Legal Lunacy

The following true story came in first place in a Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.

 

A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of expensive cigars, then insured them against fire (among other things).

 

Within a month having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. The lawyer claimed the cigars were lost “in a series of small fires.”

 

Naturally, the insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious, but the lawyer sued and won.

 

The judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous.

 

Nevertheless, the judge stated that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire, and was therefore obligated to pay the claim.

 

Rather than go through a costly appeal procedure, the insurance company paid the lawyer $15,000 for his loss.

 

After the lawyer cashed the $15,000 check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson.

 

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

 

* * *

 

While the above story has a happy ending, sanity doesn’t always exist in legal matters, as exemplified by the following actual court cases.

 

On June 25, 2002, a woman was awarded $14.1 million by a NY state court after she was hit be a subway train. When it was later learned the woman had been attempting to commit suicide by lying on the tracks when the train hit her, the award was reduced 30 percent, to $9.9 million, because of her “comparative negligence.”

 

In 1998, Terrence Dickson of Bristol, PA, was in the process of burglarizing a house when he trapped himself in the garage which had a malfunctioning door opener and he was unable to re-enter the house because the door locked behind him. He spent eight days in the garage, surviving on a bag of dry dog food and a case of Pepsi. Dickson sued the homeowner’s insurance company, claiming undue mental anguish. The jury agreed and awarded him $500,000. Perhaps he should have sued his parents for mental incapacity as well.

 

In June, 1998, a similar solid citizen, 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles was awarded $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman was too busy stealing the hubcaps at the time to notice that someone was at the wheel.

 

In 2000, Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, sued a restaurant because she slipped on a wet spot and injured herself. Even though the wet spot was created when she threw her drink at her boyfriend, 30 seconds earlier, the restaurant was ordered to pay $113,500 in damages.

 

Kara Walton of Claymont, DE, tried to sneak through a bathroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying a three dollar cover charge, fell to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. She sued the nightclub and was awarded $12,000 plus dental expenses.

 

In January, 2000, Kathleen Robertson of Austin, TX, sued a furniture store after breaking her ankle tripping over her own son who was running amuck inside the store. She was awarded $780,000.

 

In November, 2000, Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City purchase a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip, Mr. Grazinski merged onto the freeway, set the cruise control to 70 mph and left the driver seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not too surprisingly to most people with an IQ above that of a turnip, the motor home crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not indicating in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a brand new Winnebago.

 

If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need lawyers.

 

A friend from Minnesota recently told me that you could no longer dry your laundry on an outdoor clothesline in the suburbs surrounding Minneapolis. Apparently, it’s the law.

 

Most people I know just want to live a normal life with a basic set of rules protecting them from unreasonable intrusions of other citizens and government agents. Unfortunately, we live in a litigious world of overzealous lawmakers who often make a mockery of judicial restraint by forcing a multitude of rules upon society that seem outright ridiculous.

 

While researching legal sites on the Internet, I discovered numerous absurd laws that actually exist.

 

In spite of the principle of separation of church and state, many frivolous laws pertain only to Sunday.

 

• In Florida, it’s illegal for single, divorced, or widowed women to parachute jump on Sunday afternoons.
• In Massachusetts, it’s unlawful to deliver diapers on Sunday.
• In Thomasville, North Carolina, it’s illegal to fly an airplane over the town on Sundays between 11 AM and 1 PM.
• In Providence, Rhode Island, it’s illegal to sell both toothpaste and a toothbrush to the same customer on a Sunday.

 

Many laws still on the books are clearly out of date.

 

• In Hollywood, California, it’s illegal to drive more than 2000 sheep at the same time down Hollywood Boulevard.
• In Utah, it’s illegal for pharmacists to sell gunpowder as a headache cure.
• In Pennsylvania, motorists driving along country roads are required to stop every mile, send up a rocket and wait 10 minutes for the road to be cleared of livestock before continuing.
• In Nebraska, motorists approaching a horse at night are required to stop their vehicle, send up rockets and throw a tarp over their car to conceal it from the horse.

 

Special rules often exist for women.

 

• In Oklahoma, women are forbidden from doing their own hair, unless licensed by the state.
• In Cleveland, Ohio, women are not allowed to wear patent-leather shoes.
• In Michigan, a woman’s hair legally belongs to her husband.
• In Helena, Montana, a woman cannot dance on a saloon table unless her clothes weigh more than three pounds, two ounces.
• In Kentucky, a law reads that no female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within the state unless escorted by at least two officers or unless armed with a club. An amendment to this law states that it shall not apply to females weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it apply to female horses.

 

Some laws are downright insane.

 

• In Tennessee, it’s illegal to operate a motor vehicle while sleeping.
• In Alabama, it’s illegal to operate a motor vehicle while blindfolded.
• In Virginia, bribery is prohibited by anyone other than candidates for public office.
• In Seattle, Washington, it’s illegal to carry a concealed weapon greater than six feet long.
• In New Hampshire, it’s against the law to tap your feet or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant or café.
• In Texas, to go barefoot requires a five-dollar permit.
• In Oregon, a dead person cannot be required to serve on a jury.

 

Naturally, all this nonsense has inspired me to come up with a few proposals of my own.

 

• In Alaska, it shall be illegal to put lipstick on a pit bull.
• In Arizona, it shall be illegal to refer to the Grand Canyon as a really big hole.
• In Arkansas, it shall be illegal to name a mule after a Baptist preacher.
• In California, it shall be illegal to yell "Fire" or "Charlie Sheen" in a crowded theater.
• In Delaware, it shall be illegal to refer to Joe Biden as the Veep of the Peeps.
• In Florida, it shall be illegal to sell sea shells by the seashore.
• In Georgia, it shall be illegal to expose a red neck or green teeth on Sunday.
• In Hawaii, it shall be illegal to refer to any body parts as the Big Kahuna.
• In Idaho, it shall be illegal to substitute a tomato for a potato in a public restaurant.
• In Iowa, it shall be illegal to wear a John Deere hat while driving a Massey-Ferguson tractor.
• In Kentucky, it shall be illegal to marry your first cousin until after her thirteenth birthday.
• In Maine, it shall be illegal to whistle near a moose during rutting season.
• In Maryland, it shall be illegal to name your first child Mary unless she's a Capricorn or a guy.
• In Massachusetts, it shall be illegal to graduate from college unless you can spell the name of the state.
• In Minnesota, it shall be illegal to fish from a three-legged stool on a frozen lake if it is not frozen.
• In Mississippi, it shall be illegal to utilize explosives or false teeth when catfish noodling.
• In Missouri, it shall be illegal to say “show me” to anyone wearing a raincoat on a sunny day.
• In Nebraska, it shall be illegal to call someone a cornhusker unless they can actually husk corn.
• In New Hampshire, it shall be illegal to ask someone whatever happened to Old Hampshire.
• In New Mexico, it shall be illegal to do the Mexican Hat Dance with an older hat.
• In New York, it shall be illegal to call yourself a Yankee Doodle Dandy unless you're a hairdresser.
• In Ohio, it shall be illegal to discard anything into Lake Erie that's more toxic than Courtney Love.
• In Oklahoma, it shall be illegal to use the phrase "sooner rather than later" during a marriage ceremony.
• In Rhode Island, it shall be illegal to tell tourists that they're really not an island.
• In South Dakota, it shall be illegal to ride a pink Cushman scooter into Sturgis during biker week.
• In Tennessee, it shall be illegal to operate a liquor still in a hollow within 20 feet of dead car.
• In Texas, it shall be illegal to wear a ten-gallon hat if you have a seven-gallon, or less, head.
• In Utah, it shall be illegal to have more than five wives if you can't count to six.
• In Wisconsin, it shall be illegal to wear a cheese-head hat in a duck blind.
• In Wyoming, it shall be illegal to have a powwow with a buffalo on Buffalo Bill's birthday.

 

I would have done all 50 states, but it's against the law.

___________

 

Quote for the Day – "The trouble with law is lawyers." Clarence Darrow

___________

 

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where outlaws keep a low profile.

___________

-

-

Anarchy in West Virginia

The greatest threat to individual freedom is an efficient bureaucracy.

 

However, government is a necessary evil.

 

If everyone took responsibility for their own behavior and cooperated on the basis of trust, we would have no need for regulation and oversight. Unfortunately, the human race is imperfect and must enforce a set of reasonable rules to prevent injustice. But the imperfection of the human race often creates a set of unnecessary, unreasonable rules, creating even more injustice.

 

The only sane option is to limit government as much as possible by ensuring the maximum amount of individual freedom, thereby allowing individuals to do as they please as long as they are not harming others or infringing on the freedom of others.

 

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republicans whom I can’t stand, one nation under smog, indespicable with liberty and justice for some, not all.”

 

The above words were inscribed on one of the T-shirts of 15-year-old Katie Sierra, a student at Sissonville High School in West Virginia. Some of her other T-shirts expressed opposition to the war in Afghanistan and similar perceived injustices. The fact that she was a new student with green hair and the World Trade Center Twin Towers had recently ceased to exist didn’t exactly endear her to the rest of the conservative student body.

 

On October 23, 2001, Katie asked the school principal, Forrest Mann, if she could start an Anarchy Club so like-minded students could meet, have discussions and do community service. She presented Mann with the club Constitution that made it clear the club would not tolerate hate or violence. Her stated goal was “to dispel the myths about anarchism, especially the belief that anarchy is chaos and destruction.”

 

Not too surprisingly, this request was about as welcome as a leaky bag of raw sewage. Not only was Katie forbidden to form an Anarchy Club, she was suspended from school for three days for “disrupting school activity.”

 

Webster’s dictionary defines anarchism as “a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups."

 

In other words, anarchy basically means the absence of government. It’s the opposite of hierarchy, which denotes various levels of authority.

 

The Britannica defines anarchism as “the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.”

 

There are many people who believe in this way of life. They contend that as both political philosophy and personal lifestyle, social anarchism promotes community self-reliance, direct participation in political decision-making, respect for nature, and nonviolent paths to peace and justice.

 

The anarchy movement has a long history in certain European countries, particularly in France and Germany.

 

As with most utopian schemes, it looks good in theory but won’t work in reality. I remember back in the 60’s and 70’s when groups of dissatisfied folks, often called Hippies back then, rejected conventional society and formed communes. Almost every one of these entities failed, usually within a very short time frame.

 

While being exact opposites, anarchy and communism are almost the same thing.

 

In communism, everyone is considered equal, required to put forth an equal effort and given an equal amount in return. This would be a perfect world as long as everyone felt the same way. But those who disagree are virtually prisoners of the system, often sent off to a padded cell to be re-educated. Plus those in control of the system can’t seem to curtail their greed and provide more for themselves than they allow for the masses.

 

Anarchy has the same drawback. It only works if everyone agrees with it. A world without government is a world without rules and there will always be those who take improper advantage of it.

 

Katie Sierra deserved better. She had an unpopular belief system and wanted to share it with others. Instead of allowing a free flow of ideas, her school principal chose to silence her.

 

America is not a place where the majority rule -- it’s where we are all allowed to think and speak freely.

 

There’s nothing wrong with a little government, especially locally. Personally, I like roads.

 

But if we could somehow reduce the federal government by about 90 percent, that would be fine with me too.

 

Unfortunately, the new Biden administration believes in promising more than it can deliver and delivering more than it can afford. Borrowing against the future and passing the burden of massive debt onto future generations is not only repugnant, it is immoral.

___________

 

Quote for the Day – "The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government." Henry Ward Beecher

___________

 

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where freedom is never free.

___________

-

-

JFK Assassination

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

 

Over the years, I've researched the JFK assassination and have formulated my own conspiracy theory about this nefarious tragedy, far beyond a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, based upon a bizarre sequence of collateral events.

 

The two biggest conspiracies in our lifetimes, if true, are the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the cover-up of the presence of extraterrestrial beings on earth.

 

Kenn Thomas, author of a book titled MAURY ISLAND UFO: THE CRISMAN CONSPIRACY, points out a remarkable string of coincidences that may actually tie the two conspiracies together. According to Thomas, a man named Fred Crisman played a central role in these seemingly unrelated events.

 

On June 21, 1947, an airplane pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted what he described as “flying saucers” over Mt. Rainier in the State of Washington, launching the modern UFO era. The term “flying saucer” soon became part of the UFO lexicon. There were many UFO sightings later in 1947, including the famous Roswell crash incident.

 

Four people, including Harold Dahl and his son, also witnessed the UFOs from a salvage boat in a nearby bay. They reported seeing six doughnut-shaped craft, about 20 feet in diameter, hovering high above. Five of the craft formed a circle surrounding a craft in the middle that was wobbling badly. The seemingly damaged craft suddenly dropped down about 700 feet, spewing two substances – one was a paper-like metal that floated in the bay and the other was a hot, steaming, black sludge that rained down, striking Dahl’s son and killing his dog.

 

Dahl reported these events to Fred Crisman, a man he believed to have some connections in the intelligence community. Crisman subsequently went to Maury Island to investigate the incident whereby he found a great deal of both materials on the shore and recovered some for himself.

 

Crisman shared his experience with Ray Palmer, a magazine publisher, who then hired Kenneth Arnold (the original pilot) to investigate further.

 

Three days later, Arnold had more sightings, culminating with a woman who had recovered some unusual material in the same vicinity and subsequently turned the material over to FBI agent Guy Banister.

 

Capt. Lee Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, U.S. Air Force investigators under the command of Gen. Nathan Twining, soon joined Arnold in retrieving debris on Maury Island. Ultimately, Crisman was compelled to turn over his own samples to the two Air Force investigators.

 

Classified documents, eventually discovered under the freedom of information act, also indicate that Crisman turned additional samples he had held back over to CIA agent Clay Shaw.

 

In his 1968 investigation of the JFK assassination, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed that Guy Banister and Claw Shaw were involved in the plot to kill JFK, and that Fred Crisman may have been one of the gunmen.

 

In 1969, Fred Crisman was subpoenaed by Jim Garrison to testify in the case against Clay Shaw in the JFK assassination. According to many JFK assassination researchers, Fred Crisman was one of the three so-called "hobos" or "tramps" who were picked up in the nearby railroad yard near the grassy knoll immediately following the JFK shooting, then released shortly thereafter.

 

Some interesting coincidences occurred between the JFK assassination and the 1947 UFO cover-up. Both included Guy Banister and Clay Shaw.

 

In 1943-1952, Guy Banister was FBI “Special Agent in Charge” in the Pacific Northwest, later transferred to Chicago. Upon retirement, he opened a private investigative office in New Orleans where he occasionally hired Lee Harvey Oswald in a variety of capacities.

 

In 1963, former CIA agent Clay Shaw was the director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, a CIA front organization. He later went to trial as one of the co-conspirators in JFK’s death but was found not guilty by a jury. Key evidence linking Shaw to the assassination was not permitted by the trial judge.

 

The world is full of strange coincidences and possible conspiracies in high places.

 

In September of 1964, the Warren Commission Report declared that Kennedy was killed by a lone-gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

 

Fifteen years later, the House Selection Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy “was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy” but “was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy.”

 

Based on the information detailed in CROSSFIRE by Jim Marrs and FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE by Robert D. Morrow, it seems likely that the conspiracy involved organized crime.

 

Carlos Marcello was the mob boss of New Orleans. In the spring of 1961, the new U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, had Marcello handcuffed and put onto a plane to Guatemala City with no luggage and very little cash, based on an immigration violation claiming that Marcello had obtained a false Guatemalan birth certificate.

 

Marcello was eventually flown back to the USA by his personal pilot David Ferrie, vowing to get even with the Kennedys.

 

Allegedly, Marcello and David Ferrie (a,k,a, "The Professor") devised a plan that included placing blame on a “nut” for the assassination of the U.S. President, Robert Kennedy's brother.

 

David Ferrie, Marcello's private pilot, had been Lee Harvey Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol leader.

 

The thrust of the plan was to make it look as though Fidel Castro was behind the killing of the American President, thereby inciting the U.S. government to attack Cuba, eliminating Castro who had forced the mob casinos in Havana to close.

 

Santos Trafficante, the south Florida mob boss, a close associate of Marcello, had been in the casino business in Cuba and even jailed by Castro for a period of time. Mobsters Johnny Roselli of Miami and Sam Giancana of Chicago were also involved in the plot.

 

Trafficante set up two men who thought they were working for the CIA to assassinate Castro and had them sent to Cuba. Through Johnny Roselli, Castro was tipped off that the CIA was sending these two men to kill him. The two men were then captured in Cuba and forced to reveal they were CIA operatives.

 

On September 7, 1963, Castro told Associated Press reporters that he was being targeted for assassination by U.S. government leaders who “could find their own lives in jeopardy.”

 

During this entire period, Lee Harvey Oswald was being manipulated by associates of Ferrie in New Orleans to appear to be a pro-Castro wacko.

 

The trap had been set.

 

Manipulated into the role of a patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald had been covertly utilized to shift the blame of the Kennedy assassination to Castro. Plus, Castro had recently made statements to the press that he was being targeted by the Kennedy Administration, further fanning the flames.

 

Thus, according to mob plans, when JFK was killed, Castro (through Oswald) would be targeted for invasion by the USA whereupon the mob would get their Cuban casinos back and get the Justice Department (headed by Robert Kennedy) off their backs.

 

However, when JFK was assassinated in Dallas several things went awry. Oswald was to have been killed in the confusion but managed to escape.

 

Oswald was later killed by Jack Ruby to silence him and close the case.

 

The FBI and the CIA both wanted the case closed as quickly as possible to avoid embarrassing entanglements.

 

The new President, Lyndon Johnson, wanted it closed quickly to avoid a possible catastrophic confrontation with Cuba and their cold war ally, the USSR.

 

Thus, the lone gunman nutcase became the quick official remedy.

 

Jack Ruby, the Dallas mob connection, was the key lynchpin to the conspiracy.

 

In its investigation of the assassination of JFK, the House Select Committee on Assassinations declared that Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald as a primary reason to suspect organized crime as possibly having involvement in the assassination and that Jack Ruby was connected to Sam Giancana, head of the Chicago Mob. In its investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations also noted the presence of "credible associations relating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to figures having a relationship with Marcello's crime family or organization."

 

Just prior to the JFK assassination on November 22, 1963, Jack Ruby made contact with Marcello, and another Mafia leader, Santos Trafficante, about a problem he was having with the American Guild of Variety Artists concerning the female performers in Ruby's nightclub. Jack Ruby also visited New Orleans that summer-- Lee Harvey Oswald also was in New Orleans during that same time frame.

 

Jack Ruby made more long distance phone calls to known mobsters (Trafficante, Marcello, etc.) during the two months prior to the assassination than he had made the entire previous year. In addition, Johnny Roselli met with Jack Ruby twice just prior to the assassination.

 

When the Dallas police chief was answering questions at a press conference shortly after Oswald was arrested, Jack Ruby (from the back of the room) loudly corrected him (captured on audio and video) as to which Cuba freedom organization Oswald had belonged. According to the mob plan, it was imperative that Oswald be portrayed as Pro-Castro, thereby placing ultimate blame on Castro as being behind the assassination.

 

Jack Ruby then killed Oswald to end any further investigation.

 

Scheduled to testify before Congress, Johnny Roselli was found dead in an oil drum floating in Biscayne Bay near Miami.

 

Sam Giancana had helped JFK get elected President, later to be subjected to Robert Kennedy’s organized crime taskforce. Five days before Giancana was to testify before a senate committee on CIA-mob assassination plots, he was shot in the back of the head.

 

A few days before David Ferrie was scheduled to meet with the New Orleans district attorney to discuss the JFK assassination, he was found dead (unsolved murder) in his apartment. Just a couple of hours later, Eladio del Valle, a known Ferrie collaborator, was brutally murdered in Miami.

 

Dead men tell no tales.

 

On October 26, 2017, many of the John F. Kennedy assassination files that had been kept secret for many decades were released to the public, with more files to be released later pending review by various federal agencies. This will undoubtedly lead to a renewed interest in various conspiracy theories about what really happened on November 22, 1963, in Dallas.

 

There have been many conspiracy theories, involving numerous diverse plots and various participants, including the CIA, Cuban exiles, rich oil barons, Lyndon Johnson, the Illuminati, Russia, Vietnam War mongers, UFO researchers, Knights of Malta, Club of Rome, radical Muslims, John Birch Society, Freemasons, the Federal Reserve, Bilderbergers, right wing zealots, inter-dimensional demons, Pindar, the ghost of John Wilkes Booth, etc., etc.

 

It all started in New Orleans. Carlos Marcello was livid after being humiliated by Robert Kennedy abruptly shipping him off to Guatemala on an immigration violation. Other mob bosses were upset about losing their Cuban casinos and being targeted by U.S. Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, who had declared war against organized crime. Plus, members of organized crime had backed JFK as president through their influence with labor unions. Key members of organized crime decided to fight back, by eliminating President Kennedy, which would also rid them of Bobby Kennedy.

 

According to FBI wiretaps, Carlos Marcello confessed to the assassination. Marcello in New Orleans and Jack Ruby in Dallas had a tight connection. Some of the dancers in Ruby's strip club were brought up to Dallas through Marcello's organization. Ruby was a hot-tempered, emotional, egomaniac who had an allegiance to organized crime, from his early days in Chicago and later to Dallas.

 

Jack Ruby had a gun running operation in the Florida Keys to Cuba. George Faraldo, the manager of the Key West International Airport, told investigators of the Senate Select Subcommittee on Intelligence that he had witnessed Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald together at the Key West airport, waiting in a plane boarding area for a flight to Cuba, in the summer of 1963. The arriving plane had been delayed for several hours -- Oswald and Ruby had been seen briefly chatting with each other on occasion. Faraldo saw Lee Harvey Oswald board the plane but did not see Ruby get on the plane and did not know if he had boarded.

 

Also, Lee Harvey Oswald and police officer J.D. Tippit (supposedly shot by Oswald shortly after the assassination) had been seen together with Jack Ruby, just one week prior to the assassination, at Ruby's strip club.

 

If you closely examine the sequence of when Oswald was being escorted out of the basement of the Dallas Police building on November 24, he appears to recognize Jack Ruby (obvious eye contact and body language) for a brief moment, then quickly turns away -- a couple of seconds later, Ruby steps forward and shoots Oswald.

 

Some of witnesses to the killing of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit claimed that two men were involved in the shooting and neither one of them was Oswald.

 

The Parkland Hospital staff in Dallas believed the white flecks visible on the X-rays of JFK's head suggested that the shooter of the fatal head shot (which forced JFK's head to the left and backward) used a mercury-tipped, frangible round, which disintegrates into tiny pieces upon impact -- perhaps a professional assassin's bullet fired from the grassy knoll.

 

Craig Roberts, former U.S. Marine sniper and author of KILL ZONE; A SNIPER LOOKS AT DEALY PLAZA, declared the following at a conference in Dallas in 1997 -- "I'll tell you what I saw, as a sniper. I saw a guy hit from the right front, with a frangible mercury bullet."

 

Carlos Marcello had an office on the Airline Road in New Orleans. On the wall of the office was a sign that read "Three can keep a secret if two are dead." If you're going to organize an operation to assassinate the President of the United States, you need to also eliminate any middle men who could be linked to the organizer(s).

 

Much, much more to go into here, but sometimes less is more.

 

Plus, additional items will come out now that the documents have been released.

 

But it's a conundrum that may never be resolved.

 

In November of 1963, I was a sophomore at the University of Minnesota at the time. I heard about it on my car radio, on the way home from college classes. It was a very sad day in American history and the nation still yearns for answers.

 

Dead skunk in the middle of the road and it stinks to high heaven.

___________

 

Quote for the Day – “A man may die, but an idea lives on." John F. Kennedy

___________

 

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where dead skunks in the middle of the road are common.

___________

-

-

The Fourth Turning

 William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their 1997 book titled THE FOURTH TURNING, theorize that society has a collective personality that changes on a regular cyclical basis. This cycle repeats itself every four generations (every 80 to 100 years), with each generation having a distinct persona.

 

When the collective persona changes, every 20 years or so, it’s called a turning. The four turnings comprise a repeatable cycle of social human growth.

 

The first turning is a high -- an optimistic period of idealism with social order and weak individualism. People born in this time frame are classified as Prophets. They challenge the moral failure of previous generations.

 

The second turning is an awakening -- a passionate era where social order comes under attack. Those born in this generation are Nomads. They defend society and attempt to slow social change.

 

The third turning is an unraveling -- a down period of strong individualism and weakening social order. This generation is called Heroes. They tend toward pessimism, fueling a society-wide crisis.

 

The fourth turning is a crisis -- a tumultuous period where the old social order is replaced by a new one. Those born in this generation are Artists. They believe in cooperation and become sensitive helpmates.

 

The repeatable cycles of social change always start out on an optimistic high, followed by an awakening, leading to an unraveling, culminating in a crisis. History is replete with this four-generation cycle.

 

The American Revolution – (1701-1791). It started as an optimistic age of enlightenment and culminated with the American Revolutionary War.

 

The Civil War – (1791-1866). The newly created nation was in an optimistic period full of promise. The cycle climaxed with the bloody Civil War.

 

The Great Power – (1866-1946). The era started with reconstruction after the Civil War with a positive outlook toward the future and ended with World War II.

 

The Present Cycle began in 1946, just after the end of the last world war.

 

In the first turning, society entered a period of building and fortification. There was great optimism when soldiers returned home to start a fresh life and the economy began to boom.

 

The second turning is an awakening. According to Strauss and Howe, an awakening is when a society takes a sudden turn in a new direction. In the mid-1960s, about 20 years after the start of the Present Cycle, our social fabric was torn apart by our involvement in Vietnam. The Prophets born in the first turning became teenagers and young adults in this time frame, rebelling against the established civil structure and ideals.

 

The third turning in the Present Cycle took place in the mid-1980s, a period of unraveling when social anxiety caused the old order to decay and new values to emerge. This was an era of self-interest replacing societal interests. After decades of liberal rule by Democrats, with their big government social programs, the more conservative ideals of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. became the social order of the day. Individuals began to become more materialistic and less caring about others. It was dubbed the “Me Generation.”

 

The fourth turning is a period of crisis. It often starts with an event that triggers an upheaval in public life. We are now in the early stages of the fourth turning of this cycle. It probably started on September 11, 2001 and will probably end in 2020 or soon thereafter. This will be a time of focus and sacrifice in a struggle for survival. If the theory of cyclical social events is correct, it may last 20 years or so. Then we will start all over with a new high, a rebirth of optimism and idealism.

 

As a society, we appear to be trapped in an endless cycle of inevitable highs and lows. Apparently, history repeats itself in some sort of bizarre 80-year mood swing, pitting each generation against one another.

 

As individuals, all we can do is treat others the way we want to be treated and go along for the ride.

 

Like it or not, we’re all in this together.

___________

 

Quote for the Day – "Life is a long lesson in humility." James M. Barrie

___________

 

Bret Burquest is the author of 12 books. He lives in the Ozark Mountains with a few dogs and where three left turns makes a right.

___________

-

-