

Like their Holocaust/election deniers & truther & birther brethren, wild-eyed JFK assassination conspiracists are nuts.

then why are you HELLBENT on advancing the lone gunman theory, r196? What do you stand to benefit from that?

The more I learn about JFK the less I like him. Same thing with his wife.

R197, they have a very great need to believe their government was telling them the truth all along.

R197, I was months away from turning seven when JFK was killed. My family loved him. After his death, I had his picture in my childhood room (& two picks of Bobby in my office). When I was younger, I, too, believed there had to be more to the story than just Oswald (although I never doubted Oswald's involvement). But I grew up, became an attorney & dispassionately examined the evidence. As I would in any other true crimes story. And became convinced that Oswald, & Oswald alone, committed the deed. Is it possible that he was acting at the behest of some larger force? It's nigh impossible to prove a negative. But my knowledge of the loner Oswald was leads me to doubt that very much. Are you suggesting that he was working as part of a conspiracy when he took a shot at Walker on April 10th? Or is that such an inconvenient fact that you don't believe Oswald was responsible for that?

[quote] they have a very great need to believe their government was telling them the truth all along.

R199 does not believe the "government" told us the truth about the 2020 election.

That's their other favorite trick - falsely label anyone asking questions as a Trumper/MAGA/Qtard/antivaxxer

[quote] Anyone who’s been close to power or observed government or industry at a high level knows that it’s actually a painfully incompetent affair, start to finish, top to bottom. And keeping it all a secret! Oh my GOD!

So well put.

Not so. Government is much more competent at things like that than anyone in the private sector.

r201, false equivalency. Not all conspiracy theories are alike.

Absolutely everything that happens in the world is usually the result of conspiracy. Opioid epidemic? Conspiracy. War? Conspiracy. Conspiracies are everywhere so anyone who dismisses them all is by definition a psychotic unconnected to reality.

When I was 12 a store in my neighborhood that sold comics and books and records was going out of business. Among the things I purchased was the Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination. Even at that age, my takeaway was that either the information in the report was incomplete or there were a handful of unresolved questions and illogical conclusions that were being made. Even the single bullet theory seemed implausible to me. If you are being objective and are capable of critical thinking the report is mostly bullshit.

The single bullet theory is a stretch. Have there been any simulations done that showed it was possible? Also, the fact that (ugh) JFK’s head snapped back and how his brain matter splattered indicates a front hit. If things were clear cut—or even logically sequenced—maybe there wouldn’t be so many conspiracies, but then again, people think there was a second shooter re Bobby Kennedy, despite dozens of witnesses.

[quote]....people think there was a second shooter re Bobby Kennedy, despite dozens of witnesses.

What do you mean by "re Bobby Kennedy?"

I have very bad news for you, R209

I meant that conspiracies are everywhere, even though the situation may have been clear cut. Bobby Kennedy was shot by one person, dozens of people witnessed it, but there are still conspiracists that say there was a second gunman.

Although of course I've been reading and hearing for decades the "second shooter theory" re JFK, I believe this is the first time I've ever read that there was such a theory in regard to Bobby Kennedy's murder.

The most damning thing in the W arren report is the obsequious way they treated General Walker, an insurrectionist.

What's really magical in this discussion is the grassy knoll gunman/gunmen, who somehow vanished into the wind.

The single bullet would have been badly mangled not pristine

^ Another disproven claim. C'mon, folks, y'all need to keep us with this stuff.

Bless your heart, R209.

R212, obviously the conspiracy theories aren’t as prevalent as JFK’s but they exist. I think even his loon son running for the presidency says he thinks there was a conspiracy.

[quote] I think even his loon son running for the presidency says he thinks there was a conspiracy.

Bingo!

R218, For decades, Ethel Kennedy has refused to make RFK’s papers public and has ordered that they not be made public after her death.

For the young & still impressionable, I refer you to the trial that Oswald never lived to see. With a jury in the UK & represented by then-noted trial attorney Gerry Spence, who famously claimed to have never lost a jury trial. Spoiler alert: He lost.

Well, if a 12 year read the Warren Report and concluded it was BS, it MUST be BS.

And yes, the single bullet theory has been proven time and again. Same with showing how that caliber of a rifle can blow the brains out of someone from behind.

Today is the 60th anniversary of your 20th birthday

R222, no doubt that the rifle was powerful enough to do enormous damage, but my point was that Kennedy’s head was blown back, not forward. There is a scientific explanation for it based on the angle of the bullet, but to people watching the Zapruder film, it seems off.

Btw, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I believe Oswald acted alone. He was way to mentally unstable to be trusted if there were a conspiracy. And he acted way too suspiciously that day to be just an innocent patsy. I was just commenting on these seeming incongruities as fueling the conspiracy talk.

No 60th anniversary would be complete without Judy Garland's rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which she taped for her CBS series three weeks after the assassination as a tribute to JFK., whom she admired greatly.

Home movie of Dealey Plaza one day later.

The kind of shots that hit Kennedy were not done by a sharpshooter/ expert or WTF ever. That kind of kill shot is done by a sniper. Big difference.

Meant to also say, that a sharpshooter with a bolt action rifle was not capable of that kind of accuracy. A sniper would have been.

Read up on Oswald's family connection - his New Orleans cousins, the Murretts. Government/CIA connections. One cousin who was a Jesuit priest, left the priesthood and rose up to be an Ambassador. His cousin Marilyn was a school teacher who went around the world, on a teacher's salary, visiting numerous countries. Oswald was no dummy, he was probably a patriot turned early liberal who supported gays and blacks at a time when it was not kosher. He was moved along, and set up for the patsy role. A false defector whose true mission was to study Soviet life, how the infrastructure was set up, how the transportation and communications systems worked. The Soviets knew it from the start. His amazing ability to renounce his defection and come back to the US is unparalleled. Ruth and Michael Paine's CIA connections are incredible, too. Bell Helicopter. Ruth's father/sister all worked for the CIA. Ruth had a mission to do - befriend and house Marina, get Oswald placed at the school book depository. I doubt she knew it was to frame him for the assasination. Afterward they had to play that game and never deviate from it. Doesn't matter that is 60 years down the pike and she's 92.

^^^I see the cranks who believe LHO was a patsy are up early to day.

R226, It’s unbelievable that the Dallas Police would allow people to be traipsing all over a crime scene the very next day.

^ It was a very different world in 1963.

R230 rather than the emema you'll have to give yourself today, to clean out all the Thanksgiving garbage you've consumed ALL WEEK, why not do what I suggest and READ UP on Oswald's familial connections. I know it's hard to position yourself in that pleather recliner you are stuck to, but a little exercise - mental and physical - might do your closed mind some good. Merry Christmas.

The “Oswald as patsy” contingent are the QAnonists of the Kennedy assassination.

All of the stuff about CIA connections from r229’s post come from crackpot internet sites. R229, anyone can post any lies on the internet. You should be old enough to know that.

r234, what part of "not all conspiracy theories are not the same" don't you get?

R236, when even assassination conspiracists are quick to disassociate from the Oswald as patsy crowd, see above, then you know that you have assumed tinfoil hat status, see Holocaust & election deniers, truthers & birthers.

Conspiracy theories make stupid people feel smart and smart people a lot of money.

R238, are you also R70?

Lee/R238, you must relate to Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall when people believe you had nothing to do with the deaths of JFK (& Tippit), or even "credit" others for your singular "accomplishment."

r27, each theory has to stand on its own. If someone believe we didn't land on the moon, that in no way shape or form says anything about if Trump stole the election or if Oswald acted alone.

But, R241, most are informed by the same mindset.

[quote]But, [R241], most are informed by the same mindset.

That's a very broad generalization and therefore worthless.

^ Suddenly seized of nuanced thinking.

R244, please explain that cryptic but nasty-sounding comment.

R241, did you mean to refer to R237?

yes, sorry.

So none of the “magic” bullet slappies are going to comment on the link to R146? So preoccupied with the government lying to them that they pay no heed to the conspiracy-for-profit cottage industry that’s been shamelessly lying to them for years.

so r248, it still had to go in various different directions. It's not just a matter of one person sitting in front of the other. That truly is "magical" (and not in the least bit Occam's Razor).

R241 there were 7 moon landings.

Which ones ere fake?

No, R249, it only goes “in various different directions” if you ignore - as does the animation in R144, consistent with EVERY reenactment I’ve seen that proffers the magic bullet theory - the ACTUAL placement of Kennedy & Connally in the car. The bullet travels a straight line when the parties are properly situated.

r250, all of them. So what's your point?

This New Yorker writer, age seven at the time of the assassination, made a recent pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza:

"I will also confess, to the ire of those conspiracy theorists for whom Dealey Plaza remains an obsession, that, for me, the sheer smallness of the place confirmed the likelihood that the familiar account of the assassination, or the “cover story,” if you insist, is true. The distance between the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository and that fatal “X” is, for a rifleman, minuscule. It would have been hard for anyone to miss. And it would have been wildly impractical to plan an ambush at the location—no way for anyone to have been concealed behind the picket fence, refurbished but still there, or within the stone pergola, still there. If there were hidden assassins on the grassy knoll, a crowd of people could not possibly have failed to see them."

[quote]there were 7 moon landings. Which ones were fake?

The one in the movie "Capricorn One."

[quote]consistent with EVERY reenactment I’ve seen

Oh, that's really reassuring. We're just supposed to take your word for it. **eyeroll**

R253: don't you get it? He's in on it. He's a plant. It's still going on. Look toward the shying sun for the rampart!

R144's depiction is representative of the con, R255. It was presented - by you, perhaps? - as supporting the premise that the single bullet theory is "impossible." R144 even added, "watch this and then get back to us." The ball's in your court. Find a depiction in support of the magic bullet theory that properly aligns the participants. Good luck! At some point, a rational, intellectually honest person would ask why the absence of same. Yes, why is the conspiracy case made on a willful misrepresentation?

I felt the same way as the author of the New Yorker article when I went to Dealey Plaza.

Every picture/film you see of Dealey Plaza and the assassination implies through perspective that it is an expansive park like areA, and that the Depository building wasn’t particularly close to the car when the shots rang out.

That isn’t correct however. The building is close to where the car was; the grass to the left of the car is essentially a median in the road; and the Grassy Knoll is a small inclined patch of grass with a fence. I think the unique acoustics of Dealey Plaza-surrounded by a freeway underpass and tall buildings , and at the time occupied by bystanders-created a lot of excess confusion. Not to mention the shock of the shooting.

I believed all the conspiracies until I went there. Now I think Oswald did it, and the “conspiracy “ was a cover up by the government and the Kennedy family to hide the truth of their involvement with organized crime; the attempts to illegally overthrow Castro; and to keep the public from finding out their young, seemingly athletic President was actually a sickly man addicted to amphetamines with multiple chronic illnesses.

And an unseemly horndog.

Another point needs to be made. Much of the conspiracy beliefs are informed by this certitude that JFK was such revolutionary figure, such a threat to the so-called powers that be that he had to be brought down (apparently, FDR was somehow spared from their wrath). Yet, the reality is that JFK was a rather cautious politician. One who one of the weekly news magazines of the era (The Saturday Evening Post, I think) described him in their memorial issue as the most conservative democratic president since Grover Cleveland.

r253, for me, that was the takeaway from the VR experience. You see how the people were positioned along the route in Dealey Plaza and you are standing there with them in VR. You can totally tell that for a second shooter to be anywhere else in that place, people would have seen them immediately. It's simply not a valid theory to say that there were other shooters. Almost every single person who witnessed it said they could tell that the shots came from the School Book Depository. There was even a witness who saw the rifle pointing out and he went to snap a picture but was too late.

Oswald then hid the gun in the boxes around the nest and fled. His prints were all over the sniper's nest and the gun.

Because he was a patsy! I mean, nobody will admit this but the security services know his grandfather was the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. Which is still down there in one piece with people trapped on it. Celine Dion is in on it.

[quote] There was even a witness who saw the rifle pointing out and he went to snap a picture but was too late.

See r93.

Is Oliver Stone among us?

[quote]His prints were all over the sniper's nest and the gun.

Wow. How very, very convenient.

r251 / r257, a not-so-pristine bullet and a path that goes every which way are consistent with EVERY reenactment I’ve seen. See, I can do that too. And then I can pretend like I never even saw your rebuttal - yeah, I can do that too.

JFK was busy cutting taxes for the rich so the plutocracy had no reason to off him. But people with a personal grudge certainly did: Cuban exiles, oil men, the Dulles family, Carlos Marcello, and General Walker.

[quote] and a path that goes every which way are consistent with EVERY reenactment I’ve seen.

On that point I don't doubt. All the reenactments someone like you would see are sure to be consistent with the one in R144's link (your non-denial makes me seriously wonder if you are, in fact, R144 ... if so, you've been busted). That is, a deliberately doctored one that is meant to produce the desired result. In that scenario, the trajectory of the bullet WOULD would go every which way.

r265, you're an idiot.

no, YOU are the idiot, r269.

I have to wonder if anyone under the age of 65 is posting here. Also, if anyone here has ever changed their views from being a proponent of Oswald's likely sole involvement to that of a skeptic (or believer in Oswald's innocence). We've had a couple of posters who've taken the opposite journey.

So we're supposed to believe this wound came from behind? Really??

Some critics have questioned the circumstances surrounding the bullet's discovery at Parkland Hospital. In a 1966 interview with author Josiah Thompson, one of the men who found the bullet, Parkland personnel director O.P. Wright, cast doubt on whether the bullet subsequently entered into evidence as CE 399 was the same bullet he held in his hand that day. Wright told Thompson that the bullet they found was point nosed, whereas CE 399 is round nosed.[111][112] However, in 1964, both Wright and Darrel Tomlinson, a maintenance employee at Parkland who passed the bullet along to Wright, were shown the bullet and said the bullet in evidence appeared to be the same one as the bullet found on the stretcher, though NEITHER COULD POSITIVELY IDENTIFY THE BULLET AS THE SAME ONE.

[quote] So we're supposed to believe this wound came from behind? Really??

Yes, really.

"[T]he third and fatal shot that hit Kennedy’s head in frame 313, when viewed in slow motion in the digitally enhanced high-definition slo-mo versions readily available online, clearly shows that the shot came from behind. If you pause it at frame 313 (below) you can see skull, brain, and blood matter ejected in an upward and forward direction as if shot from the 6th story of the Book Depository building."

r274, read 273's quote s-l-o-w-l-y. Read it a 2nd time if need be.

I’ve believed for years that there is footage taken that day in Dealey Plaza that has never been made public.

Abraham Zapruder could not have been the only person there with a movie camera that day.

The single bullet theory was concocted after it was discovered there was real time evidence from the Zapruder film and audio recording from the motorcycle police radio transmission.

[quote]I don't understand, why do you feel that the risk of killing Jackie along with JFK would have deterred Oswald?

I specifically said in my original reply I don't think Oswald made his plans with any regard to Jackie. I said spooks and the Mafia would have taken it into account--the spooks because they knew it would exponentially increase the public reaction and the Mafia because they don't shoot wives and children unless they are actively involved in what the shooting is about.

As for "the visit was announced on September 25"--"scheduled" and "announced" are two vastly different dates for those handling the diaries of VIPs. Scheduled is much earlier.

Oswald went on the record as saying he liked the president's family very much, so I think he made all precautions not to shoot Jackie by accident. He especially thought she looked beautiful in that pink suit, and no doubt blood stains from her husband's wounds would ruin it. He didn't realize all that blood would go on Jackie, so close to JFK. Oswald also wanted Connally dead, so he made certain the magic bullet - he blew on it 3 times in a ritual - would go through both men, fly in the air, change direction and come out looking as though it never hit any bones. Oswald performed magic that day.

[quote] The single bullet theory was concocted after it was discovered there was real time evidence from the ... motorcycle police radio transmission.

That was debunked almost immediately ... more than 40 years ago! Try to keep up, R277.

Yeah, frame 313 of the Zapruder film, which was withheld from public view for many years, was a critical piece of evidence. Kennedy was hit from behind, just as nearly all the contemporaneous eyewitnesses immediately knew.

I'm anti Conspiracy theory. I was an avid fan of Vince Bugliosi's magnum opus Reclaiming History, which argued that Oswald acted alone, and on behalf of no one. I still believe Oswald was the lone gunman, but I'm not at all convinced he was acting of behalf of no one.

Firstly, the most basic of facts don't seem to add up. He attempts to assassinate General Walker in April. Then, he's hired to work in the book depository in mid-October. It is an astronomical coincidence that JFK's motorcade just happens to pass by the workplace of an already would be assassin. There are, what? 150,000 million Americans in 1960, and the motorcade drives passed the one guy who attempted to assassinate a high profile general just 8 months eariler? What are the chances?

The other thing is Howard Hunt's deathbed confession. It just seems to have the ring of truth. So it was the CIA, acting with the knowledge and participation of LBJ.

I'm not CONVINCED of this, but I no longer dismiss it out of hand. In fact, I was watching Walter Cronkite's real time reporting on the event the other day. He mentions that before the shots, LBJ's car slowed down, and became somewhat separated from the rest of the motorcade.

The ONE thing I though was going to be useful about Trump was he was going to release the remaining 4,000 documents, most of them dealing with the CIA, on the assassination. But no, he didn't even keep that promise. He held them back. Just as Biden has now done.

The single bullet theory is now single bullet fact. Computer imaging traces the bullet from Connley, back through Kennedy, DIRECTLY to the 5th floor of the Book Depository.

You need to stop calling it "magic bullet" or calling it a theory. Makes you sound like an idiot.

"The single bullet theory is now single bullet fact."

Sure, Jan!

Q: Where are the "curtain rods"?

A: crickets

QAnon R to the right QAnon L to the left.

This is going to be the social and political discourse for the rest of your lives because it’s only going to get worse and then worse.

Life is a conspiracy.

No loose ends, everything, all the information we got was vetted very carefully. So when you source articles or reports to verify your support of the "Oswald acted alone" theory keep that in mind. The Mafia people who hated Castro recruited a "communist" "Fair Play for Cuba" guy. That was a way to send a message, to let the PTB know there was a Cuba connection.

I wonder if we will ever find out definitively what the actual truth is. I definitely believe Oswald was involved. But I don't believe he acted alone. I wonder if there's any information bout a second shooter in the School Book Depository on the 6th floor.

That was my post, R285. I was hoping (one of our) Oswald as patsy correspondent(s) would tackle that one, but, as you note, it’s been nothing but crickets.

R287, they did a roll call of all the building employees immediately after the shooting & Oswald - what are the chances?! - was the only one missing.

Interesting factoid is that, while both died in incarceration, neither Oswald nor Ruby died a legally guilty man.

Oswald's kids have to be in their 60's. WEHT

R291, they were subjects of interviews in the ‘90s, the older one, a seemingly well-adjusted divorced mother of two - and a lawyer - with Bryant Gumbel on Today. The younger one was a dark-haired version of her dear old dad. Of the two, she seemed more eager to think well of Lee. Both interviews are available on YouTube.

At Oswald’s burial, reporters present acted as pallbearers to carry his coffin.

I didn’t know the older Oswald daughter went to Harvard.

r283 OMG! You are sayin' the black man on the 5th floor did it!

R295, I am saying their could have been a second shooter in the School Book Depository bldg. Whether he was the Black guy on the 5th floor or one of Lee's associates, who can say. But it is a possibility.

r296, I'm saying that second shooter was LBJ who stopped the car he was in, ran up 6 flights of stairs and then shot JKF because he wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam! Who can say? But it's a possibility!

Nellie Connally with a pistol in her roses. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The Onion solved this years ago

There was a Reelz production on last week that reached the conclusion that JFK died from friendly fire. At the hands of a Secret Service agent. Of course.

The neighbor who gave Oswald a ride to work on the morning of November 22nd, the guy who asked Oswald what he had with him and Oswald replied “curtain rods”, was also apprehended by the Dallas Police and they tried to get a confession for the assassination out of him.

In Oswald’s brief work history at the School Book Depository, that neighbor of the Paines, R301, would routinely drive Oswald to work on Mondays, after driving him to Oak Cliff on Fridays. Thursday, 11/21, was the first time he went to Oak Cliff with this co-worker on a weeknight. And, then, Friday was the first time the co-worker drove Lee to work on a day other than a Monday.

[quote]At Oswald’s burial, reporters present acted as pallbearers to carry his coffin.

And, in the photo, they seem to be having a jolly time.

Nobody thinks Oswald wasn’t there. Try harder

Re: curtain rods ^^^

FWIW, I heard a radio interview in the 1970s with an unnamed guy who claimed he was a former CIA agent who was hiding out from them. (I'm not in the US and neither was the interview.) I'm too young to remember Kennedy being assassinated, so this was the first time I heard anybody talk about the event other than as background in accounts of The Later Adventures of Jackie.

He said the CIA and FBI were both involved, as were the Mafia. He said the Mafia bought the guns (definitely plural), and they were deliberately bought from Cuba in order to implicate Castro, but Cuba was just a patsy. It meant that if some unwise cop, or RFK as Attorney General, wanted to track down the killer using ballistics, they would find Cuba and then the Mafia before they hit the Agency. He said all the CIA guys who testified at the Warren Commission told the truth as they knew it and could have passed lie detector tests -- only the CIA didn't send anyone to the Warren Commission who KNEW the real truth. He must have explained how he came to know that truth, but I can't remember any of the other details. I've only retained the headline, as it were. I remember the interviewer asked him wasn't he putting himself at risk giving such interviews when he said he was hiding out, and he said on the contrary, the more often he put what he knew out there, the less worth it it would be for them to bother tracking him down.

Obviously, nobody including the interviewer could say if he was the real deal. It was a reputable radio station so they must have done SOME homework before putting him to air, but they gave disclaimers because it was ultimately unverifiable and it is a baroque plot. So, like it or discredit it, I don't mind.

My uncle encounted Oswald at the entrance of the book depository. My uncle said "the president's been shot!" Oswald winked and said "I'm gonna go catch a movie "

I know your post is in jest, R307, but, as has been noted, Oswald fleeing the scene was a real consciousness of guilt. For someone who flattered himself by thinking he was a student of history, his immediate exit from the scene of a presidential shooting is otherwise inexplicable.

R308, nobody is disputing Oswald shot at the President. What is being disputed is whether, and how many times, he hit him.

R308, you really need to read the other posts on this thread, because, yes, the "Oswald is an innocent patsy" contingent is represented here.

innocent in the sense of the Stone film (following orders) not in the sense that he wasn't at the Depository with a rifle.

So he was like a Manchurian Candidate, R311?! Please tell me you're not also R309.

[quote]Innocent in the sense of the Stone film (following orders) not in the sense that he wasn't at the Depository with a rifle.

Umm, someone who was at the book depository with a rifle to shoot JFK would not be "innocent" just because he was following orders. These discussions would be a lot more worthwhile if people knew how to use logic and words correctly.

Anyone citing the Stone film is a moron. That film had more conspiracy theories than the Xfiles.

so r314, you think the Military Industrial Complex had nothing to do with this, and it was just shear luck that they got their Viietnam War, and raked in billions of dollars? Very, very convenient.

You must be a joy to be around, R315.

That's all ya got, r316? Wow, it's amateur hour around here.

It’s more of a case that I’ve given up on you. Too much of a crank. See you, hopefully, at the 65th anniversary, R317!

I'm 314 so I'm not sure who you think you were talking to but there are several of us on here that know Oswald acted alone.

The Gulf of Tokin was what got us fully into Vietnam, r315. And it was partially wrong in that we were never attacked a second time as the US claimed.

Helps to know your history.

Tokin?

Tolkien?

Look. A lot of people might have had a motive. But the actual deed? Mafia hit. Nothing grand or glorious or like some huge conspiracy just you typical mafia hit.

[quote]And it was partially wrong in that we were never attacked a second time as the US claimed.

So if they lied to us about that, why would they not lie to us about JFK?

Tonkin.

Typo.

Well, the official stance is that it was misinformation, r322. Kind of like "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that we never found in Iraq. I personally think IF there was a conspiracy (not likely) it might have been because of this. But the overwhelming evidence is that Oswald acted alone so that's what I'm going with. And yes, I've read way more on this topic than you might think.

Sometimes there are just crazy folks who do crazy shit. And then Johnson stepped in and escalated Vietnam because he had the authority to. Vietnam was a stupid political move on his part. And a horrific, unnecessary war at that. But that was when the world was convinced Communism would come to the US someday if we didn't stop it from happening.

R319 The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag concocted to escalate the then US role in South Vietnam as military advisors into a direct war.

58,000 unnecessary US solider deaths later............

R324 Vietnam was brought to us by the same folks who gave us the Bay of Pigs. I was reading about the Dulles brothers and their relationship with Eisenhower. Allen Dulles ran the CIA and John Foster Dulles ran Sec. of State. Both lawyers, and Foster was a powerful partner for years in a law firm that had huge international corporate clients. Neither was welcome by Truman, but Allen had been in the clandestine service during WW II and he loved it. It was in its infancy and he was part of the growing importance of the CIA. Well Eisenhower gave him and his brother practically a blank check.. They determined that Russia was the real danger, believed passionately in the "Domino Theory" and had identified 6 "monsters" they had to get rid of. They and Eisenhower believed it was better to have political assassinations and small conflicts that full out wars where troops had to be committed. Theoretically. Castro was one of their monsters, so he was on Allen Dulles' hit list. Kennedy didn't want him, held him over after he became POTUS, but disagreed with him on the Bay of Pigs and then fired him. The CIA/State Dept. had Ho Chi Min on their hit list for several years. He was a reformer who was brilliant tactician, and a popular leader. They totally underestimated him. Every attempt to prevent his progress was met with defeat and instead of changing their policy they got deeper and deeper into the conflict. Weapons, military advisors, then troops. Escalation. LBJ, was old school. Kennedy was trying to move away from that kind of "diplomacy" and forge a new, more flexible path. But years of entrenched policy and actions that perceived China and Russia as irreversible enemies was almost impossible to undo. In a way the Cuban Missile crisis was a blessing because it forced us to negotiate and revise our relationship with both Russia and Cuba. I'm giving the shorthand version, but basically we had some really bad advice from the Dulles Brothers who were carrying water for their corporate clients. IRonically, that military/industrial complex Ike warned about was actually something he and the Dulles brothers helped build.

The most sympathetic view doesn’t have Kennedy withdrawing from Vietnam until 1965, after a successful re-election. If his looming softness on Vietnam is why the CIA ordered a hit, why would they, literally, jump the gun & have him killed in November 1963?

Duh R327. Uh maybe they wanted a guarantee from LBJ? Connect the dotes and the dates.

I doted on him.

Anyone new to the thread should take a look at R58 =

Of course, R328. Why didn’t I think of that?!

[quote]R22 Yes Jackie died at 64, which is quite young by today's standards.

She starved herself for decades and fiercely smoked like a chimney. That’s a lot of abuse to wring a body through.

I still can't figure out how Obama - the existential threat that he embodied - was allowed to live. But grateful.

I also was very concerned that someone would take out Obama during his presidency. Unfortunately when Obama became president much of the racist dog whistles and subliminal talk became overt and loud. So many Americans that were still racists at heart could not accept a black man as their leader. Donald Trump capitalized on that situation all the way to the White House, and made it acceptable to be mean, horrible, and racist publicly.

Anyone listening to the new Rob Reiner/Soledad O'Brien podcast on the killing? I can't stand podcasts, so I don't know if they've got any new information or viewpoints.

Reiner comes off rather idiotic in the podcast, and I'm a conspiracy advocate. He has listened to some shaky characters like Tosh Plumlee. The medical evidence he presents is nothing new.

[quote]Sometimes there are just crazy folks who do crazy shit. And then Johnson stepped in and escalated Vietnam because he had the authority to.

Bless your heart.

Occam's razor is a foreign concept to so many.

Objectively Occam's razor is the least likely answer to the JFK assassination.

The SBT is destroyed by evidence, re: bullet hole in JFK's suit coat. It does match up with a bullet that could have then exited through him to Connolly.

Actually one could apply Occam's Razor to my proposed theory of the Mafia Hit. Because I still believe it is impractical to consider Oswald acted alone, but equally, I don't think there was any grand conspiracy related to Vietnam or WTF ever. I still believe it was a simple mafia hit because they were pissed off at him, his father had the stroke and wouldn't recover, t hus unable to make good on his promises and unable to rein JFK/Bobby in, and Bobby was on the warpath.

Hoover knew. He had ties with the Mafia guys, and for years he promoted the notion that the Mafia didn't really exist outside of Hollywood. Hoover hated Bobby. He probably was aware that the Mafia guys hated the Kennedy brothers. He wasn't surprised that things came to a head and JFK was hit. Not that he had foreknowledge, but just that it wasn't a shock to him. There was an acknowledged link between the Mafia capos and the CIA contractors going back to the Cuba stuff. Not to say the CIA ordered the hit, but that the Mafia guys ordered it and used Contractors to do it. The Capos "cut off the head of the snake."

It was a message to Bobby too. it was like saying they were both expendable with Joe out of the picture. I always found Bobby's death odd. Not saying any conspiracy happened. I think in Bobby's case, ironically, it was the lone crackpot, a Palestinian who disagreed with the U.S.. policy towards Israel. How's that for full circle.

Indulge me if I run on for a bit but it seems to me there were two JFK's. There was the high class intellectual with soaring inspirational rhetoric and allusions to Greek classics quoting all kinds of poets and philosophers, and married to a wife who spoke French, and had cultural evenings at the White House. Very high class. Great images. But the other JFK, as a senator, loved to hang out in Vegas and Hollywood and date movie stars and enjoy the glamour and the sex and the glitz. That was the guy who was addicted to Ian Fleming novels about James Bond, who was fucking Giancana's girlfriend and Marilyn Monroe. The Mafia Capos knew that under that high class facade he was just another politician who couldn't keep his pants zipped and who ran a game on them. His lofty position and image held no power over them.

What did JFK possess?

R343, An out of control libido.

In mid-February 1964, 56-year-old Marguerite Oswald, of Fort Worth, Texas, arrived in Washington to testify before the Warren Commission. She was there to talk about her late son, Lee, known around the world as the man who had killed John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and who, two days later, had himself been murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters.

Marguerite had been a ubiquitous character in the media since the day of Kennedy’s assassination, when she’d called up the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, identifying herself as Oswald’s mother and demanding a ride to Dallas.

The beat reporter who’d taken the call was Bob Schieffer, the future CBS News star. Sensing the obvious story, Schieffer hurried to Marguerite’s home to pick her up. In the car, Schieffer quickly sensed there was something “peculiar” about Oswald’s mother. As he later recalled, she “began to talk about how nobody would feel sorry for her, they’d feel sympathy for [Oswald’s] wife and they would give her money. She was completely obsessed with money. She expressed no remorse about the president being killed.”

In the weeks that followed, reporters traced how Lee’s unusual mother influenced his troubled upbringing. After a failed first marriage, she wed Robert Oswald, Lee’s father, who died of a heart attack in August 1939, two months before Marguerite gave birth to Lee, in New Orleans. In 1945, she married a third time, to an engineer named Ekdahl, but that marriage also ended quickly. In divorce proceedings, Time reported, Ekdahl “charged that his wife nagged him constantly about money, hit and scratched him, threw a bottle and a cookie jar at him, [and] once nearly crowned him with a vase.”

By Lee’s adolescence, he and Marguerite were living in poverty in the Bronx, where Lee’s chronic truancy and behavioral problems attracted the attention of authorities. A psychiatric evaluation of Lee at 13 concluded that he was “an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self‐involved and conflicted mother.”

Marguerite’s 1964 testimony before the Warren Commission lasted three days. Meeting with reporters afterward, she still had plenty to say. Lee hadn’t killed Kennedy, Marguerite said, but it was possible he’d been a “scapegoat” and a secret agent for the C.I.A.

What really mattered, though, was that people understood the grave injustices done to Marguerite. She was aggrieved that President Lyndon Johnson had failed to extend an official White House invitation on her arrival in the capital. She was also mad at Jackie Kennedy for neglecting to send her condolences after Lee’s death. “We loved Lee just as much as she loved her husband,” Marguerite said. “I’m indignant at her, and I resent her thinking we’re not as good as she is.”

Marguerite would continue this kind of talk for years, but the press and public eventually tired of her shtick. A handful of historians have returned to her story in the years since, but in the vast ocean of literature that seeks to analyze and explain the events of November 22, 1963, she has mostly been a small tributary.

In American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and His Mother, Deanne Stillman makes the case for Marguerite’s greater significance. In the grievance and class rage on display in her comments about Jackie—I resent her thinking we’re not as good as she is—Stillman sees Lee Harvey Oswald’s true motive: to earn his mother’s affection by avenging her rage. Narrating Kennedy’s last living moments, in Dealey Plaza, she conjures an inner monologue for Oswald: “Look Maw! Do you love me now? Are you lookin’ at ME?”

In dazzling, evocative prose, Stillman effectively employs the tools of cultural criticism to shed light on the forces that might have left Marguerite dangerously disillusioned with the American dream. Provocatively, she holds that it matters little whether Oswald acted alone or was a pawn in a larger conspiracy. “For all the questioning and riddling over his motives,” she writes, “Lee Harvey Oswald was simply fulfilling his mother’s lifelong dream—to matter. In the end, they were a conspiracy of one.”

But reading American Confidential, or, indeed, any unifying theory of the Kennedy assassination, I am reminded of a story by the journalist Murray Kempton, written 10 months after J.F.K.’s death. In the then burgeoning Kennedy-conspiracy industry, Kempton saw “the refusal of many of us to accept the absurd.” After all, the only true way to acknowledge that history could be altered by an anonymous loser such as Oswald was to accept “that the absurd really does explain it all and that Mr. Kennedy might as well have been killed by a bolt of lightning.”

After lightning strikes, it is worth examining the forces of nature that produced it. But the best explanation for its tragic impact will always be bad luck and random chance.

[quote] to earn his mother’s affection by avenging her rage.

Seems similar to the motivation of many Trump voters.

One journalist who dealt with Marguerite - it might have been Bob Schieffer - said that to know her was to have some sympathy for Lee.

From R177 to R348.

Bob Schieffer - like Dan Rather - were CIA sympathetic and jumped right on the Warren Commission bandwagon and their careers were rewarded.

What R253 posted. Have you been to Dealey Plaza? It’s much smaller than photos seem to represent. Even a mediocre shooter could have killed JFK, he was a sitting duck.

[quote] Bob Schieffer - like Dan Rather - were CIA sympathetic and jumped right on the Warren Commission bandwagon and their careers were rewarded.

From the thumbs of MAGAts.

WHAT KIND OF WOOD DOESN'T FLOAT? NATALIE WOOD.

Dan Rather was always going to be a star. And he stayed in Nixon's ass the entire time he was PResident. I followed him on Twitter and he was sonderful. He hasn't been around too much recently. Hope he's OK. He is a LIBERAL Democrat.

If the views of pro-Warren Commission Walter Cronkite were so informed by his CIA sympathies, bravo to him for coming out against the Vietnam War.

Today is my asshole’s anniversary

R354, I saw Dan Rather at a book fair in Boston circa 1975.

He was caked in makeup, so orange he would make Trump look pale.

[quote]R345 She was also mad at Jackie Kennedy for neglecting to send her condolences after Lee’s death. “We loved Lee just as much as she loved her husband,” Marguerite said. “I’m indignant at her, and I resent her thinking we’re not as good as she is.”

That’s hysterical. It should be a two character play. JACKIE & MARGUERITE: HEARTS DIVIDED (or something like that.)

[quote] For the young & still impressionable, I refer you to the trial that Oswald never lived to see. With a jury in the UK & represented by then-noted trial attorney Gerry Spence, who famously claimed to have never lost a jury trial. Spoiler alert: He lost.

the no longer ubiquitous Gerry Spence is alive!

Gerry Spence was AWFUL in that mock trial. He came off like a country bumpkin. There was a tv movie where Andy Griffith played the defense attorney and was more convincing. Hell, Goober would have been more convincing.

Would Aunt Bea have played Herbert Hoover?

[quote] Gerry Spence was AWFUL in that mock trial. He came off like a country bumpkin.

So now Lee's cause suffered from ineffective assistance of counsel. With Gerry Spence - "country bumpkin" and all - the preeminent trial attorney of his era.

R362 did you watch it on Showtime in 83? He was ill prepared.

^ Specifics, please.

If Oswald was so certainly not guilty of killing Kennedy, no jury would have convicted him. See Shaw, Clay.

r364 are you a moron? It was a tv jury.

“Moron”?! That’s the best ya got?! They, R365, were screened as would any other jury. Those with preconceived opinions - in support or opposition to the Warren commission - would have not been seated. In other words, people with open minds. The kind of jury you’d want if your liberty was at risk.

Hey, everyone knows that juries and lawyers and judges are fool proof methods of determining guilt or innocence, right? RIGHT???????

Hey, everyone knows that conspiracists are fool proof methods of determining guilt or innocence, right? RIGHT???????

Fixed that for you, bro.

Basically anyone who could provide counter information or evidence to the Warren Commission narrative was eliminated one way or another in just the first 3 years after JFK's death.

Fortunately, the life of Jean Hill, who pointed to a killer in the grassy knoll area ... and "witnessed" a poodle seated in the limousine between Jack and Jackie, was spared.

Poodle?

^ Yes, a white poodle.

Wasn’t the “poodle” a floral bouquet?

The poodle was Jackie’s luxuriant bush!

Yes, R372, the “poodle” was a floral bouquet. But somehow Ms. Hill must’ve thought the Kennedys brought a dog with them to Texas. Bringing Macaroni was apparently too impractical.

R375, they put a bouquet in the limo and called it Macaroni!

[quote]I would give up on the conspiracy theories if it wasn't for Ruby killing Oswald which just seemed all too convenient.

Bear in mind that Ruby stopped at a Western Union office to wire money to a dancer who worked in one of his clubs prior to going to the police station. He would have had a very narrow window of opportunity to kill Oswald, why would he risk blowing it by stopping someplace where he might have been delayed enough to lose his opportunity?

R377, Didn’t Ruby leave his pet dog unattended in a car while he waited for Oswald to be transported in the garage?

[quote] Didn’t Ruby leave his pet dog unattended in a car

Was it a poodle?

R377 or he knew he had time to make the stop. That shooting wasn't as random as it may have looked.

An interesting article from a 1975 issue of Texas Monthly about Jack Ruby, from a reporter who knew him.

[quote]or he knew he had time to make the stop.

The WU wire was timestamped at 11:17 AM. Oswald was led out of his cell at 11:21. Ruby walked to the police station in the four minutes in between. Not enough time to be sure he wouldn't be delayed and miss his chance.

Why, of course, the bachelor Ruby took his beloved dog, whom he regarded as his wife, to his hit job. What self-respecting mobster doesn’t?!

And don’t forget that if OSWALD hadn’t requested a wardrobe change that Sunday morning transfer would have occurred well before Ruby’s Western Union engagement.

Do the Kennedy conspiracy theories depend on Ruby being a part thereof?

R378 . . .

“Jack Ruby left his beloved dachshund Sheba in the car when he shot Lee Harvey Oswald at Dallas Police headquarters on 11/24/63. His attorneys argued that Ruby would never abandon his dog to try to prove the shooting was not premeditated.“

^^^^

Ruby tried to get out of shooting Oswald all weekend. His family was on the line. The Mob was calling one in.

R388 That was the understanding of the situation as many people saw it.

[quote] Ruby tried to get out of shooting Oswald all weekend. His family was on the line. The Mob was calling one in.

That was one patient Mob.

My asshole lost it’s elasticity so long ago

THey could have held Oswald back , until Ruby was in place. It's possible.

^ Ha. That was one really patient Mob.

[quote]It's possible.

So is hitting Powerball.

We saw Oswald shot and killed on live tv. Remarkable when you think about it.

R395, We also saw the Challenger implode on “live” television.

In what, 230 years, we have had four Presidents assassinated so that's kind of rare too.

This article has a lot of good information... including the discrediting of the Warren Commission's findings.....

"Three of the seven members of the Warren Commission eventually disavowed its findings, as did President Johnson. In 1979, after a thoroughgoing reinvestigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations officially concluded that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” But such findings seemed not to penetrate. “In view of the overwhelming evidence that Oswald could not have acted alone (if he acted at all), the most remarkable feature of the assassination is not the abundance of conspiracy theories,” Christopher Lasch, the historian and social critic, remarked in Harper’s, “but the rejection of a conspiracy theory by the ‘best and brightest.’” For complex reasons of history, psychology, and politics, within the American Establishment it remained inadvisable to speak of conspiracy unless you did not mind being labeled a kook."

This sure is in good taste.

Why did they never find his curtain rods?

The "magic" curtain rods, that is.

Happy anniversary to my labia