Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:

“The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is men’s last desperate attempt at supremacy.”

                                          Bette Davis



I don’t know if all of you know that the queen of daytime TV, Oprah Winfrey, has requested an interview with infamous South Carolina child killer Susan Smith. The incoming Governor Nikki Haley told Oprah, that person with an ego the size of Montana, to stuff it. Thanks Nikki.



Last week the Chairman of the Mecklenburg County Commission (Charlotte, NC) Jennifer Roberts sent out a series of e-mails asking the other members of the commission if they should endorse or condemn the Pentagon’s position on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” issue with homosexuals in the military. Right off the bat that issue is no business of a County Commission but Jennifer asked and Jennifer got. County Councilman Bill James sent an e-mail back stating “Hell no we should not endorse homosexuals in the military, they are nothing but sexual predators and will be nothing but a distraction to combat troops.” Oh my God, you would have thought he had threatened to bomb the White House. Almighty hell was raised, especially by MSNBC, The Huffington Post, change.com (a left wing advocate) and others. Bill James just shrugged his shoulders and stood fast by his statement saying that everyone has a right to an opinion including himself. James represents that part of Charlotte in the Mint Hill, Highway 51 area. All of James’ critics say that he should retract his statement and apologize. I do not expect that Bill will do anything of the sort. If you go by strict democratic principles, a representative is nothing but a mouthpiece for those people he represents. I lived in Charlotte for four years and if I remember the people of Charlotte correctly, I think James’ echoes the majority opinion of his constituents by far. But if that is not the case, he still has his 1st Amendment rights, opinion notwithstanding. After all, that king of the wimps Keith Olbermann of MSNBC has said that he supports gays in the military, so it seems that Keith Olbermann can voice and opinion on nationwide television as long as it is “politically correct and left wing” but Bill James up in Charlotte cannot. I had better stop now; I am getting a little nauseous.



It has happened again. Up in Charlotte, NC a woman was out walking her dog when two Rottweilers confronted her and then attacked both her and her dog. They did a considerable amount of damage before a neighbor heard her screaming and ran out but could not distract the attacking Rottie’s. When the woman made the slightest move the dogs moved in again and again. The neighbor went in and retrieved his .45 automatic and went back out and started yelling at the dogs. One of the dogs turned his attention to him and attacked. The dog leapt at his gun hand and the man fired killing it instantly. It was so close that the man’s hand was scratched by the teeth of the dog on the way down. About then the cops arrived and the remaining dog attacked the cops. Well, there is no use in me telling you what happened next. Both the woman and her dog were severely injured but will survive. What crazy person would have a Rottweiler or a pit bull? How many times have you read about an attack on a person by Beagle, Blue tick, Bloodhound, Golden Retriever, etc? I am sorry Cesar Millan; there are just some breeds that are dangerous.



This Date in History    January 3

1777    General George Washington pulls off a brilliant strategic victory over the British near Princeton, New Jersey. As we all know, Washington had crossed the Delaware River with 3,000 troops on Christmas day and crushed the British-led Hessians in Trenton, New Jersey. British General William Howe was deeply concerned and sent General Charles Cornwallis and 8,000 redcoats to Trenton to capture “The Fox”, George Washington. Washington discovered the oncoming British and knew his 3,000 exhausted but exuberant troops could not stand up to the 8,000 redcoats. Cornwallis assumed that Washington would back-track and cross the Delaware back into Pennsylvania and sent troops to protect against that. Washington knew that Cornwallis would assume this and on the night of January 2 he pulled out of Trenton by muffling the wheels of his rolling stock and the hooves of his horses and walked right by the encamped British and headed north to Princeton. On this morning Washington encountered Cornwallis’ rear guard that he had outnumbered by 5 to 1 near Princeton. Needless to say, the Patriots beat the hell out the rear guard to the tune of 40 Patriots killed to 275 British. After this Howe decided to abandon New Jersey to Washington and moved his army to the area between New Brunswick and the Atlantic coast. The Loyalists in New Jersey were in serious trouble now. Previously the British troops and especially the Hessians had been especially brutal and cruel to any Patriots they came across and the Loyalists had welcomed the British/Hessians with open arms. Well, now the Loyalists had no troops to protect them and the Patriots came after them with blood in their eyes. Many of the Loyalists went aboard British ships for protection. The ships eventually sailed for Canada and put ashore the Loyalists who became Canadian citizens and others left by wagon immediately for New Brunswick and the umbrella of General Howe’s troops. They became Canadian citizens….and don’t come back.



1861    On this date, in spite of being a slave-holding state, Delaware refuses to secede from the Union. By now there had been 10 states that had and formed the Confederate States of America. Technically, Delaware was a slave–holding state but there were only 10 bondsmen in the entire state and they were all in the southern agrarian section, especially Sussex County, rather than in the more industrial northern section around Wilmington.



1990    In October of this year, a man named Charles Stuart makes a desperate cell phone call to the police from the Mission Hills district of Boston. He claimed that a black man had walked by and shot both him and his wife while sitting in his car at a stoplight. Charles’ wound was not life threatening but his pregnant wife was killed. The Boston PD goes crazy as hell and began the indiscriminant strip search of nearly every black man in the Mission Hills area. The police finally arrest a black small time drug dealer named Alan Swanson by falsifying an arrest warrant. Alan was able to prove that he was miles away in the presence of 30 other people. The Boston PD unapologetically releases Swanson. They then arrest another black man named Willie Bennett and it looked like Willie was going down for the murder. During all this time, the Boston PD failed to look into Charles Stuart’s background. If they had, they would have found that Charles had a thing for one of his co-workers and hit on her regularly, he was also really upset that his wife had chosen not to get an abortion when she found out she was pregnant. He had even talked with his friends about how to get rid of his wife. Anyway, on this date Charles’ brother Matthew went to the police and told them that Charles had killed his wife and shot himself in a non-fatal area. Matthew admitted that he had taken the pistol that Charles had used and threw it into the river at Charles’ behest. He said that he was OK with Charles killing his wife, but he drew the line at someone else going to prison for it. When Charles found out that Matthew had blown the whistle, he went to a bridge and jumped to his death in the river below. He left a suicide note saying that he was sorry for the trouble he had caused. Again the Boston PD unapologetically, released Willie Bennett. The Boston PD was intent on convicting a black man come hell or high water, justice be damned.



1521    On this date a Catholic monk named Marin Luther is excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Luther was the professor of biblical interpretation at the Wittenberg, Germany University. What caused this was that Luther was teaching in his classes that the Catholic Church practice of selling “indulgences” was not sanctioned by God because it was not described in the Bible. Selling indulgences had been a practice of the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. This practice was that a person could be forgiven of their sins if they contributed to the Catholic Church, either before the commission of the sin or afterward. The Catholic Church received untold billions of dollars worldwide with this practice and the church knew that if this income was stopped they would be in serious trouble financially. I can assure you that the church’s interest in saving one’s soul was on the bottom of the priorities list when it came to this. Later on Luther was called before the head of the political machinery in that area of Germany along with a Papal emissary. In those days, affairs of state and the Catholic Church were unfortunately intertwined. This meeting was called the Diet of Worms. Worms was a city in Germany and Diet loosely means “trial”. At this gathering the Papal emissary and the politicos demanded that Luther recant everything he had said adverse to the Catholic Church. Since Luther’s teachings reached the public, the sale of indulgences had fallen off sharply in that area of Europe and the church was feeling the pinch. Luther asked for a day to think it over. The next day he announced that he would only follow and teach what was in the Bible and nothing else, indulgences and other non-biblical programs of the church, be damned. Well, this essentially was a death sentence for Luther. Soon after leaving Worms, Luther was kidnapped and brought to the castle of a powerful Duke who was a follower of Luther. Luther began translating the Bible, which was written in Latin, into German. This panicked the Catholics even more because if this Bible got out into the gentry they could interpret the Bible for themselves rather that having it interpreted for them by the church. Luther’s Bible indeed made it out and the Reformation began in earnest. Thank you, Martin Luther, for being true to thyself and leading us out of a dark place.



Quotable quotes:



“Ballet is where the men wear pants so tight that you can tell what religion they are.”

                                          Robin Williams



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.