Wednesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Gratitude can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

                                                           Melody Beattie

I had an occasion to be near downtown Greenville yesterday. I had a friend with me and we decided to go to a “soul food” cafeteria that we had visited before. The meats vary from day to day but there is always fish, usually fried whiting. I like fish myself but the meat loaf was too tempting. I had that along with mashed potatoes and gravy, turnip greens and cornbread. While we were eating an elderly man struggled with his tray and finally sat down near us. Soon afterward a server that was probably a relative came over and told this man that what he had to eat was not healthy for him. He said “I have four doctors telling me what to eat and not to eat, today I am going to eat what I want.” He had pigs feet (I told you it was soul food), macaroni and cheese, turnips greens, three slices of fried fatback and corn bread. Yummy!

I have a friend that is a restauranteur here in Greenville. He is a Greek with a definite accent and is very amiable. He also is very wealthy. In addition to a considerable home in Greenville, he has a home of considerable size with considerable acreage including olive orchards near Sparta, Greece. He visits this home several times a year. When he mentioned Sparta my ears perked up. I have written several items about the warriors of Sparta in the days of the Peloponnesian wars and against the invading Persians (see Thermopylae). I knew the tradition of ancient Sparta that when a baby is born and is not absolutely perfect, he/she is carried to the top of an escarpment and left to die. I discussed this with my friend and later on he brought me a photo looking out the back door of his home in Sparta...there was a steep cliff. It was on this cliff that the babies were taken and left to die. He said this spot is considered sacred and no one is allowed up there and is protected by local and federal law. I asked him to just bring me a rock from Sparta the next time he went. Last week he gave me two stones from a road that has been used for thousands of years for traffic in and out of Sparta. Just imagine if these stones were alive what tales they could tell. By the way, one of the stones is smooth gray and white and almost a sphere, the other one is smooth, oblong and pure white. They are very heavy for their size...probably granite.

In a previous edition I mentioned that I was reading about the history of the Comanche. They had pretty much settled their war with the Apache but continued in almost unrelenting raids of Spanish and French settlements. The Spanish were in what is now Texas, Missouri, Arizona and New Mexico and the French were in Louisiana. They were after people they could sell into slavery or trade them for needed items. The main “fairs” were in Taos and Santa Fe. If the women and children hostages they brought to the fairs were not taken in trade pretty quick they would publicly rape the women and release them then kill the children. They were mostly interested in anything metal especially axes, hatchets, knives, metal arrow heads, etc. They were a savage bunch...but so was the US Cavalry.

I am going to dip my feet into the cesspool of the history of South Carolina politics once again:

South Carolina had a Republican Senator named Jim DeMint and he was running for re-election. Jim is extremely popular and is in communication with his constituents on a regular basis. In other words, there is not another person on the planet that could beat Jim in the upcoming election. In the recent primaries, the Democrats offered up two candidates to run against DeMint. They were a lawyer named Vic Rawl and an unknown named Alvin Greene. Rawl is a lawyer from the coast and Alvin Greene is the enigma. He was unemployed, recently discharged from the military and living with his father in the tiny town of Manning, South Carolina. Alvin also has a felony charge pending for distribution of pornography. Alvin spent absolutely no money on his campaign. No fliers, no posters, nothing on any sort of media. This was totally unlike Vic Rawl who did all of the traditional things done in a political campaign. Not only that, the filing fee was $10,400. After the votes were counted, Greene had beaten Rawls 60% to 40 %. Everybody, including President Obama’s political adviser in South Carolina asked “What the hell is going on?” Everyone also is asking who gave him the $10,400 and for what reason? It is well known information that nobody is going to be able to beat Jim DeMint no matter their political party so the Republicans have no reason to waste the $10,400 filing fee. The Democrats certainly would not cough up the kind of money on an unknown, especially one that is looking at a possible felony conviction related to pornography. So who the hell is Alvin Greene and what is his purpose? The Democratic hierarchy in South Carolina was in a state of frenzy attempting to do some heavy duty sweeping of this bizarre event under the rug. By the way, in one particular voting district, there were more votes for my man Alvin that were cast in the total area. That would seem like a voting machine flaw to the average person. But voting machine experts have said that even if there were voting machine flaws, it would not account for the 60% to 40% margin. To those friends of mine in the Four O’clock Club that are mystery book readers, try and find a logical explanation for Alvin. By the way, Jim DeMint recently resigned as our Senator and took a job as President of the ultra-conservative political machine Heritage, USA...including a considerable pay raise.

A while back an elderly couple was found dead in a Best Western motel room in Boone, North Carolina. The medical examiner found that the two had died of carbon dioxide poisoning. Then about a week later an 11 year old boy was found dead in the same room of the same malady. Later on after the deaths the medical examiner had opined that the swimming pool water heater was too close to that motel room air conditioner and that was where the CO2 was coming from. His opinion was accurate...but he did not tell any of the authorities who could have shut down the motel until the situation was resolved...and the 11 year old boy is dead because of it. The medical examiner resigned soon after. It is too late now. Surely there has to be some kind of procedure in effect that if the medical examiner finds something deadly he notifies others in authority to resolve it. That ex-medical examiner will carry this event on his conscience for the rest of his days.

As I have said before my favorite TV shows are re-runs of Law and Order, Law and Order SVU and Burn Notice. All of these shows are on the USA network. While watching these shows I have seen ads for a new show titled “Graceland”. They played it up as the greatest TV show in this millennium. The premise is that the US took five people from different law enforcement agencies and assembled them into a unit operating on the west coast. I watched it a couple of times and it is more boring than Britain's Got Talent...By the way, Simon Crowell is the most no-talent arrogant bastard in the solar system. He is about as talented as a pissing toad...that analogy is courtesy of author Hunter Thompson now deceased.

Earlier the US declared that they were going to support the rebels in Syria supposedly because the Assam regime has started using Ricin attacks on the rebels. As all of you know Ricin is a deadly poison that can be delivered as a gas or a granular dust. All it takes is a whiff or two and you are dead as fried chicken (that analogy was not aimed at Tiger Wood). Also, it was reported that US F-16's have began landing in Jordan (an American ally} and US aircraft carriers are drawing closer to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. It looks like the US and its allies will impose a “no fly zone” over Syria and not allow Syrian (or anyone else's) fighter jets to engage the rebels. The US is also erecting several Patriot anti-missile batteries in addition to giving anti-tank weapons to the rebels. That will make it a lot more equal. I would like to see a show of hands that believe there are no SEAL or Delta teams already in Syria training the hell of the rebels in the use of advanced anti-tank weaponry and combat techniques. That's what I thought...me neither.

This Date in History June 18

1812 On this date the United States Congress and President James Madison declare war on Great Britain. What the root of this disagreement was all the cause of England. They had been “Shanghaiing” American seaman into the British navy, meaning these men went into the British navy whether they liked it or not. Great Britain also was exercising financial sanctions against France because they were trading with America and finally, they were encouraging and financing the Indians along the Great Lakes against America. The war lasted 2 ½ years with the most remembered events being the burning of the White House to the ground, Dolly Madison ensuring the portrait of George Washington was saved from the conflagration and finally, the Battle of New Orleans with Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson kicking ass even though the war was over a week before. This victory by the United States ensured their independence for the foreseeable future. By the way, Andrew Jackson got the nickname “Old Hickory” when he was walking through a building in Washington carrying his hickory cane when a man ran up to him, pulled a pistol and fired but the gun misfired, the assassin pulled another pistol and tried again and that one misfired also, Jackson then lifted his hickory cane and beat the holy shit out of this guy and would have killed him had some of his entourage not intervened. I like this South Carolinian.

1815 One of the most important battles in world history occurs on this date. Earlier one of the greatest military strategists in history had suffered a series of defeats especially his attempt at the invasion of Russia. After this defeat Napoleon Bonaparte was captured and exiled to the island of Elbe in the Mediterranean. He escaped and went to France and gathered another army of over 100,000 and headed toward Belgium. His intent was to capture as many countries as he could as quick as he could so they could not join forces. On the way to Belgium he ran upon the 30,000 army of the Prussian Baron von Blucher. The Prussian knew when he was out manned and hastily retreated. Napoleon detached 32,000 of his own troops to pursue von Blucher. The next day Napoleon met up with the English army of 63,000 led by Lord Wellington near the small Belgian city of Waterloo. So what we have here are two armies about the same size with each having superior leadership. Then Napoleon makes a fatal mistake in judgment when he delayed his attack until mid-day to allow the fields to dry out from the soaking rain the night before. Finally Napoleon launched his attack and had initial success but who should show up on his left flank but Baron Von Blucher and his 30,000 who had eluded his pursuers. This unexpected attack unnerved Napoleon and he paid more attention to that than he should have and did not send his reserves into the area of success which allowed Wellington to re-form his troops and they began a general advance and drove Napoleon from the field. Napoleon’s “Grand Armee” disintegrated. Napoleon knew he was in deep sh-t with the French so he surrendered to the English. He thought they would send him to the United States but no, they sent him into exile on the island of St. Helena off the coast of Africa where there was no chance of escape. He died six years later, probably of stomach cancer. He was 51 years old.

1865 US General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain received a near fatal wound while leading an attack against Confederate emplacements at Petersburg, Virginia. Chamberlain won a Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg nearly a year before. He was wounded at Gettysburg also but it was a minor wound, in fact he had received 6 wounds before the end of hostilities. He won the Medal of Honor by commanding 300 Maine soldiers in defending the Union left flank at a place known as Little Round Top at Gettysburg. His troops fought as long as they could but eventually ran out of ammo so Chamberlain had a choice to make. Retreat and let the Confederates turn the flank which would be disastrous; stay where they were and get annihilated and the Confederates turn the flank anyway or to charge. So Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and ordered a charge and down the hill they went. The stunned Confederates retreated and the left flank of the Union line was secure. The next day Chamberlain and his troops were moved to a more “safe” area on the battlefield, right in the very middle of the Union lines. About 11:30a one of the largest artillery barrages ever fired in North America was launched toward the center of the Union lines by the Confederates. Chamberlain hugged the ground wondering when it would stop and when it finally did, he heard the thin, high scream of the Rebel yell and saw 13,000 confederate infantry about a mile away coming his way. It was the famous Pickett’s charge. I just wasn’t Chamberlain’s day.

1984 On this date shock-jock Alan Berg was gunned down in his driveway in Denver. Alan Berg was the star of a radio show where he tried to piss people off and be as abrasive as he could, he said that he wanted to be “the man you hate the most.” Well, there were so many people that had threatened to kill Berg that the Denver PD did not know where to start. But the FBI knew where to start. They had been trying to infiltrate an ultra-right organization known as “The Order. It was known that his organization had a Nazi posture and hated blacks and Jews. They were a step above the KKK. The FBI also knew that “The Order” had Alan Berg on their hit list and assumed they were the culprit, and they were right. About a year later, a high officer in the Order was arrested in Georgia with a truck load of arms and ammo. Through this man the case of the murder of Alan Berg was solved. This was not the first time that the length, width and depth of the hatred for Jews and blacks was uncovered. Hatred is out there y'all, look out for it.

Born today:

1913 US economist Sylvia Porter. She said “The thing to remember about economic forecasting is that what you are about to forecast usually has already happened.” It is simple Sylvia, buy low and sell high.

1939 US baseball player Lou Brock. He said “I used to complain to my Dad that I imagined animals running under my bed. He fixed that by cutting the legs off my bed.”

Died today:

1902 British writer Samuel Butler. He said “It was good of God to allow Thomas Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle to marry each other so there will be only two unhappy people rather than four.”

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow