A recently published book, Deadly Delusion, told in the fictional voice of Lee Oswald, based on actual events, is suspenseful and exciting.

Excerpts are available at suppose.wordpress.com.

The Sixth Floor Museum is OK but it needs more and better artifacts to come up to the level of the museum under Ford’s Theater which interprets Lincoln’s assassination. The Sixth Floor needs the presidential limo (which was cleaned up and used by subsequent presidents through Nixon), the clothes of the Kennedys and Connallys, the rifle and bullets, and all the other artifacts taken by the FBI as evidence.

The Conspiracy Museum is a joke, a rat’s nest of newspaper clippings purporting to tell the Real Story of the assassination. Even if there was a conspiracy, only one of the theories could be true. Therefore, you know that of the dozens of theories proposed, all but one of the theorists must be either fools or liars. I say it’s one more than that.

The only time the Conspiracy Museum was worth visiting was when they displayed Ruby’s gun, used to kill Oswald. It’s a cheap little snub-nosed 38 that wouldn’t be worth fifty bucks in a pawn shop. It’s insured for a quarter million.

Years ago, a guy bought a limo the same model as JFK’s car, dressed it up with presidential flags and such like it was that day, and sold rides in it for $25 a pop. I rode it as it retraced the route of the assassination, loudspeakers blasting three shots as we passed the Grassy Knoll full of tourists, their mouths agape. Then we raced off north on the freeway to the emergency ward at Parkland Hospital. Such historical research is not for the squeamish.

I met Jim Leavelle, the homicide detective who was handcuffed to Oswald when Ruby shot him. He said if he could get all the people together who claimed to have been in Dealey Plaza when JFK was shot, he could fill the Cotton Bowl. There are a lot of liars that have attached themselves to the assassination. He said that the murder wasn’t hard to solve. It wasn’t much different from the typical Saturday night shooting in Dallas except there was a famous person involved.

The most intriguing part of the assassination is what happenned to Jackie’s hat. She was wearing a pink pillbox hat which matched her outfit. It disappeared somewhere on the wild ride between the Texas Book Depository and Parkland Hospital, probably blown off on the freeway and never found.

The other odd incident of the day is that a radio reporter stashed a cassette tape recorder on top of the decorative columns opposite the Book Depository to record background noise of the motorcade and crowd for a radio report later. It recorded the sound of the assassination. He fetched it in the afternoon, listened to it, and heard three shots. However, in the excitement of the day, he left the cassette in the equipment room at the radio station. The cassettes of the day were bulky and expensive and so were reused. The technicians saw the cassette lying there and bulk erased it as per their normal procedure. The reporter was too embarassed to tell the story for years.

I made JFK’s assassination my little project when I lived in DFW and read most of the books worth reading. My recommendation for the two best books about the assassination are Jim Bishop’s “The Day Kennedy Was Shot” and, of course, Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed.”

If TR was President today, not only would we have ALREADY won in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but Iran and North Korea would be begging us to take their nuclear weapons away.

Indeed. I know a few folks that serve aboard the namesake aircraft carrier, and they wish he was our leader today as well. These days we just speak softly, and hand our enemies the big stick.

Theodore was my Roosevelt, but boy you never hear about him.

naliaka on February 19, 2007 at 9:32 PM

Bully.

(If TR was President today, not only would we have ALREADY won in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but Iran and North Korea would be begging us to take their nuclear weapons away.)

Dem or Rep he was the ‘man’. America has forgotten that.

Well said, Limerick. I would add, not just “the man”, but “OUR man”. Like the quarterback on a football team. Quarrel off the field if you must, but pull together when it’s go time.

This is obviously hand-waving and tea leaves,…

spmat on February 19, 2007 at 3:50 PM

Thanks. You summed up really what I meant to say without all the other hogwash I wrote.

Let me add, it’s always a tragedy whenever a president is assassinated – regardless of which president it is.

I just wish he’d have lived so the democrats would realize he wasn’t the sign of the coming of a utopia. I am so sick of hearing about how “great” a president JFK was.

I won’t say he was a great President, but I will say that he was at least marginally competent, certainly more competent than his successor. Just look at the tag lines of the two Presidencies. Kennedy: New Frontier, on the moon by ’69, cut taxes, fight commies. Johnson: Great Society, greatly expanded domestic spending and bureaucracy, purposeless and unprincipled foreign policy. Kennedy’s assassination disoriented the country, making it even more vulnerable to the back-handed legacy-building socialism of Johnson as well as making it more blind to his incompetence in Southeast Asia.

Kennedy was part of the smooth continuum of electoral decisions by the American people, his marginal support notwithstanding. His assassination disrupted that continuum, with disastrous consequences. Had he not been killed, the natural course, I think, would still have lead to a Nixon Presidency in ’68 or ’72, and in the intervening time, the Great Society and all of its attendant woes for the present would either not have existed or would have existed in a far less destructive form.

This is obviously hand-waving and tea leaves, but I stand behind the statement that Kennedy’s assassination was a tragedy that extended far beyond just the loss of a President.

Not so fast, Bush has his hand everywhere

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

brak on February 19, 2007 at 1:53 PM

Yep – Skull and Bones, the Nazis, CBS, The Bay of Pigs and Bush – it’s all starting to make sense. Maybe, just maybe, the far left is on to something.

We lost more than just a President with that assassination.

spmat on February 19, 2007 at 3:08 PM

There is no question things would have been different. I will not speculate if better or worse. JFK was a charmer but that does not make a good president, ie Clenis. But could have been a great charmer president, ie President Regan.

One think I do know is the country is better off because there is and was no Bobby Kennedy.

We lost more than just a President with that assassination.

spmat on February 19, 2007 at 3:08 PM

Please tell me that was sarcasm.

I just wish he’d have lived so the democrats would realize he wasn’t the sign of the coming of a utopia. I am so sick of hearing about how “great” a president JFK was.

I mean look at the Clintons and Kerry. They all somehow had contact with him and (according to the Dems) you could compare it (JFK and the Clintons and Kerry – & Pelosi for that matter) with Christ and the apostles.

They don’t make Democrats the way they used to.

Sure he was young, but, judging from the blue dress, his aim is remarkable.

Arkansas ain’t far from Texas, now is it?

Let’s not let GWB and GHWB take all the conspiratorial heat.

Where was B.J. on 11/22/63?

Hillary would like to know. (At least before appointing him ambassador or senator or cuspidor.)

Not so fast, Bush has his hand everywhere

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

brak on February 19, 2007 at 1:53 PM

I KNEW it!!

http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/bush.htm

A national tragedy and no one out there yet blaming President Bush.