It surprises me that November 22 passed without comment

Too many of us that wore the Green remember the Bay of Pigs and can never forgive Kennedy for that.....Digger

I'd suggest we benefit every day from not breathing in radioactive dust, and should be grateful for it. And the Bay of Pigs was a CIA/Cuban exile op, created during the Eisenhower Administration which Kennedy allowed to proceed, but did not throw the US military into. I'd have thought the US Military would be grateful for that, given that even a win would have been costly in American lives. E.Howard Hunt reported for the CIA from Havana in 1960 "All I found was a great deal of euphoria and support for Castro." There was no opposition in Cuba to inspire to rise against him.

There's no media spin for what I discussed in my post. It was a personal recollection inspired by another personal recollection and dramatization. I won't say that there was no spin during the Kennedy Presidency, but to ignore the groundswell of support and good feelings generally in the US for the President is counter to my and just about everyone's experience, outside of the Old South who hated him because they knew which way he leaned regarding Civil Rights and Voting Rights even though he didn't actually do much about them.

And where your reference to RFK came from since I didn't say a word about him, and what it means, I am utterly unable to divine.

Rob

The Cuban missile crisis was during RFK administration. Then you mention the PA of the Principal talking of the shooting. What shooting...why RFK of course, because you also mention Parkland Hospital, where he was taken to. let's not lose track here, I replied because that seemed proper and got what I thought it referred to. I shouldn't be critiqued "as if it wasn't mentioned" it was. The crisis was of a failed bay of Pigs and missiles were all under RFK. You also, refer to 1962, that was also before 1963 when he was shot. As i stated, I'm glad we're all here and breathing good air. As for civil rights he got things started but was cut short by his death, LBJ finished or expanded and got it done if not by law alone, to allow those laws to become enforced as time when on and other Presidents did as well. It took awhile but things are better for it, IMHO. -----Willy

RFK was never president (unfortunately). There was no RFK administration. RFK was assassinated in 1968, just as he was on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination for president.

though I never thought about they had the same middle initial before.

John Kennedy has often been just JFK but I just don't think of Robert Kennedy in initials.

It was one of those dead Kennedy's I would think most would have filled-in my lapse of memory. Glad, I wasn't playing Jeopardy game. -----Willy

Nukes out of Turkey. All in all, a win for USSR.

Had the USSR gotten what they wanted, then Nikita Khrushchev would have remained the Soviet leader. In fact, he was replaced within 6 months and basically exiled to a remote city in Siberia.

The U.S. missiles in Turkey (Jupiter intermediate range missiles, if memory serves) were relatively inaccurate, very unreliable and hard to maintain. They were also unneeded. At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. had an overwhelming superiority in strategic nuclear weapons - and the Soviets knew it. We knew just how much of a superiority we had due to the activities of the Soviet GRU colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who had passed on to the British - and thence to the U.S. - much data on the state of the Soviet nuclear force. Had the two nations come to blows over Cuba, we would have been grievously wounded, but the USSR would have been effectively obliterated.

But I must disagree with your assessment of JFK. Than Senator JFK was a staunch opponant to Civil Rights and voted against Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act which a lot of folks believed Ike did only to get the Black vote. When Sen. JFK was running for POTUS he changed his mind and decided to back Civil Rights so HE could get the Black Votes. He didn't Really believe in Civil Rights though , there was a Big Lie behind that gleaming smile. As far as the Bay of Pigs goes, President JFK knew exactly what was going on . Yeah Ike approved "A" plan to remove Castro from power But Not the plan Kennedy used. Kennedy even help design the plan and implemented it. Here's an article on that ->http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/01/4-kennedys-failure-at-the-bay-of-pigs-top-10-mistakes-by-us-presidents/ . You may have well called those exiles "U.S Soldiers or Marines" because they were trained by the U.S and shipped there by the U.S. and Left to Die There By Kennedy. The man served honorably in WW2 and I repect him for that, and the guy looked real good after he married the very elegant Jackie but,in reality he was a cheat in his marriage and he was a bum in the Oval Office. That's how I view JFK....Digger

equals Carter's Desert Storm failure.

were mercs. We weren't trying to rescue anyone, we would have been waging a war of conquest, and ruling an unhappy populace who would have despised the Americans. No US Servicemen died in that op because Kennedy refused to play the CIA's game for which I and I think most people are grateful. If any had, even in a successful invasion, Kennedy would have worn that and been a one term President, but then again he was.

And, oh master of imprecision, it was Desert One, not Desert Storm which was George H.W. Bush's superb success. Georgie Porgies op was Operation Enduring Freedom, which is laughable in its utter failure to achieve much except the death of Saddam Hussein. Bit of an expensive op for that seeing that it stirred up the entire Muslim world against the US, even more than before. Thank God it's over, and Afghanistan will be over next year, I hope. I find myself being very Isolationist about the middle East excepting Israel which surprises me.

Rob

in the South at the time were shocked, but also relieved, although that soured when Johnson followed the JFK agenda like he was still his lap dog.

.....passing the Civil Rights Act.

Yeah, I bet they weren't happy about that at all.

under the previous administration that Kennedy wouldn't accept while a senator?

......Kennedy began to appreciate how important it was, both politically and as a matter of common decency. LBJ's motives were more singularly political. Supposedly he was quoted saying (about the passage of the act), "I'll have those n*****s voting Democratic for the next two hundred years."

continuation of the prior Administrations (plural) and not a Revolution a la Ronnie Ray-gun.

You baffle me Steven. I wasn't denigrating the Eisenhower Administration which by and large I admire except for the '53 installation of the Shah of Iran. Administrations of all stripes are vulnerable to CIA manipulation during their first year in office. Except for one, which was oblivious to all warnings and indications of an attack in the US by Al Qaeda.

As to Kennedy's vote, I refer you to Churchill explaining a peculiar vote against something one would have thought he would support. "The job of the Opposition is to Oppose". Mind you he functioned in a system which was based on a simple majority vote. He never engaged in the coordinated Obstruction of all Legislation by insisting on a Super Majority in the Senate. Britain confronted the problem of its Senate, The House of Lords, Obstructionism by instituting a system, whereby 3 positive votes from the Commons over-rode House of Lords veto. There has never been a mechanism like the filibuster in the British and therefore the Canadian system of Government. I can think of nothing more anti-democratic, and I felt that when I was learning about Government in High School.

Rob

claim to have written and wasn't referring to it in any manner.

"The Commons passed resolutions (14 April) which would form the basis for the Parliament Act: to remove the power of the Lords to veto money bills, to reduce their veto of other bills to a power to delay for up to two years (the Bill would become law if passed a third time by the Commons), ... ."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Asquith

The House of Lords been through Liberal Party domination and Conservative Party domination, during which time the Lords blocked Budgets and other legislation through portions of the 19th Century.

It was ended under H.H. Asquith in 1909 with a deliberately provocative Budget calculated to provoke the Lords to veto it. Of course they did and the Parliament Act was eventually passed essentially through the Liberal Party threatening the appointment of enough Liberal peers to ensure its passage. The Lords capitulated passed the Budget, and later the Parliament Act of 1911.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Act_1911

Rob

"In 1789, the first U.S. Senate adopted rules allowing the Senate to move the previous question which meant ending debate and proceeding to a vote. Vice President Aaron Burr argued in 1806 that the motion regarding the previous question was redundant, had only been exercised once in the preceding four years, and should be eliminated.[2] In that same year, the Senate agreed, recodifying its rules, and thus the potential for a filibuster sprang into being.[2] Because the Senate created no alternative mechanism for terminating debate, the filibuster became an option for delay and blocking of floor votes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate

A rule change in 1917 allowed for cloture, which is called closure in Britain and Canada.
Just how tabling of legislation and appointments thereby incapacitating discussion, I don't know. Find a Constitutional expert.

you're not off on a tangent, you are totally in another place.

by Steven's post about the External versus Internal enemies issue in the 50s and 60's versus now, and my mind hared off after the rule change in the Senate yesterday or whenever.

When you have "a brain the size of a planet" , sometimes thoughts on one issue slop over to other issues. Still, it does have an applicability to US Politics generally, if not this thread.

The US Congress isn't the only legislature to suffer from Obstructionism and to have to deal with them. I just wanted all here to know that Britain had the same problem and dealt with it in a fairly strong way after 60+ years of interference by the House of Lords, an unelected body.

Curiously, Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the first Budget including Health Care provisions for Britain in 1907, and the Liberal 1909 Budget introduced a number of other pieces of social legislation, but nobody called it Socialist, not even the Conservatives of whom Churchill was one.

The American born Lady Astor, said to Winnie, a member of the same Political party while at dinner, "Winston, if you were my husband I would put poison in your soup!"
Winston said, "Madame, if you were my wife I would drink it."

And American discourse has declined to Joe Wilson shouting "You lie." when Members of Congress have traditionally kept a respectful silence, even for that Socialistic Son of a B*tch, Franklin Roosevelt. Nobody ever did that to a White President, or any President before. That seems to be a conspicuous declaration that the rules were to be different for this President, and yes James, that's a tangent too, though tied to the paragraph above this one.

Rob

great deal. I thought you grew up in Maryland which remained loyal to the Union, though not everybody did viz 1st Maryland Regiment CSA.

I grew up identifying as an American but I did identify with the Union as opposed to the Confederacy.

It has been said of the English Civil War, "Parliamentarians, repulsive but right, Royalists, romantic but wrong." Right and Wrong being on the right side of history and what came after or the wrong side.

Unionists, not particularly repellent but Right, Confederates, definitely Romantic, but Wrong in the eyes of history. The fact that the South continues to fight the States Rights battle over and over 138 years after the issue was settled by a huge slaughter is a little sad, and a little mad.

Rob

at age 1 we moved to Texas. Lived in Boling, then Houston. We moved back to Florida and I lived at times with either set of grandparents in Panama City and Lake Butler. Lived almost 3 years in High Springs outside Gainesville. We moved to Tampa when I was 13-14 age range and I went in AF 13 years later. That was my early years. I'm in Maryland because that was my last military place of assignment and it wasn't convenient to return to Florida when I exited. My wife is from Maine, so in between the two places is for both our mutual misery and satisfaction, based on the season we each prefer. She prefers mild summers, I prefer mild winters, usually we get neither here.

to summer in Maine and winter in Florida come retirement time. I may be a contentious SOB, but I still wish you both the best of both situations.

I love wilderness Maryland though I never get home any more, but I canoed in Maine several times and drove the coast as best as I was able. Just slather on the bug juice for summer. Maine is almost as bad as Northern as in 100 miles north of Toronto, Ontario. from mid May to the first of October you go through three or four different series of biting insects. May June, black-flies, often called no-see-ums in the US, but if you're allergic to them, as some people are, they actually make them sick and they really shouldn't expose themselves. June July August it's Mosquitoes, which can actually form clouds around you. Slather yourself with the highest power repellent you can and spray your clothes too. Then, Oh God, it's deer-fly season, who have a tendency to land in your hair, crawl down to your scalp and load up on a couple of gallons of Prime Rob Boyter juice before they take off just as, or just before the pain sets in. They also crawl up your shirt cuffs to get a nice bite of the good blood supply in your arms. Those you usually slap, because your arms are more sensitive, but I hate them, mostly because they love flying around and around your head until you're sure you're going to go nuts. I finally bought an LL Bean hat with net covering you face and back, to tuck into your shirt. You still have to put your pant legs inside your long socks, and spray your shirt and slather your hands and arms past the elbow with Deep Woods Off or better yet, Muskol.

Do you get Muskol in the States? It's about the best repellent on the market, and I highly recommend it. Check Bass Pro Shops. Any body else remember 6-12 repellent, particularly the stick. That was our repellent of choice in my youth in the Snake River country (my favourite road in the world, and I've driven a lot of roads but the Snake River Road is by far the best. Beautiful country and more twists and turns than Teddy Kennedy trying to explain his latest affair).

Damn, I start talking about this, and I get itchy all over. No kidding.

Rob