Good
morning,
Quote
of the day:
“A
little sincerity can be dangerous, a lot of it is absolutely fatal.”
Oscar
Wilde
I
got considerable feedback about my opposition to treating women
differently just because they are women. Lets assume that Three
women walked into a bar that was “standing room only”. These
three women are Susan Smith, Andrea Yates and Elsa Koch.
Susan
Smith was married but her lover told her he did not like children.
She drowned her 3 and 5 year old boys by strapping them into their
car seats and rolling the car into a nearby lake hoping her lover
would divorce his wife and marry her. The Idea of surrendering
custody evidently never crossed this bitch's mind.
Andrea
Yates got depressed and slowly and methodically drowned her five
children in a bathtub.
Elsa
Koch was the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration
camp during WWII. This animal would seek out prisoners with
interesting tattoos, have them killed and the tattooed skin removed
very carefully, tanned and made into gloves and lampshades.
Am
I going to hold the chair for these beasts...open a car door for
them...help them with their coats on and off just because they are
women? The point I am trying to make is treating someone with
kindness applies to anyone regardless of gender. As far as I am
concerned respect is earned and is not a gift from God because of
gender. I will treat any and all with equality. The “Golden Rule”
will always keep you out of trouble.
I
received this from a friend that helped me when I was on my
semi-annual visit to Pensacola Beach and without a car. He also is a
frequent fellow imbiber at one of the most famous watering holes on
the Gulf Coast...Dan lives on Little Sabine Bay and can hang with
anybody. These are his words:
It
was another hot day, as most were. I was used to it by then.
I was lucky to be where I was, not slogging through a swampy jungle
or a rice paddy like a lot of guys on that day,
especially those whose lives would end before nightfall.
The
view from Observation Post 10 was spectacular from the mountaintop.
Sunlight glittered from a cloudless sky on the myriad azure colors
of the South China Sea. Gentle waves broke on crystalline
quartz sand so pure that Japan imported it for optical glass.
The
mountain wasn’t big as mountains go, probably not more than a
thousand feet or so. OP 10 sat atop a massive boulder near the top,
jutting out over the side. From there it seemed that you could see
forever: distant hazy mountains on the mainland to the left,
scrub covered hills to the right, and everywhere the dazzling glare
from the sandy beaches. Sampans dotted the horizon as grizzled
old fishermen eked out their meager catches from the sea.
None
of this mattered though. I was too busy feeling sorry for
myself to see the beauty before me, to count my blessings, to be
thankful for family and friends. The SAT team came by to
relieve me for an hour, so I could eat a turkey dinner in the chow
hall instead of cold C rations. Bah! Humbug! I
sent them away so I could sulk Christmas away by myself.
As
I pondered my miserable existence, the wop, wop, wop of a chopper
grew louder as it neared from somewhere out of view behind the
peak. Suddenly it burst around in front of my lonesome boulder
directly in front of me and hovered. There in the open doorway
was Santa, bedecked in his red suit and hat, full white beard
blowing in the wind. Over the noise he greeted me with a
“Merry Christmas! Ho. Ho. Ho.” over a bullhorn and dashed away
to his next destination.
Last
night, Christmas Eve, a neighbor friend and another beautiful young
lady tapped on my front door. Hawkeye, one of my cats,
alerted. As I opened the door and they broke into a Christmas
carol for me. The bore a gift of homemade decorated cupcakes
packaged beautifully for the occasion. This will be another
Christmas to remember because of good friends’ caring and
kindness.
This
Date in History December 26
2004 On this date
at 8:06a Indonesian time a large slip in the earth’s crust occurred
when a continental plate southwest of the Indonesian archipelago,
dropped about 15 feet for a length of about 50 miles. This event
generated an enormous amount of energy that spread rapidly throughout
the Indian Ocean and displayed itself as one of the most devastating
series of tsunamis or tidal waves in recorded history. The hardest
hit was several different beaches in Thailand which was just a short
distance north and east of the tectonic event. Then the waves
traveled across the Indian Ocean and came ashore on the east coast of
India and Bangladesh and traveled on to the east coast of Africa to a
lesser extent. There were many home movies made at the resorts in
Thailand and it was scary to watch as the water on the beaches
retreat to the horizon and then come storming back with a vengeance
in three or four waves. I have a mental image a little kid on the
beach after the water had disappeared and then when the tsunami
arrived it washed that kid inland like a rag doll. She did not
survive. I fact there was in the vicinity of 350,000 deaths
attributed to these tsunamis world wide. We will never know exactly
because the small villages up and down the coast that simply
disappeared. One strange thing was the people on the beaches in
Thailand saw their dogs, cats and even goats and cattle run for high
ground even before the water retreated. They knew what was going on.
1908 On this date
the first black American Jack Johnson wins the World Heavyweight
boxing title by knocking out Canadian Tommy Burns in 14 rounds near
Sydney Australia. Johnson held the title until 1915 and was hated
and reviled by boxing fans in the United States because he did not
fit in the typical “Jim Crow” image Americans had of the back
man. Johnson drove fancy cars and wore fancy clothes and had a white
wife, flashed gold teeth and had several overlapping affairs with
different women, all white, which further inflamed the prejudiced.
Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas in 1878. He dropped of the
school in the fifth grade and began working on the docks in
Galveston. Not long thereafter he began his career as a boxer. In
those days boxing was divided into black and white divisions and
Johnson became the “Black Heavyweight Champion” on 1903. In 1904
Johnson issued a challenge to the White Heavyweight Champion, Jim
Jefferies. Jefferies was not interested. It was not until 1908 that
White Heavyweight Champion Tommie Burns granted Johnson the match in
Australia which Johnson won. It wasn’t long before the sports
reporters began writing about a “Great White Hope” to get the
Heavyweight Championship back into white hands. Johnson was one of
the best defensive boxers in history. He was also a devastating
slugger when the opportunity presented itself. In 1910 Jim Jefferies
agreed to come out of retirement and challenge Johnson. Johnson was
the only boxer that Jefferies ever faced that knocked him off his
feet. In the 15th
round Jefferies’ corner threw in the towel and it was all over.
Johnson faced several challengers and defeated them all. In 1912
Johnson was convicted of transporting an unmarried woman across state
lines for “immoral purposes”. This law was implemented to stop
prostitution and white slavery not to stop a night club owner and
World Champion from taking his white secretary out for a weekend
tryst. This was clearly an instance of law enforcement using the law
for their own prejudicial purposes. Johnson was released pending an
appeal. Johnson decided to get the hell out of Dodge and fled to
Europe where he lived in exile for seven years and continued to
defend his title in Europe and he became a very rich man. In 1915 he
fought Jess Willard in Havana and was defeated. Some thought that he
had thrown the match hoping the charges against him would be dropped.
He returned to the United States into the waiting arm of U.S.
Marshals. He did a year of hard time in a prison in Kansas then he
was released he tried boxing again but he had lost a step and was not
effective. His fortune went away and he ended up working in carnival
side shows. He died in an automobile accident in 1945. He was 67
years old. I don’t know what lesson we can learn from this man’s
life except “Don’t flaunt it and take the money and run.”
1861 Earlier
Confederate States of America representatives James Mason and John
Slidell had boarded the British mail ship Trent for a trip to England
to try to gain support for the Confederacy from the British. The
ship was stopped in the Bahamas by the United States warship U.S.S.
San Jacinto and
Mason and Slidell were taken off and sent to Boston. British
authorities raised almighty hell for this act which was nothing short
of piracy. They sent a message to Abe Lincoln to release Mason and
Slidell immediately and issue a letter of apology to Great Britain or
risk war yet again with the England. Abe ignored this warning for a
while but when England sent 11,000 combat troops to Canada Abe got
the message. Abe knew he could not fight the Confederacy and Great
Britain simultaneously and succeed at either one. Abe demurred and
ordered the release of Mason and Slidell. This event proved two
things. It showed Abe the animosity that England had for the United
States and to what ends he would go to avoid a war with them at this
point in time.
1609 On this date
Count Gyorgy Thurzo pays a visit to the castle of Countess Elizabeth
Bathory in Hungary. He was sent there by the King Matthias of
Hungary. The King had been getting reports from some titled people
in the area of the Countess’ castle had some young girls had been
showing up missing and he sent Thurzo to look in to it. What Thurzo
found was a genuine chamber of horrors. The good Countess got off on
torturing young girls for days and then killing them in the most
demented ways. This girl believed that the drinking of human blood,
especially young girls, would keep her youthful appearance. She was
not above biting a chunk out her victims either. She would drive
needles under her victim’s fingernail and toenails. On one
occasion she made one of her victims cook a piece of her own flesh
and serve it to the Countess. Finally she would coat he victims with
honey and stake them out on the lawn and leave them to the ants and
bees. She had much of staff scouring the countryside looking for
young girls to bring to the Countess for her fun and games. Count
Thurzo was stunned at what he found and executed over 80 people but
he could not execute the Countess because she was of royalty. So he
imprisoned her in a room in the castle that had only tiny slits for
air and food. She survived for three years but was found dead. I
wonder what happened with her body waste. I am going to let that
alone.
1820 Previously a
man named Moses Austin had opened a lead mine in what is now
Missouri. He did well for about ten years but the ravages of the War
of 1812 bankrupted him. He then decided to take advantage of his
good relationship with the Spanish. On this date he meets with
Spanish officials in San Antonio and asked for permission to bring
300 families into Spanish territory and establish a settlement.
Initially the Spanish refused but after further persuasion by Austin
they agreed to grant 200,000 acres for this settlement. Delighted,
Austin went back into the United States and began recruiting families
to his settlement which was in the lower reaches of the Colorado and
Brazos rivers. Unfortunately, Moses died before he could get back to
his proposed settlement so his son Stephan F. Austin stepped in and
continued fulfillment of his fathers dream. The first settlers
arrived in December of 1821 and within a decade the settlement
numbered 25,000 people. As you might suspect, the settlers had no
love for the Spanish and in 1836 they became part of the Republic of
Texas and eventually one of these United States. By the way, the
settlement is now the Texas state capitol of Austin.
1944 On this date
tank units of General George Patton’s 3rd
Army
break through the German army encirclement of the Belgian city of
Bastogne. This city was a major objective of the German Army when
they launched a surprise assault out of the Ardennes Forest that
later became know as the Battle of the Bulge. The city was defended
by 18,000 Americans mostly of the 101st
Airborne. During the encirclement the troops defending Bastogne
eventually ran very nearly out of food water and ammunition at the
same time. They also were ill-dressed for the bitterly cold weather.
After the breaking of the siege the long hard task of pushing the
Germans back to where they came from began. Patton pulled off one of
the greatest maneuvers in military history. His army was driving
east toward Germany 100 mile south of Bastogne when the German
assault began out of the Ardennes. Patton was able to turn his army
90 degrees to the left and attack the German encirclement of
Bastogne. That was an amazing feat considering the logistics
involved making that happen. In spite of the brilliance of Patton in
rescuing the 101st
many of those proud paratroopers said “We did not need to be
f----k---g rescued”. By the way, if I m not mistaken, the leader
of the tank column that broke through to the city was Colonel
Creighton Abrams, later to become a four star General.
Born today:
1792 English
mathematician Charles Babbage. He said “Errors committed because
of inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.”
1893 Chinese leader
Mao-Tse Tung. He said “When awakening a sleeping tiger, use a long
stick.” When disappointing a woman on PMS, use an even longer one.
1930 Us writer
Frank Hubbard. He said “It will be interesting to see how long the
meek hold onto the Earth after they inherit it.” Me too.
Thanks for
listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
No comments:
Post a Comment