Tag Archives: JFK

national news, political news

Sanders’ ‘revolution’ might be overstated

revolution

Sen. Bernie Sanders is now using the word “revolution” to describe the nature of his bid to become president of the United States.

He’s leading Hillary Clinton in every poll there is in New Hampshire, which I think is filling the Vermont senator’s head with visions of overinflated grandeur.

It’s not that his Democratic support is fake. It’s real. But let’s cool the “revolution” talk for a bit.

Three presidential campaigns of the late 20th century also were labeled “revolutions” in some quarters. How did they do?

1964: Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona took the Republican Party presidential nomination by storm, defeating “establishment” candidates, such as New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in a wild primary fight. He went on to lose the general election that year to President Lyndon Baines Johnson in a historic landslide. LBJ, of course, traded a good bit on the legacy of his slain predecessor, John Kennedy, and vowed to continue pursuing JFK’s unfinished agenda.

1968: Just four years later, the Vietnam War caused another revolution. LBJ’s popularity had gone south. Democrats looked for an alternative. They turned to one in Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who stunned LBJ with a stronger-than-expected showing in the New Hampshire primary. In came another anti-war candidate, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, brother of the murdered president and a political hero to many Americans — including yours truly. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, another “establishment” candidate, won the nomination, but then lost to Republican Richard Nixon by a narrow margin that fall.

1972: Let’s call this one the Anti-Vietnam War Revolution 2.0. The flag bearer this time would be U.S. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, who beat the party “establishment” led by Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine to win the nomination. McGovern drew big crowds to rallies, too, just like Sanders. Did they equate to votes that November? Ummm, no. President Nixon won 49 out of 50 states and buried McGovern’s “revolution” under the landslide.

Yes, some “revolutions” succeed. Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980 is one. Barack Obama’s election in 2008 could be considered another one. But they required extraordinary circumstances. The Iranian hostage crisis hurt President Carter grievously in voters’ minds in ’80 and the economic free-fall of 2008 helped lift Sen. Obama into the White House eight years ago.

Sanders might think he’s carrying the torch for another revolution. Then again, Republicans such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and perhaps even Marco Rubio might want to say the same thing . . . for entirely different reasons.

I just want to remind the revolutionaries out there that the political establishment doesn’t get to be so entrenched and powerful by being made up of pushovers or patsies.

 

 

medical news, national news

‘Moonshot’ cancer initiative must go beyond Obama years

Vice President Joe Biden points at President Barack Obama during the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)

Why do I get this nagging knot in my gut that President Obama’s so-called “moonshot” effort to find a cure for cancer isn’t getting enough attention on an important aspect of it?

It will have to continue long past the day that Barack Obama leaves the White House for the final time as president.

He turned to Vice President Biden during his State of the Union speech and made Biden the leader of the effort to find a cure for cancer. The president now wants to commit $1 billion toward that goal.

But the 44th president has less than a year to go. There won’t be a cure found before he leaves office. Who’s going to keep fighting that fight? Who’s going to lead the effort?

Would it be Biden, who leaves office the same day as Barack Obama? It ought to be.

We all know someone who’s been affected by this killer. Many of us have endured treatment and therapy ourselves.

There’s certain to be opposition to the president’s call for such a major expenditure. My hope is that we can muster the kind of national will that we managed to find for the actual moonshot initiative launched by President Kennedy in 1961.

According to The Hill: “In any type of major ambitious efforts, unless you set your sights high, you’re almost guaranteed to not get to the type of success that we all want,” an administration official said. “There’s a reason the vice president is aspiring big, it’s the only way we’re going to push the envelope and make this kind of progress.”

True enough. This project, though, is going to require a lot of attention that must persist long after the current administration leaves office.

Whoever succeeds Barack Obama has to commit with the same fervor to the fight to cure cancer.

One demonstration of that commitment would be to keep Joe Biden on the job.

 

national news

Happy 92nd birthday, Alan Shepard Jr.

alan shepard

OK, so he’s no longer alive to celebrate it but I couldn’t let pass an item that I stumbled upon this morning.

The late Alan Shepard Jr. was born 92 years ago today.

Shepard enlivened a nation, invigorated our national psyche and gave us a sense of mission at a time when we needed it.

He did it simply by riding atop a rocket for a 15-minute ride into outer space. He splashed down a few hundred miles off the Florida coast into the Atlantic Ocean.

I was a youngster at the time. On May 5, 1961, when Shepard took off aboard that Redstone rocket, I was just 12. But I was fascinated, along with the rest of the country, by the notion of human beings flying into space.

The Soviet Union — which would be known later as the Evil Empire — had beaten us into space. Yuri Gagarin had orbited Earth a month before Shepard took off. The Soviets were beating us at our own game! President Kennedy would have none of it.

Shepard’s flight didn’t measure up to Gagarin’s orbit in the strictest sense, but it didn’t matter to a nation itching to get into the space race. Shepard’s successful flight put us in the thick of the fight.

He got another shot at space travel. A decade later Shepard commanded Apollo 14’s mission to the moon and hit that famous golf shot from the moon’s surface that flew for “miles and miles.”

I miss those days. I wish we could find it within our national spirit to insist on manned space flight. We’re now sending our astronauts into space aboard ships launched by our former arch-enemy; it’s called “Russia” these days, now that the Soviet Union has disintegrated.

Our space agency is developing a deep-space vehicle that eventually will take future pioneers to places like Mars and perhaps to the asteroid belt.

Is there national excitement as we await that day? Uhh, no.

We’re left to remember when gutsy test pilots such as Alan Shepard squeezed into tiny space capsules and flew aboard those relatively itty-bitty rockets. He gave us a national thrill that we haven’t duplicated in quite some time.

I hope I’m alive to see the first flight to Mars.

Meanwhile, happy birthday to a man former President Bill Clinton once described as “one of the great heroes of modern America.”

 

national news, political news

Political ‘debates’ become show biz

CNBC panel

I might have a solution to returning some decorum and dignity to these presidential joint appearances.

I’ve said it before: Get rid of the audience.

CNBC’s moderators became the target of many of the Republicans running for president at tonight’s so-called debate.

First of all, I concur that the moderators were terrible. They lost control of the event. They let the proverbial tail wag the dog — to borrow a political phrase.

Indeed, the candidates fed off the crowd that gathered at the University of Colorado in Boulder. They cheered ’em on. They provoked the zingers. They roared every time a candidate took a shot at the “mainstream media.”

Tonight’s GOP joint appearance lacked almost any semblance of dignity. It became a circus and the moderators — Becky Quick, John Harwood and Carl Quintanilla — became the ringmasters.

It’s not as though the questioners didn’t ask good questions. They sought to probe the candidates’ backgrounds, prod them to explain previous statements and provoke them to make memorable statements.

It seemed, though, that CNBC debate troika set themselves up to become as much a part of the story as the candidates.

Why is that? The moderators were fueled as much by the audience as the candidates.

I have an intense dislike for what these events have  become.

Both parties have become enamored of the entertainment value that the audiences bring to these confrontations.

I’m old enough to remember the very first televised presidential debates, involving Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. They had three of them. Each one got a little more vigorous than the preceding encounter.

Audiences? None. Just the two men … and Americans learned a lot from them both, without the distraction created by the cheers and catcalls.

 

national news, political news, religious news

Hey, didn’t JFK settle this religious thing already?

deadstate-Ben-Carson

I’ve always thought — or hoped, at least — that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech in Houston settled the notion that a candidate’s religion should have no bearing on whether he could serve as president of the United States.

He told some Protestant clergy that the Vatican would not dictate to the Catholic candidate how he should govern, that he would swear to be faithful only to the U.S. Constitution.

Well, silly me. The issue is coming up again. The target this time is Dr. Ben Carson, the famed neurosurgeon whose faith is of the Seventh-day Adventist variety.

Donald Trump raised the issue the other day in typical tactless Trump fashion. Now comes a well-known lefty commentator, David Corn, editor of Mother Jones, to wonder aloud whether Carson’s faith would inform the way he would govern should he “take control of the government.”

This is a ridiculous debate.

First of all, presidents don’t control the government. We have this notion that power is spread among two other governmental branches — the courts and the Congress.

The Constitution says there should be “no religious test” for candidates seeking any public office. That includes the presidency.

Yes, Carson has brought up his own faith. He’s talked about how his faith would guide him. He hasn’t said he would toss the Constitution aside any more than then-Sen. Kennedy said he would more than five decades ago.

Corn is playing to voters’ fears when he says of Carson: “Now, he is running on the basis that he has faith. And I think it’s going to open, you know, a big can here. Because, you know, he does come from a church that believes in end times, prophesies, and he’s said he believes in the church’s teachings.”

A simple declarative question is in order: Dr. Carson, do you vow to uphold the law under the Constitution of the United States?

I believe he’s already pledged to do so.

 

national news, political news

Memo to Marco: Quit your day job

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., presides over Senate Foreign Relations Committee, subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, And Global Women's Issues hearing on overview of U.S. policy towards Haiti prior to the elections, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Marco Rubio doesn’t like his day job.

Too bad. He ought to quit and concentrate on the other job he is seeking.

He’s a United States senator from Florida seeking to become president of the United States.

Rubio told the Washington Post that the Senate frustrates him. His friends and close associates say he “hates” the Senate. It’s too slow. Too bound by procedure. Too this and too that. Rubio is a young man on the move and he wants a job that will enable him to get things done in a hurry.

Rubio wants out of a job that pays him a pretty handsome salary, about 175 grand annually. But now that he’s seeking the presidency, he’s been off the Senate grid for most of the year.

His Senate absenteeism has drawn fire from the home folks. According to the Post: “On the campaign trail, Rubio comes under attack from rivals who say he’s become an absentee federal employee. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, in a less-than-subtle knock on his former homestate ally, has said senators who miss work should have their pay docked.

“’It’s just, kind of, like, dude, you know, either drop out or do something,’ Bush’s son, Jeb Bush Jr., told New York University College Republicans earlier this month, in comments first reported by Politico Florida. The junior Bush, a Floridian, cast himself as an aggrieved constituent. ‘We’re paying you to do something, it ain’t run for president.’”

I don’t begrudge the Republican senator for wanting to seek higher office. I’ve noted already that other senators have done the same thing.

But the way I see it, if Rubio dislikes the job he has so much that he’s willing to admit it publicly, then perhaps it’s time for him to quit that job., let the governor of his state appoint a suitable successor — who’ll do the job and actually earn that six-figure salary — and then devote all his waking-hours energy to seeking that White House gig.

Rubio already has declared he won’t seek re-election to the Senate next year. He’s decided one term is enough.

Here, though, is a bit of history that Rubio should consider.

In the event he gets elected president next year, he’s likely to find that the presidency is hamstrung as well by certain processes. An anecdotal story has been bandied about Washington for the past 50-plus year about how another young, go-go senator got elected president and became frustrated that he couldn’t snap his fingers to get things done instantaneously.

President John F. Kennedy learned that his new job tied his hands on occasion and that he had to learn to work through the process. Then again, he hated the Senate, too.

Give up your day job, Marco.

national news, Uncategorized

JFK murder conspiracy theorists will come out … again

jfk

Wait for it.

It’s coming. I almost can guarantee it. New “information” about what a late CIA director knew about President Kennedy’s murder in 1963 is certain to ignite more speculation — as if there needs to be more of it — over whether someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald had a hand in the crime of the century.

John McCone, who died in 1991, reportedly withheld information from the Warren Commission — appointed by President Johnson — that might have shown that Oswald had help in killing JFK.

Stop, already!

Oswald did it. Of that I remain convinced.

And, yes, he almost assuredly acted alone. He was a Marxist, former Marine, lone wolf nimrod who was pretty good with a high-powered rifle. He was good enough with the weapon that he fired three shots from the School Book Depository Building in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 and killed the 35th president of the United States.

McCone, though, didn’t tell the Warren Commission about the CIA’s repeated attempts to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and overthrow his communist government. The commission was unable to ask probing questions of witnesses about whether the Cubans had a hand in JFK’s murder.

Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of conspiracy theories. I’ve rested quite comfortably for the past nearly 52 years believing that Oswald did the terrible deed all by himself.

I also continue to believe that the never-ending conspiracy theories are the work of people with (a) too much time on their hands and (b) who just cannot abide by the notion that a loser such as Oswald could take down the Leader of the Free World.

Let’s just accept that he did.

national news, political news

RFK spoke of gun control … in Roseburg!

RFK's last speech

This story freaked me out when it became known.

The late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — who had some intimate knowledge of gun violence — made some remarks on May 27, 1968. His topic? Gun control.

RFK was responding to a sign in the crowd about the right to “keep and bear arms.”

He said: “With all the violence and murder and killings we’ve had in the United States, I think you will agree that we must keep firearms from people who have no business with guns or rifles.”

Sen. Kennedy was not advocating disarming Americans. He wasn’t calling for the feds to take people’s firearms away. He was speaking as one whose own brother, President John F. Kennedy, was killed by a man with a rifle in Dallas less than five years earlier.

The place where he made the remarks is in the news again. He spoke in Roseburg, Ore., as he campaigned for the presidency of the United States. Today, Roseburg is reeling from the shock of the massacre at Umpqua Community College by a maniac who then killed himself.

Late the next day — it was nearly midnight, as I recall — RFK pulled into a Portland restaurant next door to where I was working. I ran across the parking lot, extended a piece of paper and a pen to the senator and asked him for his autograph.

He signed the paper, “RF Kennedy,” and then went inside.

The next day, Oregon primary voters delivered him a stunning defeat when they cast most of their Democratic Party votes for Sen. Gene McCarthy.

RFK trudged off to California, won that state’s primary the next week — and then was murdered by Sirhan B. Sirhan in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

 

 

State news

What a way to go, Mr. President

lbj

STONEWALL, Texas — My wife and I came to this place expecting to be moved in some fashion.

Neither of us expected precisely what we felt when we walked up to this family plot on the sprawling LBJ ranch, which the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the National Park Service have turned into a national historic site.

The cemetery lies under a grove of live oaks. It’s got a few headstones. The tallest two grave markers belong to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson.

It was the circumstances of the president’s death that struck me the most today as we paid our respects to the late former first couple.

My wife marveled at the peace and serenity of the place. She said — only half-jokingly, I believe — that she “wouldn’t mind” being buried there. It won’t happen, obviously.

But later on our tour of the ranch, we heard from a young guide — who admitted he was born in 1991, 28 years after LBJ’s death — about how the president was able to go out “on his own terms.”

Johnson’s presidency perhaps killed him. I remember how he had aged in the more than five years he served as president. He’d had two heart attacks already, the first one coming in 1955 when he was just 47 years of age.

The Vietnam War raged throughout his presidency — which began, of course, under the enormous weight of international tragedy, the assassination of President Kennedy.

Johnson would win election in the 1964 landslide. Then he would become the target of intense national anger over the conduct of the war he inherited from his predecessor.

He left office in January 1969 and returned to the place along the Pedernales River that formed his character.

The young guide informed us how LBJ — once he settled in back at the ranch — resumed his smoking habits, dragging on Lucky Strike; he drank too much; he ate all the foods he wasn’t supposed to eat, given his history of heart trouble.

Then, just four years and two days after leaving the White House, the fatal heart attack struck him. He phoned his Secret Service garrison the moment he felt it coming on and told them, “Get in here, boys; something bad is happening.”

He died essentially in his bedroom.

President Johnson was just 64 years old when he died. But he was an old 64.

They buried him under the live oaks about 200 yards from where he came into this world in a modest home that’s been reconstructed.

My thought as we left that place today? What a way to go, Mr. President.

 

national news, political news, religious news

Davis saga recalls long-ago controversy

john-f-kennedy

The Kim Davis Saga in Rowan County, Ky., should serve as a key lesson to all public officials who take an oath to perform their duties on behalf of the entire public constituency they serve.

Davis took that oath to serve as county clerk. One of her duties is to issue marriage licenses to those who request them. The highest court in the land then decreed that gay couples are entitled to the same rights of marriage as straight couples.

That doesn’t comport with Davis’s Christian values, she said. She refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples and now she’s been ordered to jail by a federal judge.

Public officials take an oath to serve everyone. Their oath is a secular one. One’s faith has no bearing on whether they should perform their duties.

This does sound familiar to those of us old enough to remember a controversy 55 years ago involving a young candidate for president of the United States. Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kennedy was his party’s nominee and was campaigning to become the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency.

Questions arose during that campaign about Kennedy’s ability to fulfill the oath he would take if he were elected. Would he be loyal to the U.S. Constitution or, some wondered, to the Vatican? Some die-hard conspiracy theorists conjectured that he would be taking orders from the pope.

Sen. Kennedy then decided to settle the issue once and for all. He came to Texas and, speaking to a Protestant gathering of clergy, made a solemn vow: He would follow the Constitution and if in the highly unlikely event he encountered an issue that contradicted the teachings of the church and he could not act on that issue, he would resign the presidency.

And then he added: “I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.”

Read the speech here

He won the 1960 election, took his oath and as near as anyone can tell was loyal to the U.S. Constitution.

Kim Davis cannot perform the duties of her office. She says they conflict with her faith.

She needs to quit that public office.