King of the Hill did it!
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
PBS Nova did a show on the JFK assassination, focusing on the ballistics: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/cold-case-jfk.html They concluded that one gunman could have done it all and there was no gunman on the grass knoll.
First brush with intellectual dishonesty? What was this guy, five years old and forbidden to watch TV? Or read? Or listen to the adults around him?
I’m fairly convinced that there was only one shooter and the bullets were fired from the book depository. The location and trajectory of the head wound complete debunks the “back and to the left” nonsense. If someone shot him from the grassy knoll his brain matter would have sprayed “back and to the left”. The magic bullet theory has been fully debunked when proper measurements of seating location and position were made.
What is more disturbing is the Secretary of State John Kerry may buy into some of this nonsense.
Kerry bought into it when he was much much younger.
I wonder too.
Is this an ad grab posting?
I blame movies, really. Hollywood has given rise to the common misconception that people get violently flung through the air by bullets (basic mechanics are, apparently, not widely taught).
So of course it’s incomprehensible to most people that what happened to JFK’s head, after it got hit, was exactly what one would expect from such an impact.
Or the ludicrous notion that “one mane could never pull of those shots in that amount of time”. Well, maybe no untrained shooter, but a fucking Marine sharpshooter most definitely could.
Everyone who has looked at credible sources - and not just the Oliver Stone movie - can come to only one conclusion: The official account of events is by far the most likely.
ok so no coverup. Oswald did it. If we look at the evidence they allow us to see, ignore the testimony of witnesses, increase the reported length of the curtain rod box to fit the size of the gun, and ignore the fact that Oswald’s military buddies and record said he was a poor shot then I can see how someone would think that. Especially since he himself was killed before he could do anything other than act confused and profess his innocence.
Until all the evidence is made available to academic researchers, this thing will remain a controversy.
By the way, the white picket fence on the grassy knoll had a pale missing from the day of the assassination until about a year ago. Behind that fence are some trees, bushes, and a short decline leading to a road.
I got to see Vincent Bugliosi’s Warren Report defense roadshow when I was a teen. It was a small theater packed with ardent JFK conspiracy theoriests (including my history teacher) and having only ever seen various media presentations it was eye opening. The con-theos (does that work?) were largely shut down by his initial presentation, and those that did ask questions afterward were all quite genuine and thoughtful, but he could answer pretty much everything, which is the advantage of a simple, coherent story, I guess.
One of the problems I’d always had with the conspiracy stuff was the fact that even if, for instance, the “magic bullet” measurements were true, all we’d proven was that there was a magic bullet: you couldn’t then take those measurements and turn them into linear trajectories from some other location. I think the way many of these things work is that you first create an obfuscation (by willfully/subconsciously misinterpreting the data), then claim that the obfuscation means the data are inconsistent, then “C. ?”, then profit.
Oh, there was a coverup. Just not a very interesting one. Officials in DC, once they were satisfied that the Russians did nothing to spur Oswald, covered up the extent to which he and the Russians interacted.
And thanks to that coverup, the risk of World War Three breaking out in 1964 was greatly abated. And the KGB began a policy of blowing the whistle on loose cannon characters who reached out to them.
Well, this certainly had to be before he was working for Slate!
That gnoll looks more gassy than grassy…
One of my favorite bits from Full Metal Jacket:
HARTMAN: Do any of you people know who Charles Whitman was? None of you dumbasses knows? Private Cowboy?
COWBOY: Sir, he was that guy who shot all those people from that tower in Austin, Texas, sir!
HARTMAN: That’s affirmative. Charles Whitman killed twelve people from a twenty-eight-storey observation tower at the University of Texas from distances up to four hundred yards. Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? Private Snowball?
SNOWBALL: Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!
HARTMAN: That’s right, and do you know how far away he was?
SNOWBALL: Sir, it was pretty far! From that book suppository building, sir!
HARTMAN: All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot? Private Joker?
JOKER: Sir, in the Marines, sir!
People seek a balance in magnitude between a loss and the cause. “Our dashing young President, rich, articulate, war hero, beautiful family, leader of the free world, stood up to the Soviets- killed by some nameless misfit with a mail-order rifle? No, there must be more to it…”
What I find significant about this is that he’s pointing out what seem to be lies, rather than theories. I can understand cognitive dissonance, or even plain ignorance, but you’d have to be a special kind of person to intentionally fabricate a truth that you then standby completely unnecessarily; backed up only by lies that you’ve created. Is there a name for that mental illness?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
Something about the manipulating of sources makes me think it’s a little different - as that’s the kind of imperfection I would assume would drive a narcissist mad. Although I guess it’s only a problem if you care about the people that know…
