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The right’s support for Robert Kennedy Jr. makes little sense — 77 Comments

1. From what I’ve read and seen, I don’t think many on the right actually support RFKJr. He is everything you say he is. It’s more like, someone, is actually challenging the Marxist edifice that is the modern Democratic party. The Kennedy name brings up memories of the Democrats under JFK. That party died and was finally buried with the election of Obama.

   For myself, I am nostalgic for the Democrats of JFK, Humphrey, Zell Miller, Lieberman, etc. Would never really agree with them, but I never thought they truly were working for the destruction of the USA.

2. I would never vote for him, but I do credit when he lurches into the truth, where does the antisemitism come into the picture?

3. he does evince at least more working class concerns, like his father did, but he was a founder of the nrdc, that allowed some of this first world flummery to go forth,

4. physicsguy:

   It’s certainly not a majority on the right. But I think it’s a fairly sizable group nonetheless, from discussions I’ve seen around the blogosphere.

5. It comes from the same reason a lot of people voted for Trump in 2016: it’s a chance to vote with your middle finger.

   As for the antisemitism issue, let’s not forget that Joe Sr. (his grandfather) was an antisemite.

6. Well, Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame endorsed RFK Jr. yesterday: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on Sunday officially endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president, saying he was the best Democratic candidate who had a shot at beating Republican rivals Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. The endorsement came in a Twitter post from Dorsey, who shared a clip of Fox News’ Harris Faulkner interviewing Kennedy titled: “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues he can beat Trump and DeSantis in 2024.” “He can and will,” Dorsey commented.

   https://nypost.com/2023/06/05/twitter-co-founder-jack-dorsey-endorses-robert-f-kennedy-jr-in-2024-presidential-race/

   It’ll be interesting to see what Musk has to say (if anything) about Dorsey’s endorsement.

7. RFK Jr. is a head case with a history of satyriasis and polysubstance abuse. It’s a mistake to identify him with any sort of politics.

8. Everything gets a lot simpler if people just speak in favor of what they actually want to see happen, instead of trying to play 4-D chess.

   RFK Jr is going nowhere; but even if elected, like Trump, he’d get little done because the Deep State won’t execute his orders and Congress will continually stab him in the back.

9. AFAICT, all Kennedys are nuts. Must be something in the family genes.

10. RFK Jr. is a head case with a history of satyriasis and polysubstance abuse.

    Wouldn’t he and Hunter Biden be the Dem dream team?

11. Widburg, quoted by Neo, and Art Deco both make unsubstantiated claims about RFK, Jr. There was indeed a time when there was extensive concern about the preservatives in conventional vaccines, and they were not all expressed by nut cases. They were expressed by parents of kids who had been seriously wounded by conventional vaccines.
    Art claims he has satyriasis, which if true is a Kennedy trait (see JFK).

    As to polysubstance abuse, that same past history charge can be levyied against some of our best and brightest. Plus, it is unsubstantiated (no I’m not going to websearch on this topic. I did not raise the issue.) If allegations are made, they should be supported!

    I am in favor of him pursuing the Dem. nomination. Biden and his cohorts are ruining the country. Permanently. RFK,Jr will be a Dem. improvement, at least based on his public remarks to date. Let us not forget the Biden, plus extended Biden family, moral and financial corruptions, about which I no longer harbor any doubts.

12. Final point:
    Widburg says, “RFK Jr. made common cause with conservatives but not because he’s conservative.”

    Do we need a Goldwater test passed before we form an alliance with someone useful? Makes for a smaller tent, surely.

13. hes smart to soft pedal some of his more exotic notions, he has ridiculous notions about energy, but thats most of the dems, even gabbard was for the green nude eel in the primaries,

14. Cicero:

    RFK Jr. promoted the whole “vaccines cause autism” scam. See this. He is also an extremist on the environment and would like to imprison those who won’t get with the program.

    He’s just as bad or worse than Biden, just in a different way.

15. marianne williamson, was on a similar wavelength, but thats the audience shes trying to appeal to, those unanchored to any traditional belief system so they go for the pagan dieties

16. Neo:
    the “vaccines cause autism” did not start as a scam. As I recall, it was the minute amounts of mercury in the preservatives that were suspect. By parents with autistic kids (not a picnic!) And methyl mercury is neurotoxic, as the Japanese have found.
    BTW, we still have no identified cause for autism! Even though the numbers are ballooning.

17. RFK Jr also takes the Trump/Tucker position on Ukraine. Since Tucker is off the air, he is more or less the only public figure taking that position. Don’t discount that.

    To be clear, I do not support RFK Jr. and would not vote for him under any conceivable circumstance.

    Nonetheless, RFK Jr. would beat Trump like a drum if both are the nominees.

18. I think he has more upside potential, for reasons I’ve spelled out, now the dems are crazy on all fronts and don’t care about working class interests, that has been made crystal clear,

19. He’s a crackpot. Pure and simple. The fact that he’s taken seriously anywhere is a sad testament to the state of our nation.

20. I’m with Neo on RFK Jr. A member of our extended family has refused to allow her son, now almost eleven, to be vaccinated for anything, including tetanus. RFK Jr. has long been a leader in the anti-vaccination movement.

21. Cicero:

    The numbers are ballooning because of changes in reimbursement and definition of the syndrome. They are not actually ballooning.

    The connection with vaccines was a scam from the start.

    See this and also this. And as far as I know, RFK Jr. has not abandoned it.

22. most the democrat platform today is utter lunacy, (connery accent added) yet they are driving us in that direction, through academia, corporate media, and the tech giants,

23. I think miguel cervantes has put his finger on a significant factor: “he does evince at least more working class concerns”. This is appealing to those on the right who focus heavily on the abandonment/betrayal of the working class by progressives and have come, quite rightly, to loath the corporate/academic ruling class. Especially now that abandonment/betrayal has metastasized into open contempt and hatred. Did y’all see the story today about some prog journalist vilifying De Santis’s wife as “WalMart Melania”?

    This is not an endorsement of RFK by the way, just an observation.

24. the daily basilisk, is vomitous trash, the digital version of the view,

25. AFAICT, all Kennedys are nuts.
    ==
    Joseph P. Kennedy had 29 grandchildren who survived infancy, give or take. The ones with known issues or known transgressions include one of the Lawford kids, one of Jean Smith’s, one of Teddy’s, and about five of Robert’s. Of course, quite a mess of things may have been covered up. Mostly, they seem like ordinary people who are by accident of birth abnormally wealthy. The more functional ones are society wives, or have a small enterprise they run fitfully, or work for non-profits in some capacity (or, combining category two and category three, work for non-profits founded by the family). A few have had careers in business or the professions you might expect of people with their advantages. Edward Kennedy Jr works for some sort of consulting or securities underwriting business, Christopher Kennedy runs the family real estate business, one of the Smiths practices law and another is a doctor.
    ==
    You’ll recall Dr. William Kennedy Smith beat the rap on a rape charge in 1991. Maybe not guilty and maybe a Scottish verdict, but you’ll recall the prosecutor located four women willing to sign sworn affidavits to the effect that he’d sexually assaulted them at one time or another, and in pretty much the same way. The whole mise en scene in that case suggested both decadence and an orchestrated cover up.
    ==
    You can also divine a weird sort of recklessness in their recreational conduct. Two of Joseph Kennedy’s grandchildren have dropped dead exercising, another was killed in a skiing accident (at a family gathering where, the previous day, Ethel Kennedy had been taken aside by a lodge official and asked to get her bloody kids under some kind of control as they were irritating other vacationers), and a great-grandchild along with her son drowned chasing a lost beach ball in a canoe. One of the grandchildren and one of the great-grandchildren died of drug overdoses. Another left his brother’s gf paralyzed via reckless driving.
    ==
    RFK aside, they’re not crazy. A mess of them are decadent and a mess of them fancy ordinary rules of personal conduct don’t apply to them.

26. a plurality of them are crazy,

27. Pre-covid I was on the same page as many here: antivax=nutcase, and all vaccines=good.

    Post-covid: I want to see the data. I don’t trust “all vaccines are good”. The people I previously thought of as nutcases actually have some very good data backing up *some* of their statements. That is not to say I believe everything they say either. But I don’t believe everything a pro-vaccine person tells me anymore. Digging into the pre-Covid vaccine era you find there was a lot of fast and loose “trust me” and all the same stuff you saw with the Covid vaccine. Nothing with the Coivd vaccine BS was new, they were just caught this time.

    I do agree with his position on Ukraine, and the non-interventionist side will be proven right as we always are from Vietnam to Afghanistan, where the end-result will be the same as not doing anything, just the pro-war crowd needs to kill 100s of 1000s first.

    Otherwise I think he is a kook, but I do find this Kennedy amusing spinning up mostly the lefties. He doesn’t have a chance but he is more fun to watch than presidential entrant Pence.

28. whatever:

    You are creating a false dichotomy on vaccines. No one here said anything remotely like “all vaccines good.” In fact, not only is that not the case, but all vaccines have risks. It is a risk/benefit question, and for most vaccines the benefits outweigh the risks.

    Also, in particular the data on vaccines and autism is fraudulent. In addition to the two posts on the subject I linked to in my comment to Cicero at 8:01 PM, I have written MANY on the COVID 19 vaccine. To be rather blunt, there’s plenty of crap written about it from both the pro and the con sides, and I am tired of playing whack-a-mole on this.

29. @neo:You are creating a false dichotomy on vaccines. No one here said anything remotely like “all vaccines good.”

    It’s the “which side” heuristic again. People listen only long enough until they think they can tell you are on the “pro-vaccine side” and then (if on the “anti-vaccine side”) they attribute everything they ever think heard in favor of vaccines to your position.

    The COVID vaccines were not like other vaccines. I’m not convinced they were any more or less dangerous than any vaccine (which is hardly at all), but I am convinced the vast majority of people who took it derived so little benefit that it didn’t really make sense for them to take it. Depending on how I order those sentences, people can put me on the “pro vaccine side” or the “anti vaccine side” and then do to me what is being done to you here.

30. You are creating a false dichotomy on vaccines. No one here said anything remotely like “all vaccines good.””- Neo

    That was in fact the official line, and why the definition of vaccine was changed to allow the covid shots to be called vaccines. As noted by another commenter – they were just caught this time, which raises the question – which other vaccines are not really vaccines, or were subject to the same dodgy testing regimes for authorisation that the covid shot was.

    Alot of eyes were opened to how corrupt the process is, and alot of criticism of vaccines in the past was dismissed based largely on goodwill attributed to vaccines such as polio. People know question how much of the conventional wisdom is overstated or completely fabricated. Given what we now know about big pharma, its hardly a fringe position to be skeptical.

31. Personally this sort of reminds me of Kanye West. I mean Previously RFK jr was definitely a creature of the left now some on the right like him because he’s doing damage to the left. Similarly the left like Kanye at first because he said Bush hated blacks but then abandoned him when he seemed to like Trump. These days it looks like most think Kanye is just crazy.

32. Is Bobby Jr a pedophile? No?
    Does he have family members in no-show jobs? No?

    Well then, it’s all the way with RFK Jr (up to the general). We’ll take our chances after that.

33. LordAzrael:

    I said no one here is saying “all vaccines are good.” Now you’re moving the goalposts to “That was in fact the official line.”

    It is the official line that all vaccines recommended to the public are “good” in the sense that the cost/benefit ratio comes out as a net benefit for the populations for which they are recommended. For the most part the evidence indicates that is correct. But no one – including even the CDC – does not acknowledge the existence of risks in vaccines.

    And yes, RNA vaccines are a different type of vaccine, and that was clear from the start to anyone paying attention. RNA vaccines started to be developed in the 1990s, and although they were called “vaccines” no one was hiding that they used a different method than traditional live or killed vaccines (see this). In fact, there are many different types of vaccines, and they are all called “vaccines.” Here is an overview of the types.

    The definition of “vaccine” was not changed just for the COVID shots. RNA vaccines were called that when they were being developed, long before COVID. They are called vaccines because they teach the body to recognize and fight a bacteria or virus in the future.

34. Moreover, the Biden abomination must end – by whatever means.

35. Neo,

    It may be true those rna vaccines were called vaccines. It is false that the official definition was changed back then. Itwas changed in September 2021 to remove “immunity” from the definition. What “vaccine” was introduced in 2021 that did not create immunity in the recipient? Under the definition existing prior to Sept 21, the covid shots would not be vaccines, and would have not been entitled to the legal protections granted to vaccines approved by the FDA.

    https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-976069264061

36. And to clarify – the official line was – “its a vaccine” relying on the generally accepted goodwill of the public that term. Many health professionals used just that argument -“its just like the flu shot, or childhood vaccinations”. The term implied it granted immunity (and health professional expressly said it did, and this assumed immunity was the justification for vaccine mandates and social exclusion of the unvaccinated) and was akin to other vaccines the public was familiar with.

37. Did y’all see the story today about some prog journalist vilifying De Santis’s wife as “WalMart Melania”?
    ==
    Katie Baker, who has had stints at The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Newsweek, Jezebel, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She’s the issue of UC Berkeley. Age 35. Once upon a time, mean girls grew out of it or learned to be much subtler.

38. I do agree with his position on Ukraine, and the non-interventionist side will be proven right as we always are from Vietnam to Afghanistan, where the end-result will be the same as not doing anything, just the pro-war crowd needs to kill 100s of 1000s first.
    ==
    The non-interventionist side has never been proven right in any circumstance.

39. Gotta understand that DeSantis is THE new Fascist leader and Florida THE new Fascist state.
    As such, ANYTHING goes. Everything is permitted.
    (That is, WRT anything DeSantis says or does, or anyone he’s close to.)

    That’s right: the Democratic Party and it’s Media attack-dog hacks are so predictable…. They’re rottweilers with bylines; so, like rottweilers, can they really be blamed for their knee-jerk depradations??)

40. Great comment by Frederick, including the debate/rhetoric heuristic, but I particularly liked,

    I’m not convinced they were any more or less dangerous than any vaccine (which is hardly at all), but I am convinced the vast majority of people who took it derived so little benefit that it didn’t really make sense for them to take it.

    I think this is exactly right.

41. @LordAzrael: What “vaccine” was introduced in 2021 that did not create immunity in the recipient?

    No vaccine was ever guaranteed to produce immunity in everyone who took it. That’s not a new thing. That’s you not paying attention before 2021, and assuming that all vaccines create immunity in all who take them, and now after 2021 you are learning for the first time that this is not what vaccines do, and thinking it’s some kind of change.

    Here’s an article from 2014 about the waning efficacy of the TDap vaccine that kids get:

    The researchers found that, overall, Tdap efficacy after time of receipt declined as follows: 75.3% (95% CI, 55.2-86.5) for vaccines received in 2012; 68.2% (95% CI, 60.9-74.1) for vaccines received during 2011; 34.5% (95% CI, 19.9-46.4) for vaccines received in 2010; and 11.9% (95% CI, –11.1% to 30.1%) for vaccines received during 2008-2009.

    According to the researchers, increased time since vaccination was associated with increased pertussis risk.

    Flu vaccines never stopped people from ever getting flu again. Where have you been living? Here’s an article from 2018 where the CDC says that year’s flu shot is 36% effective. Nowhere do they say you will be “immune” to flu if you took the flu vaccine.

    They were saying the same things then that have been since about the COVID vaccine, but because you didn’t pay attention, you thought they “changed” things.

    “You’re 36% less likely to get the flu and see the doctor if you get a flu shot,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday.

    “If a young child gets a flu shot, he or she is 59% less likely to get the virus and have to go to the doctor,” Azar said. “Getting the flu shot is the same kind of sensible precaution as buckling your seat belt. If you got the flu shot but you end up catching the flu, it could be less severe and less likely to land you in the hospital.”

    Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams also recommended the flu shot and urged parents, in particular, to get their children vaccinated.

    “The flu vaccination is safe,” he said. “It is still your best defense.”

    He noted that three-quarters of the 63 children who have died of flu this season had not been vaccinated.

42. As long as .gov docs get secret royalties, I am not inclined to trust them.

43. Here’s another article, NPR from 2010, explaining that vaccines are not guaranteed to produce immunity in all who take them:

    …some vaccines work well — and some, not so much.

    “There are at least two systems in the immune function,” Katz says. “One is called antibody, and the other is called cell-mediated immunity. And with most infections, we’d like to have both of those active.”

    The human body uses those immune systems to fight off viruses and bacteria. Once those systems are activated, they can remember the bugs and stand ready to fend off new infections for years — or even for a lifetime.

    “We think that’s what we’ve achieved with measles,” Katz says. “We think that’s what we’ve achieved with polio.”

    But other vaccines, whether because of the nature of the microbe or the vaccine itself, don’t confer lifetime immunity. The vaccine for pertussis, or whooping cough, is one of those.

    “We’re seeing right now in California, where they’re having a large outbreak, that a number of cases are individuals who’ve received the vaccine,” Katz says.

    Another article, from 2011:

    
    Vaccines do not guarantee complete protection from a disease. Sometimes this is because the host’s immune system simply doesn’t respond adequately or at all. This may be due to a lowered immunity in general (diabetes, steroid use, HIV infection) or because the host’s immune system does not have a B cell capable of generating antibodies to that antigen.

    Even if the host develops antibodies, the human immune system is not perfect and in any case the immune system might still not be able to defeat the infection.

    Adjuvants are typically used to boost immune response. Most often aluminium adjuvants are used, but adjuvants like squalene are also used in some vaccines and more vaccines with squalene and phosphate adjuvants are being tested.

    The efficacy or performance of the vaccine is dependent on a number of factors:

    the disease itself (for some diseases vaccination performs better than for other diseases)
    the strain of vaccine (some vaccinations are for different strains of the disease)
    whether one kept to the timetable for the vaccinations
    some individuals are ‘non-responders’ to certain vaccines, meaning that they do not generate antibodies even after being vaccinated correctly
    other factors such as ethnicity or genetic predisposition.

    When a vaccinated individual does develop the disease vaccinated against, the disease is likely to be milder than without vaccination.

44. “…which is hardly at all…”

    I would submit that we simply don’t know…YET.
    Or rather, we have been told some some terrible stories, but the statistics on the damaging side effects are not all in even if those that we’ve read about are gruesome. But what to believe?
    Since there are stories and there are stories.
    And then there are stories.
    (And why should we be expected to believe any of them, unfortunately…? So we end up believing the ones we choose to, generally speaking.)
    IOW, whom to believe? What to believe?

    We DO know that the folks that insist that things are generally OK are the same folks who’ve been lying and covering up consistently for the past three-plus years.
    We know Fauci’s been lying.
    We know Brix’s been lying. (She told us, herself…oh-so-airily.)
    We know Daszak’s been lying along with most of the rest of Fauci’s “army” of co-conspirators.

    We know that “deaths by COVID” were artificially inflated while Trump was president.
    We also know that “deaths by COVID” were—mysteriously?—DEflated once Trump was out of the picture. (To be sure, the trajectory of pandemics is that they become less virulent with time…. but what about the scandal WRT changing the PCR test threshold cycles starting in 2021? Talk about “moving the goalposts”…)

    The biggest giveaway of all? That Pfizer DEMANDED that it NOT BE SUBJECT to any lawsuits for 75 years following the roll-out of the vaccine, which was ultimately tossed out by the presiding judge.
    (And those guys are supposed to be geniuses.)
    YMMV.

45. Neo – If the fda, big pharma, medical journals, and the cdc among others had not shown themselves to be untrustworthy about the Covid snafu, I would not be suspicious on vaccines.

    The amount of vaccines recommended has gone up over the years.

    There may be an issue of side effects of multiple vaccines being taken at the same time. Or the increase in vaccines given.

    And the lack of data per Steve Kirsch is suspicious.

    I do appreciate RFK Jr at least bringing up certain areas, that’s being censored for discussion. With the amount of conspiracy theories that have been proven to be correct, I’m not sure what is true.

    Immunization Schedule:
    https://www.healthpartners.com/blog/childhood-immunization-schedule-by-age/

46. @Barry Meislin:We do know that the folks that insist that things are generally OK are the same folks who’ve been lying and covering up consistently for the past three-plus years.

    @Ray Soca:If the fda, big pharma, medical journals, and the cdc among others had not shown themselves to be untrustworthy about the Covid snafu,

    Just more “which side-ism”.

47. his fauci expose had a lot of receipts, at how vaccine testing and deployment is carried out in the third world,

48. “…Just more…”

    Just?
    Might not this be considered A crux of the matter?

49. The fact that he is a Kennedy is reason enough to be wary of him. The same for “Bush”, “Clinton”, and any other poltical families. Republicans fall for Liberals whom they agree with on one or two issues (such as Tulsi Gabbard who was a Bernie supporter in 2016, an open borders advocate, as well as a Putin apologist).

50. Very interesting blog, thank you! First comment:
    There is a profound level of frustration and division in US politics. Many Americans feel (rightly, IMO) that they are not represented at the national level. To take a few examples:
    The borders of Ukraine are sacrosanct, the borders of the US are irrelevant.
    The “Fiscal Responsibility Act” will see the National Debt rise to $50trillion by 2030.
    Thugs, lowlifes, career criminals, and bums are indulged or lionized, while responsible citizens are terroized by alphabet agency thugs, incarcerated, tortured, and sentenced to ridiculous prison terms by kangaroo courts.
    Political leaders in Washington DC routinely talk of adding “nuclear 1st strike” doctrine to US military policy.
    Corruption is rampant at the highest levels of political leadership.
    The list of issues is endless; who do these people think they are and who do they represent?
    So a relatively minor politician like RFK jr calls for an end to the Ukraine war, or at least an end to US involvement. He also calls for the “troops to come home” and for the hundreds of US military bases around the world to be evacuated. That is a popular policy in middle America.
    So people sieze upon a potential leader. Trump is a classic example, although a man less suited to be a politician, never mind POTUS, is hard to imagine. I voted for him twice though; in 2016 because literally anybody would have been better than Hilary, and again in 2020 because Biden.
    This situation (the frustration) is going to get worse because it is quite obvious that only a democrat can now be elected POTUS. Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and probably Georgia as well, are locked up for the democrats by election management. There is no path to 270 electoral votes for any republican candidate. If Biden is still alive in 2024, and he stands, he will be re-elected.
    So more war, more debt, more demographic destruction, more identity politics.

51. they stole the election in order to wreck the country, I don’t forget that rfk jr pushed on this door of ersatz science, but he did get the number of mr science, fauci, a character even michael crichton couldn’t have imagined, as much as rand paul,

52. A big reason for some conservative support for RFK Jr. is his opposition to the Deep State because of his belief that they killed his father and uncle. You don’t have to believe that the Deep State killed JFK and RFK to believe that the FBI, CIA and the entire federal intelligence and investigative apparatus needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. Some conservatives see RFK as a useful vehicle to shine light on Deep State corruption, whether or not they share all his beliefs.

53. The Deep State did not kill his father or his uncle.

54. Art Deco:

    I never said that the Deep State killed JFK and RFK but RFK Jr. sincerely believes they did. A few years ago there were many conservatives that never would have believed that the FBI and CIA would conspire to sabotage the candidacy and administration of a sitting President. I think a big reason why some conservatives support RFK Jr. is because they no longer trust government institutions. They see RFK Jr. as a weapon against the same institutions that they now believe are irredeemably corrupt. They don’t need to believe everything that RFK Jr. believes about vaccines or assassinations, they only need to believe that he will fight the institutions that conservatives feel have betrayed them.

55. @Barry Meislin:Might not this be considered A crux of the matter?

    Not of the matter–reality is what it is, doesn’t matter who the people describing it are–but it’s the crux of the rule you are choosing to use to filter what evidence what you are willing to accept. By saying you’re only going to listen to people you think are on your “side”, you’re creating your own bubble of filtered reality to live in.

    That’s not a smart or a safe thing to do, since reality reaches into your bubble when it can.

56. They’re glad that somebody in the Democratic Party is opposing Biden and they like his stand on Big Pharma. There may also be a little remaining glimmer in the Kennedy name (remember the Q cultists who gathered in Dallas for JFK Jr.’s triumphal return). Also, there’s a feeling that anybody who can throw a monkey wrench into the system can’t be all bad: somebody who shakes things up could loosen the grip of the powers that be and open the way to change. And at a time when Trump is constantly slagging DeSantis and DeSantis is starting to fight back, voting in the Democrat primary looks like an easier choice.

    I’d agree that RFK Jr. wouldn’t be good for conservatives or Magaites or the country. I doubt he’s an anti-Semite, though. There’s a wide range of opinion in Israel on what should be done in the Middle East. We might want to consider that for us as well.

57. They’re glad that somebody in the Democratic Party is opposing Biden and they like his stand on Big Pharma. There may also be a little remaining glimmer in the Kennedy name (remember the Q cultists who gathered in Dallas for JFK Jr.’s triumphal return).

    Also, there’s a feeling that anybody who can throw a monkey wrench into the system can’t be all bad: somebody who shakes things up could loosen the grip of the powers that be and open the way to change. And at a time when Trump is constantly slagging DeSantis and DeSantis is starting to fight back, voting in the Democrat primary looks like an easier choice.

    I’d agree that RFK Jr. wouldn’t be good for conservatives or Magaites or the country. I doubt he’s an anti-Semite, though. There’s a wide range of opinion in Israel on what should be done in the Middle East. We might want to consider that for us as well.

58. I would have never given RFK Jr. the time of day, but I listened to the “debate” between him and Alan Dershowitz who took the position that the government has the right to force you to be vaccinated. It was hard to believe that Dershowitz was a constitutional law professor at Harvard based on that interchange–insightfully disappointing to say the least. But what surprised me was the information cited by RFK Jr. regarding the science research that has paved the way for the exponential growth in numbers of vaccines on the register. It is a fallacy that he is anti-vax. That is the broad-brush that is applied to discount any credence to what he and his organization have uncovered with regard to the actual science. His position is that better vaccinations need to be developed by way of proper scientific protocols. I put a lot of stock in science so that is how I listened to the information. I once held Neo’s view regarding the risk/benefit aspect of vaccination. I could no longer support that based on the shoddy manner in which approval is garnered. Over the last several years we have witnessed the uncovering of the fraudulent nature of our ABC agencies. The FDA is no better than the FBI, CIA, DOJ and on and on. A very sad truth. None of this makes me a potential supporter of RFK Jr. I hold out little hope for the turnaround needed in our ailing Republic by way of the voting booth, compromised as it is. In the present configuration, our government structures remind me more of white-washed tombs than a way out of our present morass.

59. Sharon W:

    Kennedy has distorted research findings and used bogus research and truncted quotes as well, and has not recanted those things. He has also funded organizations that do those things. In addition, as I wrote earlier, he is an AGW fanatic who has said he would like to imprison those who disagree with him.

    Also see this. And then we have this from RFK Jr.

    Also, RFK Jr. does not believe Sirhan Sirhan killed his father. Incredible.

60. Also, RFK Jr. does not believe Sirhan Sirhan killed his father. Incredible.
    ==
    IIRC, Vincent Bugliosi’s take on it was that there was reason to believe there was a second gunman. If that was the case, my wager would be that Sirhan has been protecting one of his brothers all these years. It was Gerald Posner’s guess that the mysterious ‘Raoul’ in James Earl Ray’s account was actually one of Ray’s brothers.

61. Neo, my comment is not addressing all things RFK Jr. has said or believed about “xy and z” but pertaining to what was cited in that interchange, that was information I never knew and VERY IMPORTANT to the subject at hand; verifiable and damning to the cause of let’s vaccinate according to the burgeoning register. In combination with what I know about the COVID-19 vaccines that were and continue to be (with California taxpayer provided dollars) promulgated, I’m confident his position is the better one. LOTS of need for actual scientific improvement regarding this matter.

62. Sharon W:

    I was merely pointing out some of his other lapses of judgment, as well as his misstatements and errors about previous vaccines and their relation to autism. I do not find him to be a credible person in general, and – as I’ve said many times – although I agree that the CDC has lied about tons of things connected with COVID and I do not trust them, I most definitely also do not trust RFK Jr. on the subject of vaccines or much of anything else.

    My own research into studies cited by those arguing for the heightened dangerousness of the COVID vaccine has turned up a bunch of misstatements and lies as well. I have probably looked at close to 50 studies cited by people as showing certain evidence about the heightened dangerousness of the COVID vaccine and not one is as such people have represented it.

    I agree that the vaccine has risks, and I’ve written about them many times. But I am very much against those who exaggerate and misrepresent (that is, lie about) those risks found in the results of studies that I can read for myself and can ascertain are being misrepresented. That is constantly happening. The complexity of research and of interpreting results, and most people’s ignorance about that, make it very easy for clever people to mislead people.

63. Art Deco:

    As far as I know, Bugliosi floated that in 1975 as a possibility, but never talked about it much afterwards. His book on JFK didn’t mention it at all, as far as I know – and I read just about the whole thing, all gazillion pages of it. I doubt very much Bugliosi ever believed it except as a hypothetical and probably abandoned it somewhere along the line. In a quick search, I can’t find anything he said about it after 1975.

    Bugliosi wrote a fabulous book on the JFK assassination, but it was the result of over a decade of intense research. There is no evidence I can find that he gave much time to research RFK’s assassination, and his opinion wouldn’t mean anything much to me in the absence of that.

64. A message from RFK Jr. to Roger Waters.

    “Roger,” Mr Kennedy, the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, tweeted on Saturday. “You are the global hero Orwell had in mind when he said ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” The high priests of the totalitarian orthodoxies are trying to silence you with censorship, gaslighting and defamation. Please keep speaking truth to power!”

65. Frederick, you’ve tried an absolutism argument. ok vaccines were never guaranteed to produce an immunity. However the official CDC definition until 2021 stated that a vaccine did produce an immunity – not a perfect immunity but did. The fact earlier vaccines did not supports my argument, rather than debunk it. I stated that given what we know about the covid vaccine not producing immunity how many earlier vaccines also did not meet the definition. Your argument isn’t proving what you think it is.

66. @LordAzrael:However the official CDC definition until 2021 stated that a vaccine did produce an immunity

    Where was this “official” definition stated and what official granted it its “official” status? What does “official definition” even imply in a scientific context?

    The CDC, to my knowledge, and consistent with the evidence I linked to, has always acknowledged that vaccines have a range of efficacies and that vaccines don’t work for everyone. Every scientist who worked on developing vaccines has always known and acknowledged this, and every paper and every study ever done on every vaccine has always acknowledged this and shown in their clinical results that the vaccines don’t make every person immune.

67. “Providing immunity to no one” is vastly different from “doesn’t provide immunity to anyone”. Another strawman in your part.

    The cdc definition was in the article I linked above to prove, contrary to neo’s statement, that up until 2021 the cdc definition of a vaccine did include a requirement to produce immunity. No mention of a requirement to produce 100%, but something that produced no immunity was not a vaccine. Its known as either a therapeudic if taken to reduce symptoms once infected, And hence did not enjoy the immunity from litigation that cdc approved vaccines did – its the legal consequences of being classed as a vaccine that are important here.

68. “…stories…”

    “Dr. Scott Atlas to Newsmax: I ‘Was 100 Percent Correct’; ‘I Don’t Expect an Apology’ “—
    https://www.newsmax.com/politics/scott-atlas-white-house-coronavirus/2023/06/06/id/1122619/

    More stories….
    “The Great COVID Death Coverup”—
    https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/07/covid-death-coverup.aspx

    So WHO we gonna believe?
    (WHO do we wanna believe?)

    Disclaimer: I’d really, really like to believe the authorities. I really would.
    (That’s just me, maybe.)
    But I can’t.
    Nor can I believe their statistics.
    The key question being: Why should we believe ANYTHING they’ve told us…or ANYTHING they are saying (or ANYTHING they WILL SAY…)?

    File under: Problem.

69. I read the first half of RFK Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci. I got the impression that Kennedy is basically honest, but not a good thinker. There are a lot of interesting facts in the book, but they are not tied together properly. (An interesting fact I didn’t know: most of the FDA’s budget comes from the drug companies they regulate.)

    I think he’s gullible, and not very smart. But his honesty is attractive at a time when so many people are so willing to lie. He seems to make up his own mind about things, which is another thing we don’t see a lot lately. I’m glad he’s in the race for those reasons, and because he’s widening the Overton window to include some of the right things (questioning Fauci, etc.), but I hope he never gets elected to anything.

    He demonstrated his gullibility today, tweeting about the so-called UFO whistleblower. This UFO guy is one person who claims the government is covering up actual non-human vehicles and alien pilot bodies. This person once held a government position; apparently some people think that makes him credible, which is a laugh. He says he has evidence but he won’t show it to anyone. He cites unnamed sources who assured him this is true. Right.

    There’s a good book about the anti-vax movement called The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin. He’s a good reporter, and details all of the major vaccines and how they were introduced to the public. He points out that during some early vaccine trials, the government was not honest about some of the results, which he says laid the foundation for future skepticism. He goes into a lot of detail about the recent anti-vax movement (pre-COVID), about which he is extremely critical. His emphasis, as the title implies, is on the way bad ideas move through society. In a way, it’s a very sad book.

70. Correction: Apparently it is not just one guy talking about UFOs, there are a few other people claiming to support his allegations.

71. bob lazar was the name I was going with who had a dodgy rep, the cia covered up a whole host of things along the way, so did the joint chiefs, see operation northwoods, the nordstream op seems to be like the 5420 op that provoked the gulf of tonkin, if unilateral assets or actual western personnel were involved, lets not even count the whole saudi support network in the 28 pages that were left ouf of the 9/11 report, like a hot dog with just the bun

72. bugliosi did do an extensive deep dive, into the story, it cured his bush derangement fever early in the decade, moldea did some less extensive reviews,
    as an expert on the mob, the role of dommarea, the mobster that employed sirhan, probably drew him into the story, rfk jr fancies himself hamlet because of these circumstances, and the last 50 years probably hasn’t given less reason for skepticism,

73. Enroll in the Harvard University Kennedy School of Driving today!

74. LordAzrael:

    You write: “The cdc definition was in the article I linked above to prove, contrary to neo’s statement, that up until 2021 the cdc definition of a vaccine did include a requirement to produce immunity.”

    I didn’t make a statement about the CDC defining vaccines in that manner.

75. the cdc has proven that scientific rigor is no longer in its objectives,

76. Here’s the comment I was referencing.

    “Lord Azrael” “The cdc definition was in the article I linked above to prove, contrary to neo’s statement, that up until 2021 the cdc definition of a vaccine did include a requirement to produce immunity.”

    “Neo – I didn’t make a statement about the CDC defining vaccines in that manner”

    “Neo – The definition of “vaccine” was not changed just for the COVID shots. RNA vaccines were called that when they were being developed, long before COVID. They are called vaccines because they teach the body to recognize and fight a bacteria or virus in the future.”

    You said the vaccine definition was not changed “for the covid shots”. It was changed in 2021. Leaked emails now show that the change was because of the covid shots (https://www.theepochtimes.com/emails-confirm-why-cdc-changed-definitions-of-vaccine-vaccinated_4590628.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=allsides)

    From the article

    Newly obtained emails confirm that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed its definition for both “vaccine” and “vaccinated” because people were pointing out that the definitions didn’t seem to apply to the COVID-19 vaccines.

    “The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition,” Alycia Downs, a CDC official, wrote in an email to a colleague on Aug. 25, 2021.

    The definition is located on the CDC webpage on immunization basics.

    “Vaccine” had been defined since at least 2011 by the CDC as a product that triggers immunity, while “vaccination” was described as an injection that prevents a disease, according to archived versions of the page. However, a flood of inquiries on the definitions was triggered by the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been increasingly ineffective against infection by the virus that causes COVID-19, the emails show.

    “Our question is how is the CDC and the rest of the world allowed to call the shot a vaccination when it doesn’t even meet your own definition,” one person wrote to the CDC.

    “Right-wing covid-19 pandemic deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines,” another said.”

77. LordAzrael:

    I repeat: I never said the CDC defined vaccines as conferring immunity. And I did not reference the CDC definition; I used other websites for the definition, and I said that RNA vaccines were already called vaccines when they were being developed, long before COVID. They are called vaccines because they teach the body to recognize and fight a bacteria or virus in the future.

    You are distorting what I said.

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