Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

“It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory.”

                       W. Edwards Deming

A friend of mine and I got into a discussion about what the requirements are to be President o fht United States. According to my research the Constitution is says that the candidate must be a "natural borne citizen". What does that mean keeping in mind that the framers of the Constitutionwrote it in in 1782 and had no clue as to how many Americans would be stationed over the globe today. Here is an example: I was sent to spent 3 to 4 months in Kingston. Ontario in Canada. If I had been married and had a preganant wife and she had the child in Kingston, would my child be eligible for the US presidency? Of course he/she would. That is because the law has been amended to be "either born on American soil or at leat one of the parent must me an American citizen". Think about it y'all. Fluor and hundred of other engineering firms send people all

More about the Comanches:

The settlers in Texas, especially in the “Hill Country” area complained bitterly about the apparent blasé attitude of the local Comanches. They had a habit of walking into house un- announced and uninvited and taking whatever they fancied. The Texas government contacted the local Comanche tribe and asked for a conference to try and settle this problem. Seven sub-chiefs showed up in Austin. The whites were expecting them to show up in full regalia astride prancing Spanish mustangs. They showed up naked from the waist up (it was summer), hair in tangles and stained breechclouts. They were astride several different examples of horseflesh including mules. The Comanches were responsive to a peace treaty but the whites demanded that all the white hostages must be released. The next day the Comanches brought in a 16 year old girl that had been a captive for 7 years. The girl was not in good shape. She had many visible burn scars including her nose that had been burned off to the bone which infuriated the whites. The whites also knew that the Comanches had a lot more white captives that this one girl. The seven sub-chiefs were puzzled over the anger of the whites because they believed that it was common practice to keep whatever captives they wanted and treat them anyway they wanted. The whites reacted by hanging four of the sub-chiefs and imprisoning were to the others in spite of them being there under a flag of truce. The whites ought not to have done that because the enraged Comanches stopped walking in and stealing things and began a campaign of systematical torture and massacre the white settlers especially those on the banks of the Brazos River. The carnage continued until a large contingent of US Cavalry arrived and then the Comanches melted away into the countryside. More to come later.

The largest oil skimmer in the world is being tested in the Gulf of Mexico. The claim for this vessel is that it can capture all of the oil being spewed by the Deepwater Horizon on a daily basis. If this is true then there will be more oil added to this disaster but what is all ready out is enough for me.

I have a friend from Baton Rouge that is spending this week in Pensacola Beach and has been giving me reports. The condo he is staying in is on the 6th floor and he has a good view of the beach and the clean-up crews. He says that he sees nothing on the beach but an occasional tar ball. He says he has seen similar tar balls on the beach on a regular basis for years and so have I. In the past the tar balls came from oil tankers that have unloaded their oil and clean their tanks by flushing with seawater… He says the clean-up crews spend a lot of time sitting down under a tent. The rule is that if the temperature is above a certain level the workers cannot be exposed to direct sunlight for a specific length of time if they are in a HAZMAT suit, which they are.

I was presently surprised to see the enthusiastic display of patriotism over this past weekend. Even though I think we are in the greatest peril since the Great Depression, it seems that love of country is still in the hearts of America.

Even though the Attorney General of South Carolina, Henry McMasters is leaving office in January, he is running hard against street gangs in the state. He has indicted 115 thugs and organized drug dealers in the last couple of weeks. We had found out that the “Crips” street gang from Los Angeles had set up illegal drug operations on Greenville’s west side and another in Walterboro, SC. Both locations are being attacked in force by a combination of law enforcement officers from a variety of agencies including the FBI and ATF. Good for you Henry.

This date in history July 7

1863    On this date frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson departed Santa Fe on a mission to gather up all the Navahos in the four corners area and take them 300 miles to a reservation for the duration of the Civil War. Before the outset of the war Carson was a friend and confidant to the Navaho, Mescalero Apache, Kiowa and several other tribes in the southwestern United States. After the Civil war started Carson offered his services to the US and was given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st New Mexico Volunteers. He was present at the battle of Val Verde where the Confederates beat the crap out of a US Cavalry unit. Something happened to old Kit as soon as he put on that uniform. Suddenly he became a hater of all Indians and began a campaign of terror against them. When the Navajo resisted going to the reservation, Kit ordered their villages burned, poison their water supply, burned their crops and slaughtered their livestock, mostly sheep and horses. Then the Navajo began a 300 mile walk across the desert to the reservation. There is no use for me to go into what happened to the old and very young. I don’t know what happens to some people when they gain a little power; some of them just go crazy as hell. History is full of examples. Like Hitler, Napoleon and the queen of mean, Leona Helmsley and finally Tony Rodriguez. Some friends of mine will know who he is.

1864    On this date, for the first time in the history of the United States issued a sentence of death to a woman and she is hanged. There were other women hanged and burned at the stake as being witches in our early years in and around Salem, Massachusetts but we were not the United States at that time. By the way, it took the Governor of Massachusetts stepping in to put a stop to that carnage. Anyway, the woman’s name was Mary Surratt and she was convicted of treason in spite of overwhelming evidence that she was innocent. Mary ran a boarding house about 2 blocks from the Ford Theatre in Washington where Lincoln was assassinated. What made her “guilty” was that the real conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln used her parlor to plan it. There was no evidence that she knew anything at all about what they were planning. Another travesty of justice was the imprisonment of Dr. Mudd that treated and set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth after he had broken it jumping to the stage after shooting Lincoln. Mudd had taken the Hippocratic Oath that he would treat anyone that needed it. All of that not withstanding, he was jailed for keeping his oath. The powers that be in Washington were in a frenzy of revenge, no matter how unjust.

2006    That’s right ya’ll, two days ago a 31 year of man named Anthony Berry beat another 53 year old man into a coma. It is his father, Jeffrey Berry. Jeffrey was the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. This did not take place in Meridian, Mississippi, it happened in South Bend, Indiana. Earlier, Jeffrey had granted an interview at his house with a local TV station as he being the Grand Wizard. After the interview, the news reporters told him that they would be adding comments from other Klansmen to the interview. Jeffrey said “Like Hell you are, give me that video tape”. As you might expect the reporters refused. Jeffrey’s assistant produces a shotgun and Jeffrey says that they ain’t leaving until they surrender the tape. They did not give up the tape and as soon as they got free they went to the police and filed a complaint for kidnapping. Jeffrey was tried and convicted and sentenced to ten years. He was out on probation after three. No one knows what precipitated the attack on Jeffrey. Isn’t there something about “Live by the sword die by the sword” here?

2006    Again, two days ago Kenneth Lay the former president of Enron died suddenly of a heart attack in his summer home in Aspen, Colorado. Isn’t it ironic that he still has a summer home in the Colorado Rockies and has already been convicted of several crimes and could possibly be sentenced to life? His sentencing was due in October along with CFO Jeffrey Skilling, also previously convicted. A member of the jury that convicted Lay said that she had doubts about his guilt until he testified and seemed irritable and arrogant. When he was asked about giving his wife a $200,000 yacht for her birthday even after the company had gone bankrupt costing thousand of employees their pensions and savings, he said “You can’t give up this lifestyle like turning off a spigot.” It was then that the juror knew that he had no remorse for what he had done to his employees and voted guilty. I would have too.

Births and deaths:

1940    Professional dumb-ass and musician Ringo Starr is born. He said “I like Beethoven, especially his poems.”

                               Ringo, shut up.

1816    English parliamentarian Richard Sheridan dies. When hitting on a potential new mistress he said “Will you come into my garden, my roses would like to see you”. Listen up guys; I don’t know if I have ever heard a better pick-up line than that.

Quotable quotes:

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”

                    Thomas Paine

“It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.”

           Blaise Pascal. Think on that, ya’ll.

“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”

               Gen. George S. Patton

“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer”.

          Gen. George S. Patton

“If you see a snake, just kill it. Don’t appoint a committee.”

                          H. Ross Perot

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice your gift.”

                        Steve Prefontaine

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridges to cross and which to burn.”
                            Laurence Pete

“Life is to be lived as a child at play”
                    Plato

And finally:

“Most people run a race to see who is the fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts”

                                  Steve Prefontaine

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow