"We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they...

[Zkribbler]

Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they...

Originally posted by Lancer
...are easy but because they are hard."-JFK

What other thing?

Took on the task of breaking the back of the Jim Crow laws and desegregating the U.S.

Not only continued the Truman Doctrine of containing communist expansion but tried to roll it back by invading Cuba and attempting to have Castro assassinated.

Squared off against Big Steel when it looked as if it were price fixing.

Sent the FBI after the Mafia.

Kicked Russian missiles out of Cuba.

Founded the Peace Corp. and engaged in other acts of international diplomacy and good will.

Got America off its flabby ass by popularizing fifty mile hikes.

And seduced Marilyn Monroe.

...all in just a 1,000 days of Camelot.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they...

Originally posted by Lancer
...are easy but because they are hard."-JFK

What other thing?

Probably banged Marilyn Monroe, while already married... Hell, it is probably the only good thing Kennedy did in his administration!

[BeBMan]

"Other things" reffers obviously to some conspiracy. Of course he couldn't reveal that, so he just said "other things".

Or he knew the Russians were listening, and made that up, and there were no real other things, but maybe the Russians believed it and allocated lots of intelligence resources to find out what he meant.

[DanS]

Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they

Originally posted by Lancer
...are easy but because they are hard."-JFK

What other thing?

Rice playing Texas.

[Ecthy]

Yeah, I wondered about that, WTF does that mean?

[DanS]

Rice University playing The University of Texas at Austin in football, even though winning against Texas is a tall order (Texas leads the series 66-21). It was a well-placed joke, because he was giving the speach in Houston, Texas (where Rice is located) in front of Vice President Johnson's home crowd. Kennedy was a died-in-the-wool yankee out of place in the South, so the edge was taken off by that joke.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they...

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Probably banged Marilyn Monroe, while already married... Hell, it is probably the only good thing Kennedy did in his administration!

Either Imran failed to see my post or else he's pro-segregation and pro-Mafia.

[Spiffor]

Re: Re: Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not beca

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Either Imran failed to see my post or else he's pro-segregation and pro-Mafia.

Well, he does have a libertarian streak you know.

[Winston]

Kennedy was pro-mafia when it suited his needs. Don't know about segregation..

[Imran Siddiqui]

Re: Re: Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because they..

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Either Imran failed to see my post or else he's pro-segregation and pro-Mafia.

Aside from the fact that your post is mostly mythology about the man. His "pro-Civil Rights" stance is laughable. There is an effort to make the man a larger than life myth. He didn't do anything that Eisenhower didn't do, and no one calls Ike a Civil Rights crusader. He, at times, gave lip service to the whole idea, but did absolutely nothing of consequence to advance civil rights except die (so LBJ could push through the Civil Rights Bill). For all his talk, Kennedy placed mostly pro-Segreationist Democrat judges on the federal bench (Eisenhower's were more anti-segregation).

As for the mafia, Winston is right. Kennedy was pro-Mafia when it served him.

I almost expect you to say Kennedy would have ended the Vietnam War if he lived (that assumes he would have been re-elected, of course, not exactly set in stone there).

All this is simply because Kennedy was a good looking optimistic young President and those that like that want to hide the fact that he was the worst President from WW2 to the end of the century.

Quite frankly, Lee Harvey Oswald may have done the country a favor . LBJ was a prat, but at least he was competant in his job (Vietnam would have been escalated no matter who was in office).

[Jon Miller]

Kennedy was terrible, the only obviously worse president since WW2 is GWB.

JM

[Imran Siddiqui]

To continue about Kennedy's Civil Rights record... (and I know y'all hate the WSJ's opinion page, but read it, it may be enlightening).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/hail/over.html?id=65000681

Dynasty Dooms JFK
Kennedy failed the Constitution by not furthering civil rights and trying to crown his brother.

By Akhil Reed Amar
Monday, November 27, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST

I grew up idolizing JFK. My first television memories come from November, 1963. In early 1964, my parents--immigrants from India--bought me a documentary record excerpting Kennedy's best speeches. I wore its grooves out. I can still recite much of his inaugural address.

But as a student of constitutional law over the last twenty years, I have come to see another, less inspiring, side of Camelot.

Begin with Kennedy and the courts. To appease Southern Democrats, he stocked the lower federal bench with some notorious segregationists who proceeded to trample the Constitution. His first southern appointee, Harold Cox, was recently described by civil rights crusader Jack Greenberg as "possibly the most racist judge ever to sit on the federal bench." Similarly, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch has noted that "the best civil rights judges in the South were Eisenhower appointees; the most egregious segregationists were Kennedy's." Publicly, Kennedy pooh-poohed the problems created by his judicial appointees, and even commended these judges at a March, 1963 press conference.

JFK's two picks for the Supreme Court were better, but ultimately disappointing. Arthur Goldberg stepped down after only three years. Byron White sat for more than thirty, but somehow managed to write no truly towering opinions and leave almost no legacy. No great idea bears White's name. His most famous decision, deriding gay rights in Bowers v. Hardwick, was simultaneously hard-hearted and soft-headed.

Now turn to JFK and civil rights more generally. His account of Andrew Johnson's impeachment in "Profiles in Courage" lionized civil rights conservatives and moderates while slighting crusaders like Charles Sumner, the true heroes of the Reconstruction story. Only two words of JFK's soaring inaugural address gestured towards the American dilemma of race, and the problem of human rights "at home" as well as abroad. Late in his administration, he addressed the nation in a famous televised speech eloquently stating the legal, moral, and geopolitical case for racial equality; but what took him so long? It may be unfair to fault Kennedy for failing to win any major civil rights legislation--his mandate was shaky and Southern Democrats held key Congressional posts. But it is fair to note that, on civil rights, he failed to make the most of his bully pulpit and his great gifts of expression.

At its best, Kennedy's Justice Department embodied grace and courage and decency under intense pressure. In 1968 Bobby Kennedy was my hero. But I now view Bobby's appointment as attorney general as a terrible precedent. The Justice Department should not be headed by the president's best friend and campaign manager. Although the attorney general is formally part of the executive branch who serves at the president's pleasure, the country is best served by a tradition of some informal independence, where legal judgment and professional detachment temper partisan calculus and personal loyalty. Instead, Bobby's appointment begat John Mitchell's. Mitchell, after all, was Bobby's mirror image--Nixon's campaign manager and confidant, whose later lapses during Watergate proved to us all how dangerous it can be to put the president's best buddy in charge of federal law enforcement.

Bobby's appointment also reawakened the sleeping dragon of presidential dynasty. In effect, JFK dubbed his thirty-something kid brother as his political heir apparent. Americans at the founding consciously tried to break with British dynastic rule. One key reason that George Washington became father of his country was that he was not father of any offspring. Having sired no heirs, he could be trusted not to create a throne to hand down to a young prince. Of the first five men Americans made president, only John Adams had any (legitimate) sons. Adams' heir eventually became president of course, but long after dad had left the scene and not because the old man had named young Johnny Q. to the cabinet. The Constitution exudes special anxiety about ascensions of young and irresponsible princelings: This is part of the story behind the Founders' requirement that presidents be at least 35 years old. Though impressionable voters might be charmed by a young kinsman of a popular president, the Constitution makes dynastic succession more difficult by insisting that only mature political figures may be chosen to fill the big chair.

The metaphor of Camelot, after all, is ultimately un-American and undemocratic, conjuring up images of crowns and dashing young princes and noble birth. Our revolutionary forbears forged an emphatically anti-monarchical Constitution that went out of its way to condemn "titles of nobility" and to promise "republican" government. Today, the world is still struggling to break free from the grip of dynasty. Perhaps we can understand dynasty's allure in places where democracy has never taken firm root: Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria, and so on. But the world's largest democracy--my parents' India--has also failed to transcend this vestige of feudalism: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi and grandson Rajiv Gandhi both claimed their crowns and now a fourth generation of Nehrus has appeared on the Indian political scene.

Indians revered JFK in the 1960s, and his dynastic ambitions taught India precisely the wrong lesson. It set a dubious precedent for the rest of the world. And for America too.



Mr. Amar is a professor at Yale Law School.

[q=Jon Miller]Kennedy was terrible, the only obviously worse president since WW2 is GWB.[/q]

I'm in 100% total agreement.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: Re: Re: "We choose to go to the moon this decade and do the other thing. Not because th

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Aside from the fact that your post is mostly mythology about the man. His "pro-Civil Rights" stance is laughable. There is an effort to make the man a larger than life myth. He didn't do anything that Eisenhower didn't do, and no one calls Ike a Civil Rights crusader. He, at times, gave lip service to the whole idea, but did absolutely nothing of consequence to advance civil rights except die (so LBJ could push through the Civil Rights Bill). For all his talk, Kennedy placed mostly pro-Segreationist Democrat judges on the federal bench (Eisenhower's were more anti-segregation).

It was Kennedy's administration that drafted the 1963 Civil Rights Act. True, it was questionable whether it would have made it through the Congress -- especially with the stranglehold the segregationalists had on the Senate -- this remains the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation since the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.

As for the mafia, Winston is right. Kennedy was pro-Mafia when it served him.

He was willing to work through the Mafia to try and oust Castro but as far as I know, that was the extent of his being "pro-Mafia."

Before JFK, Hoover refused to let his men go after the Mafia. He'd seen every police force that tangled with it be corrupted by it. It was JFK and RFA who forced Hoover to do his job and go after these guys.

RFK also exposed a lot of Mafia corruption and Mafia infiltration of big unions.

For this, the Mafia hated the Kennedys.

Don't forget Traficante's infamous gloating words when he heard about the assassination: "Now Bobby Kennedy's just another lawyer."

I almost expect you to say Kennedy would have ended the Vietnam War if he lived ...

There is some indication that he would have done so. But if he had, he'd only have been backing off a previous position. I can't give him cudos for thining about undoing what he'd previously done.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It was Kennedy's administration that drafted the 1963 Civil Rights Act. True, it was questionable whether it would have made it through the Congress -- especially with the stranglehold the segregationalists had on the Senate -- this remains the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation since the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.

The Justice Dept drafted the legislation. I got nothing against Bobby Kennedy. I think just like the Bushes the smarter, and more principled, brother was the one that didn't get to be President. Kennedy did not seem to push it strongly and appointed some horrid racists to the bench.

He was willing to work through the Mafia to try and oust Castro but as far as I know, that was the extent of his being "pro-Mafia."

He was willing to work through them, though. No matter how much he went after them, he showed he was willing to work with them when it suited him.

There is some indication that he would have done so. But if he had, he'd only have been backing off a previous position. I can't give him cudos for thining about undoing what he'd previously done.

Oh jeez, you are one of those loonies! Though only a minor one, because you don't give him credit for undoing his policy (even though he never would have done so).

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by RoboCon
Hello there! I see you are discussing Kennedy. Perhaps I can be of assistance.

Do you remember when Chegitz was comparing Chappaquiddick with 9-11? Perhaps it was sound advice, but without tort reform, Bobby Kennedy wouldn't have lived to see 60 anyways. People always ask me who did the shooting. Anne Coulter is the answer. Never has a filthier liberal occupied that Senate seat.