Deal-y Plaza
All manner of Kennedy odds and ends are coming to market in time for Thursday’s 40th anniversary of the assassination.
The latest up: a Polaroid taken by Mary Ann Moorman,
showing Kennedy’s car in the midst of the shooting, with the grassy knoll visible in the background.
[here she is third from the left, taking the picture] 
The picture had been at the 6th Floor museum in Dallas, and has figured in all manner of theories about the assassination. Blown up fragments of the photo have been mined for images that could possibly be a shooter or shooters – hence a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Some science supports the multiple gunmen thesis.
An attempt to sell the photo in April seems to have not worked out. Perhaps anniversary mojo will carry them over the top this time.
Dallas, Dealey Plaza – and You Are There!
But Kennedy isn’t.
Avatar Promotions has chosen to recreate the JFK assassination site in 2nd Life as it exists in 2007, so your of hopes of finally sorting out those hobos up behind the grassy knoll may have to wait till they gin up a 1963 version.
Analog versions 
And Their Flag Is Still Here
Miami may be knocking down the Orange Bowl, the sports stadium storied in legend and song, and the site of John Kennedy’s 1962 encounter with Bay of Pigs veterans ransomed from Cuba.
Shadow of a Gunman
The event came off despite exile claims Kennedy sabotaged the invasion by withdrawing American air support, and Kennedy received the Brigade 2506 flag.
The Orange Bowl will now miss another event, the planned celebration of Castro’s death.
The Berlin Wall has been down 18 years today, but America never tires of the old concrete chunks left over. Pieces grace all your finer Presidential Libraries, no matter how strained their relationship is to the Wall.
And we usually display them West side out with all the pretty graffiti.
Roosevelt: 
only link is this hideous sculpture made by a Churchill Granddaughter from Wall.
Truman: 
see where she got the semi-human shapes above? Still more Churchill relative art at Westminster College where Truman invited Churchill to let rip.
Eisenhower: none – Wall but a gleam in Walter Ulbrecht’s eye then. 
Kennedy: 
because it was built on his watch?
Johnson: sadly, no.
Nixon: 
because it existed simultaneously with his Presidency?
Ford: 
same as above, and US established diplomatic relations with DDR.
Carter: none.
Reagan: 
leapt into the future and tore down his own-self.
Plus one inside: 
Plus at the Ronald Reagan Building in DC: 
Plus one at the “Reagan Ranch” [downhill from it in Santa Barbara]: 
Bush: 
fell while in office.
Another, indoors: 
Other Americans have different ways of displaying the Wall: 
You can’t find your place in history when someone shuffles the pages
From washingtondecoded via historynewsnetwork comes a new interpretation of Lyndon Johnson’s decent into Vietnam: LBJ, the Best & the Brightest’s first victim.
“What Did LBJ Know About the Cuban Missile Crisis? And When Did He Know It?” pivots on the fact that Johnson was cut out of the final deal which settled the Missile Crisis. Johnson was somewhat involved in Kennedy Administration policy making during the events, but nobody told LBJ the US pulled it’s missiles from Turkey in trade for Soviets taking theirs from Cuba. Then or later.
Leaving the Sage of the Pedernales to buy the hype: cool, calm JFK masterfully staring down the blinking Russians. 
Que Vietnam! 
“False history led to mistaken lessons, including a belief in the efficacy of calibrated force, which helped prevent Johnson from seriously entertaining the concessions necessary for a negotiated political solution to the Vietnam War… not only was LBJ deliberately shut out as vice president, but the tape recordings show that he was still in the dark years after he became president, when he was presumably entitled, and urgently needed, to understand the knowable truth behind Kennedy’s spectacular success…. LBJ’s unspoken presumption was that the same men who were at Kennedy’s side in October 1962 would surely see Johnson through to a similar, unmitigated victory, regardless of the differences. And if they could not, conversely, that suggested something LBJ did not want to countenance: that the only real difference was in the president who led this assemblage of the best and the brightest.”
