Hillman avenger wrote:Royal24s wrote:Hillman avenger wrote:birdie wrote:Ralph wrote:birdie wrote:
But wouldn't that have made him medically unfit for military service? Unless, of course his father paid for a favourable medical report.
Good point. Don't know. Perhaps he didn't tell the truth & the medical examination wasn't that thorough.
Joe Kennedy was a political animal and very ambitious for his sons, it wouldn't have gone down well if JFK hadn't done military service because he'd failed the medical and far better have a war hero as a political candidate than one who hadn't served because he couldn't pass the medical, so I'm thinking its a fair bet he paid to,have a favourable medi
cal report, after all, it's an open secret that he paid for votes to get him elected, he's reported to,have said, when he learned the size of the majority, that he could have saved himself several millions and not paid for so many votes.
It's true that Joe wanted a son as President, but it wasn't John. It was his older brother, who was killed in the war. John was reluctant to get into politics, but did so in the end. Joe did not buy votes..what he did, in the Boston district that John stood for, was to find somebody with the same name as John's opponent, did him favours to get him to stand and then banked on voters being confused by seeing the same name twice on the ballot. It worked. After that John did it on his own.
You make it sound so quaint. What a jolly man you make Joe Kennedy sound !
In fact he made his money out if bootlegging then bought the ambassadorship to London.
As well as being up to his neck in blood from organised crime, he was a keen nazi and, according to Winston Churchill, who had him replaced as ambassador , a German spy .
This perhaps explained Hoovers antipathy towards the whole family.
In fact, he bought New Hampshire through the mob, who did some pretty bad stuff to secure it, but promised them favours when the son was elected.
When he was , though, he snubbed Frank Sinatra and half the familia by failing to attend a victory party they'd laid on for him. His little brother was duly appointed Attorney General and instead of looking after them, went after the mob very hard.
Some think this was the motive for 22/11 but it's much more complicated than that of course. Certainly it led to their willing participation.
In short, Joe Kennedy was filth .
I wasn't speaking up for Joe Kennedy.
I was pointing out that the comment here was misleading.
BTW it was Massachusetts and the first political office JFK had was as a Representative for Massachusetts
Yes he was the Senator for Massachusetts , obviously, but I was rallying about the 1960 dem primaries .
Kennedy SNR was closely affiliated with the Patriarca family in Massachusetts , but it was Sam Giancanna of the Chicago mob who was brought in to deliver New Hampshire, being the crucial state, for the Kennedy team. The initial contact point was said to have been Frank Sinatra whose family was from the same town in Sicily as Giancanna.
This caused conflict because new Hampshire was Patriaca territory , and it also wasn't clear which crime family the kennedys now owed allegiance to.
When elected, they snubbed Sinatra, Giancanna and the Chicago mob then contraversially appointed the young brother,( then a very newly qualified lawyer), as Attorney General and he actually went after both families.
Since Giancanna was closely involved in the CIA , his subsequent involvement in the assassination on 11/22/63 was hard to see as independant from them.
This is all quite well known, and I don't think anyone would dispute it but - and I say this with respect, only to make a point - perhaps you didn't know it.
Now, if it's a surprise to you that the US government in the early sixties was being secretly influenced by the mafia, perhaps you will see that it is not in fact preposterous to think that the governments of today have sinister backers ?
Jo Kennedy wasn't politically ambitious for his son, as you put it. He was politically ambitious for himself, and in this was entirely sponsored by the mafia who don't do things for nothing.
Maybe I shouldn't digress into the assassination , but it certainly involved on the one hand the fact that the Chicago mob wanted to avenge being double crossed over new Hampshire , and the fact that Hoover and other law enforcement knew that the whole family were dirty.
Others in politics were ambitious, and this was another factor - one of many- in the murder.