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Lem Johns, LBJ Bodyguard, Dies; Witness To JFK Assassination, Spattered With Paint In Australia

May 11, 2014

Lem Johns, the United States Secret Service agent who was spattered with paint during President Lyndon Johnson’s visit to Australia in 1966, has died, at the age of 88.

Johns, with his right hand raised, can be seen in the picture below on the right hand side of Johnson’s limousine. The incident occurred during a demonstration in Melbourne.

LBJ

Johnson’s visit in October 1966 came just one month before the federal election of November 26. The election was conducted amidst vigorous public debate about Australia’s commitment of conscripted troops to the war in Vietnam. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Ex-Presidents, Political History Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Political Quotations – Set 2

Oct 11, 2008
  1. Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. – Mignon McLaughlin, author.

  2. When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. – Confucius (551-479 BC).

  3. At the end of a long and probably very boring meal (at a formal dinner), (British Prime Minister) Macmillan turned to Madame de Gaulle and asked politely what she was looking forward to in her retirement. Quick as a flash the elderly lady replied: “A penis.” Macmillan had been trained all his life never to appear shocked, but even he was a bit taken aback. After drawling out a series of polite platitudes, – “Well, I can see your point of view, don’t have much time for that sort of thing nowadays” – it gradually dawned on him to his intense relief that what the old girl had actually said was “happiness.” – Paul Foot, in the essay A New Definition: The Quality of Life, British Medical Journal, VOLUME 321, DECEMBER 2000.

  4. The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life — the children; the twilight of life — the elderly; and the shadows of life — the sick, the needy and the handicapped. – Hubert Humphrey, Vice-President of the United States 1965-69.

  5. When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now, all I see are the dregs of the middle class. When will you middle class perverts stop using the Labor Party as a cultural spittoon? – Kim Beazley Snr to an ALP State Conference, circa 1970.

    6. [Read more…]

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Sir Robert Menzies Announces Military Commitment To South Vietnam

Apr 29, 1965

Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies announced his government’s military commitment to South Vietnam in a speech to the House of Representatives on April 29, 1965.

Menzies said the government would provide an infantry batallion. He said: “The Australian Government is now in receipt of a request from the Government of South Vietnam for further military assistance.”

Menzies said the commitment had been made “after close consultation with the government of the United States”.

The Menzies government first provided assistance to South Vietnam in 1962 when it sent 30 military instructors to provide military training assistance. [Read more…]

Filed Under: ANZUS, Asia Tagged With: , , ,

The Great Society: Speech By President Lyndon B. Johnson

May 22, 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society speech was delivered exactly six months after he assumed the office, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

LBJ

Johnson gave the Commencement Address at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kennedy had originally been invited to speak.

The speech came to be seen as a major statement of Johnson’s domestic policy ambitions. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Audio, Ex-Presidents, Presidency, Video Tagged With: , , , ,