We are probably alive today because Jack Kennedy checked our military’s impulses.

We were three during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as such have no memory of it. Our introduction came much later, during the Seventies, thanks to an ABC dramatization starring William Devane as Jack, and Future Fake President Martin Sheen as Bobby.

The Missiles of October holds up pretty well four decades on, both against our teen memory and what we later learned. But you’ll have to forgive Sheen’s terrible Boston accent to get through it.

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Zsa Zsa Gabor died today, and we got to thinking how she was famous for being famous while we were growing up, and that it was sister Eva who starred in the absurdist masterpiece of our youth, and then we wondered whether Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz was a fan of Green Acres, so we went Googling for references, and then this happened.

We regret the error.

On Monday, freelance agents of the Russian government will vote to elect Donald Trump the President of the United States of America, following a successful campaign directed by Vladimir Putin to undermine the candidacy of his opponent.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Instead, the Russians were supposed to launch a land war on the United States, breezing to success until a group of plucky Colorado teens resisted them. We were supposed to fight the Russkies, not welcome them.

Silly us, we thought Americans had a problem with tyranny. We should have known better.

And the thing is, we used to.

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If power, as an unindicted war criminal once said, is the ultimate aphrodisiac, there are a lot of Republicans sucking Donald Trump’s cock right now.

And swallowing.

Hard.

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John Glenn, American Hero of the Space Age, Dies at 95 [NYT]

The night of John F. Kennedy’s funeral — three days following his assassination — Lyndon Johnson met at the State Department with the world leaders who had traveled to Washington to pay their respects.

Although LBJ had been vice-president almost three years, he was not considered a vital part of the Kennedy Administration, and had been excluded from any significant role from the start. That fall, rumors had been circulating that he might be dropped from the ticket in 1964. JFK’s Harvard-educated Best & Brightest regarded Johnson as an embarrassing Texas throwback.

And now he was the most powerful man in the world.

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Cuba’s Fidel Castro, former president, dies aged 90 [BBC]