Biden’s Body Double
Gavin Newsom is the man Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be if Kennedy didn’t have a deeper soul.
Newsom is a progressive when it comes to environmental protection, abortion defense, LGBTQ rights, gun control and other social issues. He’s good looking and dynamic. And he’s the “next rising Irish star in U.S. politics,” in the words of an Irish commentator, a high-profile Democrat poised to take Joe Biden’s place as the 2024 presidential candidate (despite his strong disavowals) if the octogenarian with glaring polling weaknesses steps down.
But Gavin Newsom is not his own man. He’s the creation of others, who are much more wealthy, much more powerful than him. Yes, he’s a rising star — but in someone else’s galaxy.
It’s true, he has his attractions. I’ve watched him closely ever since he was supervisor, then mayor of my hometown, San Francisco. If Newsom does become the Democrats’ back-room choice next year, he would make a formidable opponent of RFK Jr. Unlike the sophomoric debate-stage antics of Donald Trump, which have worn thin, Newsom and Kennedy would clash in illuminating ways, outlining the clear differences between the mainstream Democratic positions and those of an independent thinker like RFK Jr. As he showed last week in the Fox News-sponsored debate with pugnacious Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Newsom is not afraid to go into the lion’s den and exchange ideas (and barbs) with an adversary. He’s a skilled and smart debater.
When it comes to RFK Jr., Newsom also takes a smoothly strategic tone, expressing sadness about Kennedy’s political evolution, rather than censorious scorn like many of his fellow Democrats. In a September interview with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, the California governor extolled RFK Jr. as “one of my great inspirations on the environment. “ But he also expressed regrets that they had diverged sharply on issues like the parole of Sirhan Sirhan (whom Kennedy boldly met with behind bars and knows didn’t fire the fatal shot that killed his father) and the statewide Covid lockdown (which Newsom himself infamously violated, dining with politically-connected friends at the exclusive French Laundry in the wine country). While describing his past relationship with RFK Jr. as “reverential,” Newsom also criticized him “for veering off on the spectrum.”
This attitude of pained disappointment with Kennedy is shrewd and, yes, slick, as Newsom himself is.
Like Joe Biden, Newsom aspires to the mantle of JFK and RFK. His late father, Judge William “Bill” Newsom, worked on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign before it ended tragically at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. In 2017, when I was a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, I interviewed Gavin, who was then serving in the sleepy post of California’s lieutenant governor, while nursing his blue-sky ambitions. After the interview ran, Gavin thanked me in a text for “the balance in today’s article — the good, tough questions.” I replied that I was “rooting for you to be the JFK/RFK I know is inside you.” To which he texted, “I appreciate that, seriously!”
It's true — there is something Kennedyesque about Gavin Newsom. But I fear it’s mostly cosmetic. Unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was seen as a traitor to his class, Newsom has never betrayed his super-wealthy benefactors.
Like his grandfather and father, Gavin has always been very close to the Gettys, the dynastic family that has long benefited San Francisco political luminaries like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris. (It was Bill Newsom who carried the ransom for John Paul Getty III.) Young Gavin went into the wine and hospitality business with Billy Getty, a grandson of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who amassed the family fortune.
Gavin himself, a child of divorce, was not rich when he grew up. But he knew the path to success, he knew with whom to partner, and who to keep close. Two years ago, when the governor was scheduled to address a global climate crisis conference in Scotland, he opted instead to attend the glittering wedding of 27-year-old billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty, a ceremony that took over San Francisco’s opulent city hall and was officiated by Speaker Pelosi.
Today, Gavin Newsom’s wealth is estimated between $18 and $22 million, mostly from his co-ownership of PlumpJack Associates, which runs a winery, restaurants, hotels and retail clothing stores. As DeSantis pointed out during their debate, Newsom is one of the hypocritical “liberal elite,” preaching the benefits of public education while sending his own four children to private school.
Besides the difference in their ages (81 and 56) and energy levels, there would be little dissimilarity between President Biden and a President Newsom. On the debate stage last week, Newsom loyally confirmed that he was a Biden man when it came to important issues like the economy and immigration. Unlike Biden administration officials, Newsom does not demonize China, a big trading partner of California. But like other current Democratic leaders, he celebrates U.S. imperial power and would continue our costly and bloody “forever wars” policy. President Newsom would also keep supporting the triumph of the oligarchy over democracy, as the governor’s alliance with Silicon Valley and Hollywood shows, as well as his close relationship with the real estate industry when he was mayor of San Francisco.
Yes, a President Newsom would be Biden 2.0. Newer, more memory, more capacity — perhaps some AI. But the same machine.
Governors Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis
You Have to Seek Out the Truth
As I've pointed out, the New York Times -- and even "independent" information sites like Wikipedia -- are under the control of the national security establishment. The CIA no longer needs Operation Mockingbird to covertly control the press, because spooks and generals tell us what to think each night on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News -- and the war colossus has even vacuumed up independent news outlets. We live in an Orwellian world of daily, 24x7 disinformation.
Fortunately, there are a few cracks in this media stonewall. This is one of them... On the Kim Iversen Show, I was allowed to speak at length about the JFK assassination (of course) and the tragic state of the nation. Give the show a listen if you are looking for an alternative view.
At 60, We’re Winning - and Losing - the JFK Media War
Twelve days ago, I was asked by the Opinion section of the New York Times to write an essay on the JFK assassination nearly 60 years later. This was a major breakthrough because the newspaper of record has always embraced the official version of the assassination, even as the Warren Report, based on the "magic bullet" and all that nonsense, has grown increasingly tattered over the years. In 2015, when The Devil's Chessboard -- my book about CIA spymaster Allen Dulles and the national security state's war with President Kennedy -- was published, the Times refused to review it. (Nonetheless, the book was a New York Times bestseller.)
So it represented something of a milestone when the Times commissioned me to write a JFK article. I turned in a sober, detailed piece that was, if anything, TOO kind to the Times and the corporate media. The Times killed it anyway. (Below, you can read what my editor emailed me.) Sigh.
So, unfortunately, when it comes to the Big Media and JFK, we're still at square one at 60. The New York Times is STILL part of the cover-up.
A few days later, I was scheduled by Ben Wecht of the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University to give the closing speech at its annual conference, which is the best gathering of JFK experts in the country. I spoke about the Times and Big Media's role in the Kennedy cover-up.
Here is my speech:
We’re Winning – and Losing – the JFK Media War
Thank you, Ben Wecht and thanks to the staff of the Cyril Wecht Institute. I regret that I can’t be in Pittsburgh in person. I may be virtual, but I’m live from San Francisco.
I will keep my remarks fairly brief as I close out this very informative conference today. I know you’re all rushing to return home. But I do want to leave you with something provocative. So here goes.
“History,” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the White House aide to President Kennedy and Harvard historian, was fond of saying, “is an ongoing argument.”
No subject embroils academics and journalists more than the JFK assassination, even 60 years later. But the American people are a different story. There, a substantial majority has long been of one mind.
Poll after poll ever since the shots rang out in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza has showed that most Americans believe President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. According to a new Gallup survey, the percentage of lone gunman skeptics remains a solid 65% of adult Americans, with the largest numbers of those skeptics pointing at the federal government (20%) and specifically the CIA (16%) as the likely culprits – numbers that are sharply up in recent years.
Despite this unshakeable public conviction, and a growing body of evidence to the contrary, the U. S. media has remained stubbornly even perversely wedded to the single assassin version of Dallas. The Guardian, one of the more liberal newspapers in the English-language world, just ran a worshipful profile of aging Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who still clings to the tattered Warren Report, despite (among other recent revelations) his former Secret Service colleague Paul Landis’s assertion that there was nothing “magic” about the magic bullet at all.
Shaking his head sagely, Guardian correspondent David Smith opined, “In an age of division, disinformation and internet-fueled movements such as QAnon, conspiracy theories about who killed Kennedy and why are thriving as never before.”
I would bet that David Smith has barely cracked the surface of the JFK story. Journalists for the mainstream press routinely offer their judgments on subjects they know little about. Newspaper and TV reporters are captives of relentless deadlines and a pack mentality. Despite their feisty reputations and their insatiable habit of awarding themselves with prizes, they are a timid lot. They are loath to bite the hands that feed them. This story is so epic – involving a brazen assault on American democracy – you would think the Fourth Estate would show a little humility in its ignorance. It never has.
As I wrote in my book The Devils’ Chessboard, Cold War-era national security officials like Allen Dulles enjoyed a cozy relationship with the corporate media. Dulles, the CIA director linked by me and other historians with the JFK assassination and cover-up, got himself appointed to the Warren Commission, playing so active a role that some observers said it should have been called the Dulles Commission.
After the Warren Report was released in 1964, Newsweek national affairs editor John Jay Iselin sent Dulles a gushing note, thanking him for helping the magazine direct its coverage of the report’s 26 volumes on a tight deadline. Newsweek’s cover story on the Warren Report, Iselin told Dulles “was made easier through your kindness in giving us some idea of what to be on the watch for.”
Dulles was on a nickname basis with New York Times executives and journalists throughout his career. When Dulles was named CIA director in 1953, Times general manager Julius Ochs Adler – “Julie,” as Dulles affectionately called him – warmly congratulated his friend “Allie.” Times columnist C. L. Sulzberger was also a reliable advocate during Dulles’s reign as spymaster, with Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame later exposing their close connection in a Rolling Stone investigative article about the CIA’s media assets.
These days the press is so close to the national security state that the CIA doesn’t need a clandestine program like Operation Mockingbird to infiltrate it. Every night you can see a parade of former CIA, FBI, NSA and Pentagon officials on liberal news networks like MSNBC or CNN.
Essentially, from Ukraine to China to the Middle East, the corporate media acts as a mouthpiece for U.S. empire. National security reporters soon learn that there is no access for them in Langley and Washington if they don’t report the official line. It’s clear to them: no access, no career.
What the press conveniently forgets, in its disdain for the “conspiracy culture,” is that the American people have been lied to by their government (and the obedient media) time after time. From Dallas to the Gulf of Tonkin to Iran-Contra to 9/11 to WMD -- to Trump and Biden’s presidential decisions to allow the CIA to illegally keep secret some 4,000 government documents related to the Kennedy assassination.
A message to David Smith and the rest of the smug press corps: this refusal to come clean about some of our biggest national traumas is what has led to widespread public skepticism about authorities, about official pronouncements. There is a direct line between these government lies and the growth of QAnon and other crazy subcultures.
By the way, some conspiracy theories are cracked. And some are true. Do you think power prefers to operate in the open?
Now for some good news. As I’ve long observed, quoting Leonard Cohen, there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. The official version of what happened six decades ago in Dallas is so widely rejected, is so patently absurd, that even the Big Media is catching up to the truth.
It’s a mixed bag this anniversary season. Yes, we have useful idiots like the Guardian’s David Smith. But we also have documentaries like JFK: What the Doctors Saw on Paramount+, the blunt eyewitness testimony of several members of the surgical team that worked on the mortally-wounded Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital and saw with their own trained eyes that he had been struck by bullets from the front and rear. In other words, clear evidence of a conspiracy.
On the November 22 anniversary, we can watch on several streaming platforms the opening episode of Four Died Trying, a documentary series on the history-changing assassinations of the 1960s. This month, there is also the multipart podcast Who Killed JFK? produced by Hollywood actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, who teamed up with longtime Kennedy assassination author Dick Russell.
You can also detect a slow movement in the right direction by the corporate press. In recent months, Peter Baker, the New York Times’s White House correspondent, has covered two important developments in the Kennedy case, the Landis revelation about the magic bullet and the discovery that the CIA was secretly reading Oswald’s mail before the Kennedy assassination. This was an eye-popping story because the agency had long claimed that Oswald was off its radar before the assassination -- a dubious assertion about a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union, threatening to reveal military secrets, and then returned to this country with a Russian wife. Baker is clearly open to new information about the JFK case.
And New York magazine recently featured a generally positive profile of JFK expert Jefferson Morley, the dogged journalist who sometimes succeeds in making the mainstream press do its job --- though strangely the magazine’s editors chose to delete the positive quotes about Morley from other Kennedy authorities.
Despite this flirtation with the truth, the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media remain largely wedded to the official version of Dallas. Last week, I was asked by a Times opinion editor to write a JFK assassination op-ed – a landmark event considering my reputation. Unfortunately, the newspaper of record rejected my measured article. “The piece is rich and fascinating,” the editor emailed me, “but I don't think I can move forward with it. The fascinating mobius strip of truth and conspiracy is very tricky for Times Opinion.” Whatever that means.
So, yes, the mainstream press is, let’s say kindly, a work in progress as we near the 60th milestone of the JFK assassination. The news media is still trailing far behind public opinion, even the Times Opinion section.
But if the mainstream press’s progress has been slow – some would say glacial -- Hollywood, unfortunately, is even worse. The dream factory is where the truth goes to die. And the entertainment industry has even more power to shape public consciousness than the daily news barrage.
After Oliver Stone’s explosive movie JFK was released in 1991, the CIA reportedly vowed that another film like that – which blamed Kennedy’s murder on powerful government plotters -- would never be made. The agency was right. The CIA now operates a branch office in Hollywood which has done a very effective job at making sure that U.S. spies are portrayed in a heroic light and in canceling screen projects which take a different view.
After they were published, my New York Times-bestselling books – Brothers, on Robert Kennedy’s hidden search for the truth about the murder of his brother, and The Devil’s Chessboard, about the rise of Allen Dulles and his central involvement in the JFK assassination – were optioned by major studios and filmmakers. But neither book has come close to reaching the screen. “They’ll never make your books in Hollywood,” Oliver Stone told me several years ago. So far, he’s been right.
What I’m about to tell you is painful. Darkly comic. Sure, it happens every day in Hollywood – after all, it’s Hollywood, Jake. But there’s a political dimension to my frustration. Yes, Oliver was probably right – they’ll never make movies or TV shows from my books. Or from anyone’s books, if you tell the truth about the Kennedy assassination.
A few years ago, I was sitting at a studio conference table with big producers and a major left-wing director. They wanted our feature to say the Mafia killed JFK, case closed. Wellll, I said, organized crime did play a role – gangsters are often recruited by the CIA to do the spy agency’s dirty work. But, as my books demonstrate, Dallas was a national security operation. The movie producers just looked at me like I wasn’t getting it. Later, the director said to me on the phone: We both know it’s bullshit. But let’s take the money and run. I didn’t. Now I hear director Barry Levinson and writer David Mamet are making a new movie. It says gangsters killed Kennedy. That one is getting made.
Hollywood continues to confound me and thwart me. Continues to buy the rights to my books and do nothing with them. I was raised there. My father Lyle Talbot was a cofounder of the Screen Actors Guild. My son Joe Talbot is the widely acclaimed director of The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I’ve learned how to write fiction and screenplays.
I even collaborated with Oliver Stone on a screenplay. That’s right. It hasn’t gone in front of the cameras yet. Maybe it will someday.
Yes, we must admit – we’ve been losing the big media war. The corporate news media has been slow, very slow, to let in the light. And Hollywood, the other communications bastion, remains a twilight zone, a largely impregnable fortress. The land of superhero spies and fantastical propaganda.
So, what should we do at this point? Sixty years later. When the White House still sides with the CIA, in brazen violation of the law, and keeps some 4,000 documents about the Kennedy assassination secret. When our vigilant, watchdog press rouses itself and growls… “Oh, well. So it goes.”
By the way, while researching my book The Devil’s Chessboard, I filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the CIA and State Department for the travel records and passport history of William Harvey. He was the assassinations chief for the CIA during the Cold War and a Kennedy hater. Before the JFK assassination, Harvey was spotted by his CIA deputy flying from Rome, where he was stationed at the time, to Dallas. A court ruled that the government could keep Harvey’s travel records hidden, though he died many years ago.
So, given all this official stonewalling, what should we do? Keep doing it ourselves. Keep ignoring the government and the big media gatekeepers. If the New York publishers and Hollywood studios persist in blocking us, we’ll keep going around them with podcasts and blogs and documentaries. That’s what we’ve always done.
If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own. That’s what Scoop Nisker, the late great San Francisco radio host, used to say.
I have a saying of my own – The best story wins. We have the truth on our side. And guess what? It’s a much better story.
Keep saying what the New York Times doesn’t want to hear. Keep digging up information that will never get you on CNN.
Someday our citizens army will win.
Let me add one final comment as we depart. With apologies to my good friend Jeff Morley, who has done so much to advance the JFK case. Jeff spoke earlier today. It was a very good speech, but I must disagree with one of his statements. When it comes to understanding this murder most foul, we are more than just “warm.” We are hot, very hot.
Yes, there are crucial gaps in our understanding of the crime – like the names of the snipers who shot the president and who exactly financed the operation. But we know the larger truth. Top officials in the CIA and military organized the killing of President Kennedy and its cover-up. They killed him because JFK was trying to wind down the Cold War and was threatening the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower belatedly warned the American people about. In other words, Kennedy was confronting a very lucrative racket. We’ve been at war ever since Dallas.
In 2019, a list of prominent Americans signed a so-called Truth and Reconciliation public statement, which said in part: “A growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus using, among others, figures in the criminal underworld to help carry out the crime and cover-up.”
This powerful and definitive statement, which I helped organize, was signed among others by G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the House Assassinations Committee; Dr. Robert McClelland of the Parkland Memorial Hospital surgical team; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; former Secret Service hero Abraham Bolden; and a who’s-who list of leading JFK researchers including Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Gary Aguilar, James Douglass, Peter Dale Scott; Rex Bradford; James DiEugenio; John Newman – and yes, Jeff Morley.
Sixty years after Dallas, let’s state loudly and clearly what we know. Even when the mainstream press and Hollywood refuse to listen.
The truth will out.
Thank you.
Season of the Gun
I've written extensively about how the power elite and its security agencies have historically maintained their rule by infiltrating progressive movements and by assassinating our leaders. This is the season of the gun -- the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination (more on that mother of conspiracies on Monday) and one that Bay Area radicals of a certain age will remember -- the 50th anniversary of the assassination of progressive educator Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of the Oakland CA public school district. Foster's killing was carried out by the strange radical cult known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, which the leftwing sociologist Todd Gitlin later called "the graveyard of the Bay Area left."
Gitlin was right. I was a Berkeley radical when the SLA burst on the scene with its bizarre targeting of Foster. And I wrote about the SLA years later in my book Season of the Witch. It was a deeply dispiriting time, after the ecstatic hopes and dreams of the '60s.
In his excellent podcast "East Bay Yesterday," my friend Liam O'Donoghue talks to the Oakland curator of a recent exhibit on Marcus Foster and then to me, about 30 minutes in.
Knock me your 'lobes...
Marcus Foster
The Lost Left
As a lifelong leftist, the dismal political fortunes of the U.S. Left have long depressed me. A big part of this political failure, of course, comes from the fact that we tilt against the biggest capitalist superpower in the world. The elite in this country does anything and everything to hold onto and extend its power. But the Left itself is also to blame for its repeated failures to take power.
Let's talk about one key way. We don't protect our leaders. (Some on the Left don't even want leaders. Instead, they talk endlessly about "process" and "identity"-- that's how unserious about taking power they are.) Historically, when our leaders get too powerful, too threatening to the ruling elite, they kill them. Good liberals don't like to acknowledge this. But, yes, that's how the powerful in America have imposed their rule -- through the barrel of a gun.
Of course, the powerful prefer to assassinate the CHARACTER of oppositional leaders. The other way is messy and can produce martyrs. And since the elite control the Big Media in this country, that's easy.
There are countless supine lapdog journalists who eagerly will do the bidding of media moguls. They do it because that's their jobs. And that's what their colleagues, the rest of the news pack, think. They go along and get along. They never question authority. Frankly, they're not that brave or bright. They are, in fact, pathetic creatures. I know.
Look what the Big Media did to Senator Bernie Sanders when he threatened the Democratic Party's ruling elite. The New York Times, Washington Post etc. ran more than one NEWS article a day in their pages smearing him.
The corporate media is doing even more to tear down Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A barrage of hit pieces. Some subsidized by the pharmaceutical industry, one of his most powerful antagonists. Some produced by news organizations that essentially now function as propaganda arms of the national security state, another big target of Kennedy. Yes, in the land of the free, the CIA and other security agencies run our free press. (And we won't even get into Hollywood here, what movies and TV shows are allowed to say.)
We'll end where we started. The Left NEVER understood the Kennedy presidency, its sharp break from the Cold War orthodoxy of its day (allied with the highly lucrative military-industrial complex). The Left never understood why JFK was killed and why it still matters.
I have great admiration for progressive intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh. But when it came to President Kennedy, they were clueless.
The Left's intelligentsia helped create a false and destructive narrative for the JFK assassination and cover-up. They argued that the killing did not much matter, because President Kennedy was a Cold Warrior and there was a continuity of power after he was violently removed. They were (and are) dead wrong.
It matters, too, that the Left is now gleefully participating in the character assassination of RFK Jr. When has a serious critic of corporate power ever climbed so close to the White House?
Some on the Left excuse and even applaud President Biden's perverse decision to withhold Secret Service protection from Kennedy. Despite the recent threats to his safety. Despite the controversy (some of it generated by the corporate media) that swirls around him. Despite what happened to his uncle and father.
Yes, the American Left is partly to blame for its chronic loser status. We fail to protect (or even appreciate) our leaders. We eat our own.
Noam Chomsky
Canceling Peace
I'm with New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who decries the war in Israel's stifling impact on free debate. On Friday, the 92NY, a big literary stage in Manhattan, canceled an event featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who signed a public letter denouncing the "violence and destruction in Palestine" and has supported the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel. Goldberg, a Jewish writer who sat down with Jerusalem-based journalist Nathan Thrall for a recent Brooklyn event, noted that he too has been widely canceled, even though his new book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salaman, is a humanitarian cry for peace in the region.
The cancel fever has also spread to Hollywood, where a top agent at Creative Artists Agency was demoted and forced to apologize after posting anti-Israel remarks on Instagram. Meanwhile, Hollywood celebrities are lauded for donating money to Israel and have even raised funds for the Israel Defense Forces, whose soldiers are now massing on Gaza's borders, an imminent invasion which is certain to cause horrific civilian casualties.
"The moment when dialogue is most fraught and bitter is when leaders most need to model it," Goldberg writes.
I don't know any creative person who thinks tribally and vengefully now. All of them blame Israel's brutal occupation of Palestinian land as well as the outburst of bestial violence by Hamas. They want peace and justice for both sides. And yet very few writers and artists and entertainers have the courage to speak their minds. We are experiencing a further clampdown on intellectual exchange and dissent. And it only silently fuels the bitterness and divisiveness that is tearing us apart.
The author Nathan Thrall
Apocalypse Now
Whether Israel's military targeted the Gaza hospital or whether it was hit by a rocket misfired by a jidahist group as the Israeli government claims, this massacre is what happens when you turn a densely-populated city into a war zone.
Netanyahu is a war criminal. The world knows it even if the U.S. media can't say it. President Biden has no business meeting with and reinforcing him. In recent months, Netanyahu's extremist government has been beleaguered from within. Brave Israeli citizens have poured into the streets, people who hold their rapidly fading democracy dear.
Who benefits from this war now? Netanyahu, of course -- and the like-minded zealots in Hamas and Iran. Their dominion is based on madness and mayhem.
Was it really an Israeli "intelligence failure" that allowed Hamas to commit their atrocities? Or did the Netanyahu government permit the outrageous provocation? Did the would-be dictator see a war in Gaza as the only way to rally Israeli citizens and the U.S. and Europe to his side?
Netanyahu and his fellow maniacs in the region are determined to draw the entire world into their apocalypse. In the wake of the hospital massacre, furious protests have erupted throughout the region. Israel is more isolated than ever.
It is incumbent on Western leaders to be leaders. Not just President Biden, but EVERYONE who seeks to occupy the White House. If you don't speak out, if you don't work actively for peace in the Middle East, you're no leader.
“Murder on the Starlight Express” The Final Act
In Washington D.C., our heroes dine with a sinister J. Edgar Hoover, meet with FDR consigliere Louis Howe, and try to solve the murder while rescuing the incoming Roosevelt administration. The dramatic conclusion of "Murder on the Starlight Express"...
“Murder on the Starlight Express” Act 3
As they hurtle toward FDR's first inauguration on board the Starlight Express, do our Hollywood heroes have what it takes to solve the murder most foul, even though it looks like a political crime? Act 3 of my serial...
Warner Bros. stars Joan Blondell and Lyle Talbot, passengers on the fateful train ride.
The Queen Is Dead
My New York Times commentary on the late Dianne Feinstein as mayor of San Francisco.
Dianne Feinstein at a memorial march a year after her colleagues were assassinated at San Francisco City Hall
“Murder on the Starlight Express” Act 2
The plot thickens as the Starlight Express chugs across Depression America for FDR's first inauguration. The Hollywood passengers engage in sexual hijinks, go to feverish movie premieres, attend an an ominous political rally .. and, yes, discover a murder that will change our hero's life forever... Btw, that's my father Lyle Talbot (far left) on the real Warner Bros. train, standing next to a blonde Bette Davis.
All Aboard! My Fiction Debut
Today, Alta, the magazine launched by Will Hearst, premieres my fiction debut -- a four-part serial called "Murder on the Starlight Express." The story is based on a real train trip that my father, actor Lyle Talbot, Bette Davis and other Warner Bros. stars undertook in 1933 from Hollywood to Washington DC, for FDR's first inauguration. I invent a murder and intrigue on the train, and dream up several leading players. But it was fun to immerse myself in this tumultuous history, and to invent (or highlight) dialogue for the likes of witty writer Dorothy Parker, gangster Spike O'Donnell, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters activist C. L. Dellums, villainous FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and FDR's right-hand man Louis Howe.
I hope you agree it's a fun and gripping read...
Yes, Big Media, JFK and RFK WERE the Victims of CIA Plots
Please read this.
John F. Kennedy and CIA Director Allen Dulles, the master of assassinations
Sellin’ My Soul for Bullshit Pay
There's a reason that Oliver Anthony's angry song about about getting screwed by the "Rich Men North of Richmond" has hit number one in America. The song has been dismissed by liberal pundits as a Red State lament. But it's broader and deeper than that. (Anthony himself condemned Republicans for using his song.)
President Biden doesn't get it -- he thinks Bidenomics have made the voters happy. Trump gets it and is exploiting it. RFK Jr. -- the other candidate whom we've been told to hate -- also sees it. He's the ONLY Democratic leader who seems to. Everywhere he goes in the country, Bobby says, he sees suffering people. He wants to make the Anthony song his campaign anthem.
If we liberals and leftists on the coasts stay in our safe bubbles, we're doomed.
Let's wake up.
"Rich Men North Of Richmond"
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Oliver Anthony
Donald Trump: The Fire Next Time?
Donald Trump ended his remarkable conversation with Tucker Carlson on X by observing there was a dangerous combination of "passion and hatred" out there "because of what they've done to our country." Although it will further inflame many of my liberal Facebook friends, I've come to oppose the four court cases aimed at Trump. As you know, I adamantly oppose Donald Trump and hope that the American voters reject him again if he's the Republican nominee in 2024. But I'm also an adamant small "d" democrat. Trump enjoys the passionate political support of much of the electorate. In fact, each time he's indicted, his poll numbers have gone up. The legal crusade against him is actually boosting his political support.
I think it's best for our bitterly divided country if Donald Trump is beaten fairly and squarely at the ballot box instead of in a courtroom.
For a long time now, the Democratic Party (which I've belonged to my entire voting life) has been increasingly taken over by suburban professionals -- and lately (and more worryingly) by Wall Street and the war industry. As a result, our party -- unsurprisingly -- has largely abandoned working people and the poor, who have gone in large numbers to the Republicans, including Trump.
This is a disastrous trend -- one that is only fortified by Trump's accusation that he is being unfairly singled out for challenging an election (which many Democratic candidates have also done).
That's why his fate should be in the hands of voters, not judges and juries.
Is Donald Trump "above the law." Yes, in a sense he is. He is far and away the most popular Republican presidential candidate. If the "liberal elites" are seen throwing him behind bars, I worry about the future of our country. Republicans could subject Democratic leaders to the same legal ordeals. Already, Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House committee that is investigating the "weaponization" of the federal government against critics, has targeted Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, following her indictment of Trump.
This legal crusade against Trump will not end well.
If Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, we need to talk to our fellow Americans, we need to convince them he's taking the country in the wrong direction.
We need to defeat him the old-fashioned way. We need to work our asses off.
John Warnock’s Smile
When John Warnock -- who cofounded (with Chuck Geschke) the software giant Adobe — died at 82 last weekend, he was eulogized in the press for his role in creating Photoshop and other hugely popular publishing and design tools. “A technological genius.” That’s how Warnock was remembered primarily -- almost exclusively. But he was more than that. He studied philosophy at the University of Utah, he collected antiquarian books, he loved (and supported) movies. And he recognized early on that the Web would be a popular communications medium. His investment brought Salon, my publishing venture, to life.
Salon was a co-creation of San Francisco's edgy editorial and artistic talent and Silicon Valley's financial prowess. But I saw it as something more important than that, and so did John.
Warnock believed deeply in a rambunctiously free press. And, as Salon's major investor, he allowed me and my colleagues to create an independent, often controversial publication.
John was a very intelligent man -- and when he walked into the Salon office for a board meeting or took me to lunch, I knew that I would have to justify the expenditure of his money. But he also stood by us during the political and financial hard times.
When, for instance, we broke with the media establishment and investigated the nemesis of President Bill Clinton -- Ken Starr and his vast right-wing conspiracy -- not because we loved Clinton, but because we knew the alternative (New Gingrich) was even worse. The Wall Street Journal editorialized against us (condemning Warnock as our principal investor), Republican leaders threatened to sic the FBI on us, a bomb threat forced us to empty our office, and we were targeted by ad boycotts and tech sabotage.
Throughout all of these dark times, John Warnock never once pressured me to go easier, to temper our editorial crusades. He was a brave and good man.
But it's his warm smile I'll always remember. It always reassured me: you'll get this Internet thing right, you'll figure it out, you'll get to breakeven. And, in the meantime, you're doing some great journalism. I'm proud of you.
His smile meant the world to me. I wish I could've seen it one more time.
John Warnock
The New York Times Finally Gets to the Bottom of the JFK Mystery!
Thank God! The New York Times -- which, as you know, is the voice of God -- has finally put the JFK mystery to rest. According to Times reporter Elizabeth A. Harris, in her profile of contrarian book publisher Tony Lyons ("contrarian" means he still believes in free speech), "There is no evidence that the U.S. government was involved in President Kennedy’s assassination."
Whew! That's a relief. Harris, of course, spent years investigating the JFK assassination. Didn't she?
Harris knows that the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in its final report in 1979 that there was a "conspiracy" in President Kennedy's murder, right?
She reviewed all the key sources and evidence and read the well-documented books that revealed CIA involvement in the plot, right?
And I'm sure that Harris has seen the nearly 5,000 JFK documents that the CIA is still hiding, against the law -- including the travel records of CIA assassinations chief William Harvey, who was spotted by his deputy flying from his Rome station to Dallas in the days before Kennedy was killed there? (The Harvey records I tried to legally obtain while researching The Devil's Chessboard, but was blocked by the CIA, even though Harvey is long dead.)
The newspaper of record would NEVER let one of its reporters blithely dismiss U.S. government involvement in the crime of the 20th Century unless she had first done her due diligence.
Right?
Now that the New York Times has spoken (again) on this fraught subject, we can all go back to our restful slumber. That's what the mainstream media is for -- to reassure our troubled minds. To put us to sleep.
P.S. Below is President Kennedy with General Curtis LeMay, chief of the Air Force. LeMay thought the U.S. could "win" a nuclear war. Really. He thought Kennedy was "weak." Kennedy thought he was a "madman." Whoops! I hate to wake you up.
Life Is Very Short and There’s No Time…
Life is very short, and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it's a crime,
So I will ask you once again.
"We Can Work It Out” Lennon & McCartney
Out here in the far West, people are running into the ocean to escape the flames from the wildfires devouring Maui. Speaking of the ocean itself, the water is getting a lot hotter here in Northern California. And Arizona? Forget about it. It burned up weeks ago.
And that's the weather report from here. How's YOUR neck of the woods this extremely hot summer?
Meanwhile, as the world burns, President Joe Biden is escalating his feud with the two powerful nations which could make the biggest difference in a global climate alliance: China and Russia. Brilliant, visionary leadership.
But we have bigger fish to fry these days.
We're busy prosecuting Trump for his crimes. The only problem with this strategy is that Trump's multiple indictments -- including the last big one, for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election -- is just making Trump MORE popular with Republican voters, who think he's being politically persecuted. (Read the lead editorial in today's NYT by Harvard law professor and Hoover Institution fellow -- but anti-Trumper -- Jack Goldsmith, "The Prosecution of Trump May Have Terrible Consequences.")
Then there's the Biden problem. If you're a worried Democrat like me, the president is doddering and old and pro-war and a weak reelection candidate. He could very well hand over the White House next year... to Donald Trump!
But no Democratic office-holder has the guts to break party ranks and challenge Biden in the primaries. The "leaders" of the party are cowardly careerists.
Only Bobby Kennedy Jr. has the necessary courage. And it takes courage to go up against the venomous DNC and the corporate powers behind it. President Biden will not even order the Secret Service to protect RFK Jr. -- despite what happened to his father when he ran in 1968. Even Bobby-haters can question the wisdom and compassion of THAT decision.
And so, as humanity torches itself this summer, we find myriad things to argue about -- none of them related to the rapidly escalating climate crisis.
But don't worry -- Big Tech will save us. Won't it? Oh, that's right, the tech industry is now enamored with AI, which uses HUGE amounts of energy, and driverless cars.
Robot cars have flooded the streets of San Francisco, and some city officials and activists have cried "halt" to Google and GM's plans for the human-less vehicles to start taking passengers. It seems the taxi industry, firefighters, public transit advocates and concerned citizens are fretting about unemployment, traffic congestion, emergency mishaps and vehicular manslaughter.
Oh, well, there is always resistance to technological progress. Or as impatient Big Tech investor Garry Tan announced on YouTube, the city officials standing in the way of automated cars are "ideologically driven" and "hate technologies."
Try to see it HIS way. True, AI and driverless cars will put millions out of work and worsen the climate meltdown. But, hey, people like him will make a killing!
I tried to make my post today fun and upbeat. I watched The Last Waltz yesterday evening in honor of Robbie Robertson. I once sat next to his entourage in a seaside cafe in Italy, after they came ashore from their docked yacht. He was with Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg. They seemed to be having fun -- who wouldn't that moonlit night in Portofino? And he looked, at age 72, fabulous.
Robbie Robertson in The Last Waltz
How Did Rolling Stone Become So Uncool?
These and other media mysteries explained in my new weekly column in The Kennedy Beacon, “All the News the CIA Sees Fit to Print.”
Strike or Die
My father, Lyle Talbot, was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild, I'm proud to say. Ninety years ago, in 1933, Lyle and actors like Boris Karloff and Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart organized SAG in defiance of the all-powerful studios, which dictated the long hours of their work days as well as their personal lives. (Warner Bros. -- the studio where my father was under contract -- objected strongly when my father began dating Lina Basquette, the widow of studio co-founder Sam Warner. He told the WB executives to get lost and they tried to end his career.)
I remember Lyle telling us four kids how he and the other actors had to sneak down alleys to avoid studio spies and hold union meetings.
Lyle would be very proud of the current SAG-AFTRA strike, which comes at a make-or-break moment for actors. Most of the union's 100,000-plus members struggle to make a living now, taking odd jobs to stay afloat. The strike is imposing even tougher austerity on them, but they realize there is no future for them if robotic, profit-obsessed Big Tech and AI continue to take over the entertainment industry.
Let's hear it for the actors' courage and grit. Let's hear it for human talent.
My father, Lyle Talbot, and Barbara Stanwyck