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The young never learn how to listen to the people who can help them make life beautiful.
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This is both on and way off topic, but Abby Martin just smacked an old fuckhead to Pluto while interviewing him about his Kennedy book. Wow. Just wow. That last inflection zinger's going to be throttling him for weeks. To his credit, I think he caught it on the moment, but it was one of those to make most people wake up in the middle of the night with sudden realization and a panic attack.
[Or maybe it was edited in....]
Anyway, he says LBJ killed JFK, and he says it was Johnson who threw the election for the win. I have been thinking for decades it had to be Joe Kennedy, because he was skunk enough to try to cheat his son into the White House, but, well, when this was mentioned here, I immediately thought of Truman coming out a week before the convention to ask JFK to step aside, even though he was way ahead already.
I'm trying on putting two and two together.
"I do not intend to step aside at anyone's request," the Massachusetts Democrat declared Monday. "1 was, the only candidate to risk my chances in all the primaries -- the only one to visit every state." Kennedy, 43, told a nationwide television and radio audience he is ready for the presidency because a new generation of leadership is needed to cope with new problems and new opportunities. After reading a prepared statement, he answered questions at a news conference. Thus the front-runner in the Democratic party nomination race replied to the former president's statements that he is too young and inexperienced for the nation's highest office. "I have encountered and survived every kind of hazard and opposition," Kennedy emphasized "and I do not intend to withdraw...But I don't know if it will hold up.
AFTER REPLY TO TRUMAN -- Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife left the news conference in New York yesterday in which the senator replied with an emphatic no to former President Harry Truman's suggestion that he drop out of the 1960 Presidential race....
Texan In Dem Race WASHINGTON -- Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas announced his candidacy today for the Democratic presidential nomination.... The Texas senator -- long recognized as a bidder for the nomination -- finally made it formal and official at a news conference. His announcement came just six days before the opening of the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, and signals a stretch drive by his supporters to stem the momentum gained by Sen. John Kennedy of Massachusetts.
I mean, wouldn't you just die for the days when somebody could hop into the race the week before the convention? But that was expected all along. What was probably not expected was that JFK would do so spectacularly well in the run-up to the convention, and was threatening to take LBJ's presidency from him. This would finally explain to me why Truman would have done such a thing as to ask America's already darling to step aside. The oligarchs had not expected this little interruption in their well-oiled machine, and were desperate to try to knock JFK back so their man could waltz in and win the convention at the eleventh hour. I don't know if they would've intended the election to go to Nixon or Johnson, but it's pretty clear they had Johnson in mind for that nomination.
We were all so floored that Truman would do such a thing.
I still don't think LBJ was the prime mover in the assassination, but I do think he was in on the conspiracy from the jump... which might have been as early as in the smoke-filled room at the 1960 convention. Had he not been, things would have played out much, much, much differently.
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