Good
morning,
Quote
of the day:
“It
isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you
are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think
about.”
Dale
Carnegie
The
American media is peeing in their pants about Israel engaging Hamas
in Gaza and bombing a school. I do not know if it was intentional or
not but it is a well known fact that Hamas stores munitions in
schools and hospitals hoping to prevent an attack. I will tell you
this...two days from now 69 years ago a USAAF B-29 took off from the
Pacific island of Tinian (near Saipan), flew to Hiroshima, Japan and
killed about 79,000 men women, children in the blink of an eye and
thousands more weeks later from radiation poisoning. Not only that,
three days later Nagasaki, Japan received a similar attack with the
similar results. The attacks were meant to put an end to the
slaughter called WWII and it worked. The attacks were not
discretionary and the devastation was total. Perhaps Israel is
attempting to put an end to attacks from Gaza by Hamas once and for
all. In any event, America is not the one being attacked, Israel is.
Hamas is not interested in finding a homeland for the Palestinians,
their much stated intention has always been the total elimination of
Israel. They have no problem sending rockets into Israeli towns and
they are not worried about making sure schools and hospital are not
hit. What would you suggest Israel to do? Should they allow
constant attacks from Hamas in Gaza and not respond for humanitarian
reasons? Well, should they? By the way, over 83,000 were killed in
one night when British and American bombers firebombed Hamburg,
Germany. The resulting firestorm was not discretionary.
There
is a man-made lake complex in eastern South Carolina that is the
largest body of water east of the Mississippi River. It is known as
Santee-Cooper. It is two giant lakes formed by the damming of the
Cooper and Santee rivers and are connected by a canal. The eastern
most lake is labeled Lake Moultrie and the entire area is surrounded
by very thick swamps that contain a myriad of wildlife including full
grown American alligators. A while back it was reported that a 56
year old man staggered into a picnic area on Lake Moultrie minus a
left arm up to the shoulder. Fortunately for him, there were five
nurses present in the picnic area and the staunched the blood flow
with ice and called 911. The EMT’s showed up and transported man
to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. A
Wildlife officer also showed up and found out an alligator had taken
that unfortunate man’s arm off. A team of Wildlife officer went on
the search for the Gator and found an 11 foot, 550 pound gator at the
spot described by the victim. They dispatched the reptile and open
up its stomach and retrieved the man’s arm and immediately put it
on ice and sped it to the MUSC just in case it could be re-attached.
If all of this is true that 56 year old victim is the luckiest man on
the planet to have found a group of nurses immediately after such a
trauma as that. However, it sounds like an urban myth to me.
I
was recently thinking about events in my past that made an
impression. One in particular came to mind:
I
was discharged from the USAF at McChord AFB near Seattle. A friend
and I were headed from McChord to the Seattle-Tacoma airport to fly
home. I was coming home to Greenville and my friend was going home
to St. Petersburg, Florida. While enroute in a cab we saw a '53 Chevy
on the side of the road for sale and we looked at each other and
decided to drive home. We stopped the cab, bought the car and headed
out. We were going to drive south to the California beaches to stay
a while before heading east. A map told us that if we did not take
the highway that paralleled the Columbia river that would be the last
chance to head east for several hundred miles. We decided to turn
east down that highway rather than go hang ten with the surfer girls.
This was before there were any Interstates. It took us 9 days to
get to Columbia, Tennessee where my friend wanted to stay a few days
visiting some of his family so we flipped a coin to see who would buy
the other one out. I lost so he got the car and bought me a bus
ticket to Greenville. On one particular occasion during this trip we
had stopped at some tiny town in eastern Colorado for gas and food.
This town was about 8 blocks long and dust was in the air like you
would imagine in a William Inge play novel. We went into a mom and
pop cafe to eat and as men will do, we struck up a conversation with
the female server. We told her that we had just gotten discharged
and was on our way to the east coast but was going to have a good
time along the way. We got up to leave and she pulled us aside and
with the saddest look on her face she said “Look out the window, I
was born here but please don't leave me here, take me with you.” I
looked at my friend and we knew we could not do that and refused.
The look of sadness on her face and the despair in her voice will be
with me the rest of my days.
Earlier
a woman was driving west on the 1900 block of 7th
street in downtown Charlotte, NC (been there) when she struck three
pedestrians, jumped the curb and struck a tree. The three
pedestrians and the driver were taken to Presbyterian Hospital and
treated for non-life threatening injuries. After the driver was
released she went to the joint and charged with a DUI. The other
three passengers in her car were not hurt. They were Jack Daniels,
Jim Beam and Captain Morgan.
This
Date in History August 4
1892
On this date the Fall River, Massachusetts police are called to the
home of Andy and Abbie Borden. The two had not been seen or heard
for several days. Upon entry the cops found Andy in the downstairs
living room where someone had chosen to part Andy’s face down the
middle with an axe. The police were stunned, that is until they go
upstairs to one of the bedrooms where Abbie was lying in a pool of
blood. This girl had been struck several times on her skull also
with an axe. According to the police Abbie’s head had been
literally crushed from multiple blows. Well, the only possible
suspects that could have committed this massacre were a daughter
Lizzie or the housekeeper. Abbie was Lizzie’s step-mother and the
word on the street was that they were not very friendly toward each
other. The police arrested Lizzie for murder. She was tried and
acquitted in spite if the evidence. In those days it was
inconceivable that young lady could muster up such a rage and deliver
a hacking like that, especially on her parents. There is little
question that Lizzie did the deed but the good people from
Massachusetts did not want to admit that one of their young ladies
were capable of such a slaughter.
1961
On June 21 three civil rights workers were scanning the
countryside in and around Meridian, Mississippi in an attempt to
resister to vote many black people that had never voted before. Two
of them were from New York named Michael Schwerner and Andrew
Goodman. They were accompanied by a local black man name James
Chaney. On June 21 they were riding away from the jail in
Philadelphia, Mississippi where they had spent a couple of hours for
a trumped up charge of speeding. What they really went to jail for
was so the Sheriff could notify the KKK and they could prepare an
ambush when they left. The ambush was indeed sprung and all three of
the civil right workers were killed. The parents of the New Yorkers
got concerned when they did not hear anything from Michael and Andrew
for several days and notified the local police and the FBI. The
local police were not interested in pursing the case but the FBI was
very interested. They moved into Philadelphia, Mississippi in force
and began an investigation that was somewhat less than gentlemanly.
The local rednecks responded with more and more heat being applied to
the blacks. Finally the FBI bribed a local Klansman into telling
where the bodies of the three workers were buried. They were in the
bottom of an earthen dam that was under construction and were
unearthed on this date. Several Klansmen went to trial fro murder
but were acquitted by a very prejudicial jury. The FBI re-arrested
them and put them on trial for violation of their civil rights, a
federal offense. They all did hard time but not what they would have
gotten if they had been convicted of murder. Mississippi declares
that their people don’t think that way any longer and they are out
in the sunshine now. I certainly hope so.
1782
On this date English General and writer John Burgoyne died in
England. It was Burgoyne that lost the Battle of Saratoga to a
Patriot army he had out gunned and out numbered. The French Monarch
had been waiting for the Patriots to come up with a victory before
they would offer overt military and monetary help to the colonists
and Saratoga was the catalyst. Burgoyne was a multi-talented man.
He was an author also and a good one at that. In 1775 he wrote a
successful novel “Maid of the Oaks”, but later on the influence
of his father got him in the British army. It was Burgoyne that led
a combined army of British regulars, Hessian mercenaries and Canadian
loyalists in a successful raid and capture of the patriot camp of
Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Burgoyne continued south
toward Saratoga with the understanding that British General Charles
Howe would meet him there and re-supply his troops. But good old
Charles chose to go to capture Philadelphia instead and left Burgoyne
dangling in the wind. Burgoyne had out distanced his supply lines
and Patriot General Horatio Gates had no problem with cutting what
supply lines there were and surrounded Burgoyne and his army of
nearly 8,000 and forced them to surrender. The downside was that the
funds of the fledgling United States could ill afford to room and
board so many prisoners. Burgoyne was able to negotiate the return
to England of him and his British regulars in return for the promise
that they would never return to North America. That cut the number
of prisoners to 6,000 but still a hell of a burden to our treasury
but they stayed incarcerated until the end of the war.
1864
Earlier Confederate General John Bell Hood had launched three
separate attacks against the troops of US General William Sherman in
his attempt to protect Atlanta, Georgia. All three attacks were
repulsed with heavy losses causing Hood’s army to become
ineffective from then on. Sherman sent US General Schofield and his
Corp around to cut the railroad supplying Atlanta from the south and
southwest. He also sent US General John Palmer to help Schofield.
Then egos got in the way. General Palmer was very sensitive as to
who had seniority, the mission be damned. Palmer would only accept
orders from US General George Thomas (a Virginian, by the way) and
because he felt that Schofield was his junior the mission came to a
standstill in spite of the fact that it was Schofield’s assignment.
Palmer refused to accept orders form Sherman also so Sherman took
the bull by the horns and declared that Schofield was senior to
Palmer whereupon Palmer resigned and went home to Illinois (are you
listening, Jim?) This squabbling allowed the Confederates to
re-group and reassemble. When the Union soldiers resumed their
attempt to take the railroad the Confederates were ready and
delivered a bloody repulse and heavy casualties. As usual, this
meant that the over inflated egos of Generals cost the lives of the
men in their commands. So what else is new, see Armstrong Custer.
1873
Lt. Colonel George Custer had been assigned the task of protecting
a survey party that was laying out the Northern Pacific Railroad.
This route took them through the Sioux territory of Crazy Horse and
Sitting Bull but the Indians seemed to not pay any attention to them
much to Custer’s chagrin. Custer was hungry for combat. Since
there was no action, Custer took this opportunity to go hunting for
buffalo, elk, deer, etc. On one occasion he found himself far from
the rest of the troops. He was near the Tongue River hunting when a
considerable force of Sioux Indians shows up on the horizon and
attack. Custer was asleep and when awakened he was able to form an
effective defense and the Indians withdrew. From this Custer
developed the idea that the Indians would rather run than fight. He
had this attitude three years later at Little Big Horn when he
attacked without reconnaissance and was massacred. The Indians did
not run this time.
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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