Nothing To See Here, Keep Moving 
We’ve recently seen release of ever more definitive documents showing that nothing happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, despite the use of the “Incident” as Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War MacGuffin.
Now we learn that the Kennedy Administration’s finest hour, the storied grace under pressure of a wise beyond his years Jack Kennedy, was kind of a bust too.
Specifically, the moment of high seas drama when Soviet Missile ships turned back from the US Cuba blockade, the Eyeball to Eyeball/Other Fellow Blinked stuff – that didn’t happen either.
Happier Days 
The Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs is unleashing his account of the Missile Crisis semi-serially in the paper, with vast companion documents and excerpts available on the National Security Archives website.
Only A Mad Dream 
Get Me Central 
Thrilling new tapes from the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library are released, showing his intense identification with Israel.
All well and good, but tales of American presidents and the plucky Jewish State are beginning to get mushy. We’ve had Harry Truman’s recognition of Israel commemorated, a hideous Kennedy memorial defaces the Jerusalem 
landscape, and Johnson’s Jewish ties are being extended back to his first term in Congress.
With some unfortunate photo placement.
The effect of all this is to extend the current US role as Israeli’s godfather back in time, burying the whole period when France provided nuclear technology and most of their conventional weapons, and of Czechoslovakia’s arms during the War of Independence.
The anachronistic centrality we are seeing starts is beginning to resemble the hemp cultists 
counting past presidents who grew the crop.
Would That It Were So 
George W. Bush’s pet National Archivist Allen Weinstein brought a message of hope to the dreamed of future home of Bush’s Presidential Library , and offered proof of just how differential to power he is.
Weinstein assured the Southern Methodist University commencement crowd that the Bush Library will gussy up SMU’s image, 
even the Fantastic Freedom Institute., once that darn popularity gets turned around.
“Even most opponents of the proposed independent Bush Policy Institute acknowledge that a popular, well-run presidential library center will redound to the benefit of SMU.“
The man who has watched the Bush administration lose millions of presidential documents with no apparent response is unsurprisingly calm about the prospect that Bush will bury his past in the vaults.
The secret is showing your sensitive side.
Weinstein claims that Lyndon Johnson’s image is on the upswing because the Johnson Library released tapes of him agonizing over Vietnam.
“This is the kind of gamble other presidential families will be more likely to try now, and perhaps be less fearful about.”
But thanks to Richard Nixon this isn’t supposed to a decision by “presidential families.” The documents belong to the public, and the families would have no role if the courts or Congress overturned George W. Bush’s executive order letting ex presidents and their children after them hide papers.
Gritty, Urban 
Laura Bush has unveiled an exciting new talking point for the Bush Library to come in Dallas:
“This will be the first truly urban location for a presidential library “
Meaning what exactly? George will be taking public transportation to work on his memoirs at the Library? And she is casually dissing the two existing Texas Presidential Libraries at Austin and College Station, one of which is her father-in-law’s.
Would A Cow Town Shine So Brightly? 
One Man, Our Vote 
Greg Grandlin offers a roundup of one interested party’s role in the last twelve presidential elections, and perhaps on his last one.
“Fidel Castro, the First Superdelegate” clocks el Lider Maximo’s walk-ons and cameos over five decades.
Vote Early & Vote Often 
