Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Wednesday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

A restless soul is a sign of life.”

                  Aristotle



                                                 Crazy as Hell

Chapter 2

New Years Eve of 1972 fell on a Sunday and as you might expect in the Big Easy the streets were packed with revelers and the cops had their hands full. Just before 11:00 p.m. Essex stepped out of his Chevy one block from the New Orleans city police headquarters armed with the Colt and the Ruger and pockets full of ammo. He sneaked to point across the street from the main entrance to the headquarters and took aim. By this time the cops were in the middle of a shift change. There was a 19 year old police cadet in a glass cage that controlled the doors for vehicles entering the building with prisoners. Standing in front of the doors was two police lieutenants and another 19 year old police cadet. Essex chose as his target the cadet in the glass cage and opened fire. The first round shattered the glass and the cadet knew he was under attack and jumped from the cage. Essex was momentarily stunned by the considerable recoil but regained his composure and fire twice more. One of the shots hit the cadet in the chest, passed through, ricocheted and hit one of the lieutenants in the leg. The cadet was dead before he hit the ground. After firing four rounds and with the Ruger only holding five, Essex ran away from the building and stopped briefly, reloaded and fired a couple of more rounds without aiming...no one else was hit. He ran about 50 feet lit off a string of firecrackers as a diversion and fired off a few more rounds without hitting anything. He must have really rushed because he dropped the Colt and several rounds of Winchester .44 magnum ammo.



I am back to the textbook on the history of the Comanche. For over 80 years these guys were recognized as the finest light cavalry in the world. They were aboard fiery Spanish ponies that had escaped the Spanish conquistadors and ran wild and bred for a couple of centuries. The Comanche were the first to capture and “break” them. Both the Comanche riders and the ponies could last longer without rest, food and water than anyone chasing them. The ponies were in great demand to the other plains tribes for running down bison. Eventually the Comanche realized that if they were going to expand their influence they needed firearms and metal tipped axes, lances and arrows, etc. They decided that the answer was kidnapping people, especially the Spanish and the Apache. Why them? They had horses. The would kidnap these people and hold them as hostages and trade them back for at least three horses per person. They would take the extra horses and trade them to the illegal gun runners for firearms and metal tools. In many cases they would take the extra horses and trade them to the other plains tribes for bead work, gold and silver and use that as currency. Eventually the US cavalry entered the picture and they needed horses also and business boomed because the illegal gun runners needed even more horse to sell to the US cavalry. But finally the US cavalry began indiscriminate slaughter of the plains tribes. In a stunning display of logic, these tribes determined that there were more members of their tribe that were dying or disappearing than were being born and if that continued they would be annihilated. They decided that they needed replacements for their women and children that were murdered or died from the white man's diseases. The plains tribes felt that if the honkies were responsible for the death or disappearance of their women and children the honkies should be responsible for replacing them and business increased for the Comanche. The beginning of the end for the Comanche came when the US Cavalry ceased trying to track down the warriors and began a wholesale slaughter of horses wherever they found them. Without horses the Comanche had nothing to trade and no way to run down bison. The tribes as a whole did not believe that anyone would indiscriminately try to annihilate animals just to subdue other human beings. They were wrong.



             This Date in History October 29



1777  After a prolonged illness, John Hancock resigned as president of the Continental Congress. Hancock is famous for his large and flowing signature on the monumental Declaration of Independence that was signed on July 4, 1776. He was present in one capacity or another at nearly every important document signing in this country’s fight for independence. He was a very wealthy man and had much to lose if the rebellion had failed. After resigning he went back home to Massachusetts and started his recovery from his illness. By 1780 he had recovered enough to run for the Governor of Massachusetts which he easily won. He served for five years and then refused to run again in 1785 and went back to his home. Two years later in 1787 he ran for the Governorship again and won. He served in this capacity until his death in 1793. His tenures as Governor of Massachusetts proved this man’s great leadership and administrative skills. Not only that, he was a feisty devil and the British knew it and had a bounty on him. After signing the Declaration of Independence, Hancock said about his signature, “Now the British can read it without their spectacles, their bounty be damned.” I like his attitude.



1901  On this date a nurse named Jane Toppan is arrested in Amherst, Massachusetts. It seems that in the recent past this woman had been responsible for the death of the entire Davis family of Boston. As with most serial killers Jane had an atrocious childhood. Her mother died when she was very young and her father, a tailor by trade, was crazy as a loon. He went to an asylum after sewing his eyelids shut. Jane bounced around several foster homes until she was finally adopted. Jane expressed a desire to become a nurse and attended a nursing school. But Jane was not interested in healing as much as she was interested in hanging around morgues an autopsy rooms. She began her reign of terror by being an in-home nurse which gave her an opportunity to do her evil things unobserved and unsupervised. She finally ended up in the Davis house in Boston to take care of the feeble Mattie Davis. Soon thereafter Mattie died, followed swiftly by Mattie’s sister Annie, Mattie’s father Alden and Mattie’s sister Mary. Mary’s husband called bullshit on this as being too much of a coincidence and demanded autopsies of all the above. The autopsies revealed that all had died of an overdose of morphine. Upon hearing that autopsies were going to be performed on the Davis family, Jane hightailed out of town but was easily captured. While she was on the run she chose to murder her sister with an overdose of morphine also. At trial she admitted to at least twenty murders but the authorities thought she was responsible for over 100. Jane was sentence to life in a mental institution. While there she was constantly bugging the nursing staff to give her some morphine and a syringe so she could kill even more. She died in 1938 and hell rejoiced at their new arrival.



1962   Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier testified before the United States Congress about the lack of opportunity for black actors and actresses in the movie industry. Sidney was recognized as a superb actor and was indeed an Oscar winner for his performance in the movie Lilies of the Field. What I don’t understand is what Sidney wanted Congress to do about it. The movie industry is like any other business, its goal to make money for their investors. If I was an investor I would not give damn about the equality of the casting of roles, I would just be interested in the making of a profitable enterprise and the producers and casting directors had damn well better keep that in mind, racial issues not withstanding. Congress cannot dictate to a business enterprise such as this who they must hire or not hire. After all the success of any movie is greatly dependent on the skill of the actors, screenwriters, and large variety of other skilled technicians, not the color of their skins.



1740   One of the greatest writers of his time is born on this date. James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to wealthy and influential parents. The name Boswell goes deep into the history of the ancestry of Scotland. As with most parents of that era, they had already decided that James was going to be a lawyer. After James grew up he decided that he wanted to be a writer instead and ran away from home and traveled Europe and met with other great writers such as Rousseau, Voltaire and a short Corsican that later became the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte. But James parents ran him down and brought his young ass back Edinburgh and began forcefully teaching him English law. That did not extinguish the flame of writing burning inside James in spite of the fact that he established a successful law practice in London. He eventually became a very successful writer of essays. He consorted with another successful writer in Samuel Johnson and they exchanges ideas regularly. James delivered his most famous and successful essay “The Life of Samuel Johnson”. This essay came in three volumes. Boswell finished writing the first two but while writing the third he decided to drink heavily and chase skanky women in the London night life. Boswell died drunk with a smile on his face before finishing the third volume. He was 53 years old.



1901   The assassin of US President William McKinley is executed in the electric chair. Leon Czolgosz went to meet his maker medium rare courtesy of the electric chair. Leon was in a receiving line waiting to shake the hand of President McKinley at the World’s Fair. When it came Leon’s turn, he had a handkerchief tied around his right hand hiding a small revolver. McKinley thinking that Leon was crippled reached out with his left hand and Leon pumped two rounds into McKinley’s abdomen. Leon was immediately disarmed and arrested. Of the two shot, one went all the way through and caused very little damage but the other one lodged near his liver and had to be removed surgically. It looked like McKinley was going to be OK but after a couple of days her started getting worse and soon died. It was gangrene that had set up inside his abdomen that was undetected. Leon was unrepentant to the end. His last words were “I am not sorry, he was an evil man.”



1619   English explorer and bon vivant Sir Walter Raleigh had a fateful meeting with a big guy with a big axe on the lawn of the Tower of London and went to meet his maker in two pieces. It seems that Sir Walter had been a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and she was quite fond of him. She sent Sir Walter on several exploratory trips to the new world including the fateful settlement on Roanoke Island, North Carolina of which not one scrap was ever found after a supply ship arrived two years later. After returning to London Queen Elizabeth found out that Sir Walter had been having a liaison with a Scottish beauty named Bessy Throckmorton, one of the Queen’s Maids-of-Honor, and the Queen became enraged the threw Sir Walter and Bessy into the Tower. Sir Walter coughed up enough money to bail out them both. Sir Walter and Bessy were married and they tried their damnedest to stay out of the way of the Queen. Elizabeth died in 1603 and James I rose to power. James accused Sir Walter of opposing him becoming King shortly but allowed him to live so he could send Sir Walter on some more expeditions. Sir Walter finally returned from an expedition of establishing a village near a gold mine in South America. James I evidently felt that Sir Walter had outlived his usefulness and recalled the supposed crime of 15 years before and had him executed. Sir Walter Raleigh was 66 years old and had spent the greatest part of his life in the service of his country. But as the saying goes “What have you done for me lately, Walt?”



Born today:

1897 Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. He said “If the day should ever come when we Nazis must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that it will shake the universe and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.” Hey Joe, what really happened was the Allies sealed off the western side of Germany and would not accept a surrender and allowed the Russian army to attack unhindered from the east. The Russians were bloodthirsty for revenge because the Germans had slaughtered over 25,000,000 Russians in their attack toward Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. When the Russians found the German extermination camps of Dachau, Buchenwald and several others, they decided that no German air breather should live. They headed toward Berlin slaughtering everybody and everything in sight including dogs, cats and various and sundry livestock. The Russians crushed any resistance to the city of Berlin that was being defended by sub-teen boys and men in their 70’s. Yeah Joe, mankind was stupefied alright. And you, being the brave son-of-a-bitch that you were, poisoned yourself your wife and your five daughters. It was that kind of cruelty that stupefied mankind to this day.



Born today:



1971 US actress Wynona Ryder. She said “I feel my best when I am happy.” Wynona, shut up.



Died today:

1918  English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. He said “All men are evil and will declare themselves so if the occasion occurs.” See the above paragraph on Joseph Goebbels.


                    Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow







Monday, October 27, 2014

Tuesday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

The degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being.”

                                           Dalai Lama


                 The History of Halloween


This pagan celebration of Halloween goes back more that 2000 years to the ancient Celts of present day Ireland, England and northern France. The original name of the festival was Sawhain pronounced “sow-in” and was to celebrate the harvest and prepare for the upcoming harsh winter. The Celts celebrated November 1 as the beginning of a new year and the evening before became known as “All Hallow’s Eve” which was corrupted to Halloween. It was the only day of the year that the boundary between the living and the dead became clouded and on this night the dead walked the earth. It was also believed that only on this night could one person predict the future of another. This was very important because of the rigors of the upcoming winter did indeed kill many of them. Every house extinguished the fire in their hearth because the Celtic priests (Druids) would cut down a sacred tree and build a gigantic bonfire for this night’s celebration. It was believed that if they could get a scrap of burning wood from this sacred fire and bring it into their homes, it would keep them warm throughout the winter. When the Celts approached the sacred fire they were costumed in animal heads and skins for ritualistic reasons. Upon the arrival of the Romans the rituals changed somewhat and Roman rituals were introduced as being part of the ritual. One of these rituals was the celebration of the harvest also except here they would honor the Roman goddess of fruits and trees, Pomona. Pomona is represented by the symbol of an apple. I guess y’all see where this is going. That’s right; it is the bobbing for apples and trying to bite an apple while it is hanging from a string that was the result of paying homage to Pomona. During the 8th and 9th century the Roman Catholic Church tried their damnedest to eliminate this pagan festival and make it a church related event and instituted all Saint’s Day on November 1 hoping to sway the existing pagans back under the umbrella of the church. It did not work. This pagan festival continues to this day. There is no written evidence for the rise of the event known as “trick or treat” except that on All Hallow’s Eve some of the dead that walked the earth were mean, spiteful creatures. I suspect that ritual was really fostered by candy manufacturers and costume makers. Anyway the colors that are associated with Halloween as being orange and black have a meaning. Orange represented the changing color of the leaves on deciduous trees and black meant winter, shorter days and death was on the horizon for some. It bothers me somewhat for different churches to sponsor a Halloween event. It means that they are fostering a pagan festival but it could keep some of the kids off the street.



                   This Date in History    October 28



1775    The new British military governor, General William Howe, ordered that every citizen of the city of Boston cannot leave town until further notice. Additionally, he decreed that all the citizens were expected to combat that group of ruffians that threw the tea into the harbor and that rag tag militia that had killed 226 and wounded 838 of his majesty’s troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of this year. The Continental Congress had elected Virginia planter George Washington as commander-in-chief of the army but he was having a hell of a time convincing his troops that this was not a game. They were used to being commanded like a militia whereby the leaders are elected by the troops and if the leader was not what they wanted they simply fired him. Not only that, they all went back to the farm at harvest time. It happened here and Washington had no choice but to wait until spring and recruit a new army. Only this time he would have a professional military trainer to whip them into shape. That man was the Prussian Baron Von Steuben who joined Washington at Valley Forge this winter. Von Steuben did indeed begin training the remainder of the troops soon after his arrival. It worked and a well trained and disciplined army emerged. Howe stayed in Boston until in the following March when Washington and the brilliant Henry Knox were able to get some captured British artillery on high ground overlooking Boston. Howe had no choice but to retreat and the Bostonians were free to travel about for the first time in six months.



1864  The Battle of Fair Oaks ended. In the siege of Petersburg, two days earlier US General George Meade had tried and failed to turn the Confederate flank at Hatchers Run. A simultaneous attack was launched by US General Grant at the Confederate embrasures near Fair Oaks, Virginia in the hopes of preventing Lee from reinforcing the points of attack. The defenses near Fair Oaks were formidable ones and the Confederate commander there was CSA General James Longstreet who skillfully placed his troops to stem any and all attacks. After a two day struggle, the Union commander decided that they had done all he could and on this day withdrew and the drudgery of the siege continued. The Union had lost 1,100 killed, wounded or missing to the Confederate losing only 450.



1961    Rhythm and blues singer Chuck Berry went on trial for the second time for violation of the Mann Act. The trial was dubbed the “Apache Trial” by the media. It seems that Chuck had met Janice Escalante in a bar in El Paso, Texas. Chuck became enamored with Janice and invited her to join his entourage. Janice was a Mescalero Apache Indian. Chuck questioned her at length about her age and she insisted that she was 21 years old. After a few weeks Janice tired of the road and Chuck’s treatment of her and she went to the cops and complained and Chuck was arrested. At the trial the prosecution produced a birth certificate showing Janice as being only 14 years old. In spite of the fact that Janice lied to Chuck about her age, Chuck was indeed found guilty and was sentenced to three years and sent to Leavenworth. Later on he was sent to a jail in Saint Louis where he served his time until paroled. By the way, the Mann Act makes it a Federal crime to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes. It was meant to prevent interstate prostitution and white slavery. Does that mean if I take a woman from Greenville, South Carolina to Hendersonville, North Carolina, about 40 miles, to view the Autumn leaves or pick apples and we spend the night, am I am guilty of a Federal crime? I realize that leaf looking and apple picking is not immoral, but I probably had thoughts of staying over in mind from the start.



1999    Cyclone 05B comes ashore on the southeast coast of India. As y'all know, in that part of the world a hurricane is known as a cyclone. This bad boy was a category 4 when it came ashore. The only problem is that it never quite came ashore completely and stalled out with part of it still out over the Indian Ocean which kept feeding it warm, moist air and therefore the storm never broke up. It poured torrential rains for days which resulted in monumental flooding. After it was all over there were 10,000 dead or missing along with 406,000 head of cattle. The same thing happened here that happened earlier in Bangladesh. Some of the human bodies were not found right away and the tigers came out of the jungle and feasted on them. They developed a taste for it and began hunting humans as a matter of course. It took a generation for the tigers to get back to normal.



1965    On this day the famous arch in Saint Louis, Missouri is dedicated. This monument was designed by the famous Finnish architect Eero Saarinen as a memorial to the western expansion fostered by Thomas Jefferson and explored by the immortal Lewis and Clark expedition that began and ended in Saint Louis.



Births and deaths:



1704 English philosopher John Locke died. He said “The care of souls cannot belong to a civil magistrate.” The same thing can be said about the churches these days.



1898 US costume designer Edith Head is born. She said “Your dress should be tight enough to show that you are a woman but loose enough to show that you are a lady.” Hey Edith, will you go have a talk with Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus?



1949 US Olympian Bruce Jenner is born. He said “I spent four years training for one day and Joe Namath trains for one day and plays for 12 years.” Joe was famous for wearing pantyhose of cold game days. There ain’t no justice.



1960 English writer Steve Pond is born. He said “Just how long can you know nothing without you head collapsing inward?” I have met many of them, Steve.



1967 US actress Julia Roberts is born. She said “I won’t do nudity in films…performing while clothed is acting, performing while nude is a documentary.” Julia has a beautiful face and is very skilled at acting (Erin Brockovich, in particular) but in my opinion her physique is lacking in certain places...but what do I know.



      Thanks for listening    I can hardly wait until tomorrow

























Sunday, October 26, 2014

Monday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

I shall pass through this life but once. Any good therefore that I can do let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

Etienne de Grellate



I just saw that Deion Sanders' house is for sale. It is located in Prosper, Texas which is about 30 mile north of Dallas. It is an estate of a 29,000 square foot main house, a smaller guest house on 6 acres...the price $10 million.



I am going to do something a little different starting today. I have written a bio of a man that went insane. It is pretty long so I am going to send it out in chapters. Here is the start:



                                                   Crazy as Hell



Chapter 1

This is a story of an apparently stable person deciding to go insane. Mark Essex was born in Emporia, Kansas the son of hard working honest parents. His family was part of a black community that was a very small percentage of that city. He left high school early and joined the US Navy saying he wanted to become a dentist. In 1970 he was assigned duty as a dental assistant at Imperial Beach NAS (near San Diego), California in 1970. Almost as soon as he arrived he started complaining that the Navy had institutionalized racial discrimination and bigotry. Keep in mind the the Vietnam War was raging and this man had the sparkling beaches and warm weather almost year round while other Americans were being chopped into confetti over in Southeast Asia. He met another black man from New Orleans that felt the same way he did and they fed off each other. Essex was so belligerent that the Navy gave him a Bad Conduct Discharge after only two years and the same happened to his buddy from New Orleans . Essex went to New York and joined the Black Panthers. He learned from them that in urban warfare the best weapons would be at least a Colt .38 special revolver and a Ruger .44 magnum carbine. After about three months he went back to Emporia but became restless and called his buddy from New Orleans and went down for a visit. While there he obtained a Colt .38 special revolver and a Ruger .44 magnum carbine.



Up on I-26 in western North Carolina a tragedy occurred. There were 6 cars and three semis that had stopped for a wreck ahead of them in the eastbound lane. Another car rammed into the back of the last car in line and pushed them all together into a metal to metal meat grinder. There were four killed and several severely wounded. Even though this accident happened at night, I still do not see how someone that is the least bit alert could not detect that many cars that were at a standstill, especially the semis. That just goes to show you that there is danger not only in front of you but from all directions. Be alert.



This Date in History October 27



1864 After several months of the siege of Petersburg, Virginia US General U.S. Grant decided that if he can cut the Confederate supply line and that being the Southside railroad that was bringing supplies in from the west the siege would be over. He assigns this task to US General George Meade who delegates three of his Corp led by Generals Winfield Scott Hancock, G.K. Warren and John Parke to attack the Confederate trenches near the railroad at a small creek named Hatcher’s Run. The combined forces would be about 40,000 infantry and a detachment of cavalry. The plan was for Warren and Parke to attack from the front and Hancock to circle and attack the Confederate flank. On this date the attack began. The frontal assault ran into trouble when the Confederate trenches proved to be more heavily defended than expected. But they kept demonstrating to try and conceal Hancock’s flanking movement. Because different units attacking from the front moved at different speeds a gap in the Union line occurred. Meade ordered the attack to slow down to close this gap. It was then that the Confederates launch a successful counter-attack and drove the Union troops attacking the front from the field and then turned their attention to Hancock and repulsed that attack. Finally Meade ordered a total withdrawal. It was very embarrassing failure for the Union and could have effected the upcoming presidential election. But Lincoln depended of the recent victories at Atlanta and Mobile, Alabama to tide him over and he was re-elected.



1962 Earlier the US intelligence community had discovered Russian medium range nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba. President Kennedy asked for confirmation and several over flights were made to photograph the construction sites there. And sure enough, the confirmation came. The missiles if launched from Cuba could strike anywhere in the US, Central America, northern South America and all of the Caribbean. President Kennedy made a TV speech telling the Americans what was happening and what we were going to do about it. He also warned the Russians that any attack launched from Cuba would be interpreted as an attack by Russia and an appropriate response would be forthcoming. The big bombers and missiles of the Strategic Air Command went to “Defcon 4” status meaning that the next step would be nuclear war. President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of all ships headed for Cuba, only he called it a “quarantine”. Very soon thereafter a Russian cargo vessel with missiles aboard approached the naval blockade and the world held its breath. There was no doubt that had the ship attempted to break the blockade it would have been sunk and the risk of world war would have increased dramatically. But the ship slowed to a stop and eventually turned back to Russia. While all of this is going on, negotiations between the US and Russia kept the telephone lines hot. The final offer was that Russia would withdraw their missiles from Cuba if the US would promise to never invade Cuba and withdraw their missiles from Turkey. The US had already begun the dismantling of the missiles in Turkey so the deal was acceptable. On this date, the deal between the US and Russia was agreed upon by both parties and a potential world war was averted. I was sweating bullets that whole time. It was a scary thought to believe that this day on the planet could be your last.



1659 On this date William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson are hanged on Boston Common in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their only crime was their religious belief, they were both Quakers and Quakers were forbidden by law under the penalty of death. Both Robinson and Stevenson had come to the colonies from England to escape religious persecution in 1656, believe it or not. Rhode Island and several other New England colonies accepted the Quakers, but not the hard-assed Bostonians. That law was later repealed. I have no clue as to why those from Massachusetts hated the Quakers. As we all know, the Quakers are some of the gentlest people out there.



1873 On this date a man named Joseph Glidden from DeKalb, Illinois is granted a patent for barbed wire (known in Texas as “Bob Wahr”). Glidden had seen a semblance of barbed wire at an exposition but it was single stranded. Glidden improved this concept by twisting two wires together which held the actual barbs in position. From this day forward the method of raising cattle changed forever. There would be no more cattle ranging and grazing free across the Great Plains. There were young wars fought over lands that were fenced and blocked cattle from ranging free and from finding water. What a damned shame.



861 In this year the wild-eyed Vikings successfully attack Paris, Toulouse, Aix-la Chapelle and Worms. They came to these towns by sailing their dragon boats across the North Sea and then down the west coast of Europe and up the Rhine and Seine rivers. This was no easy trick. Those rivers had a considerable downstream current and being able to reach those towns deep inland took a lot of rowing. But they were equal to the task and conquered most of Western Europe and even Russia by sailing down the Volga River from the Black Sea. They were so successful with their rape and pillage that there little doubt that all of us that have ancestry from Western Europe have a drop or two of Scandinavian blood flowing in our veins.



Births and deaths:



1858 One of my heroes Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt is born in upstate New York. He said “I think there is only one quality worse that having a hard heart and that is having a soft head.” When asked what was going to be his philosophy on the Presidency, he said “Speak softy but carry a big stick.” We need more leaders like Teddy.



1874 Business giant Owen Young is born. He said “When it comes to modern business crooks are not feared as much as an honest man who does not know what he is doing.” Hey Owen, what about women?



1914 Welch poet Dylan Thomas is born. He said “An alcoholic is a person you don’t like that drinks as much as you.” I know several.



1963 Bimbo Marla Maples is born. When meeting Tina Louise who played Ginger on “Gilligan’s Island she said “I loved Ginger, I have patterned my life after her.” Marla has a great body and face but she is very, very short on ambition.



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow







Thursday, October 23, 2014

Friday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

In 2001 after Enron declared bankruptcy meaning thousands of people had lost billions of dollars, the Securities and Exchange Commission began an in-depth investigation and nearly everybody in the upper echelon went to jail for fraud, insider trading and money laundering, etc. The auditing firm of Arthur Anderson was dissolved for destroying documents relative to the failure of Enron. The President of Enron, Ken Lay went to trial on a 10 count indictment. He was on the stand giving testimony that would take a couple days. During one of the breaks Lay ordered a $225,000 sail boat to give to his wife for her birthday. When this was brought out the judge hit the freaking roof and asked Lay if he realized how many people's lived he had destroyed. Lay said “You can't just turn off this lifestyle like turning off a faucet.” By the way, Lay's wife sold 550,000 shares of Enron stock the day before it was announced that they were bankrupt and no insider trading charges were filed. Two months after Lay's trial and was sentenced to a prison term he died of a heart attack. That is karma, y'all.



Here is a bio of one of my favorite musicians.



Biography of Gregg Allman





Gregg was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1947. His brother Duane was one year older. When the brothers were 10 and 11 years old they were taken to a B.B. King concert in Atlanta, Georgia. In those days the concerts were segregated. Duane and Gregg saw how much the black people were into the kick-ass blues delivered by the legendary B.B. and how much fun they were having by singing along with the music and dancing their ass off. After the concert Duane said to Gregg, “We have to get into some of this.” They both started out on the guitar but eventually Duane stayed with the guitar, especially a slide, and Gregg was more interested in the vocals and keyboard. The Allman family finally ended up in Daytona Beach, Florida where Duane and Gregg graduated from high school. Very soon after graduation the brothers formed a band the named “The Escorts”. After this they changed their name to “The Allman Joys”. Their music was essentially black blues with Elmore James being the most favorite of Gregg and he performed many of his songs. My favorite of Elmore is “The Sky is Crying” but there are many others. Their talent was soon recognized and they were signed by Liberty Records from Los Angeles. The band moved to Los Angeles and the record Company re-named them “The Hour Glass”. The record company wanted acid rock and the band did two albums of this stuff. After this Duane said to hell with it and moved back to Jacksonville, Florida and began organizing a band. He got Dickie Betts (guitar and vocals), Berry Oakley (bass), Butch Trucks (drums) and Johnnie Johansson (drums) and himself of slide guitar. It soon became apparent the even though Dickie Betts was good on vocals, he was no Gregg Allman. Gregg had decided to stay in Los Angeles and try it on his own but the future was grim for him as a solo act. Duane called Gregg and told him about the band and asked him what it would take for him to join up with the band as a keyboard man and vocalist. Gregg immediately said “a Hammond B-3 organ”. Duane agreed and the famous Allman Brothers Band was born. It did not take long for the musical arrangements by Duane and Gregg of older blues songs to be recognized as nearly a new genre in the world of music. The counter-rhythms and harmony of Duane Allman’s slide guitar along with the soul of Gregg Allman’s voice still raises the hair on my arms. As you might suspect, fame and fortune brings with it the risk of excesses and this was true of Gregg. He got heavily into a variety of uppers, downers, cocaine and heroin. But fortunately the band was able to cut a live album known to this day as one of finest blues albums ever made in “Live at Fillmore East”. Fillmore East is a famous blues venue in New York City. This stunning album was recognized by “Rolling Stone” magazine recently as number 49 in a group of 500 of the finest albums ever made. They also recognized Duane’s guitar work on this album as number 9 best of all time. In spite of the drugs the band held together until Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia and three weeks later Berry Oakley was killed at in a motorcycle accident three blocks from Duane’s accident location. Duane and Berry are buried side by side in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon. The band achieved enormous fame and ended up in Las Vegas on one occasion. It was there that Gregg met and married Cher Bono. Cher and Gregg had issue of one child, a boy they named Elijah Blue, but Gregg is the sire of several children both in and out of marriage. Cher once said that Gregg was one a very few men that she had known that knew how to please a woman. Gregg’s drug abuse finally overcame him and he contracted Hepatitis C and it looked like the end for him. Somehow Gregg was able to get a kidney transplant and is still with us. He recently released a new album, his first solo album in the last 14 years. I immediately bought it and I was not disappointed. It is titled “Low Country Blues”. What soul this man has in his voice. There is only one other that I would consider his equal or better and that, my friends, is Otis Redding. Gregg now lives in Richmond Hill, Georgia which is very near Savannah.



I like Savannah, especially on Saint Patrick’s Day.




By the way, someone asked me how I came up with my sign-off. It came from a quote by Oscar Wilde who said “Good writing is like someone singing in your ear.” The “can’t wait” part came from a female bartender I knew down in Pensacola Beach who would say as I walked in the door “You look better every day”. I knew it was horseshit but I tipped the hell out her anyway.




        This Date in History   October 24



1775 The last British governor of Virginia, Lord Dunsmore, ordered British Captain Matthew Squire to take British warships up the James River and then up Hampton Creek and attack and capture Norfolk. On this date Captain Squire carried out his orders and brought 6 British warships into Hampton Creek and opened up an artillery barrage on the city of Norfolk. At the same time a contingent of British infantry disembarked in small boats and headed to the city. Upon arriving the artillery barrage ended and the infantry deployed in finely shaped lines of attack and await a similar arrangement from the Patriots. The only problem here is that the Patriots are not about to line up out in the open and array themselves in front of the British. The Patriots are outnumbered at least two to one and it would be suicide to fight as the British wished so they did the smart thing. The British did not know that the Patriots had a large contingent of expert sharpshooters and they began picking off the British infantry at extreme range while well hidden. Upon hearing the gunfire, the leader of the local militia brought an additional 100 marksman to the fore and the British infantry suffered even more dramatically. Even though the British thought this form of warfare as being ungentlemanly, they knew they had to do something and fast because they were falling like leaves. They beat a hasty retreat back to their ships and re-boarded still falling in rapid succession. Once aboard their ships, the carnage was not yet over. The sharpshooters moved closer and began picking them off while aboard their ships. Captain Squire ordered his ships to sail the hell out of there and fast. In his retreat, two of his warships ran aground and were captured. There was not even one injury to the Patriots. It was not a good day for the British, this October 24, 1775.



1862 US General Don Carlos Buell is relieved of his command and is replaced by US General William Rosecrans. Buell had proven himself as a capable leader in previous engagements, especially at Shiloh. A few days before Buell had defeated the army of CSA General Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky and for reasons known only to Buell, he failed to vigorously pursue Bragg and try to eliminate the threat of that army and Bragg and his army slipped away. Needless to say the US military and especially A. Lincoln was not pleased. Buell was assigned several different tasks but none that included combat. His days of command of a combat unit were over. After the war Buell retired and settled in Kentucky. He died in 1898.



1970 On his third try for the Presidency of Chile, devout Marxist Salvador Allende is elected much to the chagrin of the United States. The US, ITT and Kennecott Copper had poured a lot of money into keeping Allende out of office knowing what he would do one elected. Allende did not disappoint. He established diplomatic relations with North Korea, Red China and Cuba and began nationalizing ITT and Kennecott Copper. Well, with that the US, ITT and Kennecott started peeing in their pants and began trying to find a way to get that son-of-a-bitch out of there. It would not be easy because Allende was elected peacefully and democratically so an invasion like the Bay of Pigs was out of the question. But the CIA was equal to the challenge and spread enough money around that the Chilean army rose up in a coup, arrested and murdered Allende and peace, as the CIA saw it, prevailed. I suspect that the ouster of Allende was not the first nor will it be the last interference in a foreign government by the good old CIA.



1997 Famous sportscaster Marv Alpert is arrested in New York for biting a woman on the butt. That right folks, I said Marv was arrested for biting a woman on the butt. It seems that Marv had met 42 year old Vanessa Perhach in Miami a few years before and they had a continuing liaison since. On this night, after Marv had called a basketball game in Madison Square Garden between the Knicks and the Bullets, he had invited Vanessa up to his hotel room. At first Marv approached Vanessa for a threesome and she refused. Then he approached her for oral sex and she again refused. It was then that Marv pinned her down and administered the bites. Yes, there was more than one bite. At first Marv denied it but a court ordered dental match of Marv’s teeth and the bite marks confirmed Marv as the biter. To add insult to injury, another woman came forward claiming the Marv had done the same to her. Marv was convicted and was sentenced to one year probation and a $2,500 fine and was fired by the Madison Square Garden. The deal was that if Marv kept his nose clean for year his arrest record would be expunged. After a year his record was indeed cleansed and he was re-hired by MSG.



1648 On this date the 30 Year War comes to the end with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. The war had started in 1618 when the king of Bohemia, Ferdinand II, became the Holy Roman emperor and had declared that everyone is his domain, almost all of Eastern Europe, would be required to become a Catholic. Needless to say what happened next. The Protestant princes and kings said “Not no, but hell no we ain’t giving up our Duchies and Earldoms to the Catholic Church” and went to war. It was not one continuous battle but several battles stretched out over many years. The end result was that the Catholic Church did not get what it wanted and France, with Louis XIV as king, emerged as the most powerful country in Europe. It still do not understand the need of the Catholics to own property or dominate people. What has that got to do with saving my soul?



Births and deaths:



1830 US writer Belva Lockwood is born. She said “No one can be called a Christian that spends money on warships or arsenals.” Hey Belva, you need to read about Adolph Hitler, Attila the Hun, Francisco Pizzarro, Hernan Cortez, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc. But better still, just stay encapsulated in that little cocoon you are in and quit ruining my life.



1909 US writer Moss Hart is born. He said “So far as I know, anything worth hearing is not uttered at 7:00 in the morning; if it is, it will probably be repeated later on at a reasonable hour.” I like the way Moss thinks.



1981 US costume designer Edith head dies. She said “I have yet to see a completely unspoiled star, except for Lassie.”



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow











Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Thursday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

After being confronted by Xerxes, the head of the Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae Pass, Leonidas the leader of the Spartans was told by Xerxes that if he would acknowledge him as king of the world, he would make Leonidas the ruler of Greece. Leonidas, an acknowledged hard-ass, said “I would rather die on my feet with my countrymen than to serve on my knees”. By the way, Leonidas would slaughter every messenger that came from Xerxes, and send a Greek back with his answer. Like I said, a hard-ass.

By the way, when Leonidas was informed about the arrival of Xerxes and his gigantic army and agreed to lead the Hoplites (acknowledged to be the meanest combat soldiers in the world) against the Persians he knew he would not return and told his wife, “Find a good husband and have good children.” He indeed did not return, however the Persians beheaded him but recognized his courage and bravery and retrieved Leonidas' corpse and sent it back to Sparta for a hero's burial.



I have a friend that owns a restaurant in Greenville, SC. This man is Greek and only one generation from immigrants. His ancestors and he are from Sparta, Greece. He owns a house near Sparta that he visits on occasion. Behind this house there is a mountain that has a pretty steep cliff on one side. This cliff is protected and no one is allowed to visit this site. According to legend, many years ago if a Spartan child is borne that was not perfect in shape and form, it would be carried to this cliff and left to die. The Spartans had a very, very vigorous training program for every male beginning at the age of 8 and continuing until the staff of trainers were satisfied that he was ready to enter a combat unit. They wanted perfect female children also so it would be more likely that they would bear perfect children.  Nobody attacked Sparta for obvious reasons...except Athens. There was a war between these two from 431BC to 404BC known as the Peloponnesian War . Athens led a group of city-states that existed over on the Aegean Sea and Sparta led a group of city-states over on the Peloponnesian peninsula in southwest Greece. The war broke out when Athens tried to exert influence on some of the city-states under the umbrella of Sparta. They fought for 27 years. Eventually all of this nonsense came to an end when the Athenians received a severe ass-kicking at the battle of Aegospotami in 405BC. The Athenians asked for a treaty and one was signed and that slaughter of humans for power was ended. By the way, they did it the hard way then...axes, swords, lances, knives, etc. The Athenians did have “Greek fire” then. This was a flammable material, probably naptha, that was put into clay jars, set on fire and launched at the enemy with catapults. The clay jar would break and spread the flaming liquid. This method was excellent from ship to ship because of the slow moving vessels but maneuvering a catapult on a battlefield against fast moving troops, especially cavalry on horseback, was too unwieldy...so they did it the hard way as previously described.         



      This Date in History    October 23


1965  The 1st Cavalry division launches Operation Silver Bayonet in an attempt to drive the North Vietnamese Army out of II corps (Central Highlands) in Vietnam. They met up with the North Vietnamese 33rd and 66th regiments. It was a week long bitter struggle and ended up being one of the bloodiest of the War. The fleeing North Vietnamese Army decided to make a stand and protect one of their supply depots on the La Trang Valley. This three day battle with the 7th Cavalry engaged was the most savage of the operation. The final result was 834 North Vietnamese killed on this battlefield alone. In a related attack, 500 NV soldiers fell upon a company of American Soldiers waiting at a landing zone and were annihilated. The final result of this operation was 1771 North Vietnamese and 241 Americans/South Vietnamese killed. 



1864    CSA Gen. Sterling Price attacks US Gen. Samuel Curtis’ infantry unit near Westport, Missouri. Price had entered Missouri from Arkansas and had raided several small Union detachments before reaching Westport in an attempt to draw away some of the Union forces from the Eastern theatre. The war was not going well for the Confederacy and President Jefferson Davis ordered Price to try and spread out the Union Army. Price’s attack on Westport went well at first but he was unaware of US Gen. Pleasanton’s cavalry was closing in fast from another direction and he was going to be trapped and possibly forced to surrender. Price orchestrated a skillful withdrawal and escaped. The exhausted Union units failed to follow but if they had, the war would have been over sooner. There were about 1,500 casualties on both sides but this represented about 10% to the Union forces but 20% to Price. As usual, the Confederates were outnumbered about 2 to 1.



42BC    One of the conspirators in the assassination of Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, committed suicide after losing the 2nd battle of Philippi. Brutus and Cassius had formed an army in an attempt to re-institute the Republic of Rome rather than an empire which was the reason for the assassination. They were opposed by Octavian and Marc Antony who wanted to preserve the empire. This was the same Marc Antony that got hung up with Cleopatra. Anyway, the first major engagement between these two armies was at Philippi at which Octavian and Antony defeated the army lead by Cassius and Cassius committed suicide. Then came the 2nd Battle at Philippi and with Brutus in command and he was defeated also and committed suicide. After a while Octavian and Marc Antony started squabbling and they split up with Octavian taking the crown under the name of Augustus and the rest is history.



1983    A coward pig sucking Arab drove an explosive laden truck through three blockades into the lobby of a hotel in Beirut, Lebanon and lit it off destroying the hotel and killing 241 American military personnel that had been using the hotel as a barracks. We had troops there to try and stop the civil war that had been raging for some time between the Palestinians and the Christian militia for the control of Lebanon. I have an acquaintance in Greenville that is an immigrant from Lebanon and was a member of the Christian Militia. His solution for the war in Iraq is a simple one. Get rid of the media and take care of business, meaning kill any and all suspected insurgents wholesale giving no quarter. That means take no prisoners. I like it.



1942    Author Michael Crichton is born in Chicago. Mike evidently was from a pretty affluent family because he graduated from Harvard Summa Cum Laude. After this he went to Cambridge in England and taught anthropology. In the mean time he had turned out some fairly successful books and decided that writing was his calling and started doing it full time. This man cranked out some of the best books ever written by a modern day American author in: “Andromeda Strain”, “The Terminal Man”, “Congo”, and “The Great Train Robbery”. He wrote and directed the movies: “Binary”, “Westworld”, “Jurassic Park” and “Rising Sun”, at one point in 1993 he had four books on the best seller list. He is a very wealthy man and deservedly so.



Births and deaths:



1869    US Football coach John Heisman, for which the trophy is named, is born. John once said “It is better to die as a young man than to fumble”. He was a hard man.



1920    The Mayor of Philadelphia John Rizzo is born. John once said “A conservative is a liberal that just got mugged the night before.” I concur.



1976    Actor Ryan Reynolds is born. John had to kiss an older woman as part of a movie scene. When asked about it he said “You have never had an experience until you have a mature tongue darting in and out of your mouth.” Indeed.



1942 English writer Anita Roddick is born. She once said “If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”



       Thanks for listening    I can hardly wait until tomorrow







Sunday, October 12, 2014

Monday


Good morning,



Quote of the day:

The Nazis had occupied Paris for three and a half years. After the allied invasion on D-Day succeeded, the days of the German occupation of Paris were numbered. Eventually the German commander told Hitler that he thought the allies would be in Paris in two or three days and he could not stop them. Hitler ordered him to burn Paris to the ground. The commander, General von Choltitz, refused to give that order and said “I will not go down in history as destroying one of the the greatest cities in Europe.” I think this man that had spent three years in Paris and had fallen in love with “The City of Light”.



I hate to say this but the world must do what ever it takes stop the ISIS movement even if it means boots on the ground. If those lunatics get control of the oil fields in Iraq and Syria the world economy will be in immediate turmoil and they will be able to further finance their obscene rampage of terror. The largest acknowledged single pool of oil in the world is near Tikrit, Iraq. There are oil wells and refineries already in place there. There are probably larger pools in Russia or Siberia but it is not acknowledged. ISIS is invading Syria and Iraq to gain control of the hearts and minds of the people...and the oil.



Recently certain discoveries have made the history of mankind itself very foggy. For those that are unfamiliar, about 100 years ago a stone spear point was found near Clovis, New Mexico. This spear point had been finely shaped and was the oldest yet found on the North American continent. It was agreed that it was about 13,000 years old. This indicated to ethnologists that the native Americans, including those in Canada and Alaska, had ancestors that crossed over from Siberia during the last ice age. During this ice age there was so much of the oceans that were frozen, some of what is now relatively shallow seas were above water including the Bering Sea meaning there was dry land between Alaska and Siberia. There evidently was an area of ice free land along the western coast of Alaska and Canada and on down into what is now Washington and Oregon. It is assumed that those people followed this path and populated North America then Central and South America. This is somehow verified by the Clovis Point, as it is known.



Recently a scientist from MIT has found several stone spear points along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. What makes this discovery significant is that the spear point was much better made than the Clovis Point meaning that there had been people living there longer than those in Clovis. How could this happen with the Arctic ice cap extending all the way down to northern Virginia? Where did these people come from? The scientist opined that people from northern Europe crossed over to Iceland, Greenland and then the vicinity of the Virginia coast in boats, following the face of the ice cap that was over a mile high at its peak time period. There would have been plenty of wildlife to keep them fed. Of course there is no documentation for this happening. But there is also no documentation of human settlements on western coasts of North America that extend that far back in history either. Now here is where the world gets really foggy. A recent discovery of drawings in a cave down in Brazil have been proven to be about 24,000 years old. Where did these people come from? They certainly did not come down from the Clovis people because they had been in existence for over 13,000 years before the Clovis people ever reached New Mexico.


Then there is the Kennewick man. About ten years ago the rising and falling of the Columbia river uncovered a skeleton near the town of Kenniwick, Washington. Paleontologist wanted the skeleton to determine what they could. The Native Americans sued because it was obvious that this skeleton existed before the white man ever arrived in that part of the world. They wanted to give the skeleton a ritual burial believing it was Native American. Science won that suit and were given the entire skeleton to find out what they could. After a lot of scientific examinations and test it was found that the Native Americans were wrong. Kenniwick man was found to be about 9,000 old and is clearly not of Mongolian ancestry but was East Asian...meaning from somewhere south of China and north of Australia. They found that his diet was heavily into marine life especially seals. He was about 5'-7” weighed about 160 lbs. He had suffered several broken ribs and a couple of skull fractures and died when he was about 47 years old. The cause of death is unknown but he had a spear point that was lodged in his hip and had been there for quite a while. His right arm was a lot more robust than his left and his right shoulder showed a lot of heavy use. This indicated that he used a spear or threw some sort of missile regularly. How did he get here? I do not believe he walked from Malaysia, for instance, across the width of China and Mongolia to cross the Bering Land Bridge. I think he got to the west coast by boat. It would not be that hard. Someone could sail northeast for thousands of miles an never be out of sight of land. Not only that they would eventually encounter the Japanese Current. This is a strong current in the Pacific ocean going from the vicinity of Japan to the American west coat via Alaska.



The oldest city in the world is Jericho but it was not continuously occupied. Damascus, Syria is the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. Jericho is about 7,500 years old. There were recently discoveries by archaeologists of two cities in central Turkey. Both of these cities were a hell of a lot more sophisticated than either Damascus or Jericho during the same time period. In fact both of these cities were at least 1,000 years older than Jericho. Who were these people and where did they come from and where did they go?



All of this tells us one thing...we don't know crap about where we came from or who we are.



     This Date in History   October 13



1976   Secretary Of Defense Robert McNamara went on his 8th fact finding mission to South Vietnam. Bob visited with General Westmoreland, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, South Vietnam Premier Ky and President Thieu and then went back to Washington to a press conference and with his bare face hanging out declares that the war is proceeding satisfactorily. Then he went to LBJ and secretly told him that we are in deep doodoo over there. LBJ got tired of McNamara’s vacillating and replaced him with Clark Clifford. He isn’t much better. That whole debacle was a disaster top to bottom from the git-go.



1792  The cornerstone of the White House is laid on this day. The Irish American architect James Hoban was hired to design the house and he used the Lienster House in Dublin as a model. The location for the house was made by George Washington and the first resident was President John Adams. The White House was burned by the British during the war of 1812 in retaliation for US guerillas burning the British Embassy in Canada but James Hoban was again hired to direct its restoration. The White House and the adjacent Lafayette Square are blocked off from vehicular traffic for security purposes. Over a million people a year visit the White House.


1943  26 year old poet Robert Lowell is given a one year jail term for refusing the draft because he is upset about the allies using “blanket bombing”. I wonder what Bob would have felt if he had seen what was going on at the German Auschwitz concentration camp. Anyway, Bob was born to privileged and wealthy parents and he received a good education. He wrote some very good essays and poems and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for “Life Stories” which was an account of how he was dealing with his mental instabilities. In the early 60’s he read poet Allan Ginsberg’s “Howl” and was blown away by Ginsberg’s honesty and being down to earth. Bob was involved heavily in the opposition to the Vietnam War and was present at nearly all protest meetings/marches. Bob went to that great library in the sky in 1977.


1935  Doctor Buck Ruston is arrested for murder in Lancaster, England. The good doctor’s maid Mary Roberson and common law wife Isabella Van Ness had been missing for some time and an intense investigation had begun at the behest of the good doctor I guess to throw suspicion off him self. Investigate they did. A farmer in Scotland found several objects wrapped in newspaper on a river bank which turned out to be various body parts two of which was mutilated human heads from which all the teeth had been removed and the nose cut off one of them and had been disemboweled. All the fingertips on both had been removed also. Even though identification of the bodies was nearly impossible, Scotland Yard determined from the evidence the time of death and from the newspapers that they were issued in the good doctor’s home town. The searched the doctors home and found traces of human blood and human fat in the kitchen sink drain and therefore the doctor was tried and convicted of a double homicide. Just before going to the gallows the doctor stated that he had killed his wife in a quarrel and that the maid had walked in on him in the act and so he had to kill her too. Doctor Ruston went to meet his maker about 2 inches taller than he had been.



1845   Under the leadership of Sam Houston, the people of Texas approve a state constitution and ask that they be allowed to become a member of the United States. In 1836, again under the leadership of Sam Houston, the people of Texas had declared themselves independent of Mexico and became the Republic of Texas. The acceptance of Texas into the fold was delayed somewhat because it was to be a “slave” state and that was not palpable to some interests in the Northeastern US and Mexico had stated that if Texas became a state they would declare war on the US. Eventually Texas was admitted into the US and sure enough a war with Mexico ensued. It didn’t last long though.



Births and deaths:


1949  Rock start Sammy Hagar is born. Sammy once said “If Van Halen called me, I think I would puke”.



1959 Marie Osmond is born. Marie had seven brothers and no sisters. She and Donnie Osmond had a moderately successful TV career together.


1969 Ice skater Nancy Kerrigan is born. Nancy was famous for when one of Tonya Harding’s friends ran up to Nancy and popped her on the knee with a pipe so as to eliminate Nancy from the Olympic tryouts. Tonya believed that Nancy was her only competition and said so. Her friends took that as a request to stop Nancy from competing. It was proven that Tonya had no part of this attack. Tonya had dynamite legs, y'all.


1925 Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is born. She is known affectionately as “Iron Pants Maggie” for her hard nosed approach to problems. She is one of my favorite people. It was Maggie that said “If you have to keep telling people that you are a lady, then you aren’t one’.



1959 Stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce is born. Lenny told us “More and more people are straying from the church and getting back to God.”



1997 Movie actor Clifton Webb died. Clifton once said “Barbara Stanwick is my favorite American lesbian”. Clifton was brutal.



                  Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow