Judge Orders Funeral Home That Sold Lee Harvey Oswald’s Pine Casket for $87,468 Must Return It To Presidential JFK Assassin’s Brother, Robert Oswald

IMAGINE SEEING THIS FOR SALE ON EBAY OR CRAIG’S LIST …

Tarrant County, TX Judge Don Cosby ruled Friday that the funeral home that sold Lee Harvey Oswald’s pine casket for $87,468 must return it to the presidential assassin’s brother. Judge Cosby wrote that Robert Oswald bought his brother’s (Lee Harvey Oswald) pine box for $300 on November 24, 1963, and it remains to this day “the personal property of Robert.” In December 2010, a Los Angeles auction house sold the casket to an unidentified buyer for $87,468.  Judge Don Cosby stated the actions of the funeral home’s conduct was “wrongful, wanton and malicious.”

CREEPY, JUST CREEPY.

Judge orders Lee Harvey Oswald’s casket returned to assassin’s brother

In 1981, Lee Harvey Oswald’s body was exhumed (VIDEO) amid conspiracy theories that the grave did not contain Lee Harvey Oswald’s body. What a shock, something surrounding the assignation of President John F. Kennedy was mired in conspiracy. The remains were examined and determined to be that of Oswald after dental records were confirmed. When Lee Harvey Oswald was reburied, it was not done so with the original pine box as it was too damaged. It was thought by the family that the original casket was thrown away. However, that was not the case. As it turns out the funeral home, Baumgardner Funeral Home, kept it and eventually sold it at auction, along with Lee Harvey Oswald’s death certificate and the embalming tools and table used in his burial,  to an anonymous buyer. How creepy. Robert Oswald sued Nate D. Sanders Fine Autographs & Memorabilia, Inc., and Baumgardner Funeral Home over the sale of the casket, as well as other grim items tied to his brother’s death. During the trial, the funeral home’s attorney actually tried to argue that the coffin was “a gift” from Robert to Lee.

The Funeral Of Lee Harvey Oswald

A funeral home that sold Lee Harvey Oswald’s pine casket for $87,468 must return it to the accused presidential assassin’s brother, a judge ruled Friday.

Robert Oswald had bought the pine bluff casket for his brother, whose body was exhumed in 1981 amid conspiracy theories that it did not contain Lee Harvey Oswald’s body. After a Dallas hospital confirmed the body through dental records, it was reburied, but not in the original casket, which was too water-damaged.

Oswald’s family says it thought the original casket had been thrown away, but the funeral home actually kept it in storage before selling it at auction — along with Lee Harvey Oswald’s death certificate and the embalming tools and table used in his burial — to an anonymous buyer.

Oswald’s brother, Robert, sued Baumgardner Funeral Home after it sold the coffin through an auction house in Santa Monica, California. The auction house still has the coffin, because the lawsuit had put the sale of the coffin on hold. The sale was never completed, the judgment says.

Oswald’s brother wins suit over casket.

In addition to returning the casket to Robert Oswald, the funeral home must pay him $87,468 in damages, state District Judge Don Cosby ruled, saying its conduct was “wrongful, wanton and malicious.”

It also must pay the auction house more than $10,000 in storage fees.

The funeral home also must cover the expense of transporting the coffin from California to Texas, where the family plans to destroy it, according to Oswald’s attorney, Gant Grimes.

25th Year Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall … Nov. 9, 1989

It is hard to believe it has been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall …

Nov. 9, 1989, 25 years later and it seems like yesterday I can remember watching the news of the German people hammering, chiseling and tearing down the Berlin Wall, symbolizing the freedom of the East German people and the defeat of Communism. Thousands of East Berliners poured into West Berlin and freedom.  It was a moment in history that you remember where you were when you saw the images of the fall of Communism and the rise of freedom. It is a forever remembered moment in history for the world, not just Germany. The people celebrated in the streets, as Germans shed their hammers and sickles for hammers and chisels and brought the wall down forever.

White balloons spanning a stretch of the former death strip floated over hundreds of thousands of revelers in the German capital on Sunday, culminating a day of celebrations to mark 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

More than 300,000 people gathered in Berlin to watch a light installation of 8,000 helium balloons tracing a nine-mile stretch be released into the night sky, police said. The illuminated balloons snaked past historic locations such as Checkpoint Charlie as part of a celebration that included music and fireworks at the city’s Brandenburg Gate—a location once circumvented by the wall.

Speaking earlier in the day, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the fall of the Berlin Wall proof that dreams could come true during a ceremony to mark the event’s 25th anniversary. She added that its collapse offered hope to regions where “freedom and human rights are threatened or even trampled on.”

For days, celebrations throughout Germany have been commemorating the opening of the East German border on Nov. 9, 1989. The breaching of the border heralded the collapse of the Communist system and led to German reunification less than a year later.

The Iconic Photo of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

National Geographic on the Berlin Wall, pretty good documentary.

The Guardian: A city undivided: the fall of the Berlin Wall commemorated 25 years on.

This year’s commemoration of the fall of the Iron Curtain may also feel more poignant because there is a palpable sense that peace in Europe in 2014 is more fragile than it was at the 20th anniversary in 2009.

In her speech at the wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse on Saturday afternoon, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, had explicitly emphasized the geopolitical resonances of the event, instead of indulging in personal reminiscences.

“We have the strength to shape things, to turn things from bad to good, that is the message of the fall of the wall,” she said. “These days, that message is directed at Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and many, many other regions in the world.”

Let us never forget what real leadership looks like. Where US President Ronald Wilson Reagan not only went to Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987 and gave his famous speech when he uttered those famous words  that would eventually come true … “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall,” but also helped bring about the fall of Communism. Wow, imagine that, a president with a spine and resolve to effectuate real change that brought liberty to millions, not one apologizing for America’s actions. A president that looked to unify people, not divide them. A president that looked to end Communism, not partake in it. God bless Ronald Reagan. These days we can only say, what a novel concept.

President Ronald Reagan – Speech at the Brandenburg Gate – West Berlin, Germany – June 12, 1987:

Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it’s our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we’re drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American presidents. You see, like so many presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin. [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: “We will bury you.” But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind–too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Presidents Day 2014 … Great Presidents & Great Speeches (George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Reagan), And Other Presidents & How History Will Remember Them

Never has America needed a president more who was a true leader and statesman who cared more about the United States of America and “We the People” than they do about themselves, their own power and their agenda. How far have we come from a first president who feared the impression that he would have the appearance of a king and had to be talked into a second term. George Washington left office on his own after two terms, there was no legislation that told him to do so. Compare that to today’s power grabs by presidents and their purposeful and willful ignoring of the US Constitution.

Please America, you have one more chance to get it right in 2016 and follow the path of the great presidents of our past and what America was intended to be.

1. President George Washington – George Washington Speech – First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years–a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow- citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence. (more)

Also read Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796.

2. President Ronald W. Reagan – ‘Tear Down This Wall’ speech from  June 12, 1987 in West Berlin, Germany at the base of the Brandenburg Gate.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent– and I pledge to you my country’s efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Government is not the solution, Government is the problem

There are just so many great and historic moments from the Reagan years, go HERE to watch and listen to many of them from the space shuttle Challenger tragedy to his Evil Empire speech.

3. President Abraham Lincoln – Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19. 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate— we can not consecrate—we can not hallow— this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us— that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- dom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

4. President John F. Kennedy – “I am a Berliner – Ich Bin Ein Berliner” … read Text HERE.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.

When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe.

When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

Ask Not What your Country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your Country

And then we have those presidents who no matter what they had and have said during their terms in office will forever be known for the following comments and speeches. One inspirational and two, not so much.

President George W. Bush -Bull Horn speech at Ground Zero following 911 terror attack ... “I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

President Bill Clinton -  I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Could also have used, “it all depends on what is, is”.

President Barack Obama – “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period! If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan, period!”

America Remembers John F. Kennedy 50 Years Later after that Fateful Day … “Anybody here seen my old friend John?”

November 22, 1963 … the day that shook America in Dallas, TX.

For those that were alive on that fateful day, yesterday most Americans remembered where they were the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot and assassinated while traveling in his presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas. It was the day that shocked America, the world and forever changed the United States with innocence lost. In a time in which few can even conceive or remember when there were three news channels, no-24-7 news, no internet, no social media, no Twitter … the nation was rocked with the unthinkable, the death of a president as all watched in horror.

At 12:29 pm CST, as President Kennedy’s uncovered limousine entered Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally, then the First Lady of Texas, turned around to President Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” which President Kennedy acknowledged. Then life changed, everything changed as we knew it. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 pm CST, Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. JFK was taken to Parkland Hospital, Trauma Room 1 where he was treated for his mortal wounds to his head.

At 1:00 p.m., CST President John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. As one doctor was reported to say, “We never had any hope of saving his life.” And sadly we were presented with another good man who died too young. 

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

50 years later we remember President John F. Kennedy, a life taken far to soon and his vision for America that was cut short  that Day in Dealey Plaza by an assassins bullet. We remember the man who is frozen in time because of the tragic nature in how he was killed and we can only wonder how things, so many things would have been different in America had he lived. Too many focus on the “conspiracy” theories of how JFK died or his affair with Marilyn Monroe, but there was so much more to a president who captured the imagine of the country. I was not alive the day JFK died, but being a history major I had read much of his life. I have attended the Kennedy Library and been to grave, the “Eternal Flame,” at Arlington National Cemetery as well as grew up in New England so was surrounded by the lore of the Kennedy’s most of my life. JFK was a unique man, an inspirational individual who knew how to communicate with people, bring them together and make people feel good about themselves. But he was much more than that, he was a leader, a man who had big goals as seen by is efforts to get the US into space and he was the one who asked us,“ask not what your country can do for you can do for your country” (VIDEO). Where are those leaders today?

‘Abraham, Martin and John’ - Dion

U.S. President John F. Kennedy was remembered as a transcendent leader of a rising nation at a ceremony in Dallas on Friday, the 50th anniversary of his assassination, while bitterness remained for many who disbelieve the official story of how he died.

“Our collective hearts were broken,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told a crowd of about 5,000 who came to a frigid Dealey Plaza, near where Kennedy was slain, for a commemoration marked with prayer, song and tears.

Remembered fondly for his youthful vigor and his glamorous wife, Kennedy remains one of Americans’ favorite presidents for his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, his call to public service with programs such as the Peace Corps and a promise – later fulfilled – to land an American on the moon before the end of the 1960s.

“A new era dawned and another waned a half century ago when hope and hatred collided right here in Dallas,” Rawlings said.

The assassination cut short “Camelot,” as the 1,000 days of the Kennedy presidency became known. He was 46 when he died

This is how I remember John F. Kennedy, as a leader, a unifier and a man with a vision of big ideas and one’s that made America better, not just a political party. Take a good listen to what a true leader sounds like. I hear an awful lot of “WE”, not me or I. JFK wanted the United States to be a leader in the world, number one, not a follower. Where has my old friend John gone, it is true that the good so die young.

“The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not. And it is one of the greatest adventures of all times. And no nation which expects to be the leaders of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space”.

“We Choose to go to the moon, not because they are easy, because they are hard”

EPIC FAIL: President Barack Obama Bombs in Berlin … a Weak, Underwhelming Address From a Floundering President

Barack Obama, International Rock Star No More …

The UK Telegraph just rips Barack Obama’s underwhelming speech apart as they compare it to the one’s that JFK and Ronald Reagan made in Berlin. What else would one expect from a weak, ineffective and scandal ridden  president? Because truth be known and its about time that America and the World admit it, Obama really is an empty suit and an epic failure. Obama is no JFK and he certainly is no Reagan. Obama is simply an emperor with no clothes and now no audience. Obama’s speech yesterday in Berlin was as weak as it gets and showed just how small this president has become. Obama took his scandal plagued, failed economy on the road for what seemed more like a State of the Union laundry list of begs on the road to Europe. His lame speech can be read HERE. One has to wonder who thought this was a good idea. Is his ego really that big and is Obama do deluded to think that this small, tiny, miniscule speech was on par with JFK and RWR? All that has been accomplished during Obama’s European vacation is just how much he has diminished the role of the President and the United States in the World.

John F. Kennedy – I am a Berliner – “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”

Take a look what a real president looks like speaking in Berlin, Germany

When John F. Kennedy delivered his “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate on June 26, 1963, 450,000 people flocked to hear him. Fifty years later a far more subdued invitation-only crowd of 4,500 showed up to hear Barack Obama speak at the same location in Berlin. As The National Journal noted, “he didn’t come away with much, winning just a smattering of applause from a crowd that was one-hundredth the size of JFK’s,” and far smaller than the 200,000 boisterous Germans who had listened to his 2008 address as a presidential candidate. JFK had a clear message when he came to Berlin a half century ago – the free world must stand up to Communist tyranny. 24 years later, President Reagan stood in the same spot famously calling on the Soviets to “tear down this wall.” Reagan’s speech was a seminal moment that ushered in the downfall of an evil empire, and gave hope to tens of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. It was a display of strength and conviction by the leader of the free world, sending an unequivocal message of solidarity with those who were fighting for freedom in the face of a monstrous totalitarian ideology.

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favorite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.

President Ronald Reagan – “Tear Down this Wall”

Another great President in Berlin, German

What did we get from Barack Obama? A political liberal beg speech of his liberal wish list that has nothing to do with anything except show just how shallow and small Obama really has become. It was nothing more than embarrassing.