John F Kennedy was assassinated exactly 60 years ago today. Hard to believe...

[Estil | 1,265]

Edited November 22, 2023 by Estil

[BlackVega | 583]

These are some very dramatic topics appearing here last time

[BlackVega | 583]

Game of the Anniversary

 

[guitarzombie | 924]

5 hours ago, BlackVega said:

Game of the Anniversary

 

I had this haha.  Still somewhere on my computer.  I was a big JFK assassination buff ever since I saw "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" in the late 80s.  Asked my parents to rent JFK when it came out and I was 9 haha.  Who does that?  I always thought conspiracy until I watched a video of Robert Groden talking about the entire scope of it (switching bodies, the autopsy, forging the zapruder film, forging the autopsy photos) and it was so preposterous, I decided to watch/listen to some single gunman arguments, and there were plenty of things I never heard before because the conspiracy people never mentioned them. 

If you're open minded and are a big JFK buff, I would strongly suggest listening to Gerald Posners audiobook on youtube (as I did) called "Case Closed".  Its 20 hours long.

[guitarzombie | 924]

This one is pretty good too, not 20 hrs long but theres a lot to unpack after 60 years.

 

 

[Estil | 1,265]

What I will never for the life me understand is why WHY did they just leave Kennedy wide open inside that open car!?

[guitarzombie | 924]

8 minutes ago, Estil said:

What I will never for the life me understand is why WHY did they just leave Kennedy wide open inside that open car!?

They had a dome, but he wanted it off because, as Texas wasn't a very JFK "friendly" state, he didn't want to seem aloof.  He wanted the people to see him directly.  Even when he got off the plane, he was shaking hands with everyone outside.  It had drizzled a little bit that morning but by the time they got there it was sunny.  If it rained, perhaps things would have been different.

[Tulpa | 3,500]

11 minutes ago, Estil said:

What I will never for the life me understand is why WHY did they just leave Kennedy wide open inside that open car!?

What guitarzombie said, and keep in mind the last three presidents to be assassinated were all at very close range, and McKinley was sixty years prior. It just wasn't on the radar that a long range rifle shot would take out a president.

I mean, it's really easy to say in hindsight, and they certainly have more precautions nowadays, but sometimes it doesn't seem to be a big deal until it is.

Each of the assassinations had some element of "why didn't they do this or that?"

[Tabonga | 2,317]

41 minutes ago, Estil said:

What I will never for the life me understand is why WHY did they just leave Kennedy wide open inside that open car!?

Times were just much different back then - it was a lot less violent culture and political assassinations hadn't occurred for quite a while.  Mass shootings were not really an issue either (the earliest mass killing at a school* (in 1927) only peripherally involved guns). The first mass shooting involving guns (at least that got nationwide coverage) was in 1966.

There also was not the political hatred/polarization that currently is in place.  People could (and did have) different views without the animosity that generally pervades the discourse now.  (That would really come with the events around the Vietnam War. 

So it was largely a matter of complacency.  And since the thing is still clouded in mystery it is quite possible that the assassination just would have occurred in a different manner if not by shooting.

*It actually involved a fertilizer bomb that killed 38 school children and five adults.  It is generally ignored/overlooked in the current dialogue because it doesn't fit the narrative (IMHO) that some want to have dominate the discourse.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Tabonga

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Tulpa said:

What guitarzombie said, and keep in mind the last three presidents to be assassinated were all at very close range, and McKinley was sixty years prior. It just wasn't on the radar that a long range rifle shot would take out a president.

You know how Kennedy was put on the half dollar right after he was killed?  Well McKinley for the same reason in 1928 was put on the "half mil" dollar bill!

[guitarzombie | 924]

It also should be known that the Dallas police/FBI actually had Lee Harvey Oswald on their radar.  He visited their office shortly before killing Kennedy to deliver a note that said to stop harassing his wife, as they were going to his house (I could be a little off on that).  Then he kills the president.  Think the FBI are gonna get out there and said "Hi all!  Yea we knew about this guy and let him slip.  We fucked up, our bad!".

[Brickman | 3,986]

I didn't really know anything about JFK besides he was shot and Ich bin ein Berliner, but I read Stephen King's 11/22/63 and that was a great read with info about the assassination. Probably all common knowledge to people from the US but I still recommend it as a great Stephen King book worth reading.

[guitarzombie | 924]

Ok one last thing I wanted to post about this.  A lot of the conspiracy people get into it because they're told about it from someone they trust.  Its been a 'thing', but a lot of people don't know the details.  The origins of a conspiracy really were rooted in the Warren Commission.  Here's why:

When it came out, it said Oswald was the lone gunman, but things like the single bullet theory really made people skeptical because its preposterous, and rightly so!  Its impossible.  Basically its like they took a math test, got the right answer but showed their work was wrong.  How could the government produce a document like this?  They must be covering something up!  Well its really because of this, they made one big mistake.

Since they could only go by the Zapruder film, and witness testimony, they had to weigh certain testimony higher than others.  The reason why the forensics doesn't make any sense is because of two things.

1) They asked Abraham Zapruder "Did you film the whole assassination".  He said yes.

2) They asked Connally when he got hit, and he watched the Zapruder film and he chose a frame (Between 231 and 234).  In reality it was frame 223.  They couldn't figure out precisely when he was hit.

The issue is, they're both kind of wrong.  Since the consensus was there were 3 shots, and the last shot was the fatal one.  So with this incorrect information, they tried to fit it all together.  They knew when Kennedys head shot was, but didn't know when the other 2 were.  They could see when Kennedy reacts, and when Connally said he was hit.  Theres no other possibility other than the bullet hitting them both.  So thats where the 6 seconds comes from.  Thats the timeline they put together, but its wrong.  Plus they had Connally sitting in the car wrong, so thats why it does all those weird turns and whatever. 

With the 4k version of the Zapruder film, you can actually see Connallys lapel flip up and back the instant Kennedy gets shot.  So that was the 1 bullet, it traveled in a straight line, because Connally heard the first shot that missed, looked back and while turning back forward was hit.  There's even speculation that the first shot happened RIGHT before Zapruder started recording again (the film has a cut.  He filmed the motorcyles, stopped, then resumed when he saw Kennedy).  Even tho in those 6 seconds, they said the rifle couldn't shoot that quickly.  It can, and people have done it.  But now we know Oswald had even more time to aim and reload.  They tried to take all the things people said, or mis-remembered and make them fit. That they heard a shot that missed, there were 4 shots, only 1 hit Kennedy, the other Connally, etc.  Eyewitness reports are the least credible info you can get, but thats all they really had.

Also there was no front headshot, because after being hit the first time, Kennedy slumps in his seat.  If the bullet came from the front it would have had to have went thru the windshield and theres no bullet hole.  There is a small crack but thats from the bullet fragment.

Well what about Jack Ruby killing Oswald?  Here's an interesting piece of trivia.  We know Ruby was a few stores away at a specific time because theres a Western Union money order with a time stamp that he had.  His timeframe from then to when Oswald was shot was really short, like 2 minutes or something.  I could be wrong.  But while Oswald was being transferred, he asked for a sweatshirt, the one that he was wearing.  It wasn't his, he was arrested in pants and a tshirt.  If Oswald hadn't asked for that sweater, Jack Ruby wouldn't have been able to get to the basement in time to kill Oswald, he would have already been in the car and transferred.  Crazy right?

Bottom line, Oswald was a political nut.  He tried to kill a General earlier in the year (Its in his diary!), and made a last minute impulsive decision to kill Kennedy.  Then he goes, kills a cop (JD Tippet) and then when being arrested, tries to shoot another cop and fails.  If the Zapruder film had sound, this wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was.

[Tulpa | 3,500]

2 hours ago, Estil said:

You know how Kennedy was put on the half dollar right after he was killed?  Well McKinley for the same reason in 1928 was put on the "half mil" dollar bill!

Half mil is an odd way of saying $500.

https://www.investopedia.com/6-famous-discontinued-and-uncommon-u-s-currency-denominations-4773302#toc-500-bill

[Estil | 1,265]

4 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Half mil is an odd way of saying $500.

https://www.investopedia.com/6-famous-discontinued-and-uncommon-u-s-currency-denominations-4773302#toc-500-bill

In this context it goes with the half dollar thing.

[Link | 2,712]

On 11/22/2023 at 10:04 PM, Estil said:

In this context it goes with the half dollar thing.

500 is half of a thousand. It is not half of a million. You'd have to multiply it by another thousand to get there.

[Estil | 1,265]

On 11/24/2023 at 10:16 PM, Link said:

500 is half of a thousand. It is not half of a million. You'd have to multiply it by another thousand to get there.

Yeah; McKinley got put on the half of a thousand, and Kennedy got put on the half of a dollar.  I kinda feel bad for Garfield though...nobody seems to care about his assassination.  Lincoln's and Kennedy's get all the attention.

[Tulpa | 3,500]

12 hours ago, Estil said:

Yeah; McKinley got put on the half of a thousand, and Kennedy got put on the half of a dollar.

When you say half mil, though, most are going to assume you mean half a million, not thousand. And yes, I know the latin etymology of mil.

12 hours ago, Estil said:

I kinda feel bad for Garfield though...nobody seems to care about his assassination.  Lincoln's and Kennedy's get all the attention.

Garfield had the bad luck if being one of the Gilded Age presidents (1877-1900) where things were relatively peaceful in North America and the presidents at that time kind of blur together. His term was also very short, second only to William Henry Harrison. Lincoln and Kennedy were presidents during  major events (Civil War and Cold War/Cuba/early Vietnam War) and had the whole Lincoln/Kennedy coincidence mystique, though if you look into most of those, they're not really coincidences.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Tulpa

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Tulpa said:

When you say half mil, though, most are going to assume you mean half a million, not thousand. And yes, I know the latin etymology of mil.

Garfield had the bad luck if being one of the Gilded Age presidents (1877-1900) where things were relatively peaceful in North America and the presidents at that time kind of blur together. His term was also very short, second only to William Henry Harrison. Lincoln and Kennedy were presidents during  major events (Civil War and Cold War/Cuba/early Vietnam War) and had the whole Lincoln/Kennedy coincidence mystique, though if you look into most of those, they're not really coincidences.

"William Henry Harrison...I died in thirty days!" All because he didn't listen to his mother and wear his coat and hat and mittens during his inauguration and his speech...

Edited November 26, 2023 by Estil

[guitarzombie | 924]

I ended up finding a 7 hour version of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" which I referenced as my first introduction to the assassination.  Even though I don't believe in any of it anymore, I always find it fascinating to watch.

[Tulpa | 3,500]

4 hours ago, Estil said:

"William Henry Harrison...I died in thirty days!" All because he didn't listen to his mother and wear his coat and hat and mittens during his inauguration and his speech...

Somehow I KNEW you were going to go off on a William Henry Harrison tangent with some TV reference.

Never change, Estil. Never change.

[Estil | 1,265]

In Johnny Cash's Six White Horses song, if he had done verse in the beginning about Lincoln like in the other song, how might it go?  Maybe something like:

Some are north and some are south...some are west and some are east...

Once divided now united again...but then one guns you down...

Goodbye Abraham...a long black train come to take you home...

Goodbye Abe...they took you away before you sang your song...

Edited November 28, 2023 by Estil