DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Lanya on December 27, 2006, 01:10:08 AM
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ford27dec27,0,5566263.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
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I can recall two quotes from Ford:
1) "the business of America is business."
2) 'he's pardoned.'
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Ford perfected the Nixonian retirement coup of getting rich from being an ex-president without costing the taxpayers much.
Every year or so, he would move from one tasteful Palm Springs mansion to another. Palm Springs is full of social climbers whose crowing career trophy is living in an ex-presidential home. He could sell anyplace he lived in for a cool million more than it cost to build. Whole neighborhoods formed around his homes.
Nixon only moved about four times, but the Fords were veritable gypsies.
He was not the sharpest tack in the box, but compared to Juniorbush he was a statesman. Better than Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding and on a par with Millard Fillmore, anyway.
Our best unelected president.
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I remember the Swine Flu shot I never got.
And the wrestling with Reagan for the right.
All in all a good guy with a goofy humor and humility .
No one elese was ready and able to collect the shreads of the Executive and start to mend them when he did.
I see his presidency and Carters together as a period of wounded convelesence , and in those terms ,a success.
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<<I can recall two quotes from Ford . . . >>
Well, "I'm not a Lincoln, I'm a Ford" wasn't bad at all.
I'll remember him kindly as the guy who refused to put the plug back in after Congress finally pulled it on Viet Nam.
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What was truly ironic was the thought that Ford was not as intelligent as Reagan.
Reagan was a good actor who knew less than nothing about anything except for acting, and simply was surrounded with a huge cadre of screeners who only let his monumental ignorance shine through about one a week, which was not enough to convince the ratwingers.
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Our best unelected president.
And so far, our only unelected president.
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Ford was the last & rarest of breeds: A Republican that could be respected. He wasnt a genius, but knew it. He had humor and a great wife.
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isn`t chester arthur unelected.
and a pretty good one also
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isn`t chester arthur unelected.
He was elected vice-president.
Ford was appointed to the position of vice-president, then took over as president when Nixon resigned. Ford never won an election for office as either vice-president or president.
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Also, Ford was a co-conspirator after the fact in the murder of JFK.
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Also, Ford was a co-conspirator after the fact in the murder of JFK.
Only in the minds of a very few. Not an actual fact, however.
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isn`t chester arthur unelected.
and a pretty good one also
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Chester A. Arthur was elected Vice President, and took over when Garfield was assassinated..
Gerry Ford was not elected to anything other than the House of Representatives from Grand Rapids.
Nixon chose a crook, Spiro T Agnew to be his VP. When it became likely that Nixon would be impeached and removed from office, previously hidden evidence against Agnew was brought forth, because the GOP did not want Agnew in charge of the party or the country, so Agnew was confronted with the charges, and allowed to plead nolo contendere in return for his resignation. Then Ford, who was Minority leader of the House was named VP.
Then Nixon turned out to be a crook and had to resign, and Ford became president.
Ford's VP was Nelson Rockefeller, also named by a joint committee.
Rocky died humping his mistress, apparently.
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Only in the minds of a very few. Not an actual fact, however.
Have you figured out some way to deny that he was a member of the Warren Commission?
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Have you figured out some way to deny that he was a member of the Warren Commission?
That only makes him a "co-conspirator after the fact" in the minds of a very few, and it's still not an actual fact.
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Have you figured out some way to deny that he was a member of the Warren Commission?
That only makes him a "co-conspirator after the fact" in the minds of a very few, and it's still not an actual fact.
Do you then deny that he falsified evidence?
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Do you then deny that he falsified evidence?
Before you answer, you may want to get up to speed.
Let me help.
With all of these contradictions emerging – both during the Warren Commission hearings and in the aftermath of its final report – one has to wonder how the Warren Commission managed to arrive at the conclusions it did.
A key edit in the Warren Report may have helped. The report's first draft said: "A bullet had entered his [President Kennedy's] back at a point slightly below the shoulder to the right of the spine." Had that stood, the trajectory would have made it impossible for the bullet that struck Kennedy to come out his neck, and then somehow critically wound Connally.
Newly released documents show, however, that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the wound and place it higher in Kennedy's body. Ford wanted the wording changed to: "A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine." The panel's final version was: "A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."
This crucial change only came to light in 1997, when the Assassination Record Review Board released handwritten notes made by Ford that had been kept by J. Lee Rankin, the Warren Commission's chief counsel. Ford's change is even at odds with his own declaration in the Oct. 2, 1964 issue of Life: "I personally believe that one of these three shots missed entirely – but which of the three may never be known. I believe that another bullet struck the president in the back and emerged from his throat (and went on to strike Connally.)"
When the alteration was brought to Ford's attention in 1997, he said it "had nothing to do with (thwarting) a conspiracy theory" and was made "only in an attempt to be more precise." Assassination researcher Robert Morningstar, however, called the change "the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report." He pointed out that if the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have gone on to strike Connally the way the commission said it did. Morningstar contended that the effect of Ford's editing suggested that a bullet hit the president in the neck – "raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins."
Ford's alteration supports the single-bullet theory by making a specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body ''at the back of his neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff originally wrote.
Harold Weisberg, a longtime critic of the Warren Commission's work, said: "What Ford is doing is trying to make the single bullet theory more tenable."
http://www.crimemagazine.com/06/ford-jfk,1111-06.htm (http://www.crimemagazine.com/06/ford-jfk,1111-06.htm)
Sure, you could take him at his word but with all the other mounds and grandiose piles of evidence of lies and obfuscation, what's the point? The Warren Commission was out to cover up anything that could possibly make people think that there was a conspiracy. The next committee discovered lots of cases where they omitted or completely lied (the HSCA was polite and called them mistakes). Ford was secretly funnelling information to Hoover.
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Do you then deny that he falsified evidence?
Yup.
Looks like the picture of the wound in question is substantially similar to the description in the Warren Commission report. Or are you gonna quibble about semantics now?
(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/back.jpg)
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Now are you seriously going to look at that (fake) photo up above and tell me that this ("A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine.") is an accurate description of where that bullet hole is?
You're actually going to tell me that bullet hole is in "the back of his neck"? Are fucking kidding me?
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You're actually going to tell me that bullet hole is in "the back of his neck"? Are fucking kidding me?
Yup. Above the bullet hole is only the shoulder muscles. That part of the body is actually the flesh joining of the back, shoulder, and neck. JFK was an athlete, so he had some large muscles.
It's definitely not the location that is promulgated by conspiracy theorists. As this drawing suggests, the bullet hole according to conspiracy theorists was over 5" below the shirt collar. The actual photo, though, shows the bullet hole just below where the collar would be.
(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bogus3.gif)
You can debate whether that particular spot is neck, shoulder, or back, but that would just be arguing semantics, which I know you despise.
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You're misrepresenting semantics. Semantics is the difference between "surge" and "escalation". Semantics is not the difference between "neck" and "back". Neck and back is like car and boat.
What Ford was trying to do by altering that sentence was making it seem like that magic bullet could have gone in the hole that you and I are discussing and then come out the hole in Kennedy's throat just below his Adam's apple. That is the basis of the drawing you presented.
What is your aversion to reality?
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Semantics is not the difference between "neck" and "back". Neck and back is like car and boat.
No, they're not. I would say that the hole in the photo is in the neck or shoulder. It's definitely not in the back. I consider the back to be below the collarbone, and that hole is about level with the collarbone.
What Ford was trying to do by altering that sentence was making it seem like that magic bullet could have gone in the hole that you and I are discussing and then come out the hole in Kennedy's throat just below his Adam's apple. That is the basis of the drawing you presented.
Except that the drawing assumes that the bullet hole was nearly six inches below the collar, which is was not. Computer modeling shows that the bullet path is straight until it hits Connelly's bone, and is an accurate portrayal.
(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt-faa.jpg)
What is your aversion to reality?
I'm not the one with the aversion.
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Semantics is not the difference between "neck" and "back". Neck and back is like car and boat.
No, they're not. I would say that the hole in the photo is in the neck or shoulder. It's definitely not in the back. I consider the back to be below the collarbone, and that hole is about level with the collarbone.
What Ford was trying to do by altering that sentence was making it seem like that magic bullet could have gone in the hole that you and I are discussing and then come out the hole in Kennedy's throat just below his Adam's apple. That is the basis of the drawing you presented.
The problem with your bullshit computer model is that the doctors at Parkland all stated that the hole in Kennedy's throat was an ENTRY WOUND that they opened up more in order to insert breathing tubes. So, no matter where the hole was in his BACK (not neck), no bullet went all the way through Kennedy and hit Connelly.
Reality just has a way of creeping in on lies.
At least one doctor stuck his finger in the wound in Kennedy's back and felt the bullet in there.
You see how this works? There was no bullet that went through Kennedy and into Connelly and did all that magic damage that no bullet in the history of gunfire has ever done and come out pristine. You're over there arguing about where Jack's mother threw the magic beans. There never were any magic beans.
Except that the drawing assumes that the bullet hole was nearly six inches below the collar, which is was not. Computer modeling shows that the bullet path is straight until it hits Connelly's bone, and is an accurate portrayal.
(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt-faa.jpg)
What is your aversion to reality?
I'm not the one with the aversion.
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The problem with your bullshit computer model is that the doctors at Parkland all stated that the hole in Kennedy's throat was an ENTRY WOUND that they opened up more in order to insert breathing tubes.
The buffs will endlessly push the doctors impression that the wound
might have been one of entry, but will not tell you about *all* the
speculation the doctors engaged in.
For example, the doctors speculated that a fragment from the head shot
had *exited* from Kennedy's throat.
Let me quote Josiah Thompson:
Frazier's suggestion that the throat wound might have been caused
by a fragment (possibly bone) has already been made by one of the
Parkland doctors who helped Perry make his trachetomy incision.
Only three hours after the assassination, Dr. Robert N. McClelland
had written an "admission note" in which he had remarked: "The
President was at this time comatose from a massive gunshot wound
of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea (WCR, p. 526).
As another Parkland doctor pointed out in his testimony, the idea
of such a fragment driver downward and out the throat by the head
impact had been discussed at Parkland Hospital on that Friday
afternoon. (SSID, p. 53
Thompson references Carrico's testimony on this latter point (6H5):
Mr. Specter: Was there any discussion among the doctors who
attended President Kennedy as to the cause of the neck wound?
Dr. Carrico: Yes; after that afternoon.
Mr. Specter: And what conversations were there?
Dr. Carrico: As I recall, Dr. Perry, and I talked and tried after
-- later in the afternoon to determine what exactly had happened,
and we were not aware of the missle wound to the back, and
postulated that this was either a tangential wound from a
fragment, possibly another entrance wound. It could have been an
exit wound, but we knew of no other entrance wound.
Mr. Specter: Was the wound in the neck consistent with being
either an entry or exit wound, in your opinion?
Dr. Carrico: Yes.
Thompson further quotes several sources that echoed this same
speculation:
This same hypothesis was put forward by various government
spokesmen in December, 1963. Citing governmental sources,
NEWSWEEK (Dec. 30, 1963), TIME (Dec. 27, 1963), and the WASHINGTON
POST (Dec. 18, 1963) all carried stories asserting that the
autopsy had produced evidence that a fragment from the second
bullet (the head shot) had been deflected downward and had pased
out through the throat. THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION (Jan. 4, 1964) reported that "a small fragment of this
bullet [the head shot] angled down and passed out through
Kennedy's throat. (SSID, p. 53)
So what have the buffs been doing with this testimony? They have been
*suppressing* the doctors' speculation that the throat wound was the
exit wound of a fragment, and *pushing* the doctors speculation that
the wound was an entrance wound.
and
The following is from the JAMA, April 28, 1993, page 2058.
CLINICIANS' FORENSIC INTERPRETATIONS OF FATAL GUNSHOT WOUNDS OFTEN
MISS THE MARK.
The odds that a trauma specialist will correctly interpret certain
fatal gunshot wound are no better than the flip of a coin,
according to a recent study at a level 1 trauma center. The
study, which looked at single, perforating (exiting) gunshot
wounds and multiple gunshot wounds, found that trauma specialists
made errors in 52% of the cases, either in differentiating the
entrance and exit wound, or in determining the number of bullets
that struck the victim.
Investigators at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest
University, Winston-Salem, NC, compared the postmortem findings of
a board-certified forensic pathologist with the medical records of
emergency medicine physicians, trauma surgeons, and neurosurgeons.
The study is the first to quantify the forensic acumen of these
specialists, says Vincent DiMaio, MD, a forensic pathologist and
editor of THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF FORENSIC MEDICINE AND PATHOLOGY.
The study's coauthors . . . investigated the fatal gunshot wounds
treated by trauma specialists at the hospital between January 1987
and June 1992. They excluded single penetrating (nonexiting)
gunshot wounds from the study.
Of the 46 cases identified, 24 had been misinterpreted by the
trauma specialists. These included 16 errors in differentiating
the exit and entrance wound, and 15 errors in determining the
number of bullets. In seven cases, the clinician had made both
types of errors.
As expected, multiple gunshot wounds were more often
misinterpreted--74% of the time. Of the single, perforating
gunshot wounds, 37% had been misclassified.
The researchers presented their results at the recent annual
meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Boston,
Mass.
Of course, Kennedy would fall in the "multiple" gunshot wound
category.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/wound4.txt (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/wound4.txt)
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ludicrous.
Mcadams.
You must be kidding.
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ludicrous.
Mcadams.
You must be kidding.
Not as ludicrous as "Crime Magazine." Besides, the quote was transcripts of interviews and a JAMA article, they just happened to be hosted by McAdams.
BTW, what's your complaint? They disagree with you? Seems like they agree with science.
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McAdams is a guy who is indicative of the ostrich mentality towards the JFK murder.
And not only that, part of the "quoting" was from the Warren Commission report. Come on, it's been shown over and over that they lied and fabricated testimony and didn't conduct a valid investigation. The HSCA, though flawed and also suspect, at least admitted that someone "probably" shot from the grassy knoll and there was a conspiracy.
Jesus, what's your reticence towards reality?
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McAdams is a guy who is indicative of the ostrich mentality towards the JFK murder....Jesus, what's your reticence towards reality?
And what's yours towards both science & facts?
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Jesus, what's your reticence towards reality?
I don't have a "reticence towards reality" - when presented with valid evidence, I accept it. You have brought no valid evidence. Just because there were some mistakes in the WC report does not make the fundamental conclusion incorrect. And the science leans towards a "lone gunman" scenario.
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Jesus, what's your reticence towards reality?
I don't have a "reticence towards reality" - when presented with valid evidence, I accept it. You have brought no valid evidence. Just because there were some mistakes in the WC report does not make the fundamental conclusion incorrect. And the science leans towards a "lone gunman" scenario.
How does your version of "science" explain a plume of smoke coming from the grassy knoll?
How does your version of "science" explain half the people in Dealey Plaza running towards the grassy knoll and saying that shots came from the grassy knoll?
Last I heard, "science", in reality, showed a man in a policeman's uniform shooting from the grassy knoll. Not to mention the guy who was standing in front of the fence who "felt" the bullet whiz past his ear.
Science has proven that the Zapruder film is faked. Is that science or some crazy science?
The point is that Science emphatically supports the theory of a massive coverup of a massive conspiracy.
Your general cherrypicking at this thing is ridiculous when people who were present have spent the last 43 years looking at this thing and coming up again and again with Oswald (at least not the man who was call Oswald) not even having anything to do with the assassination act itself.
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The point is that Science emphatically supports the theory of a massive coverup of a massive conspiracy.
Now don't that sums things up nicely :D
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Your general cherrypicking at this thing is ridiculous when people who were present have spent the last 43 years looking at this thing and coming up again and again with Oswald (at least not the man who was call Oswald) not even having anything to do with the assassination act itself.
"Cherrypicking" is what science does. Break it down into pieces and see which are real and which aren't.
As I said, science supports the single shooter theory. Personal observations under pressure can be (and usually are) wrong. Witness that JAMA article I cited that showed that 73% of time, emergency room doctors are wrong with determining entry and exit wounds. The 3 pathologists on the case have all agreed that the throat was an exit wound. Yet, you claim that the emergency room doctors (which are wrong 73% of the time) are a better source than the pathologists, even though they admit that knew nothing about a shot from behind, they were speculating purely on the basis of the head wound they saw. You also believe the illustration of the "magic bullet" path in "High Treason" when the photograph of the wound on Kennedy's body is clearly higher on the body than that shown in the illustration, and the photograph also matches the documentation produced by others.
And sound is routinely misinterpreted. For instance, if you're standing on straight railroad tracks with your eyes closed and facing along the tracks, and you hear a train whistle in the distance, you can determine if it's moving toward you or away from you, but not if it's front of you or behind you. You have to rotate your head to one side to determine which direction it's coming from. A grassy knoll can easily echo a gunshot. I know that when I was on the 50 yard pistol range at the shooting range in Baltimore, the rifle shots from the 600 yard range sounded like they were coming from the woods behind the range, and not the shooting stand (there was a dirt berm between the ranges, so the sound would travel back into the woods, then echo back to where I was).
The film has problems because it's been documented that a number of the frames were damaged during developing. A "plume of smoke" doesn't indicate a gunshot. Modern firearms use "smokeless" powder.
The necessary conspiracy is too complicated to have remained undisclosed this length of time. Complex conspiracies always have some member eventually spilling the beans.
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You also believe the illustration of the "magic bullet" path in "High Treason" when the photograph of the wound on Kennedy's body is clearly higher on the body than that shown in the illustration, and the photograph also matches the documentation produced by others.
Interestingly, both the diagram and that photograph appeared in High Treason. You would think they'd have provided some explanation, considering they contradict each other. It was that kind of sloppiness that killed the credibility of that book for me. The authors primarily railed against the Warren Commission's conclusion, but were never able to advance an alternate theory. Basically, all they had to say was, "Something ain't right here!".
For all that, the book does provide a lot of excellent source material, for anyone interested in that sort of thing.
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I thought part of his skull went flying off onto the back of the limo (isn't that why Jackie was crawling on the limo?). Where is that in these photos or drawings? It didn't happen?
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A "plume of smoke" doesn't indicate a gunshot. Modern firearms use "smokeless" powder.
So what does it indicate?
A black powder rifle on the grassy knoll?
Perhaps an air rifle?
I tend to think that a Lucky Strike would be entirely different.
It's very obvious that the MLK shooting involved a lot more people than James L. Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan and Osward are pretty unlikely assassins as well.
I doubt that any of this will ever really be known, and preventing more skullduggery is a lot more important now, anyway.'
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I thought part of his skull went flying off onto the back of the limo (isn't that why Jackie was crawling on the limo?). Where is that in these photos or drawings? It didn't happen?
No. Jackie said that she was trying to get to the security detail.
So what does it indicate?
More than likely, a witness that was mistaken.