Maybe you thought I was going to discuss here the fact that both events resulted in cutting short (or preventing) the Presidency of a former (or current) liberal, war hero, Massachusetts Senator with the initials JFK, and resulted in the ascension to the Presidency of a Texan who led the country, under false pretenses, into a long, misguided and eventually very unpopular war. Well if you thought that, you’re wrong (though I thought it would be cool to mention those facts). Those are just superficial, coincidental, and trivial similarities.
The deeper and more important similarities are that both were right wing coups, with earth shattering implications, masterminded by an extremely powerful group of people, and our government wants us to know as little as possible about these events. The powerful guardians of the status quo in 1963 (and now) did not want us to know that the assassination of our popular President was NOT the result of a simple act by a lone crazy person, because that would raise all sorts of possibilities in our minds regarding the potential role of our own government. Nor do our current guardians want us to know how poorly equipped our current election system is to express the will of the American people. That is why right wing media whores such as Tucker Carlson refer to those who question the results of the 2004 election as “grassy knoll conspiracy theorists” – which I proudly admit that I am. Furthermore, the failure of our government to ever acknowledge the truth about the JFK assassination helps to discourage doubts about our current election system, because this failure contributes to a general atmosphere that facilitates the belief that our democracy is in better shape than it really is.
The basic medical evidence pertaining to the JFK assassination and the cover-up of that evidenceI will only briefly summarize that evidence here, because otherwise this thread would be too long. If you want to read about this in more detail you can take a look at
this thread, which I posted on GD.
The most basic issue is that two of the bullets which hit Kennedy, a non-fatal bullet that went through his throat, and the one that caused the fatal head wound, were commented upon, either in Warren Commission testimony, newspaper reports, or official medical records, by nine doctors and a nurse who treated Kennedy at Parkland Hospital in Dallas following after he lapsed into a coma. All ten of these medical people characterized the wounds as entrance wounds. This meant that these bullets came from the FRONT, in the direction of the grassy knoll, NOT from the BACK, which was the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was claimed to have shot the President.
But the autopsy results were radically different from what was noticed by the doctors and nurse at Parkland Hospital. So, either you must believe that all of the medical personnel who treated Kennedy at the hospital were radically wrong about what they said they saw, or else the body was altered prior to the autopsy. In my other thread I summarize evidence that points towards a conclusion that the Secret Service kidnapped Kennedy’s body and maintained possession of it long enough to alter in a way to suit their purposes, that the conspirators intimidated the doctors performing the autopsy and controlled the autopsy findings, and that they then silenced witnesses to these events.
More parallels with the 2004 Presidential electionWho to believeThe mystery of JFK’s assassination is very complex, and many books have been written about it. But I believe that the main question comes down to something very simple: Who do you believe – the doctors who treated Kennedy at the hospital, or the Secret Service Agents who claim that they know for a fact that the body was not altered prior to the autopsy? The former means believing in a complex conspiracy, participated in by at least some parts of our government, to kill an elected President. The latter means believing that all of the doctors who treated the President’s wounds were completely mistaken about what they saw, or lied about it – for no apparent reason whatsoever.
A similar issue arises with regard to voter registration fraud in Ohio. Who do you believe – the
New York Times reporters who reported massive increases in voter registration in Democratic precincts prior to the 2004 election, or Kenneth Blackwell’s official registration figures?
SecrecyThe main problem that we election reform advocates have with the 2004 election and our election system in general is the privatization/secrecy of our elections. When private companies take over responsibility for running our elections, and when those companies install computer programs to count our votes, and we’re told that we can’t inspect those programs because they’re “proprietary”, it sound to us like we no longer have a democracy here. One incident that exemplified this problem in 2004 was the Warren County “lockdown”, where election officials in Warren County used the bogus excuse of a
national security alert to justify locking the press out of the building while they tallied up the votes. It certainly doesn’t help any that, as far as we know, a criminal investigation has never been launched to pursue this matter.
The parallel with the Kennedy assassination is the fact that the Secret Service agents grabbed control of the evidence (Kennedy’s body), against Texas state law, and made sure that they had control of the evidence long enough so that they could alter it to fit their purposes. Many people see nothing wrong with this. They just assume that the Secret Service agents naturally had a right to control the situation as they did.
The role of power and authorityJust as Katherine Harris had control of the Florida election in 2000 and Kenneth Blackwell had control of the Ohio election in 2004, our government had control over many aspects of the JFK assassination investigation. The obvious overtly partisan manner in which Harris and Blackwell performed their duties doesn’t seem to have sufficiently bothered our elected representatives, because if it had, some serious official investigations would have been launched. Nor does there seem to have been sufficient realization of how our government, following the JFK assassination, abused its power and authority to ensure that it maintained control of the evidence, the conducting of the autopsy, and the silencing of witnesses.
The effort to prevent the public from knowingIt seems that many of our representatives in government, even those who had nothing to do with these two awful events, and even those who otherwise have numerous admirable qualities, feel that some things are just too horrible for the public to know about.
For example, Howard Dean, the most vociferous Bush critic of all the Democratic candidates for President in 2004, has been by comparison
quite silent on the need for more investigation into what happened during the 2004 Presidential election.
Earl Warren led our Supreme Court to such a liberal sea change (including Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education) that it caused President Eisenhower, a moderate Republican, to exclaim that his nomination of Warren to the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was the worst decision he ever made as President. Yet, Warren led the Warren Commission to an investigation of the JFK assassination that was so sloppy that many still believe that the whole purpose of that Commission was to cover up what really happened. So I’ll conclude with this example, which I believe exemplifies the Warren Commission’s seemingly pre-determined goal to reach a conclusion to its investigation that would not be too shocking to the American people:
Arlen Specter was having trouble with his questioning of Dr. Perry because no matter how he tried to frame the question, Perry kept on repeating that the President’s throat wound was an entrance wound, not an exit wound. So Specter tried this:
Permit me to add some facts which I shall ask you to assume as being true, for the purposes of having you express an opinion. First of all, assume that the President was struck ... from the rear at a downward angle ... Assume further that the missile passed through the body of the President ... then exiting precisely at the point where you observed ... Now based on those facts was the appearance of the wound (the throat wound) in your opinion consistent with being an exit wound?