The World Is My Canvas

This is another story that added to the estrangement between me and my father. I started my freshman year of college just before I turned 17. I quickly found many kindred spirits in the dorm, who introduced me to something called a bong. They also introduced me to something to put in the bong, called Colombian, which was a far cry from the rolling papers and Mexican green that I was familiar with.

One afternoon, early in my first semester, a group of us were gathered in Joe's dorm room watching a rerun of "Gilligan's Island." Bob B. was saying that I needed a pen name, when a preview for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" came on, which was just released in theaters.

We were all familiar with the book by Ken Kesey of Merry Pranksters fame. Bob B. said, "R.P. [after Jack Nicholson's character]. You've gotta use R.P."

The show came back on, and Joe started joking about Mrs. Howell's name "Lovie." All of a sudden he blurted out, "Lovie. Dunn-Lovie!"

And that's how I became known as R.P. Dunlovie, a nickname that has stuck with me for almost 40 years.

My parents were getting ready to sell the family home, and they asked if I could help paint some areas on the second floor that they couldn't reach. I made arrangements to come home from school one weekend, and climbed up on the roof to do some painting. I did an excellent job painting the wood in a rich dark brown and the trim in a contrasting color. But just before I climbed down, I got the idea in my head to sign my name to the project.

With a large brush, I printed RP Dunlovie in large block letters all across the roof. It couldn't be seen from the ground, and after cleaning up and heading back to school, I forgot all about it.

I subsequently learned from my brother, who was still living at home, that my father was showing the house to a prospective buyer, and the buyer casually glanced out a side window in one of the upper bedrooms and suddenly exclaimed, "What is that!?" pointing out the window.

My father looked out and almost had a heart attack as he saw my writing on the shingles. It almost kiboshed the deal, and he either had to have that section of roof retiled, or take some money off the asking price.

We joke about it today, but at the time, I can tell you, he was not amused. However, as is the bizarre nature of life, my actual painting job was so good, that when he moved into a new office, I spent a week painting that too - sans my signature on the premises.

The Tie That Binds

I was chatting with a new Facebook friend, and I was telling him about my blog. He asked what kind of stuff I wrote, and I told him, humor pieces, political pieces, news analysis, stories about science and technology, animal stories, holiday essays, movie and book reviews, stories about growing up in the 60's and 70's, fiction, poems - just anything and everything that caught my attention.

He asked me if there was something that tied them all together. I thought for a few moments and a word popped into my head - humanism. We chatted for a while longer, and when we logged off, I Googled the word humanism. I went to Wikipedia, which is always my first line of defense, and found this definition:

Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence over established doctrine or faith.

Humanism dates back to ancient Greece where the philosophy was founded on education and training in the liberal arts, or literally translated as "the good arts."

Founding Father Thomas Paine called himself a theophilanthropist, a word combining the Greek for "God", "love", and "man", and indicating that while he believed in the existence of a creating intelligence in the universe, he entirely rejected the claims made by and for all existing religious doctrines.

Humanism identifies pollution, militarism, nationalism, sexism, poverty and corruption as being persistent and addressable human character issues incompatible with the interests of our species. It asserts that human governance must be unified and is inclusionary in that it does not exclude any person by reason of their personal beliefs.

Philosopher Dwight Gilbert Jones wrote that Humanism may be the only philosophy likely to be adopted by our species as a whole.

In fact, a new psychological perspective rose to prominence in the mid-20th century in response to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism. The approach emphasized an individual's inherent drive towards self-actualization and creativity.

"Cosmos" creator Carl Sagan said, “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

So perhaps after all, humanism is the modus operandi of my writing, but the tie that binds them together is love.

Love Me

It is not my intention - okay, it is - to toot my own horn, but the Huff Post recently published an article regarding a new study about creativity.

The findings pinpoint many of the "defining characteristics in the personalities" of highly creative people.

Neuroscience has now confirmed that creative thinking goes far beyond the left brain/right brain model, and instead is a conflux of nature, nurture, and random chance.

This is very difficult for me to put down on paper, but it is essential for any understanding of who I am and how I got here.

I was born with a medical condition called hypospadias, generally described as a birth defect in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis, instead of at the tip. Repeated surgeries to correct this defect were unsuccessful, and the hospitalizations were always scheduled during the summer so I wouldn't miss school.

I underwent seven surgeries until the age of twelve when my father took me to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. I remember visiting the Mayo Museum of Medicine and Hygiene, but mostly I remember the endless series of invasive tests and, of course, the inevitable surgery. In those days, anesthesia was delivered through a large, black, rubber mask that covered half your face. Despite the reassurances of all the adults around me, I remember being very, very scared. This operation, performed by the nation's most renowned urological surgeon, was also unsuccessful.

If anything good came from this experience, it was one of my dad's favorite family stories. I was recovering from the operation, and he stepped into my hospital room one morning and saw a large group of doctors surrounding my bed staring down at me in total concentration. His heart fell thinking the worst, and he hurried over to find that I was soundly thrashing the greatest medical minds in the country in a game of chess.

But from early on, all the procedures left profound physical and emotional scars. I mean that quite literally. I could not urinate standing up (which contributed to my lifelong affinity for the fairer sex), I had great difficulty controlling my bladder, and I was embarrassed by my disfigurement. When I was in first and second grade, I sometimes had accidents at my desk. I would shrink down inside myself until one of my classmates called it to the teacher's attention. I would be taken into the restroom where I had to wait until my father, a young, practicing attorney, could be reached and bring me clean clothes. My father was angry at having to tear himself away from clients or court, the teacher was angry at having her lessons interrupted, and to say that when walking back into the classroom, I felt about - and wished I was - two inches tall, does not adequately convey my thoughts and emotions.

As you can imagine, this caused immense problems when I reached dating age. And high school swim class, where for some ungodly reason we swam nude, was a nightmare.

All these issues were compounded by the double-promotion. Because my birthday fell in September, I had just turned five when I entered kindergarten. Most of my classmates were six months to a year older than I was, and after skipping a grade, I was nine years old in 5th grade sitting among boys and GIRLS who were eleven or even twelve. I was a small kid anyway, and being a strange, brainy, Jewish, introvert in a predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhood, was a recipe for disaster. Nature, nurture, random chance.

In fact, as the Huff Post reports, there is "an emerging field of psychology called post-traumatic growth which suggests that many people are able to use their hardships and early-life trauma for substantial creative growth. Specifically, researchers have found that trauma can help people to grow in the areas of interpersonal relationships, spirituality, appreciation of life, personal strength, and - most importantly for creativity - seeing new possibilities in life."

Researcher and psychologist Scott Kaufman explains, "A lot of people are able to use that as the fuel they need to come up with a different perspective on reality. What's happened is that their view of the world as a safe place, or as a certain type of place, has been shattered at some point in their life, causing them to go on the periphery and see things in a new, fresh light, and that's very conducive to creativity."

Many creative people, myself included, daydreamed their way through grade school. As a student in the Chicago public school system, I was disengaged from my surroundings. For the subjects I was interested in, such as reading and writing, my aptitude was so far beyond the level of the curriculum, that I quickly lost interest. For subjects that I was curious about like history, I was more interested in "why" than in the repetition of dates and names without context. Math and science, the way they were taught, turned me off, and let's face it, although they may have been qualified and well-meaning, the teachers were not inspiring.

Yet despite my inattentiveness, my classroom and standardized test scores (using the old number 2 pencil) were so high that I was double-promoted from 3rd to 5th grade.

The study concluded that contrary to popular opinion, far from being "mindless," daydreaming actually involves a highly engaged brain state, where insights and connections rise unbidden.

Another trait displayed by creative individuals is that they observe everything and see possibilities everywhere. Just think of a comedian who goes through life constantly looking for new material. But what the creative individual observes most is themselves. American author, Joan Didion, wrote, "However dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable 'I.'"

Psychologist Rollo May remarked, "You need to get in touch with that inner monologue to be able to express it. It's hard to find that inner creative voice if you're not getting in touch with yourself and reflecting on yourself."

Creative people need - and take - the time to think. The study refers to this time as "solitude." In case after case, the iconic character conceived by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, focuses his intellect on an inanimate object and draws inferences that boggle the mind of Dr. Watson - as well as the reader. And invariably, after Holmes explains his deductions, Watson remarks on how easy the mental exercise seems.

Creative people make it look "easy," because all the 'thinking' that went into the finished project is hidden.

Creative people also understand that their avocations are a job. They may not adhere to a 9-5 schedule, but as with any other form of employment, they establish a schedule that works best for them. Some creatives prefer early mornings, while others prefer the dead of night, but the one thing they all know is that "genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." If artists just sat around waiting for some divinely inspired revelation to strike them, they would achieve very little. By the way, the quote is from Thomas Edison.

These work habits - solitude and scheduling - are part and parcel of the creative process.

Another essential aspect of the creative mind is curiosity. These individuals readily seek out new experiences, often crossing the line into danger. Anyone who knows me or has read my blog, knows that I have continuously put myself into situations where things could have quickly gone south. Brushes with the law, experimentation with drugs, binge drinking, hitchhiking, shoplifting, joyriding, skitching on the backs of cars, were the dark side of thrill seeking.

But openness to different kinds of music, cultures, and most importantly, ways of thinking are the bright side of the coin. Psychologist Scott Kaufman explains it this way: "Openness to experience is consistently the strongest predictor of creative achievement. This consists of intellectual curiosity, thrill seeking, openness to your emotions, openness to fantasy. The thing that brings them all together is a drive for cognitive and behavioral exploration of the world."

This innate and irresistible curiosity extends from the infinite to the infinitesimal. Curiosity led, for better or worse, from the splitting of the atom and quantum mechanics, to the exploration of deepest space. It reaches from the beginning of time to the fate of the universe. It challenges the existence of God, the meaning of life, and our place in the cosmos. It leads from heights of glory to crushing despair.

Socrates sentiment that "the unexamined life is not worth living," is a mantra for creative minds.

Creation is also a very risky business. A true artist puts everything out there for all to see. They literally expose themselves, much as I have done earlier in this piece. They open themselves to failure, ridicule, banishment, embarrassment, and worst of all, indifference. But they do it anyway because they have no choice.

As the Huff Post says, "Creative people tend to be intrinsically motivated - meaning that they're motivated to act from some internal desire, rather than a desire for external reward or recognition."

Creative individuals are keenly aware of their "gift" or "curse," as the case may be. The Handbook of Creativity states, "Eminent creators choose and become passionately involved in challenging, risky problems that provide a powerful sense of power from the ability to use their talents."

When highly creative people have been asked, "What frightens you most?" the number one answer is, "a blank page." That rectangle of white emptiness that mocks and dares. Fortunately there is nothing a creative person likes more than a challenge.

Steven Kotler wrote in Forbes, "Creativity is the act of making something from nothing." But I disagree. It's been said that in even the most altruistic act of charity is selfishness. Creativity is the ultimate act of sharing - of time, talent, effort, and the innermost self.

Huff Post notes, "Many of the most iconic stories and songs of all time have been inspired by gut-wrenching pain and heartbreak." Sharing this pain is cathartic for both giver and receiver.

Yet, time and again, when I read a great work of literature, look at a great painting, listen to a great piece of music, I can see the writer, painter, and musician smiling as they flex their creative muscles. My deepest hope is that others see the same in me. Whether I achieve that is up to others.

Creatives are able to tap into what is known as the "flow state," or being "in the zone." Huff Post explains, "Flow is a mental state when an individual transcends conscious thought to reach a heightened state of effortless concentration and calmness, that allows them to create at their highest level."

One finding of the study that I found personally enlightening was that creative individuals feel compelled to surround themselves with beauty. Again, as everyone who knows me is only too aware, I love decorating, and I take great pride in my collection of vintage and handmade one-of-a-kind holiday ceramics, textiles, and artwork. And these items of 'beauty' need not be expensive. In fact, my brother calls me "the master of the five dollar knickknack."

In its simplest form, creativity is the ability to connect two ideas that have never been connected before. This is the essence of humor. Steve Jobs explains it thusly: "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

Finally, there is a goal, a method to the madness. Psychologist Scott Kaufman says, "Creative expression is self-expression. Creativity is nothing more than an individual expression of your needs, desires and uniqueness."

Indeed, I have always thought of my writing as a seduction. Award winning sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison said, "Love me, love my writing." Creativity is as simple as that.

Jack

I was walking down the main hall of William J. Bogan High School in Chicago. It was during class and I do not remember where I was going, but the halls were empty, except for one kid who was sitting on a ledge looking out the windows. He was leaning back against the wall and he had one leg, knee up, on the windowsill. He was a skinny kid with long blonde hair. I had seen him around, but never talked to him before. We looked at each other, I nodded, and he nodded back, then he says, "You wanna smoke a reefer?" I said, "Sure," and we cut out a side exit, walked a block around the school, and smoked a joint he had rolled.

That's how I met Jack.

We became fast friends, and a lot of who I am today is because of what I learned from him. He taught me to question everything, especially my own beliefs. He challenged me to think in new ways. He was into a new thing called Transactional Analysis, which was basically to look at the hidden meanings and motivations behind the spoken word.

We also did a lot of acid together.

I actually lived with Jack at his mother's house during my senior year of high school. This arrangement was agreed upon by all parties, especially me and my father.

Be that as it may, there is one story about my friendship with Jack that stands above all others. Jack had a female calico cat named Cal. Maybe not very original, but the name suited her. Cal was an indoor/outdoor cat, more out than in.

Jack had removed one pane of glass from the back door of his house. He placed a thick piece of cardboard over the window, hinged at the top with duct tape. This opening sat four feet off the ground and Cal had no problem going in and out. Cal was average in size, but she was the most powerful, muscled, agile, domestic animal I have ever known. Jack had a dish of kibble and water set out for her, and occasionally gave her a can of food, but Cal was basically self-sufficient.

She slept with us at night, and when not hunting, lounged around with Jack. They loved each other dearly, but Cal was our equal, without any hint of subservience or ownership. Think what you will, but we sometimes gave Cal a few crumbs of mescaline when we tripped. After the first time, Cal knew what it was, and we left it up to her, and she always looked forward to joining us. In short, Cal was our pal.

When we went out walking around the neighborhood, which Jack loved to do, Cal would accompany us. There was never a thought of a collar or leash. One early evening we decided to go up to the corner liquor store to see if we could get a run. We had to cross diagonally across a major intersection. Jack did not want to leave Cal on the corner, but I convinced him that it would be alright, and that Cal would wait for us.

When we got back, Cal was not there. We looked and called, we went up and down the fronts and backs of houses. We worked our way back to Jack's place and he went upstairs where our room was, and there was no sign of the cat. Jack climbed out onto the overhang outside one of his bedroom windows, where we liked to hang out. He called and called, to no avail.

I assured him that Cal could take care of herself, and that she would show up before we went to bed. The evening stretched on without much conversation and without a word we turned in. That night, Chicago experienced a torrential downpour. A thunder crashing, lightning flashing, backed-up sewer, street flooding, gutter gushing rainstorm worthy of Noah.

The rain had stopped by morning, and the sun was out. Jack got up and went out onto the roof and lit a cigarette, staring off into space. There was still no sign of Cal. I knew Jack was devastated, and I knew he blamed me, but not nearly as much as I blamed myself. Without a word I left the house with little to no hope of finding Cal. I couldn't bear the thought of this affecting our friendship, but how could it not?

I started walking aimlessly, asking the few people out if they'd seen a calico cat. The minutes and then the hours passed, and I was ready to call it quits. I was going down an alley, calling Cal's name in final desperation, when my brain, more than my ears, thought it heard something. I couldn't be sure, so I called again, and nothing. But now I was determined beyond hope or hopelessness.

I moved down the alley, calling and listening, but got no response. Had I been mistaken? I swung my head back and forth, and happened to glance over a fence, across a flooded backyard, and locked eyes with Cal who was sitting in the lower branches of a tree surrounded on all sides by three feet of water.

My heart skipped several beats until I believed what I was seeing. I hopped the fence, waded through the water that lapped at my crotch, gathered Cal, bedraggled but none the worse for wear, into my arms, carried her across the yard, and deposited her over the fence onto dry land. With my head and her tail held high, side by side we headed for home.

I opened the back door and called out, "Jack!" He must have sensed something in my tone of voice and called back down the stairs, "Yah!?" "I found her!" I said.

A happier reunion there could not have been. Cal strutted up the stairs as nonchalant as ever, and Jack and I clasped hands, locking palm and thumb together. We were both beaming and smiling from ear to ear, and after a few moments of looking into each other's faces, Jack simply said, "Thanks, man."

Obnoxious Jerks Unite - In Grand Rapids

Okay, I have to admit that I'm a little confused. I saw this article from the Associated Press under the headline: 

City to Strike Ban on Being Willfully Annoying

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — It's soon expected to be OK to be willfully annoying in Grand Rapids.

The City Commission is nixing a 38-year-old section of city code that states "no person shall willfully annoy another person."

City Attorney Catherine Mish recommended repealing the language, saying the wording is "unconstitutional in terms of being vague" and "simply unenforceable." A final decision is expected March 11.

What I don't understand is that having this law on the books, why would they want to do away with it? To my way of thinking, and probably to most libertarians, this is the only law that SHOULD be on the books!

Theodor Seuss Geisel - 110 Years Old Today!

Me:  Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday.

My Wife:  What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

Me:  "Go, Dog, Go!"

My Wife:  Um, that was written by P.D. Eastman.

Me:  "Are You My Mother?"

My Wife:  Eastman.

Me:  "A Fly Went By"?

My Wife:  An illustrator named Mike McClintock.

Me:  I liked "Little Black, A Pony."

My Wife:  That happened to be written by Walter Farley. He wrote "The Black Stallion."

Me:  This guy Seuss did write books didn't he!?

My Wife:  He wrote dozens of the most popular and beloved children's books in the world.

Me:  Oh yah, name one.

My Wife:  "The Cat's Quizzer." Now go bother somebody on Facebook!

The Assassination of Innocence

I have often talked to my wife about Jackie Kennedy. Not only the horror of the actual moments of the assassination, and the turmoil that followed that day; not only the devastating grief she suffered at the death of her beloved spouse; but the fact that she had to live with the knowledge that the murder was carried out by a group of individuals both inside and outside of the government, and that they got away with it.

Last November 22nd commemorated the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In that regard, I just finished reading They Killed Our President, by Governor Jesse Ventura, and investigative journalists, Dick Russell and David Wayne.

This book was like preaching to the choir. I have always been satisfied in my mind that the assassination was a conspiracy. 

An assassination, when you strip away the political component, is essentially a murder, and the investigation that follows is treated as such. Forensic evidence is collected and analyzed, witnesses are debriefed, suspects are interrogated, documents are examined.

The plain fact is that the government's official conclusions as codified in the twenty-six volume  Warren Commission Report, do not fit the facts.

Before I go further, at the beginning of his book, Governor Ventura states that before he goes further, there's something that must be said:

The word "conspiracy" has been much-maligned and that has apparently been very intentional. When you watch mainstream media, look very closely at how they ridicule that particular word. It's only a word, but the mere mention of it now stirs up childish controversy rather than intelligent inquiry. The organized semantic ridicule of "conspiracy buffs" who "come out of the woodwork" with their "kooky theories" is a transparent effort at the marginalization of unwelcome critical thinking. 

The basis of Mr. Ventura's contention that the assassination was indeed a "conspiracy" is summed up in the subtitle of the book - 63 Reasons To Believe There Was A Conspiracy To Assassinate JFK. If you wish to review all 63 reasons, including source references, footnotes, links to youtube videos, extensive attributions, and addresses for documentation available on the Internet, read the book.

There are a few key points, however, that I do wish to mention, but before I do, please consider the following definition of the word "conspiracy": "a secret plan by two or more persons to do something unlawful or harmful." That's all it takes for the word "conspiracy" to accurately and correctly apply.

All of the issues I am about to delineate, clearly support the "conspiracy theory," although they have been contested for over fifty years, and continue to be so today. To me, the "debunking" of the conspiracy theory by so-called scholars and government officials, fits the definition of a "conspiracy" in and of itself.

The basic arguments on each side can be summed up thusly.

Either Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone for unspecified reasons, holed up on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and using a cheap bolt-action Italian rifle, fired three times, down and from the rear, missing on his first shot, then reacquiring a moving target and unleashing the kill shot that vaporized the President's brain.

Or else there was at least one other person involved, and that would make it a conspiracy.

The infamous Zapruder film is available on youtube as raw footage, enhanced footage, and enhanced frame by frame. If you care to watch it, all versions show the same thing - the President slumping forward and Jackie turning towards her husband, then the President being jerked upright as a pink mist blows out the back of his head.

Medical testimony from doctors, nurses and Secret Service agents at Dallas' Parkland Hospital trauma center, described the wound in grisly detail:

Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill: The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood.

Nurse Diana Bowron: There was a gaping wound in the back of his head. It was gone. Gone. There was nothing there. Just a big gaping hole. The wound was so large I could put my whole fist into it. There was no damage to the front of his face.

Nurse Pat Hutton: A doctor asked me to place a pressure dressing on the head wound. This was of no use, however, because of the massive opening on the back of the head.

Doctor Ronald Jones: There was a large defect in the back side of the head as the President lay on the cart with what appeared to be some brain hanging out of this wound.

Doctor Kemp Clark: I then examined the wound in the back of the President's head. This was a large, gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed.

The only wound to the front of the President's head was a small, smooth hole in his upper right forehead at the hairline. The attending physicians also noted an "entry wound" in the President's throat, indicating that at least two shots were fired from in front. The first thing you learn in CSI 101 is the difference between an entry wound and an exit wound, an entry wound being small and clean, and an exit wound being large and messy.

To truly understand the assassination, it is essential to have at least a rudimentary grasp of the context of the times. Kennedy had just weathered not one, but two incidents that brought the planet to the very brink of nuclear annihilation -  the "Bay of Pigs" Invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored Cuban counter-revolutionary paramilitary group, Brigade 2506. On 17 April 1961, Brigade 2506 intended to overthrow the left wing government. Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban armed forces, under the direct command of Prime Minister Fidel Castro.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, with total nuclear war hanging in the balance. On 14 October 1962, A U-2 spy plane confirmed that nuclear missile silos were being built in Cuba. Kennedy's military advisers recommended an attack on Cuba, but Kennedy opted for a military blockade of the island instead. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said that the blockade "constituted an act of aggression propelling human kind into the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war."

Confounded by their generals, Kennedy and Khrushchev entered into tense  back channel negotiations to attempt to resolve the crisis. Meanwhile, however, several Soviet ships tried to run the blockade, and a U-2 spy plane was shot down by Cuban anti-aircraft batteries, actions that could have resulted in immediate retaliation from the US military.

The confrontation ended on October 28, 1962, when the President and the Soviet Premier reached an agreement. The Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba in exchange for a US public declaration never to invade Cuba. The blockade was recalled.

After these two incidents, Kennedy felt he now had a good enough working relationship with the Soviet Premier that a test ban treaty and disarmament talks could succeed. This put him at great odds with the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs, as well as their counterparts in the Military-Industrial complex.

Kennedy was also planning a change to the tax code that would eliminate the "oil depletion allowance" - a gigantic tax break for the oil and gas industry. In his thesis, "Texas Oil Men," John Simkin notes:

Just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated he upset people like Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt when he talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favorable tax treatment until then accorded the gas-oil industry.

As if all this weren't enough, JFK's brother Robert, in his capacity as Attorney General, was waging war on the Mafia. Ventura writes:

Under his directorship, for the first time in history, the Department of Justice launched a serious offensive against organized crime, using every legal device in the book (and a few that weren't) to get them off the streets and limit their abilities to conduct what had been "business as usual."

In the Introduction, Governor Ventura tells us that he has "decided to break with convention" and begin the book with his conclusions, to wit that "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia."

The rest of the book is devoted to presenting his proofs and arguments.

One refrain that Governor Ventura makes throughout the book, is a quote by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, the Air Force liaison to the CIA for covert operations, who says, "When you look for a conspiracy, look for the violation of Standard Operating Procedures."

Let's start with that.

During the year 1963, the Secret Service became aware of three separate threats to the President's life - in Chicago, Miami and Tampa. In each case, heightened security precautions were implemented. The Secret Service was also aware that a threat against the President existed in Dallas. The Secret Service advance team secured the planned route that the presidential motorcade would travel.

Against established protocol, four days before the President's arrival, orders were given for the route to be changed. The new route would lead through Dealey Plaza, an area that could not be secured in time; and also against procedures, the new route would require the motorcade to navigate a turn of more than ninety degrees. Then to make matters worse, the new route was published in the newspapers.

The rules concerning the configuration of a presidential motorcade are clearly laid out: two police motorcycles, followed by a Secret Service lead car; then nine police motorcycles bracketing the presidential limousine in a wedge formation with one motorcycle riding point, a motorcycle to the right and left of the front of the presidential limousine, a motorcycle on both sides of the limousine itself, and two motorcycles each to the right and left of the rear of the car; then the presidential limousine is closely followed by a Secret Service tail car. Additionally, the back of the presidential limousine is equipped with a riding platform for two Secret Service agents.

However, as soon as Air Force One touched down at Dallas' Love Field airport, orders were issued to break procedure and reconfigure the motorcade. The new formation called for five police motorcycles to lead the parade with the Secret Service lead car just behind; a wide gap would be allowed to develop between the lead car and the presidential limousine which would be flanked by only two police motorcycles to the rear of the president's car. The Secret Service tail car lagged far behind. Then in a move that did not sit well with President Kennedy's personal Secret Service detail, the two agents were ordered off the riding platform of the presidential limousine and repositioned to the running boards of the tail car.

This formation essentially left the President and First Lady completely vulnerable, or as Mr. Ventura puts it, "that made President Kennedy a sitting duck."

After the assassination, Secret Service shift supervisors and other officials actually tried to blame President Kennedy himself for the change in orders, but the Secret Service charter by law states that no one, not even the president, can overrule the Secret Service on matters of security.

Okay, now take a deep breath, we're about to take a look at the white elephant in the room. And that white elephant is a five-foot nine-inch, one-hundred and thirty-five pound man named Lee Harvey Oswald.


From the very first page, Ventura challenges us to act as jurors, while he creates reasonable doubt, playing the part of Oswald's defender - truly the devil's advocate. In this review, I have only scratched the surface of all the information that Ventura lays before us. By the same token, Ventura only scratches the surface of all the information out there.

If you have ten years to spend, you can go online and read everything there is on Lee Oswald. The bulk of Ventura's book is devoted to outlining Oswald's movements, associations, ties to the CIA as an operative, his dealings with pro and anti-Castro groups, and even his friendship with none other than one Jack Ruby.

Colonel C. William Bishop, the highest-ranking military intelligence officer assigned to the CIA's assassination squad, Executive Action, said, "I'll tell you one damn thing. Whoever set up that poor little son of a bitch did a first-class job."

In a nutshell (or lone-nutshell if you wish), Lee Harvey Oswald could NOT have acted alone. Despite the findings of the Warren Commission, you can't make it work. Everything is wrong. The forensic evidence does not place him in the "sniper's nest" on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The ballistics show that the type of bullet fired from Oswald's supposed rifle could not have been the bullet that obliterated Kennedy's brain.

Oswald supposedly walked out of the School Book building, after stopping at the lunchroom on the second floor where he was seen by witnesses, including police officers, calmly drinking a bottle of Coca Cola that he purchased from a vending machine. He then made his way across town where he encountered and killed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, and then strolled into a nearby movie theater.

When arrested at the theater, Oswald did in fact have a gun. Officer Tippit was shot with an automatic. Oswald was carrying a revolver. When witnesses to Officer Tippit's murder were shown a picture of Oswald, they stated that he was not the assailant.

Less than thirty-six hours into the case,  officials told the press that, "the city police, working with the Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation  had the case against Oswald 'cinched'."

Governor Ventura goes to great lengths to show the world of "smoke and mirrors" in which Oswald moved. Again, I'm not going to get into that here. What I will mention though, is what happened two days later when Oswald was being transferred from Dallas Police Headquarters to the County Jail.

Surrounded by law enforcement officials (who Ventura points out, were all dressed in black or blue suits, except for the sheriff that Oswald was handcuffed to, who stood taller than the men around him and was wearing a white suit, including a white Stetson), a short man, neatly dressed in a dark suit and fedora, stepped from the crowd and fired a .38 Colt Cobra revolver into Oswald's abdomen. And all live on national television.

A jury found Jack Ruby, the owner of several low-rent nightclubs and strip joints in Dallas, guilty of murdering Oswald, and Ruby was sentenced to death. Ruby appealed his conviction and was granted a new trial. As the date for his new trial was being set, Ruby became ill and died in jail.

After the murder of Oswald, questions were raised as to how Ruby gained access to the basement of Police Headquarters. It was discovered that again, contrary to established routines, access doors were left unlocked and guards were ordered away from their posts. Assertions that Ruby regularly provided police officers with "girls" from his establishments went unanswered.

While doing research for this piece, I ran across the actual story from the New York Times, dated Nov. 24, 1963, the day that Ruby shot Oswald. The headline read:

President's Assassin Is Shot to Death in Corridor of Jail by a Citizen of Dallas

By GLADWIN HILL

I love old archival material, so it was amazing to read the report from the day it happened. One paragraph that caught my eye said, "The original plan had been for the sheriff to assume custody of Oswald at the city jail and handle the transfer. Late last night, for unspecified reasons, it was decided that the city police would move the prisoner."

I also find it very telling, that two days after the assassination, Oswald was the "President's Assassin" and Ruby was "a Citizen of Dallas," to the press (and everyone else). 

The Warren Commission determined that he too acted alone.

Then again, flying in the face of established procedures, just moments after hastily being sworn in as President on that fateful day, Lyndon B. Johnson secretly ordered the presidential limousine, the actual scene of the crime, as it were, and possibly the single most important piece of evidence, to be transported to a Ford facility in Detroit, where the car was stripped down to the frame.

George Whitaker, a senior manager at the Ford Motor Company's Rouge plant in Detroit, Michigan stated that after reporting to work on Monday, November 25th, he discovered the JFK limousine, a unique, one-of-a-kind item that he unequivocally identified, in the Rouge plant's B building, with the interior stripped out and in the process of being replaced, and with the windshield removed. He was then contacted by the Vice President of the division for which he worked and directed to report to the glass plant lab, immediately. After knocking on the locked door, which he found most unusual, he was let in by two of his subordinates and discovered that they were in possession of the windshield that had been removed from the JFK limousine.

Both the windshield and the interior of the car were never seen again.

Ventura details at length, the controversy surrounding the witnesses in the JFK/Officer Tippit murders. Testimony that rebuffed the "lone gunman" scenario was changed or omitted in the Warren Commission Report, to the point that it was often referred to as the "Warren Omission Report."

Other witnesses disappeared under mysterious circumstances, just days before being scheduled to testify before Congressional committees. And still others "committed suicide," such as one man who shot himself in the head, with investigators determining that the gun was fired from three feet away (and no gun shot residue was found on his hands); another who shot himself in the face with a shotgun; and a woman who drove herself into a bridge abutment (even after witnesses swore that they had seen another vehicle force her off the road).

A witness to the Tippit shooting was subjected to threats and harassment. Warren Reynolds, owner of a Dallas car dealership, "witnessed the shooting of Officer Tippit, and even gave chase to the man who escaped. He stated that the man was not Oswald, and he refused to be browbeaten into changing his testimony that it may have been a man looking like Oswald. Reynolds was shot in the head with a rifle on January 23, 1964, but miraculously he survived. Blatant intimidation continued and his ten year old daughter was almost kidnapped, but the abduction attempt failed. Trespassers began nosing around outside his home at night. Finally, Reynolds had become a nervous wreck and told the FBI he had changed his mind and would identify Oswald as the shooter. The harassment suddenly halted."

There is also the odd case of army cryptographer Eugene Dinkin. Dinkin was based in France in 1963. In early November, he intercepted secret military codes that appeared to be specific to a plot to kill President Kennedy. The coded messages pointed to an attempt on the President's life to take place on November 22nd, and that would be blamed on a "Communist" or a "Negro." He sent the information by special registered mail to Attorney General, Robert Kennedy.

Unable to gain the attention of his commanding officers, and not hearing back from the AG, Dinkin went AWOL, risking his career and his liberty, to visit the U.S. embassy in Bonn, Germany.

On November 13th, Dinkin was "hospitalized" in a closed psychiatric ward and on December 5th, after the assassination, he was transported to Walter Reed Army Hospital, where he was forced to undergo "therapy," which consisted of strong drugs, psychological reconditioning, and threats of electroshock therapy. Left with no other option to regain his freedom, Dinkin accepted the diagnosis of the army psychiatrists, and was given a medical discharge from the army.

Republican Senator Arlen Specter, who later gained national notoriety during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, was a lawyer working for the Warren Commission. It was he who put forward the theory of the "magic bullet."

According to the single-bullet theory, a three-centimeter long copper-jacketed lead-core 6.5-millimeter rifle bullet fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository passed through President Kennedy’s neck and Governor Connally’s chest and wrist and embedded itself in the Governor’s thigh. If so, this bullet traversed 15 layers of clothing, 7 layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of tissue, struck a necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone. The bullet was found on a gurney in the corridor at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Its copper jacket was completely intact, and the supposed bullet fired by Oswald bore no traces of blood or other tissues, not even in the microscopic grooves of the projectile.

In support of his magic bullet theory, as attorney for the Warren Commission, Mr. Specter asked the following question of a doctor who was testifying before the committee:

Permit me to add some fact which I shall ask you to assume as being true for purposes of having you express an opinion. First of all, assume that the President was struck by a 6.5mm copper-jacketed bullet from a rifle having a muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 feet per second at a time when the President was approximately 160 to 250 feet from the weapon, with the President being struck from the rear at a downward angle of approximately 45 degrees, being struck in the upper right posterior thorax just above the upper border of the scapula 14 centimeters from the tip of the right acromion process and 14 centimeters below the tip of the right mastoid process. Assume further that the missile passed through the body of the President striking no bones, traversing the neck and sliding between the muscles in the posterior aspect of the President's body through a fascia channel without violating the pleural cavity, but bruising only the apex of the right pleural cavity and bruising the most apical portion of the right lung, then causing a hemotoma to the right of the larynx, and creating a jagged wound in the trachea, then exiting precisely at the point where you observe the puncture wound to exist.

Even a top-flight surgeon, familiar with legal proceedings, would have to answer, "Um, can you repeat the question?"

Governor Ventura also calls on the carpet the mainstream media that purported the "lone gunman" explanation as the only truth from the first reports out of Dallas to the present day. Ventura maintains that media companies have long been in bed with the CIA. He quotes investigative journalist Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame:

The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception. Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA included the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald-Tribune.

Or as my wife would say, "AP, UP, every pea in the pod."

Ventura states: "Many Americans still insist or persist in believing that we have a free press, while getting most of their news from state-controlled television, under the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public. Reporters are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually cower when challenged by advertisers or major government figures."

Ventura quotes independent journalist Robert Parry, on his experience working in mainstream media (AP, Newsweek), "The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand up, who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along with the deception of the American people."

Ventura then quotes author Mary Louise from her book Operation Mockingbird, "Until the 1980's, media systems were generally domestically owned, regulated, and national in scope. However, pressure from the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. government to deregulate and privatize the media, communication, and new technology resulted in a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of super-powerful transnational media corporations working to advance the cause of global markets and the CIA agenda."

The Free Press summed it up nicely - "Massive corporations dominate the U.S. media landscape. Through a history of mergers and acquisitions, these companies have concentrated their control over what we see, hear, and read. In many cases, these companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution."

Robert Hennelly & Jerry Policoff, in their article, JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story, assert that, "if the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was one of the darkest tragedies in the Republic's history, the reporting of it has remained one of the worst travesties of the American media."

Researcher William Kelly notes that "we know that records have been intentionally destroyed, some gone totally missing and others are being wrongfully withheld," and the National Archives and Records Administration estimates that 50,000 records still remain classified.

After all is said and done, you may ask, "So what?" Ancient history. Water under the bridge. Business as usual. But I'll tell you "so what." Presidents are human beings. They have wives and children that they love. Their post-presidential opportunities are unlimited. They look forward to active retirement with their grandchildren about them. Do you think for one second that the message sent by President Kennedy's murder, whether it was part of the original intention or not, doesn't hang over the head of every man who takes the oath of office?

The reason that Jesse Ventura takes this matter so seriously, is not only because a great man was assassinated, that a husband and father was murdered, and that the perpetrators were never brought to justice, but that the powers involved have so corrupted our world. The media is compromised, the arms merchants slaughter the human race, and our political process has been bought and paid for by corporations that go far beyond mere greed.

In his Conclusion, Venture brings in a quote from President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.

In today's court of public opinion, just uttering the phrase "grassy knoll" gets you sent to sit in the corner wearing your tinfoil dunce cap. "Grassy knoll" conjurs up images of a little picnic area, but in fact, the grassy knoll was a large swath rising up to a triple-overpass that the motorcade would have traveled under, and at the top of the embankment was a railroad yard, tailor made for staging the assassination. Many of the people who were there that day, clearly heard shots coming from that direction, and many, including law enforcement personnel and Secret Service agents, even ran towards that area to assist in apprehending the shooter and cutting off his escape.

I've read all of Ventura's books and I enjoy them very much. He's outspoken and opinionated, and he backs up those opinions with ironclad innuendo and incontrovertible hearsay. His writing style is in your face, and instead of drawing the reader along with softly spoken words, he pins you to the mat and shouts in your ear. He's no Shakespeare, but he doesn't need to be because we already have one.

In They Killed Our President, he tackles a subject very close to his heart, and it shows. Does this book lay to rest, once and for all, the matter of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy? Of course not, but such is the soul of conspiracy.

The honor of the final quote falls rightfully to Jack Kennedy himself:

I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.

Ventura is an ex-Special Forces grunt, professional wrestler, actor, mayor, governor, radio and television host, author, and presidential hopeful. And he accomplished all of this with the strength of his take no prisoners personality.

He gets my vote.