Originally Posted by ASB65

I just started reading Stephen King's new book, "11/23/63". It's about a man who is able to go back in time and stop JFK's assassination. (Although I haven't gotten that far in the book in yet.) But from what I understand about the book the world doesn't turn out all that great with JFK living. Apparently King spoke with a few different historians including, Doris Kerns Goodwin, to get plausible scenario of events that could happened if he didn't been assassinated.

Anyway, it's an intriguing concept and a bit of a departure from King's normal horror stories. If there is anyone else who has already read the book, don't tell me out it ends. I don't want any spoilers, but I would be happy to discuss it later after I've finished the book and discuss whether or not King's version of how history would have been changed is conceivable.

Indeed; some historians believe that much of JFK's "legacy" would not have been realized (or at the very least, would have been delayed) had he stayed alive, but the sympathy surrounding his martyrdom led to increased support for many of his goals and ideas. In other words, he accomplished more dead than he ever could have alive.

Originally Posted by Odin

I love alternate history scenarios, so I will have to find that book!

I will have to read that one, too. And Barbara Tuchman. So many good books, so little time....

Ha, we should all read the book and post our thoughts. A 4T book club?

Originally Posted by millennialX

Ha, we should all read the book and post our thoughts. A 4T book club?

Yes! Yes! A book thread!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Yes! Yes! A book thread!

I'm all for that too. Shall the first book of the month be the Stephen King book, "11/23/63" since other people had expressed interest in reading it?

Originally Posted by ASB65

I'm all for that too. Shall the first book of the month be the Stephen King book, "11/23/63" since other people had expressed interest in reading it?

I think that's perfect and I'm going to order it from Amazon. (won't be til after thanksgiving though).

Originally Posted by millennialX

I think that's perfect and I'm going to order it from Amazon. (won't be til after thanksgiving though).

That's fine. We can wait. I'm about halfway through it and I've enjoyed reading King's description of life in the 1T. Of course, with King, there is always a dark side. But I think it probably is pretty accurate from what I've heard from the older generations on this forum who lived through it. America wasn't all that perfect back then.

Originally Posted by TeddyR

In tonight's episode the gang is talking foreign affairs. Someone better fill in Herb Cain they aren't talking about his international business trips (insert rimshot).

I can't wait. Ubeky-beky-beky-beky stan.

Any bets on the three countries Rick Perry wants to abolish?

By the way, today I was in Cambridge--much more on that later--and we went to Bartley's Burger Cottage, a famous institution there, which constantly designs new burgers named after the politician of the moment. They have a Rick Perry burger. I can't remember what it was, but I suggested that it should be:

"with Jack cheese, chili, and. . . something I can't remember."

And as for the book club, how about a little forum loyalty? If we're going to read a JFK assassination book. . . see below. I don't know if I can bring myself to read King or not. . .

OMG, you guys are superhuman. How do you keep up with the forum, get all of your work done, have quality family/friend time, AND PROMOTE A BOOK CLUB? (Whew, that wore me out just reading the previous sentence.) Don't get me wrong, this book sounds very interesting and tempting but I think I will just tune in to your conversation.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Any bets on the three countries Rick Perry wants to abolish?

By the way, today I was in Cambridge--much more on that later--and we went to Bartley's Burger Cottage, a famous institution there, which constantly designs new burgers named after the politician of the moment. They have a Rick Perry burger. I can't remember what it was, but I suggested that it should be:

"with Jack cheese, chili, and. . . something I can't remember."

And as for the book club, how about a little forum loyalty? If we're going to read a JFK assassination book. . . see below. I don't know if I can bring myself to read King or not. . .

Lol, David. I'm not a big King fan, either, although I've learned to accept him. But I think it's alternate history that is appealing.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Any bets on the three countries Rick Perry wants to abolish?

By the way, today I was in Cambridge--much more on that later--and we went to Bartley's Burger Cottage, a famous institution there, which constantly designs new burgers named after the politician of the moment. They have a Rick Perry burger. I can't remember what it was, but I suggested that it should be:

"with Jack cheese, chili, and. . . something I can't remember."

And as for the book club, how about a little forum loyalty? If we're going to read a JFK assassination book. . . see below. I don't know if I can bring myself to read King or not. . .

Let's hope King is not another mainstream author who has proudly reinvented a long-established genre and has done it as simplistically as if he never heard of alternate history science fiction.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Any bets on the three countries Rick Perry wants to abolish?

By the way, today I was in Cambridge--much more on that later--and we went to Bartley's Burger Cottage, a famous institution there, which constantly designs new burgers named after the politician of the moment. They have a Rick Perry burger. I can't remember what it was, but I suggested that it should be:

"with Jack cheese, chili, and. . . something I can't remember."

And as for the book club, how about a little forum loyalty? If we're going to read a JFK assassination book. . . see below. I don't know if I can bring myself to read King or not. . .

Come on, David. It would be fun. And you can always just criticize all the historical factual errors that King might have gotten wrong.

Originally Posted by Deb C

OMG, you guys are superhuman. How do you keep up with the forum, get all of your work done, have quality family/friend time, AND PROMOTE A BOOK CLUB? (Whew, that wore me out just reading the previous sentence.) Don't get me wrong, this book sounds very interesting and tempting but I think I will just tune in to your conversation.

Get my work done? I've been complaining fro years about no time to do that! Now have rationed my time on Teh Internets to a measly 1 hour in the morning, one after lunch, and one in the evening. OH, the pity and sorrow, how can one live so cut off? Sob ... and imagine all the reading I have done since then. And all the paperwork taken care of!

Not today. I had a racked-up back worked on and then treated myself to one of the Frontier's famous Western omelettes.

Ooops- just heard the dryer buzz. If indeed the clothes are dry. Like my front floor furnace, it often seems to think natural gas is being rationed.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Get my work done? I've been complaining fro years about no time to do that! Now have rationed my time on Teh Internets to a measly 1 hour in the morning, one after lunch, and one in the evening. OH, the pity and sorrow, how can one live so cut off? Sob ... and imagine all the reading I have done since then. And all the paperwork taken care of!

Not today. I had a racked-up back worked on and then treated myself to one of the Frontier's famous Western omelettes.

Ooops- just heard the dryer buzz. If indeed the clothes are dry. Like my front floor furnace, it often seems to think natural gas is being rationed.

Ahhh, that's the trick - limit time on the internet. I think that's where much of my time is wasted. I keep saying that I'm going to finish this task or that task before I check my e-mail, then temptation gets the best of me. I then end up working like a crazed roadrunner racing around trying to finish my work.

I think I need a recovery program.

I wanched the Republican debate so the rest of you don't have to. Huntsman is the only sane one, the rest are cookoo. Jacques Derrida's word salad is more comprehensible than Perry and Bachmann are.

Originally Posted by Odin

I wanched the Republican debate so the rest of you don't have to. Huntsman is the only sane one, the rest are cookoo. Jacques Derrida's word salad is more comprehensible than Perry and Bachmann are.

A little gung ho for war with Iran, aren't they (well except for Cain and Paul).

Originally Posted by Odin

I wanched the Republican debate so the rest of you don't have to. Huntsman is the only sane one, the rest are cookoo. Jacques Derrida's word salad is more comprehensible than Perry and Bachmann are.

Bloodthirsty is more like it. And the audience eats it up.

Good for Huntsman, he and Romney have similar views deep down, but Romney whores himself out for the right-wing of the GOP who will never love him. How could they, he is a whore. At least Perry, Cain, Bachmann and the alike truly believe their crazy views.

Originally Posted by Odin

I wanched the Republican debate so the rest of you don't have to. Huntsman is the only sane one, the rest are cookoo. Jacques Derrida's word salad is more comprehensible than Perry and Bachmann are.

I said to someone the other day, "I don't understand why Huntsman isn't in first place. He seems to be the best one of the bunch and when I talk to my Republican friends most of them say they like the Huntsman the best." My friend said, "He doesn't have any money."...Well, that it explains it then.

Originally Posted by ASB65

I said to someone the other day, "I don't understand why Huntsman isn't in first place. He seems to be the best one of the bunch and when I talk to my Republican friends most of them say they like the Huntsman the best." My friend said, "He doesn't have any money."...Well, that it explains it then.

How about, "Because he's a sane man?" All the money in the world wouldn't help him in the Republican primaries.

Originally Posted by Odin

I wanched the Republican debate so the rest of you don't have to. Huntsman is the only sane one, the rest are cookoo. Jacques Derrida's word salad is more comprehensible than Perry and Bachmann are.

I actually watched a few minutes. Michele Bachmann talking about waterboarding was very creepy. Yikes! I switched back to college football.

Originally Posted by ASB65

Come on, David. It would be fun. And you can always just criticize all the historical factual errors that King might have gotten wrong.

I'm all for a discussion of the new King book, but can we put it off a couple of weeks? I already have two discussions coming up in November (John Grisham's The Confession and Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks).

I must admit that I just read the Sunday NY Times review of it and the assassination itself seems to be background to broader concerns. There is a slip in the review, saying that the mythical hero is living below the Oswalds "weeks before the assassination," when the Oswalds hadn't lived together in Dallas for six months. But that's probably the reviewers' fault.

On to something else of direct relevance to the topic, also from the book review. Jeffrey Rosen is one of our most prolific writers on legal topics and he reviews a book today about civil rights and discrimination, in which the author calls for more common sense from the bench. At one point, Rosen writes:

"If President Obama is defeated, the Supreme Court will swing even more sharpl to the right on questions involving discrimination; if he is re-elected, the current polarization over civil rights seems likely to continue."

It seems to me that's pretty much what I've been saying about the stakes of this election. A further move to the right is a distinct (and disastrous) possibility; a significant move to the left is not. It's either holding things in place for a while, and perhaps hoping to begin an era of very gradual reforms at some point, or heading into the abyss. I'm glad I'm not alone in this view.

This is why folks like JPT all regurgitate the same nonsense:

David Gregory's use of the term 'grand wizard' was over the top for a mainstream media talking head but his inability to recognize why Herman Cain is still in the race is part of a tragedy that has been plaguing US politics for 20 years. That the mainstream still doesn't know the main reason Sarah Palin was chosen was to get Rush Limbaugh support for John McCain at the last minute before the GOP convention is part of that tragedy.

"When asked by Ann Curry if he thought the Republican party would want Cain to "just go away," Gregory said: "There is no, you know, grand wizard in the party right now who can really force the issue."

Gregory could have used poobah, king, or enforcer and named Limbaugh and he would have been correct. Cain is still in the race because Limbaugh is still defending him. That means most of the other right wing talkers will also defend him. Maybe it's because the Koch brothers are paying for it, maybe it's because the racist Limbaugh likes the Cain as the billionaire's slave, or maybe he's solid with a brother misogynist and abuser.

The only reason Cain is even in the race is that the Party of Lincoln has increasingly become the Party of Limbaugh. There is no one more powerful in the GOP. There is no one who better represents the morals and standards of the modern Republican Party, or who has done more to get them where they are now, than Limbaugh. The Koch's have been outed and the Tea Party gained power because Koch operatives gave bus passes and schedules to the talk radio Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck dittoheads that Karl Rove used to control. Rove lost the White House and central control of who's talking points get laundered through the right wing radio monopoly, which starts with Limbaugh.

The incredibly incompetent, ignorant, and unacceptable field of candidates the GOP has presented is a direct result of the inability of the 'Left' and the media to recognize this fact, mainly because it is off their radar. Increasingly, the ability of GOP candidates to make it through the local and national primaries is directly proportional to their ability to repeat the prechewed talk radio material, later reinforced visually on Fox.

Whatever the reason, as soon as Limbaugh starts backing off his defense of Cain (and threatening the accusers), Cain will drop back to Bachman numbers. For those who think Fox is the main culprit, I would challenge them to find on Fox anywhere near the same level of sexism and misogyny as Limbaugh has been blasting to 15-20 million of Americans every day in defense of Cain, and in his efforts to intimidate the accusers. It is the same swiftboating that was used against Anita Hill. It was Limbaugh who was most responsible for Clarence Thomas on the supreme court.

And it is outrageous that many of our largest universities endorse Limbaugh (and Hannity, and Beck, and Savage) by broadcasting sports on so many of his stations (15 of 16 NCAA basketball finalists, for example). It is so important to those stations that they pay the universities to do it. It brings in advertisers and acceptance. And our universities are paid while those right wing radio stations are used to sell war, wall street deregulation, torture, global warming denial, and to obstruct one political party while turning the other into a tragic joke.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I'll do you one better, I know a song from 1919, but was used in 1926 as a Wheaties jingle:

Jazz Baby - YouTube clip of the original; YouTube clip of how I know it

So in 1967 it's possible, if you were interested in a particular MGM movie musical, for a Boomer to have been aware of a song from the 1920s/1910s.

~Chas'88

I knew you'd have this one as soon as I read the question. James is throwing Chas ringers .☺

Dig this version! It' got flavor and with less scratchy.

Side note - Was Carol Channing was scary - or is that just me?

Originally Posted by Odin

This is why folks like JPT all regurgitate the same nonsense:

That is a pretty amazing piece. As you know, I have a healthy respect for Rush myself--that is, for his influence. But I'm not quite sure how much of all that to believe. I think Rush and Hannity have managed to intimidate anyone from mounting a large-scale, reasonable campaign for the Republican nomination. I don't think either one of them is ruling out Mitt yet, though.

There's a scary piece about Mormonism in today's New York Times by Harold Bloom, of all people, by the way. Worth reading. . .I did not know that Mormonism bars non-believers from its religious services.