Ranger Rick: ‘Flyover country’ folks want lower taxes

I was in conversation with a close friend and the TV commentator said, “In flyover country, there is a storm with high winds, cold air, and snow.” My friend asked, “What is he talking about, fly over country”?

I was amazed he had never heard the term “fly over country” – the space between the Left and Right Coasts where tinseltown on the west and elite know- it-all snobs on the east reside and all the space between (thus the term fly-over country).  Yes folks, it is true, they think of us as the great unwashed, ignorant, stupid hayseeds and rednecks.

I would just wish they would stay where they are, as they are trying to avoid high taxes, especially in California and New York/New Jersey and move to places like Texas and Florida, bringing their liberal ways and politics with them. Eventually, wherever liberals move, they stink up the places with their wrong-headed politics and high tax ideas by more and more government intrusion into their lives.

In the old days of media when there were only a few TV stations, radio, newspapers and magazines, the scope of penetration into the populace for knowledge was limited to those who watched, listened or read. Most knowledge is self-driven in that the person has a desire to learn what is not known presently.

In those ancient days of media, the content was easily controlled by the station management or editors of print. Now with the Internet, that firm hand of control has been destroyed, and even the government has no control, and they aren’t happy about that. If you control the content of what is presented as information, you control the audience. That is what the government depends on. All that is now gone.

If the Vietnam War would have been conducted now instead of 50+ years ago, I doubt the state of the North Vietnam after Tet in 1968 would have been misconstrued as Walter Cronkite so mistakenly surmised as an American defeat. In actuality, it was a stunning defeat of the North Vietnamese, but they saw what the media commented on and were overjoyed at the mis-reporting and felt if they could hold on, the Americans would relent as we eventually did.

Richard Nixon won the 1968 election, the de-escalation of the war started, and the peace talks began. President Lyndon Johnson said that if he lost Cronkite, he lost support of the American people, such was the power of the media at the time.

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Vice President Johnson was given the oath of office and the body of John F. Kennedy was quickly put in a coffin and loaded on the presidential plane, under protest by Texas officials because no autopsy was performed, under state law in a murder an autopsy must be performed.

Essentially, the coverup began with scripted stories about who did it and why, how many shooters (official story was only one, although many witnesses said the grassy knoll was where shots came from. Others said the book depository, and others said the building across the street from the depository. The story was already in the can and officials were told the story and to abide by it or else.

They had Lee Harvey Oswald, and as Oswald said, “I’m just a patsy” — and he was officially declared the shooter, no more questions. Then Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby because as he explained, he wanted to spare Mrs. Kennedy a trial where she might have to testify and relive the horror. Americans were stunned, and the government swooped in with the official story to cover it up. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, would have been proud!

Fifty-five plus years since the assassination and still no answer other than Oswald.  The majority of Americans don’t believe it and neither does the government, but it is the only story out there. Physics doesn’t lie and if you look at the Zapruder film, as did the prosecutor from New Orleans, Jim Garrison, he had most of the story right.  There were outside interests involved, mainly the Mafia and the CIA — they both hated the Kennedy regime because of the debacle at the Bay of Pigs invasion with Kennedy offering no support and Robert Kennedy putting Mafia dons in prison and hounding the others.

The CIA was in charge of the planning and support of the freedom fighters to overthrow Castro and they hated Kennedy, calling him chicken shit for his decision to not support the invasion once it started. The Chicago mob, under orders from Sam Giancana, wanted Kennedy dead to show father Joe Kennedy they couldn’t be double-crossed after he asked the mob come out with votes and support for JFK in the election.

Robert Kennedy was told to back off investigating the Mafia and he never did. They felt they had to kill JFK because without him, the heat would back off. And it did.  And the lies and coverup never let up. Now so many stories and theories have come out that confusion set in and everybody is right and everybody is wrong, so nothing gets investigated. Someday, someday, someday.

In today’s world of the Internet, the Zapruder film, suppressed from 1963 until the trial in New Orleans, would have been seen quickly and the examination would have shown the killing head shot came from the right front, not from the rear, as would have been the only shot Oswald would have had.

A relatively  recent confession by James Files, a person connected with Mafia and handled by CIA operatives, claims he was the shooter from the infamous grassy knoll. He said he knew Oswald and spent time with him in Dallas before the date of the shooting. He said Oswald was not involved in the shooting other than planting of the rifle in the book depository. He agreed with Oswald’s statement, he was a “patsy” and a plant to get others off the trail of the real assassins.

Of course, with all the theories and conjecture spoken and written about since the assassination, there is confusion, and that was the whole idea behind the Oswald story.  The “patsy” was really a patsy.

The most compelling part of the James Files confession of killing Kennedy with the head shot is he claims he liked the smell and taste of gunpowder, so after he ejected the shell from the Remington Fireball target pistol, he put the cartridge in his mouth, tasted the gunpowder, bit down on the casing and placed it on the wood fence on the grassy knoll. Years later a man and his son were metal detecting in the area and dug up a casing and gave it to authorities. It had what looked to be teeth imprints on the end of the bullet end of the casing. Examining the casing and the tooth pattern of Files teeth, it was determined he could have been the person that made the imprint on the casing.

On another more recent event, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proposed a gas tax of $0.45 phased in over a year would fix the roads. That would put Michigan as the highest gas tax in the nation at the pump.  I’m sure she worked as hard as she could to come up with this whopper, but such is the love for taxes by Democrats instead of cutting government expenditures.

There has to be many areas of “nice to haves” that could be cut so the “must haves” are funded and the least amount of people are affected by the cutting. But the pork in government must be kept so politicians can wield power and show they are looking out for “you”! The only thing they do is look out for themselves.

The rotting of America from within continues…