Bobby’s over there squealing like a pig in the White House

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.  Apologies in advance to those of you who never saw or read Deliverance.

One of the problems that comes from ten generations of intermarried first cousins running the country is they all begin to think it’s about Dueling Banjos.  They start believing it’s perfectly natural Bobby’s over there squealing like a pig.  Nobody wants to rock the canoe.

But at the moment the reason Bobby’s over there in the White House squealing like a pig is that Saudi Arabia and their cousins in Israel are pressuring the hell out of him to bomb their other cousins in Syria.  Same as they’re doing over there in Congress where they understand all about squealing like pigs for the White House, Israel, Saudi Arabia, anyone with the money to buy a quickie.

It’s all become a habit.  Nobody 75 years ago would have dreamed there’d come a time when the President of the US could believe he could bomb the bejesus out of anyone he wanted to anytime he wanted to without anyone raising an eyebrow.  Nobody would have believed US Presidents could take the country into a series of endless wars without consulting Congress.  Nobody would have believed any president could believe he could do it and get by with it.

But that all changed with a lot of other things.  And now we’ve got a guy in the White House hysterical because he wants to give a war and nobody’s willing to come.  Standing on one leg, then the other saying he’s going to get permission from Congress, then saying he doesn’t have to.  Saying he’s the only one needs to pick the tune for all of us.

And all those hydrocephalic banjo players over in Congress listening to Israel lobbyists handing them nice stuff under the table, Saudi Arabian lobbyists giving them free trips to Tahiti and porn stars in their hotel rooms to help them remember where their loyalty belongs.

Meanwhile, the world’s died laughing and decided they’ve had enough of US Presidents and their big-headed advisors telling them who needs the bejesus bombed out of them.  Which puts Bobby into a hell of a fix.

Bobby knows if he doesn’t do what Israel and Saudi Arabia tell him to do, he’s got a Vice President who will.  He knows he can be LBJed same as Kennedy was.  LBJed and J. Edgar Hoovered by one of the packs of goons and snipers he’s helped put into place on all the rooftops.  He never figured he’d be the one in the crosshairs he helped create.

It’s no wonder he’s squealing like a pig.

Old Jules

Clearing up all this BS about the prez

Hi readers.   Thanks for coming by.

I used to see I don’t know, bumper stickers, signs, something stirring up doubts about whether the prez was born in the US.  Haven’t seen them for a while.

But I went over to Yahoo News to see who was puffing out his chest most about Syria this morning and came across something I think will clear things up.  Saw a pic of the father of the prez, or his brother.  Obvious and indisputable.

It was under the headline, Real Estate Mogul to give $200 Million to U. of Michigan.  http://news.yahoo.com/real-estate-mogul-200m-u-michigan-204130688–finance.html

Says the guy’s name is Stephen Ross and he’s a NY real estate salesman, owner of the Dolphins.  That would be some ball club or hockey team, I figures.  Reading a little further it’s obvious it is a ball club of some kind.

Anyway the guy looks just like the prez, the way all that passle of Kennedys looked alike, and all those Bushes.

It’s been a long time since anyone’s been able to say with any certainty who the biological father of anyone was, though the mothers tend to be a sure thing.  But with those Kennedys, those Bushes, and with this guy now there shouldn’t be any doubt anymore.

Hope this eases the minds of any of you who worry about that sort of thing.

Old Jules

J. D. Salinger needs a good horse-whipping

Five new JD Salinger books on the way

Titles expected between 2015 and 2020

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/03/new-jd-salinger-fiction-documentary

Hi readers.

When J.D. Salinger went stealth in the 1960s I didn’t think he could hold out.  I snickered to myself and said he was in there writing books and one day he’d lose his determination and drop them on me like depth charges.  I figured I could hold out longer than he could.

Eventually I began to think I had him figured wrong maybe.  That he’d either burned all his stuff and wasn’t writing more, or that he was a Class A horses ass and just wasn’t going to let any of it go public until after he died.  Then he died and for a while I was sure that now, now, now, here they’d come!

They didn’t, and when I turned 70 one of the things I had to reconcile myself to was that J.D. Salinger wasn’t gonna have anymore books during my lifetime.  Decided he was indeed a Class A horses ass.

But yesterday Jeanne sent me the link above.  Oh, yeah.  Thanks a lot, J.D. Salinger.  2015.  Hell, I went out to the RV, took some mega vitamins checked my blood pressure, then checked over the cats trying to figure out what we all need to do in order to survive until 2015.

I’m thinking it’s going to be a cliff-hanger, but we’ve got a middling good shot at lasting until the first one.  I’m okay, the cats seem okay.  I’ll gear up the cat-vitamins just to help us along, make sure they eat less hard food and more canned food, and we’ll take a run at it.  Might even squeeze it all the way to the last one in 2020.

But if J.D. Salinger happens to only be pretending to be dead I’d love to say a few choice words to him.

Old Jules

Wouldn’t go to San Antonio, TX for a $100 bill plus gas

Hi readers.  When I got back from town yesterday and was putting the groceries into hideyholes and places they wouldn’t scatter hell-to-breakfast in the RV when it went up the hill again I came across a slip of paper the cashier put in one of the bags.  Had a ‘code’ number on it and said if I went to HEB.com/viva and put in that number I could win valuable prizes.

Well, heck.  I was thinking I wouldn’t mind winning a free bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, who knows?  Maybe some cat food or a pound of cheese.  A nice brisket would be nice.

So naturally I plugged in the website, went through my name, email address, zipcode and age to get all whetted down so’s I could find out if my number was a big winner.

Whoopteedooo!  I won a free pass to some museum 100, 150 miles away from here I wouldn’t go to without a gun to my head.  Those folks surely do take care of their customers and know how to build enthusiasm for promotions.


Hi D M,
Thanks for celebrating 70 years with H-E-B in San Antonio and entering the ¡Viva! SA Giveaway today! You’re now in the running for the chance to win free passes to exciting San Antonio landmarks, gift cards to great SA shops and restaurants and MUCH MORE.There are plenty of other spots on the iViva! SA Game Board to visit. Don’t miss a single chance to win – come back with a new code soon to unlock a space on the board!

Visit all 8 hot spots by October 1, 2013!

Good luck,

Your friends at H-E-B

I should have known a grocery store chain had better sense than to give away something valuable such as a bag of potatoes or onions.

Old Jules

Superb judge of character, me

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I slipped over to Yahoo News when I got online this morning, wanted to find out whether the world went up in smoke during the night.  Turns out all the news is piddly stuff mostly, nosy things allowing the non-celebrities spot checks into what life’s like for the sainted big named and big-breasted.

But something caught my eye about some 10 year old kid who found a mummy in the attic of the house his grandparents owned.  Brought to mind what a great judge of character I pride myself being.

Early 2000s a friend of mine died near Belen, NM.  He and I loved the same books about history, etc, and he used to joke he’d leave me that several walls of books we both cherished, when he died.  And I’d tell him I would kill him if he left me those books to have to drag around and find someone else to leave them to.

His house was a museum of artifacts he’d found.  We’d even done some artifact searching together.  I think some of those mini-balls on one of the lead pictures on this blog were found when we were somewhere together.

So when I saw in the Albuquerque paper that he’d died I was careful not to contact anyone concerning the fact we knew one another.  Not because I was afraid he’d left me those books, either.

Turned out he’d been robbing graves down in the neighborhood of where those mini-balls were found.  Maybe graves elsewhere, old ones.

Back room of that house was jam-packed with human remains a century-or-more old.  Bastard never showed them to me, all the time we were sitting around drinking coffee and talking about history.

Which I suppose is okay, because I put a high value on his friendship, enjoyed knowing him a lot.  And sometimes even then I’d forget how old I was and have to decide spur-of-the-moment whether to open a can of whupass on someone.

In his case if I’d known what he had in that back room we might have had to pick our weapons out of his museum and go at it.  I had a lot of mixed feelings swirling around inside me when the news came out and he had his brief day in the sun.

I’d have never suspected it of him.  So he’s the exception proving the rule.  I’ve got everyone else figured out.

Old Jules

Just to clarify the JFK LBJ thing

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Jeanne told me on the phone last night she was surprised by my several references to LBJ arranging for the death of JFK.  “I didn’t think you believed in conspiracies, for the most part.”

And for the most part she’s right.  I don’t believe human beings are honest enough and consistent enough to pull off successful conspiracies over the long haul.  Someone’s going to let the cat out of the bag.  And I think the cat has been coming out of the bag about the Kennedy assassination gradually for a considerable while.

I don’t know or care who was directly responsible for the Dallas shooting.  To me, JFK was just another US President, no better, no worse than the last several.  I’m not offended, not in any way exercized by the fact someone offed him.

But I do believe there’s a fair body of evidence LBJ knew ahead of time Kennedy was going to be killed.  And he knew who knew everything else about it.  Other than that he mightn’t have been involved, beyond giving it his tacit approval.

The LBJ Library in Austin has the tapes of all the White House LBJ telephone conversations of the time.  Here’s a conversation between LBJ and J Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, shortly after the Dallas event.  LBJ starts by grilling Hoover about why his friend John Connally, Governor of Texas, got a bullet.  Then he goes on to discuss how the investigation into the assassination can be kept small.

LBJ TAPES: Kennedy Assassination 1 (J. Edgar Hoover) .
http://youtu.be/4ZWERQevzms

Seems to me it’s clear that Hoover knew exactly who did the shooting and what the shooter intended to hit.  And that LBJ knew that Hoover knew.

The people who upload YouTube videos frequently intend to use the videos to help watchers interpret them as the uploaders think they should.  I believe this has happened with a number of the Kennedy assassination YouTube videos.  For instance, I don’t believe LBJ’s mistress knew whether LBJ engineered the killing of JFK.  But I believe it’s clear from what she describes that LBJ knew about the plans to kill Kennedy before it happened.

LBJ’s Mistress Blows Whistle On JFK Assassination .http://youtu.be/79lOKs0Kr_Y

Again, I don’t think this means LBJ told anyone to kill Kennedy.  He might just have tacitly approved of them doing it and agreed to keep his mouth shut.

By one of those strange coincidences of history, Richard Nixon, a man who hated Kennedy as much as anyone alive at the time, happened to have been in Dallas for a couple of days when Kennedy came to town.

November 21, 1963 – Richard M. Nixon in Dallas, Texas .
http://youtu.be/UkeCQWk9ID8

Nixon evidently believed there was a middling good chance LBJ had Kennedy shot, as he joked years later.

NIXON jokes about LBJ killing JFK .
http://youtu.be/OJIb73SPzkE

E. Howard Hunt, one of the guys who went to prison for the Watergate affair, admitted on his death bed he’d been involved in the Kennedy killing and named others.

E. Howard Hunt Outs Lyndon Johnson in JFK Assassination Plot
http://youtu.be/bD4611qW6R8

This one’s hokey and unreliable, but I think at least it can be said RFK probably believed LBJ had John Kennedy killed.

RFK to Johnson: “Why did you kill you have my brother killed
http://youtu.be/zzWNDPx4Pm0

The conversation you hear on tape isn’t about LBJ, JFK, though.  It’s about Hoover investigating RFK and whether RJK is trying to violently overthrow LBJ and the US Government by force.

Lyndon Johnson Admits To Walter Cronkite That He Killed Kennedy .
http://youtu.be/xd1wuXrVPjo

This Walter Cronkite interview with LBJ years later is probably the strongest testimony that LBJ didn’t actually give the orders for the killing.  But that he thoroughly believed there was a conspiracy involved involving several others.

As I’ve said, I don’t think it matters who was behind the Kennedy killing.  Nor why they did it.  But I don’t blame LBJ for being pissed Connally got shot with JFK.  Connally was still alive, knew a lot about LBJ and was able to talk.  LBJ needed to be able to assure Connelly it was an accident, him getting hit.

John Connally’s first interview after 11/22/63
http://youtu.be/cP04_lGjkO0

Collateral damages, no harm intended.  “Sorry old buddy.  Someone screwed up.”

And 50 years later, who the hell cares?  Human beings make lousy conspirators.  People eventually talk.

Old Jules

John F. Kennedy and Barbie go to Boston – 1962 – The rest of the story

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I promised the other day that I’d relate one more precious memory of John and Jackie Kennedy’s Boston adventure. 

A better way – Getting new royalty when the President croaks

So here it is.

All those men lined up along Boylston Street, including Julio, Tonyand I were still mesmerized by the thoughts of whether Jackie Kennedy would be an inspired bed partner.  The street between the police cordons was vacant for a moment, when suddenly the sound of a bell clanging brought our attention back.

Hell bent down empty Boylston came a vehicle pulling an open trailer.  A guy was on the back of the trailer ringing a huge bell mounted there, big bell.  Church bell sized, rather than locomotive sized.  On the side of the trailer was a huge sign, “KRUSHCHEV SAYS, ‘WE WILL BURY YOU!”

They zipped past us, hung a hard left around Boston Plaza, and swung in behind the emptying motorcade in front of the Plaza Hotel.  Still ringing that damned bell.  [Likely the granddaddy of the patriots of today, I’m thinking by hindsight.]

Friends and readers, this whole thing was not in keeping with the high standards Boston wanted in their welcoming Ken and Barbie to town.  Every cop on Boylston forgot about that yellow tape and ran across Boston Plaza, pulling their billy clubs out as they ran.  Wasn’t any time at all before that trailer was surrounded by Boston’s finest and all an observer could see was the backs of cops and a forest of billy clubs rising and falling.

They weren’t aiming for that bell, either.  Didn’t hear it clang one single time after the first club rose and fell.

But you’ve got to admit the guy had imagination and class.  A freaking liberty bell!  You surely don’t see that anymore.  All these teapartying occupiers just go around telling one another inane BS about what they think about guns and abortion and Wall Street.

If that guy with the liberty bell lived through the next five minutes after the cops got him, he might be still alive.  He could teach these modern jerks a thing or two about how to deliver messages to the Kens and Barbies.

Having some Secret Service or Homeland Security thug put a rifle bullet through your face before the cops arrived with mace and 20,000 volt non-lethal zappers to finish you off ought not deter anyone from a little display of class and imagination.

Old Jules

Hey! How about them Rooskies?

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

This guy in the White House is evidently really really really determined to do a humanitarian air strike against the next-door-neighbor to Israel.  He wants to do it so badly he’s even planning to ASK THE US CONGRESS to approve him doing it.  How’s that for adding a new side of presidential behavior?

But now this Rambo/Charles Atlas/Arnold Schwartzneigger guy running Russia’s saying he has an itchy trigger finger, too.  Says he ain’t going to put up with any one-upsmanship from the US guy in the White House when it comes to bombing the bejesus out of unlikely places.

So the burning question is this:

Can we still kill more Russians than they can kill of us? 

Now that they’re just a pissant rat hole more in Asia than Europe run by gangs of thugs that aren’t even all from the same families the way they are in the US, I’m betting they can’t nuke more than thirty, forty US cities.  And I’m betting too, that we can destroy several hundred Rooskie cities if it comes to it. 

Our Popeye is one hell of a lot tougher than their Bluto nowadays.

If those damned Rooskies don’t want us humanitarian bombing the bejesus out of Israel’s next-door-neighbors, maybe it’s time to cut them down a few notches, saturate them with some H-bombs for their trouble.

We can afford to lose a few dozen cities to protect our right to humanitarian bomb backwoods places like Syria.  Israeli lobbyists will work three shifts telling these straight facts to the US Congress next week.

I’m betting that, too.  But I won’t get any takers.  Nobody bets against a sure thing.

Old Jules

Moving the White House and Congress to Disneyland – A serious proposal

Hi readers.

Representative democracy isn’t working and pretty well everyone knows it.  Potential voters aren’t interestedand most don’t even recognize the costumes candidates wear to disguise themselves.  Citizens have learned from hard experience that they can vote for Snuffy Smith, L’il Abner or Joe Palooka and they still end up with Daddy Warbucks.

Moving the seat of the US government to Disneylandwould go a long way toward correcting that.  Everyone would know the candidates, known them all their lives.   A vote for Mickey Mouse or Goofy wouldn’t get you Scrooge McDuck in the White House.  Everyone is honest in Disneyland, and you get what you pay for.  Drucilla doesn’t get any glass slippers, Chittychittybangbang doesn’t have an atomic warhead and the Lady and the Tramp are all right there where everyone can see the fire hydrants.

The other advantage is that the Powerball Lottery HQ is right there in Orlando, close enough to move the IRS in there with them and do something about how the government can raise money on a more even-handed basis.  They could have billion dollar jackpots and just end their foreign wars a day earlier to pay off the winners.  Hell, everyone would be buying tickets.  And they wouldn’t gripe about doing it.

They could have a drawing every day giving away a billion dollars, all the while cutting off one day in the distant future when they’d end the wars overseas, bring the troops home.  It would assure that someday the past would catch up with the future and voila!  No more foreign military adventures!

Mary Poppins would make one hell of a lot better president than any we’ve had since wossname, Washington.

Old Jules

A better way – Getting new royalty when the President croaks

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.  Not all of this is humor.

Must have been November, 1962, election day in Massachusetts though we didn’t know it.  Three young GIs in uniform, Tony Bozza, Julio Ditata and I were off work.  We lived in a brownstone house converted to apartments on Beacon Street, so we wandered over to an ice-cream joint on Boylston Street across from Boston Plaza.

As we finished off our ice cream we saw police cordoning off Boylston Street, people drifting in behind them.  Something was happening so we rushed out for a front-line position.  Asked one of the cops what was going on.

King/President Kennedy was in town.  Came to vote for his brother for the Senate.  Maybe State Senate.  I can’t recall for certain.  JFK was going to stay at the Plaza Hotel across the street.  “Salute when he drives by!”  He scowled at our uniforms.  [In those days the military was appropriately recognized as shit.  Nobody saying, “OOOOO thank you for your service”.]

Eventually along came the limo, JFK sitting up on the back the way you’ve seen his picture in Dallas a year later.  He was patting his cheeks red with the cold.  Barbie, Jackie, whatever, was sitting down closest us gazing vacantly at the admirers lining the street, bored.  No further than from here to the door from us.

After the motorcade passed and circled over to the Plaza Hotel across the Plaza the cluster of admirers thinned and another incident happened I’ll tell you about another time.  But we GIs all looked at one another shaking our heads.

Julio:  Man I’d like to screw her!

Tony:  Fat chance of that!  She wouldn’t screw anyone with less than a million dollars.

Me:  Felt good looking at her, though.  Pretty woman.

A year later I was in Korea when Kennedy went to Dallas and LBJ arranged to have him offed.  The Stars and Stripes newspaper was full of pictures of LBJ, Barbie-Jackie, Kennedy in the back of that limo.  I thought a lot about that day in Boston.

LBJ stayed out of the backs of open limousines, but more importantly, nobody would have wanted to screw Lady Byrd Johnson.

Fact is, the historical precedent has worked fairly well.  If a King dies, his Queen takes over things until other kinfolk can fight it out and settle things.  And if Barbie-Jackie Kennedy had been vice president and taken over the White House things would have been a lot more better for the US.

LBJ would never have been VP never been prez because nobody would have wanted to risk having Lady Byrd for prez.  The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the Vietnam War would have never happened.

Hell, when Ma Ferguson took over as Governor of Texas after her husband died she pardoned half the people serving time in Texas penal institutions.  Hell of a lot better Guv than her hubby.

And one of the US Prezes, maybe Taft, became incapacitated in office, his wife took over his duties for the remainder of his term.  Didn’t feel obliged to get us into a single damned war.

I’m sitting here trying to think of some Vice President we wouldn’t have been better off replacing with the wife of the croaked prez.  Elleanor Roosevelt surely wouldn’t have been a bad’un compared to Harry Truman.  And hell, Mary Todd Lincoln was conducting seances in the White House.  That would certainly have been better than Johnston, who got himself impeached.

I haven’t looked at the others, but I’m betting the same would be true, their wives better than their legal VP replacements.

But nowadays they’d need to be good looking, as well as rich girlygirls graduated from Vassar.  Barbie’s good compared to Ken, but if Barbie and Ken go to the White House again we’ll need to know how she looks in a bikini.

Old Jules