Good morning.







Quote of the day:


“How do you know when it is time to wash your dishes, clean your house. Look inside your pants and if a penis is detected it is NOT time.


Al Campbell






Hey Edie, it was good to see you Saturday evening.






I never understood why ABC TV network wanted to interview Newt Gingrich's ex-wife. It is a well known fact the Newt and his ex-wife experienced a very bitter divorce. How can any journalist expect this woman to be objective? They cannot. This just confirms my suspicions that the news media lusts not after news but after sensationalism. That is the reason I cannot and will not read or watch any news with any thought of credibility. As far as I am concerned there is only one publication that is totally honest and without an agenda and that is the Christian Science Monitor.






Here are few tidbits about our past leaders that proves they and we are not perfect.






George Washington was a slave owner and whiskey maker.






John Adams had black women as housekeepers to help Abigail when John was gone. It is not clear if they were slaves, indentured servants or freedmen.






Thomas Jefferson sired several children by one of his slaves. When he was in France he had a blistering affair with a married woman.






Benjamin Franklin was a member of “The Hell Fire Club” in London. This club would meet occasionally and the men came dressed as priests and the women came dressed as nuns. They drank heavily and eventually the meeting descended into orgiastic debauchery.






William McKinley sold cabinet positions.






Dwight Eisenhower had a girlfriend while he was in command of all allied forces in Europe (SHAEF) while stationed in London. It was his driver, a foxy lady named Kay Summersby.






Harry Truman gained his political powers from being part and parcel of the Pendergast political machinery in St. Louis.






John Kennedy had several girlfriends including Marilyn Monroe and so did Bobby.






Richard Nixon interfered with FBI investigations of the Watergate burglary, it cost him his career.






Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, etc, etc.






Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick.






I have not scratched the surface of how flawed our leaders have been...We are very lucky...so far.






Early this past Saturday morning two men walked into a Waffle House near Spartanburg, SC. One of them produced a sidearm and announced that they were there to rob the place. Little did they know that one of the patrons was armed and had a concealed weapons permit. The patron got the drop on the robbers and told them to get down on the floor. The stupid one with the sidearm raised his weapon instead and the patron capped him with one shot to the chest and one to the head. The other robber fled but was captured two days later. In the sovereign state of South Carolina where concealed weapons permits are obtained with a minimum of effort, you can never tell who is packing and who isn't. No charges have been filed against the shooter.






This date in history January 24






1781 On this date the combined cavalry forces of the Virginian Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee and South Carolinian Brigadier General Francis “Swamp Fox” Marion descended upon a 200 man British encampment near Georgetown, South Carolina. Henry Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia and was the father of CSA General Robert E. Lee. Francis Marion was born on a plantation on Winyah Bay near Georgetown, South Carolina. Marion had been given command of the South Carolina Militia while the commander, Thomas “The Gamecock” Sumter, was recovering from a severe wound. The raid came as a complete surprise to the British and the Patriots were able to capture a large portion on the encampment including several officers and the camp commander. A month later “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was able to destroy another British unit on the banks of the Haw River in North Carolina. Lee’s unit was able to close in on the British without opposition this was because the uniforms worn by the Patriots were very similar to those worn by the British cavalry unit of the infamous Colonel Banastre Tarleton. When the Patriots were within sight of the British they waved greeting to them and kept it up until they were within striking distance. After this is was nothing short of a slaughter. The British commander, Colonel John Pyle, lost three fingers and the sight of one eye during the attack but was able to escape by jumping into a nearby pond and hiding in the reeds. To this day that body of water is known as “Pyle’s Pond”.






1956 Earlier a 14 year old black kid from Chicago named Emmett Till was visiting his great-uncle on his farm near Money, Mississippi. He bragged to the locals there that he had a white girlfriend in Chicago and was challenged to see if he could get one there in Mississippi. Emmett was the typical teenager and accepted the challenge. He went into the local convenience store and made a pass at a married white woman working there. A couple of days later the woman’s husband came home from a business trip and was told of what happened with Emmett. So J.W. Milam and his cousin Roy Bryant went to Emmett’s great-uncle’s farm and kidnap Emmett. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. They beat Emmett to death with their pistols; Milam and Bryant took Emmett’s corpse to the crest of the Tallahatchie Bridge, wrapped barbed wire around Emmett’s neck and the other end to a heavy cotton gin fan and threw them both off the bridge. The corpse was eventually discovered and Milam and Bryant were arrested and went to trial for murder. They were acquitted because the defense lawyer was able to convince the jury that the corpse was so decomposed that the true identification could not be determined. The prosecution produced a ring that was found on the corpse that was known to be owned by Emmett. The defense blew it off as being stolen. Anyway, because of the law of double jeopardy Milam and Bryant, knowing they could not be tried again, on this date sold their description of the murder of Emmett to Look magazine for $4,000. Emmett’s mother retrieved his corpse back to Chicago and in her anger held an open casket funeral that was attended by over 5,000 people. No other attempts to bring Milam and Bryant to justice but they both died of cancer a few years later. God works in mysterious ways.






1848 Earlier a Swiss emigrant to the United States named John Sutter had acquired 7,000 acres in Mexico owned California if he would swear allegiance to Mexico and keep those pesky European settlers at bay. The land was in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco. Sutter had ideas of creating a type of commune on his lands. He determined that in order to build housing he would need a saw mill so he hired a man named James Marshall to build one. The main water source in that area was the American River and Marshall decided to build his water powered saw mill on the south fork of the American River. He began digging to deepen the creek and in the diggings he kept seeing flashes of light off some of the flakes therein. On this date he gathered up some of the flakes and took them to Sutter who immediately took them to an assayer who told Sutter that it was indeed gold. Sutter tried to keep this discovery a secret and succeeded for a while but eventually the word leaked out and in 1849 the largest gold rush in history was under way. Sutter did not have to worry about the Mexicans any longer because Mexico ceded all its lands in California to the United States as a result of the US victory in the Mexican War. You would think that this would make Sutter very happy but by 1852 his thoughts of a commune had gone down the toilet and the oncoming gold seekers trampled his gardens and slaughtered his farm animals for food. He spent the last years of his life petitioning the US government to recompense him for his losses at the hand of the miners. He did not get anything.






1943 On this date the commander of the German 6th Army, General Frederick von Paulus, entreated Hitler to allow his army to surrender. Hitler refused. Earlier Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa which was the attempt to conquer Russia. There were three armies that departed Germany on this mission. Paulus was the commander of the central army whose main target was the capture of the city of Stalingrad. Upon arrival at the gates of Stalingrad he ran across a nut he could not crack so he surrounded the city and established a siege in an attempt to starve the people of Stalingrad into submission. In spite of millions starving to death, the city did not fall. Eventually the Russian army got on its feet and attacked Paulus’ army at its weakest point, the Romanian detachment. After breaking through here, the Russians swarmed around the Germans and encircled them cutting off their supplies. After the Russians had overrun his last airfield, Paulus knew the end was near especially since the descent of the worst winter in fifty years. A few days after the loss of this airfield, Paulus surrendered his army to the Russians, Adolph Hitler be damned. The Russians, remembering the people that starved to death in Stalingrad, accepted the surrender and gathered up the 500,000 half starved, half frozen Germans and sent them to prison camps. Of those that were captured, only 5,000 ever lived to see Germany again. Paulus was tried at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, but was released and spent his last days in East Berlin.






Quotable quotes:






“I go to see my doctor and tell him that when I get up in the morning I look in the mirror and begin to throw up. The doctor said that he did not know what was causing the nausea but my eyesight was perfect.” Rodney Dangerfield






Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow.