Files

The release of tens of thousands of pages from the JFK assassination investigation will not clarify anything or end the conspiracy theories for those so heavily invested in such theories.  By its nature an investigation of this sort collects all pieces of evidence without regards to its credibility, so I expect we will see a lot of wacky claims regarding conspiracies and individuals and groups, like the Illuminati!, and a lot of people on social media republishing random and unsubstantiated documents as proof that their particular conspiracy theory is thus proved.  For those who can't find the document(s) they were confident existed, absence alone will provide definitive proof that the conspiracy existed.

Here is what I think happened:

On President Kennedy

Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and not part of a conspiracy.  The Warren Commission got its overall conclusion correct, but made major mistakes in its analysis, in part because the real scandal was the CIA and FBI covering up the evidence they had gathered enough information, in the three months prior to November 1963, that if acted upon properly, could likely have prevented the assassination. It was a bureaucracy protecting itself. And Lyndon Johnson was convinced Castro was behind the deed, and he did not want that to be the public conclusion because he thought it would lead to war with the Soviet Union.

For my prior analysis read A Cruel And Shocking Act. 

On Robert Kennedy

RFK was the target of Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian upset by Kennedy's support for Israel.  There is a small possibility that the fatal shot came from a guard or law enforcement officer in the chaos after Sirhan began shooting. 

On Martin Luther King

James Earl Ray was the lone assassin though it is possible that someone else encouraged his action.  Of the three events, this is the one I know the least about, and am least confident of my conclusions.

Taj

I've heard Taj Mahal since the late 1960s, but had never seen him perform until last night at the 300-seat theater at the Musical Instruments Museum where he and his ban (bass, drums, pedal steel) were playing four shows.

Over the years he's played with everyone from the old blues artists to Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Joe Walsh, Cyndi Lauper, and Bonnie Raitt.  Taj (real name Henry St Clair Fredericks Jr, but known as Taj since 1960) is now almost 82 and moving a lot slower than he used to but his voice and playing is as strong as ever.  He played electric acoustic and steel guitar, ukelele, banjo, and keyboards.  At a Taj concert you'll hear an eclectic mix of country blues, roots music, reggae and Hawaiian music. What a fun, relaxing, and upbeat show! 

You can listen to some of his music in the linked post above; this is Take A Giant Step, the first song I ever heard from Taj and what he closed last night's show with, and below are a couple of more recent sessions:

Revenge Or Justice?

Over at National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy argues that President Trump's Executive Order suspending security clearances, contracting, and access to federal buildings to the law firm of Perkins Coie is an unconstitutional and deeply wrong act.  I agree, though with a partial dissent as discussed below.

Two senior Perkins Coie lawyers, Marc Elias and Michael Sussman, are deeply implicated in the Clinton campaign conspiracy regarding Russia Collusion, a conspiracy designed to improperly influence a presidential election.  Both Elias and Sussman are long gone from the firm, which employs 3,700 people.

It was through Elias and Sussman that the Clinton Campaign and the DNC hired FusionGPS to fabricate the phony Steele Dossier, and Sussmann used his direct influence to move its allegations through the Federal bureaucracy.  They then prepared the false submissions to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by both entities, claiming the more than $1 million paid to FusionGPS was for legal services.  The FEC found this statement to be in violation of Federal law, fining the campaign and the DNC a total of $135,000.  You may recollect that it was the alleged violation of the same FEC rules by the Trump campaign regarding the $250,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, that led Manhattan District Attorney Bragg, with the assistance of the Biden Justice Department and a bizarre legal theory converting a federal misdemeanor matter into 34 felony counts under New York law, to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump.  It's fair to say that Elias and Sussmann are scumbags whose activities undermined American democracy.  The question is what is to be done about the partnership of Perkins Coie?

McCarthy's point, apart from the constitutional argument is:

Trump is stubbornly wrong, however, in refusing to accept that the payback he gets — extraordinary payback, but the only legitimate payback — is his stunning political comeback. The Democrats suffered thunderous defeat, in large part because the public saw these and other lawfare abuses as scandalous. That has to be enough. Trump’s retribution is that he won the presidency; it is not turning the presidency into lawfare on steroids.

I agree with McCarthy in so far as this argument applies to Perkins Coie.  However, I part ways with him on his next assertion:

Participants in the Russiagate farce have been disciplined. The government officials, particularly at the FBI, were the subject of scathing inspector general reports and either fired or pushed out of office. Hillary Clinton is irrevocably damaged political goods.

Whether it is petty or prudent to do so, Trump has all the authority the Constitution gives a president to remove government officials he blames for the lawfare tactics, and he has done that.

Here, McCarthy is wrong.  There has not been personal responsibility and accountability for the greatest political scandal of my lifetime, and arguably in American history.  I support any efforts by DOJ to investigate and, if appropriate, bring criminal charges against those involved in the conspiracy.  Unfortunately, with the passage of time, the statute of limitations may have expired regarding many potential offenses. 

McCarthy admits "I’d prefer to ignore the EO because the Democrats and their base supporters now expressing outrage over it are hypocrites", pointing out the efforts to disbar any attorney who worked on supporting Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen, adding:

So it’s hard to take sides with these people: progressive ideologues who can’t spew enough bile about pardons for participants in a three-hour riot at the Capitol, including hundreds who viciously assaulted police officers (and they’re right about that)(1), but who turned a blind eye to — or even marched in lockstep with — left-wing radicals who engaged in months of lethal rioting, looting, and arson triggered by the death in police custody of a black man with a substantial criminal record, who had started the fateful confrontation by assaulting the cops. This includes progressive ideologues now trying to turn a Hamas-supporting activist into a free-speech martyr, but who have not a word to say about Hamas’s brutal killing, maiming, and raping of hundreds of people on October 7, or about Edan Alexander, the American citizen who is among the two dozen living hostages the jihadists are still holding in their dungeons after 17 months.

And, I'll add the same progressives who reveled when the Trump White House was under assault on May 31-June 1, 2020, gleefully pointing out that the president was in the basement below for security purposes, while sixty law enforcement personnel were injured, eleven seriously enough to go to the hospital. 

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(1) I disagreed with President Trump's pardon of those convicted of violent offenses on January 6, while agreeing with his decision to pardon non-violent offenders.  There was clearly a two-tier legal system created by the Biden Justice Department in which red-coded defendants were treated much more harshly than those blue-coded.  The deluded non-violent protestors (the bulk of those convicted of J6 offenses) drawn to DC by Trump's ridiculous Stop the Steal claims, deserved pardons, particularly after Trump went on to raise more than $100 million for his personal kitty, while leaving his arrested supporters bereft of legal counsel and, in some cases, to rot in jail awaiting trial.

Nobody's Fault But Mine

From Otis Redding's last Stax recording session just before his death in a plane crash at Madison, Wisconsin in December 1967.  Composed by Otis and Steve Cropper.  What a talent lost!

Funny Stories

 Kevin Pollak tells great stories about Don Rickles and Walter Matthau.

The Cost

Assistant Village Idiot from fifteen years ago.  AVP is now retired but was a social worker at a New Hampshire psychiatric facility.  A very thoughtful guy.  This is a piece about the fantasies we all indulge in when regarding those who can't cope in society.  He tells the stories of how two former psych patients manage in small town New England.  Sounds ideal but, as AVP reminds us, that is not reality.  It's a subject I know a bit about.

It is the ideal solution everyone is thinking about in the back of their minds when they are setting policy. This is the way life should be. This is how communities should act. It is the thought behind Tolkien's anarcho-monarchism, the idea behind the libertarians's love of small, naturalised, spontaneous solutions, the force behind all the liberal programs to teach job skills, develop natural networks of support, and have self-determination.

Wouldn't it be nice if.

It's 90% fantasy.

How would you replicate this solution in Boston? Hell, how would you replicate it in Concord? There are many, many more people out there, all of them with added difficulties - some of their own making, but many not. Making a life for all of them is an expensive proposition. In fact, it is furiously more expensive than any of you imagine. To do this right, to provide the services that people need to have a life, is well beyond our ability to fund. Well beyond. We might hope for technological solutions to bail us out over time: medications with fewer side effects, or gene manipulation to pull some of the developmental and psychiatric problems out of the equation. Better methods of incentive and persuasion to keep people in the treatment they need. New communication technologies that allow people to work without having their oddness and lack of social or employment skills show.

But for now, we have these people, and they are real people, and they are just difficult and expensive.

Conservatives and liberals have their separate ways of screwing this up. Small-government types entertain the fantasy that a lot of this would work itself out if people were more self-reliant - if individuals and families stepped up and made these natural solutions happen. They have a point, of course. I am very reluctant to apply for disability benefits for young people, knowing that this dooms them to a rather meager, helpless life in many cases. A lot of people could indeed smarten up and fly right if they had to. The risk of that is, some people can't, even with significant family support, or can't quite, and pushing them out into the world is merely kicking them when they are down. And let me assure you, you don't know which one's are which.

Liberals feel your pain, and in their kind-heartedness think we could do what is necessary if we would just try harder. They also have no idea how extensive the problems are. But you can see how they sense it at a distance, because a lot of them move into parts of the human-services bureaucracy where they are no longer providing services. They set up information clearinghouses, in order to connect people to services that already exist. They go into advocacy, trying to get this miserly, uncaring society to see how much we need to increase our support and grow new programs. They believe that if we all just pull together, dammit, we could make this pretty good. And so human service bureaucracies, and non-profits supported by government money, become about 50% people not doing anything that actually provides services. They go to meetings a lot.