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RFK had many flaws--his McCarthyite past, his homophobia, his ability to carry a grudge, but he and his older brother evolved in ways that no subsequent politicians have. Sadly, the New Deal coalition died with him and no one today even comes close to the promise that he epitomized.
I was too young to actually contribute to the various movements back then, but not too young to remember, realize and FEEL what was going on. I was devastated by the resultant death and destruction throughout that summer and fall.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/4/194634/9...
She now leads by ONLY 30!
I hope more SD's get more sense, and put an end to this awful
campaign. Hillary is too power hungry to do the right thing for
the Democratic party, and it's members.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-supe...
MLK and RFK were assassinated.
The Vietnam War was raging.
The Chicago Convention riots.
The whole world was watching.
With all that money, does she really need these shady characters
to help her raise funds?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/32613.html
Yes.
ways into past
scientists make laser waves show accoustic waves from the past
Can you imagine a losing MLK and RFK and ending up with Nixon as president?
Biggest political bummer of my life so far has been Bush's reelection.
But most notoriously, RFK is the guy who launched the FBI wiretapping and surveillance on MLK.
"October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy believed that one of King's closest advisers was a top-level member of the American Communist Party, and that King had repeatedly misled Administration officials about his ongoing close ties with the man. Kennedy acted reluctantly, and his order remained secret until May of 1968, just a few weeks after King's assassination and a few days before Kennedy's own. But the FBI onslaught against King that followed Kennedy's authorization remains notorious, and the stains on the reputations of everyone involved are indelible. "
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200207/garrow
So here he is hypocritically honoring MLK.
J Edgar Hoover pushed for the surveillance of Martin Luther King. Dallas provided a great distraction from ending that surveillance. If anything, it proved Hoover was wrong about King's being a Communist. In these reactionary times, the epithet "liberal" or even the undefined "ultraliberal" serves the same inane purpose. It took Hoover over two years to wear RFK down to get his surveillance. Hoover would not have lasted a day in an RFK administration.
Alfred writes, "No one knew it until New Hampshire on 12 March that the Tet Offensive back on 30 January had caused public opinon to shift one fifth of the electorate against the war." So, as I indicated, RFK waited while someone else tested the waters. Of course, no opportunism there, is there? As I remember, Eugene McCarthy had made maybe his first speech against the war in the preceding October.
Now, back to other Kennedy policies. There is their terrorist campaign against Cuba called Operation Mongoose.
" Kennedy was aware that allies "think that we're slightly demented" on the subject of Cuba, a perception that persists to the present.
Kennedy implemented a crushing embargo that could scarcely be endured by a small country that had become a "virtual colony" of the US in the sixty years following its "liberation" from Spain. He also ordered an intensification of the terrorist campaign: "He asked his brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency group that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations, economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit the 'terrors of the earth' on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple him." "
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1027/noam_choms...
"Operation Mongoose was "the centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba from late 1961 until the onset of the 1962 missile crisis," Mark White reports, the program on which the Kennedy brothers "came to pin their hopes." Robert Kennedy informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries "the top priority in the United States Government -- all else is secondary -- no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared" in the effort to overthrow the Castro regime."
- Yeah, that RFK sure was a statesman we can all be proud of. LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6hF1nGHbgY
on the news yesterday and couldn't help remembering this is the same Hillary Clinton who sought to minimize MLK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ikowGJj8pg
So i'm wonderign when is this going to be brought up? Obama did a good job of responding to Clinton's diss of MLK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5r8EPbyLN0
but to me the other day's maudlin overwrought reaction from Clinton felt rehearsed, fake, and smacked of more opportunism from her campaign. I'd love it if Jed could splice a video together.
At the time of late 1967, the pressure was on for RFK to take on LBJ in 1968, and not wait for 1972. In October, and especially 30 November 1967, it looked as if we were going to win the war. General William Westmoreland had just spoken of the "light at the end of the tunnel" on Tuesday, 21 November. Any clash between LBJ and RFK meant that RFK would cost the Democrats the election. Therefore, he was -- as Bill Mauldin drew -- Hamlet. Recall that RFK's speech against the war in the Senate on Thursday, 2 March 1967 -- after his clash with LBJ in the Oval Office on Monday, 6 February -- called for a bombing halt if Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong would negotiate an end to the war.
Finally, MLK was not a major part of the Kennedy interest until 1963. Only then, when the Kennedys listened to MLK and his group, did they turn their attention to civil rights. The Supreme Court under Earl Warren did the heavy lifting until the executive branch took charge. There's no whitewashing here. Human beings make mistakes. Only gods like Ronald Reagan receive worship. I'd rather a human being anytime, which is why I'd rather Matthew Wayne Shepard as my friend, then the saint buried within a few blocks from my home.