Was JFK Killed by Right-Wing "Hate"—or by a Commie's Bullet?

Note: I'll be talking about JFK's foreign policy on Huffington Post Live at about 12.25pm ET today. Go here to watch. The channel's program "What if JFK had lived?" starts at noon ET.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein asks the obvious question after reading various attempts to blame the assassination of John F. Kennedy on a generalized "atmosphere of hate" pervading Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. Was Dallas a hotbed of right-wing paranoid fantasies back then? Sure was. But - and this is really kinda important - it wasn't the likes of nutjub Gen. Edwin Walker who plugged the president. It was Lee Harvey Oswald, a Castro supporter who had defected to the Soviet Union out of a mix of Marxist idealism and anti-Americanism.

Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was a Communist. Not a small c, "all we are saying is give peace a chance and let's support Negro civil rights" kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union. And when that didn't work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him. Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy's anti-Castro actions.

More here.

For more on the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder, go here.

And watch our recent interview with Roger Stone, author of The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. I ain't buying the conspiracy theory—though I did literally buy his book and found it a really captivating read, right up there with Don DeLillo's novel on "Oswaldskovich" (the nickname given Oswald by his fellow Marines because he wouldn't shut up about how great the USSR was), Libra.

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Some communist shoots Kennedy, and it's right-wing hate. I see. The reality-based community totally ignoring reality yet again.

[John]

It is not Europe so they can't blame every thing on the Jews. Here it is always the "right wing's" fault.

[Caleb Turberville]

The assassination conspiracy theories are rooted in the initial cognitive dissonance many on the Left experienced when it was revealed that Oswald was a communist, Soviet-sympathizer.

Hence, the convoluted theories meant to tie the assassination to a secret cabal of industrialists.

[AlexInCT]

Because admitting that communism is about even more force or that Kennedy was not liked by communists or likely to return the feeling, makes it too blatant that he wouldn't be in tune with the dogma of the new left of today.

[AlmightyJB]

But...if republicans weren't going after communist spies then communist wouldn't have had to shoot the democrat president.

[ImanAzol]

Bush Sr was in the CIA at that time. Look it up.

[Pulseguy]

Very similar to the left wing communist who shot Gabby Giffords. Also a product of right wing hate.

[Mr. JD]

To advance an ideology that is not based on facts or reason, you must dispense with facts and reason. We see this time and time again from the Left.

[sarcasmic]

They know what they feel to be true, and no amount of facts or reason can change what they feel.

[AlexInCT]

Because it is all about the feelings....

[CatoTheElder]

I blame George Bush.

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah, but Cheney actually pulled the trigger.

[SusanM]

and hit a lawyer - nobody's all bad.

[Kyfho Myoba]

Have you read Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker? He does. Bush (41) - "Poppy" - is the only American that doesn't recall where he was 50 years ago today. Hmmmmm.

Russ Baker's site - whowhatwhy.com

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

You know who else died 50 years ago today?

[Outis]

Aldous Huxley?

[rts]

C. S. Lewis?

[guy in the back row]

C.S. Lewis?

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Tippit

[rts]

I demand that comment timestamps also have seconds, down to the millisecond.

[SugarFree]

J. D. Tippit (September 18, 1924 ? November 22, 1963) was a decorated, 11-year veteran police officer with the Dallas Police Department who was, according to two federal government investigations, shot and killed by 24-year-old former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.

citation needed

[Kyfho Myoba]

Allegedly. There was no trial of this "fact."

[Sevo]

Anybody else notice the echo? echo echo...

[rts]

J. D. Tippit?

(Why do cops always have funny/ironic names?)

[So Conz Esq.]

there was a climate of Marxism on the 6th floor that day.

[NoVAHockey]

but climate doesn't predict the weather

[Almanian!]

But the climates, they are a changin'.

[Zeb]

And you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

[Caleb Turberville]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FDR-LBJ.png

Something I didn't know. Lyndon Johnson had racist Texas governor James Allred airbrushed out of this photo to help his later campaigns in the 1960s. That's some creepy, Stalinish campaign tactics.

[Pro Libertate]

Johnson was a bad, bad man. There are some nasty stories about him, and there's not much doubt he used fraud in his elections.

[Almanian!]

No. Only Teathuglihadists use or ever used fraud. Johnson created the full welfare state as we know it, completing Roosevelt's preliminary work.

Therefore, Johnson was a god, and beyond reproach. And CERTAINLY not engaging in voter fraud, Rethugs always have to.

[Pro Libertate]

If there is an afterlife where we merge into total omniscience, I'm going to spend time perceiving just how much electoral fraud the left has engaged in in the U.S. And the right, too, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the left is behind the vast majority of the fraud in elections.

[Kyfho Myoba]

Not in Ohio in 2004.

[HazelMeade]

They are so deeply convinced of the righteousness of their cause that I'm sure they can rationalize pretty much anything.

[Killazontherun]

Hmm, you know too much. Shame I'll have to take your immortal soul.

[CatoTheElder]

Johnson created the full welfare state as we know it, completing Roosevelt's preliminary work.

HAVE YOU NO SHAME? How dare you suggest that a mere mortal, especially one as flawed as LBJ, completed FDR's work?

Johnson merely built up FDR's work. He no more completed it than GW Bush did with Medicare Part D.

To complete the work required Lightworker, the one we have been waiting for, our President, Barack Obama.

[John]

Oswald was a loser with delusions of grandeur who had no marketable job skills and a deep belief in Communism. If he were alive today, he would be an Occutard.

[Almanian!]

If President had a doppleganger, he'd look like Lee H. Oswald.

[John]

Back then they didn't hand out college degrees for spewing Marxist bullshit. And Oswald couldn't benefit from affirmative action. Make Oswald black and born 20 years later and he would have been editor of the Harvard Law Review.

[Almanian!]

Hell, he'd probably be our President. (PBUH)

[Caleb Turberville]

Actually, one of things Oswald tried to do to expedite his defection to the Soviet Union was to try to enroll in a Soviet university.

[Caleb Turberville]

Actually, I think the Warren Report had this to say about Oswald:

It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history?a role as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated a capacity to act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of assassinating President Kennedy.

[John]

Doesn't that sound a bit like Obama?

[HazelMeade]

You were right the first time, with Occutard.

[VG Zaytsev]

Sounds a lot like Stanley Dunham Sr.

[VG Zaytsev]

No So much like Obama, because Obama is a con man that's had great success in life and no one ever accused him of being decisive.

[B.P.]

I watched the Frontline piece on Oswald the other night (first aired in 1993), and while Oswald's ability to market himself to employers was likely a problem, he sure seemed to have some skills. The dude was all over the place in a short amount of time, doing a remarkable job of self-publicizing in a pre-Internet age. If alive today he probably would be an Occutard, and a well-known one. But yes, loser, deluded, etc.

[Killazontherun]

He would have been burned alive in that shoot out in LA between the cops and the Symbionese Liberation Army. I don't think he would have made it out of the 70s given the climate of hate on the left at that time would have certainly attracted him to its most extreme elements.

[JeremyR]

Today he would probably be like that Daily Kos guy

[Pro Libertate]

By today's standard, an Occupy Wall Street? dissident shot Republican President John F. Kennedy.

[HazelMeade]

Including moving to the USSR and taking shooting lessons from a KGB agent.

[HazelMeade]

meant for comment one down.

[Kyfho Myoba]

Oswald was a CIA/FBI operative who did and said what he was told.

[JRS1001]

and you know this because of what evidence??
didn't think you had any

[CE]

And yet, at the height of the Cold War, he was allowed back into the US after defecting to the USSR. And the FBI burned its file on him, just to save themselves the embarrassment, supposedly. And the Dallas police paraded him out in the open for a shady Jack Ruby to kill him 2 days later.

No, no cover up here. Everything seems fine.

[Loki]

If he were alive today, he would be an Occutard.

That and a left-wing blogger. As B.P. points out, he did a lot of self-publicizing in an age where there was no internet. Today he'd have a blog and probably a fair number of followers. Maybe even enough attention to parlay that into a hosting gig on MSNBC. Or at the very least his blogging to other leftist low foreheads might satiate his ego enough to not feel the need to go assassinate the president.

[Sevo]

I think it was some whacko. Not sure of his politics.

[So Conz Esq.]

no, it wasn't you and me Mick. It was the commie and the Palestinian and the Dewar's.

[Killazontherun]

That's the devil talking, Mick is only doing the narration.

[Warty]

The title of the Washington Post's piece of shit article?

Essay: Tea party has roots in the Dallas of 1963

At least it gets eviscerated in the comments.

[Warty]

I wonder if this is our Gaius.

GaiusMarius
11/21/2013 5:40 PM EST
Well, this is true in as much as the Tea Bag movement is the spawn of angry white southern bible thumbers (TM), of which there were many in Dallas that day. But to make a direct connection between the right wing nuts in Dallas in 1963 (by the way, the author should be aware that JFK's comment about "entering nut country" was made to Jackie in their hotel room that morning after coming across a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News) with today's Tea baggers is idiotic.

Maybe if JFK had been assassinated by a "right wing cabal". But he was whacked by a semi-employable Trotskyite loser. Back to the drawing board, Minutaglio.
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[jesse.in.mb]

angry white southern bible thumbers

There's really nothing I hate more than those who thumb the Bible.

[Almanian!]

I'll have to figure out a new way to turn the pages. I don't want you to hate me!!!

[jesse.in.mb]

Get one of those silver page turners the Jews use to turn pages.

The Jews know how to respect their Holy texts by not making bodily contact with them.

[Caleb Turberville]

How the hell does that get published? That's some seriously low standards for fact-checking.

[John]

These are the same people who said Sarah Palin inspired the Giffords shooter.

[Raven Nation]

I remember that. I think CNN started that retard thought and it was picked up by people within hours. Have a friend of mine whose FB I still avoid b/c he posted that crap that day. Good guy otherwise and whip smart, but get him on current politics and he's just a left-media tit sucker.

[Killazontherun]

but get him on current politics and he's just a left-media tit sucker.

[Cyto]

You speak as if this is past tense. This is still the accepted orthodoxy in MSNBC type circles. Giffords' would-be assassin was a right-wing nut motivated by all the hateful rhetoric of the right-wing political machine. Ask anyone who sports a (D) on their voter registration card, they'll tell you.

But it makes sense.... by definition all assassins are right-wing nut jobs.

[HazelMeade]

And then revised their story to say it was the atmosphere of hate in Tucson that shot her.

I sense a theme.

[creech]

a) JFK may have been a tea party (militarist kind) if alive today.
b)the media had drummed up all sorts of hatred against conservatives and Dallas prior to JFK's fateful visit. I learned of the assassination while waiting for a train. I immediately removed my Goldwater button as much as in fear that some right wing nut did the job as in respect for it not being a time to display partisan campaign items.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Fifty years ago today, a crazed gunman committed a historic act: Phil Spector released his classic holiday album "A Christmas Gift for You."

[Enough About Palin]

Maybe Spector killed JFK?

[Almanian!]

Naw, he shot that other person.

[B.P.]

"Texas is the Reason"

CBS Sports had a good Costas piece on the other night about Pete Rozelle's decision to go ahead with NFL games the following weekend. It talked a lot about the Dallas Cowboys' trip to play Cleveland (who didn't let their fans down that game), and how much of the nation blamed Dallas for the president's death. Cowboy players remembered being terrified over the prospects of being shot, attacked, etc.

[HazelMeade]

Thank You! I really wish this would get more attention.

It's bizarre how so few of the JFK theories even mention the fact that he was a Communist. Somehow, the conspiracy nuts manage to convince themselves that Oswald was a bad shot, based on the reports of a KGB agent who observed him when he lived in the USSR, without stopping to wonder what the fuck Castro was doing living in the USSR. Because he was a fucking communist, you idiots!

If there was a conspiracy, surely the more likely people behind him would be, oh, I don't know, perhaps the USSR, or Cuba? Wouldn't the USSR or Cuba assassinating a sitting US president in 1963 provoke a nuclear war, and wouldn't that also provide a REASON for the government to cover it up?

This is what convinces me that the conspiracy theories are really nothing more than motivated reasoning by left-wingers who just can't handle the truth that JFK was killed by one of their own, who was motivated by their own hateful propaganda.

If these is one case in history where a nutjob went and killed someone because of extremist political rhetoric, Oswald is it. OWN IT, LEFTISTS.

[Raven Nation]

"If these is one case in history where a nutjob went and killed someone because of extremist political rhetoric, Oswald is it."

I would throw in McKinley's assassin who was a died-in-the-wool anarchist (& not the Rothbardian good kind).

[Bill Dalasio]

& not the Rothbardian good kind

Well, of course not. The Rothbardian good kind would just have his majordomo take care of the matter for him. Just after polishing his monocle collection.

[cavalier973]

McKinley was a pro-tariff monster.

The assassin fired two shots at near-point-blank range. One of the shots was deflected by the Prez's button. The other went into his abdomen. He was rushed to a state-of-the-art hospital that didn't really do state-of-the-art surgery. There was one of those new-fangled X-Ray machines available, but it wasn't used. The doctor cleaned and dressed the wound, and the Prez was sent to the hotel room, or wherever, to be with his wife. That's as far as I got, because holy cow that professor is boring"

[Cyto]

"holy cow that professor is boring" made me laugh out loud. You gave me flashbacks to undergrad history. I spent about an hour reading the first page and a half of the book on ancient Greece - over and over and over - trying to figure out what he was talking about.

I finally figured out that he was describing the fact that Greece is a peninsula. That was a serious moment of realization, facing the prospect of reading an entire textbook written by an author who can manage to stretch the word "peninsula" out into eight or ten paragraphs of obtuse, jargon-filled, over-thesaurused language. Thankfully there was an extremely cute art major in the seat next to mine. She made the effort worthwhile.

[Raven Nation]

"This is what convinces me that the conspiracy theories are really nothing more than motivated reasoning by left-wingers who just can't handle the truth that JFK was killed by one of their own, who was motivated by their own hateful propaganda."

I think a little broader than this. William Manchester got it right in his book on the assassination. I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but it was basically that a lone nut killing the president doesn't seem cosmically right. You need something to balance it out: "a conspiracy, of course, would do nicely."

Shit, even Jackie got it right that evening, supposedly saying, that the tragedy was worse b/c JFK had been killed by "some silly little communist."

[HazelMeade]

If it was just the cosmic wierdness of the lone gunman killing the president, the deranged reactions would not be concentrated on one half of the political spectrum.

You can't have failed to notice that JFK conspiracy theorizing is a LEFTY thing.

[Raven Nation]

Don't disagree. I should have been more specific: a lot of people whose politics aren't well defined, think there was a conspiracy (anywhere b/w 70 & 80% depending on the poll). And I think a lot of those people believe there was A conspiracy (without being clear which one it was) for the reason Manchester gave.

However, I do agree with you that a lot of leftists who believe in a conspiracy glom onto the right wing idea out of denial.

[Kyfho Myoba]

Horse shit. The most prolific and thoroughly researched JFK assassination researcher is Jim Marrs, a strongly libertarian leaning conservative. I note that none of the above comments cite any verifiable FACTS of the case, just some nebulous, unsupportable speculation. Many actors can be ruled out by an examination of the FACTS, such as who had the capability to order the stand down of the 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fort Sam Houston over the protests of the unit commander, Col Maximillian Reich and how the fuck does Oswald just waltz right back into the USA after "defecting". BTW, how come Oswalds tax returns are still secret? Some extra income the PTB wouldn't want us peasants to know about?

JFK was killed, not by a left-wing or right-wing conspiracy, but by an entity that encompasses and controls both - an ESTABLISHMENT conspiracy.

[HazelMeade]

Marrs is a libertarian in the same way the Jared Loughner was.

[Alice Bowie]

Hi Friends,

So, did "RIGHT WING HATE" kill Kennedy or is it the LEFT?

Let's see, who shot and/or killed the following?

Abraham Lincoln
MLK Junior
George Wallace

Pretty much anyone who reached out a helping hand to the negro or, in George Wallace's case, wasn't racist enough against the negro, was killed.

Just just an interesting coincidence. I have no idea who killed jfk.

[HazelMeade]

"Right" wingers killed some people once. Therefore all political murders must have been committed by right wingers.
Even the ones that were actually committed by left-wingers. Those are just secret conspiracies by right-wingers. The proof is ... all political murders have been committed by right wingers. It's amazing how throughout history, left-wingers have never assassinated anyone, isn't it. Wherever they have assissinated anyone, it turns out it was a secret right wing conspiracy, which prooves that left-wingers never ever assassinate anyone, which proves that if it seems to be a left-winger killing someone, it must be a secret right-wing conspiracy, which proves that only right-wingers assassinate people.

[Alice Bowie]

What?

[cavalier973]

What?

[RBS]

What?

[cavalier973]

What?

[So Conz Esq.]

forget it, he's rolling

[SusanM]

Yeah, let's not forget that tea-baggin' Squeaky Fromme and her uber-liberal target...

[HazelMeade]

Squeaky Fromme was just a stooge for the Koch brothers!

False flag!

Agent provocateur!

[B.P.]

"Tejano" is the Spanish word for "Texan," and this dish is spicy
goodness in any language.

Tejano-Style Shrimp Cocktail

1 lb (450 g) cooked jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 large cucumber, diced
1 large tomato, diced
2-3 scallions (spring onions), green and white parts,
thinly sliced
1/2 cup (125 ml) loosely packed chopped cilantro
(coriander leaves)
1-2 jalape?o peppers, seeded if desired, finely chopped
1 8-ounce (225 g) can tomato sauce
2 Tbs (30 ml) lime juice, or to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Lime wedges for garnish

Combine all the ingredients in a non-reactive bowl and stir to
combine. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and serve chilled,
garnished with lime wedges. Serves 4 to 6.

[Almanian!]

OH! I'm so happy to see the return of recipes! Thank you!

[robc]

4# Maris Otter
4# 2-row
8 oz Flaked Maize
1.5# Sugar
2 TBSP Blackstrap Molasses

1 oz EKG 60 min
1 oz EKG 30 min
0.5 oz EKG 5 min

Nottingham Yeast.

[Sudden]

BSDA?

[Old Man With Candy]

You left out John Lennon, who reached out a helping hand to many negroes.

[Azathoth!!]

Let's see, who shot and/or killed the following?

Abraham Lincoln
MLK Junior
George Wallace

Two Democrats and a crazy person. You see some kind of connection?

[cavalier973]

Wrong! MLK, Jr. was, in fact, a Republican! Also, Abe Lincoln wasn't crazy so much as he was malevolently eccentric.

[Fatty Bolger]

I'm sure he meant the attackers, not the victims.

[cavalier973]

Wrong!

No...wait...you're probably right. Nevermind.

[So Conz Esq.]

Pretty much anyone who reached out a helping hand to the negro or, in George Wallace's case, wasn't racist enough against the negro, was killed.

this explains why Pete Seeger is alive and rich.

[cavalier973]

Abraham Lincoln was killed for "reaching out a helping hand to the negro"?

You, sir or ma'am, are so very wrong. He died because he ruined Hamlet.

[OldMexican]

Re: Alice Bowie,

Let's see, who shot and/or killed the following?

Abraham Lincoln
MLK Junior
George Wallace

A famous stage actor.
An ex-con, ex-porn director and big nobody who wanted to move to Rhodesia.
Another nobody with delusions of grandeur.

Only James Earl Jones was known to harbor a big prejudice against blacks. That does not make him a "right-winger". And Arthur Bremer was a big nobody who was angry at the world, not a "right-winger."

[Loki]

Only James Earl Jones was known to harbor a big prejudice against blacks.

Wow, so I guess Jews aren't the only people capable of self loathing.

Obviously you meant James Earl Ray. You're not the first to mix them up.

[Cyto]

James Earl Jones, famed for his speaking voice reputedly did not speak until age 6. He was killer-awesome in many iconic roles, such as Darth Vader, Terrence Mann, Alex Haley, Admiral Greer and Mufasa.

Meanwhile, James Earl Ray was a full-on retard who went on to pointlessly murder a champion of peace and justice.

The parallels are amazing. It is like that whole Kennedy/Lincoln theater/secretary thing.

[OldMexican]

That woukd be James Earl Ray, not Jones.

Sorry, Darth Vader.

[MJGreen]

Black Americans really have had it tough, since those are the only three people to ever try to help them.

[Corning]

Pretty much anyone who reached out a helping hand to the negro or, in George Wallace's case, wasn't racist enough against the negro, was killed.

FYI Booth was a Democrat and progressives in 1962 were racists.

[Loki]

Never go full retard.

[Homple]

Just got an earful of of "it was Dallas wot done it" on NPR. (Wlfe listens to it all the damn time.)

[Zeb]

They really have gone off the rails with the Kennedy shit. And I usually think NPR does a pretty good job with most things.

[Death Rock and Skull]

Kennedy had such stupid fucking teeth.

[Palin's Buttplug]

My favorite JFK CT:

Federal Reserve conspiracy

Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire, presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination.[354][355][356] According to Marrs, the issuance of Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the United States Department of the Treasury by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with Silver Certificates.[355] Actor and author Richard Belzer named the responsible parties in this theory as American "billionaires, power brokers, and bankers ... working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the government."[199 Wikipedia

[Raven Nation]

Marrs changes his ideas every other year. He also wrote a book wherein he argued that Kennedy was killed because he was about to expose the truth about UFOs.

[RBS]

Kennedy was killed because he was about to expose the truth about UFOs.

Orchestrated by C.G.B Spender no doubt.

[CE]

Why do you think he wanted to get to the Moon so fast?

[Kyfho Myoba]

Changes? or adds to?

[Enough About Palin]

"Was JFK Killed by Right-Wing "Hate" - or by a Commie's Bullet?"

It was you and me.

[CE]

+1 pleased to meet you

[Swiss Servator, kirsch anyone?]

But I've never worn a general's rank!

[Enough About Palin]

"Was JFK Killed by Right-Wing "Hate" - or by a Commie's Bullet?"

What difference, at this point, does it make?

[HazelMeade]

Oh, I dunno, maybe we'd just get the enjoyment of rubbing the idiots socialist little faces in their own 50 year history of abject lunatic denial.

[Corning]

Hazel you may recognize the quote that Enough about Palin used from this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR3XTOjZPfg

[Warty]

A sane article in Bloomberg.

The irony, as Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek points out, is that if Lee Harvey Oswald had any politics at all, he was very much a man of the far left. The Secret Service, concerned about Kennedy's safety, kept close watch during those fateful days before Dallas on extremists of the right but made no effort to track extremists of the left.

[Cyto]

"if Lee Harvey Oswald had any politics at all"?

Holy crap, the guy defected to the Soviet Union and tried to defect to Cuba - in the era of "duck and cover" and the Bay of Pigs. How much more "politics" could you possibly have than that?

This is what counts as the sane article?

[Caleb Turberville]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hootkins

William Hootkins (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Batman) knew the Oswalds.

[Bill Dalasio]

But, Mr. Gillespie, you fail to see. Oswald was a Staliist, rather than a Trotskyist. So, since he was a right-wing communist, it was an attack on Kennedy by the right wing.

/do I really need to?

[cavalier973]

"How is that even possible???"

Okay, I laughed at it.

[Homple]

In case you wonder why some of us refer to NPR as "The Lawrence Show For Baby Boomers" just tune in now to listen to them yammering on about half-century-old news.

[ReasonableS]

Just like they yammered about the 50th Anniversary of the I have a Dream speech, the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and other milestones of history?

I guess you are saying the reason you feel the need to denigrate things you don't understand or respect, is that you don't value reason and objectivity, but prefer pathos as your form of rhetoric.

[Killazontherun]

I'm going to assume Homple did not respond to your asinine comment because you did such a splendid job of denigrating yourself his impulse to do so was more than satiated.

[ReasonableS]

Perhaps Oswald thought of himself as a communist, but no one in the communist governments he contacted thought he was useful. To say Oswald was a communist is about as intellectually bankrupt as saying he was acting under the influence of the right wing hate of Kennedy in Dallas.

[Redmanfms]

Perhaps Oswald thought of himself as a communist, but no one in the communist governments he contacted thought he was useful. To say Oswald was a communist is about as intellectually bankrupt as saying he was acting under the influence of the right wing hate of Kennedy in Dallas.

Umm, no it isn't. Nobody here is claiming he was acting under the orders (or influence) of a Communist regime, only that he was a Communist. Which, in fact, he was.

[RockLibertyWarrior]

I am really surprised at so called "libertarians" in this comment section. I have done significant research into this thing, looked at it backwards and forwards and come to the conclusion that Oswald didn't act alone or didn't do it. For a crowd that purports to question authority (I am a libertarian who does, especially official government narratives on ANYTHING) it seems that for the most part you are all just swallowing the government line without even looking into it. Anybody who believes the Warren Commission's idiotic, unscientific "magic bullet theory" needs to have their head examined. I mean seriously are you going to discount all the witnesses who died in mysterious circumstances all of sudden? All the additional evidence? Maybe Nick needs to take a closer look at this whole thing.

[Redmanfms]

I have done significant research into this thing, looked at it backwards and forwards and come to the conclusion that Oswald didn't act alone or didn't do it.

I have done significant research into this thing, looked at it backwards and forwards and come to the conclusion that Oswald acted alone.

Anybody who believes the Warren Commission's idiotic, unscientific "magic bullet theory" needs to have their head examined.

Jesus, you watched JFK didn't you? There was no "magic bullet" dimwit. The "magic bullet" behaved in an entirely predictable way for a rifle bullet, with minimal deflection. Connolly was sitting in a jumpseat that was lower and further to the center of the car than Kennedy was, which meant that the bullet that hit both of them passed in a nearly straight line.

I mean seriously are you going to discount all the witnesses who died in mysterious circumstances all of sudden?

Who, what, where, when, and how?

All the additional evidence?

What additional evidence? Enlighten us.

[On The Road To Mandalay]

I believe he was killed as the conspiracy of lots of irate husbands whose wives he had screwed.

[JRS1001]

fact is that we don't know who killed JFK or why. Could have been James Earl Ray or someone else. Could have been him alone or a bigger conspiracy - fact is that anything is possible because nobody has been conclusively ruled out.
However, that being stated, it is rather irresponsible to put out a column like this when the least likely suspects are conservatives when Kennedy himself was largely conservative.
Most assassins are leftists because that is part of their nature just like most revolutionaries are socialist/communists.
Conservatives by their nature are interested not interested in destroying the old order but building on what is already there.
Got to remember that writers write to a large extent because they have an inflated enough ego to believe that they have something valuable to share. Others write to get paid. Sometimes it a combination of the two. Yahoo! is full of "writers' that are just writing content just to get paid which is why its so bad.
This author is making a postulation that is meritless to get published and get paid and thats about it.