Wednesday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“It is difficult to free a fool who reveres his chains.”

                                 Voltaire

You can substitute “drugs” or "government handouts" for chains.

A while back a man named Robert Laverne Henry was executed in the Raiford, Florida prison. In 1987 this animal tried to rob a fabric store in Deerfield Beach, Florida and killed two women with by beating them with a hammer, pouring flammable liquid on them and lighting them off. One of the women survived long enough to identify Henry but later died. The tax-payers of Florida have been supporting this bastard for 17 years while he was on death row. He wanted to make a speech to the families of the victims before he was executed. This beast had the freaking nerve to say things like “We don't castrate or rape a rapist and we don't cut off the hands of a thief so why do we want to murder a murderer?” He rambled on for a few more sentences but in mid-sentence one of the family yelled one word....”Die” and it was all over.

Out in Anaheim, California the local cops were out looking for a parole violator when they ran across another man that thought they were after him and he began running. One of the cops had a dog with him named Bruno, a German Shepherd. The cop released Bruno and he cornered the runner behind a dumpster. The runner shot Bruno in the mouth and the bullet lodged near his heart but Bruno is still alive but just barely. The cops capped the shooter.

Another event in my air traffic control career and again at Moody AFB:

The control tower at Moody faced east toward north-south parallel runways. A friend named Bill Cole and I were conducting takeoffs and landings (landing on the outside runway and departing on the inside runway) when we saw something coming from the southeast blowing black smoke. This sucker was gigantic and only about 800 feet above the ground. It was a B-36. These monsters were the largest airplanes ever built at the time. They were replaced by the immortal B-47 and later by the B-52. The plane reached our airport perimeter and turned due north. Bill was screaming on emergency frequency (243.0 MHZ) for the B-36 to identify himself and tell us his intentions. I had ran off all the arrivals I had and told them about this big thing flying around in contact with no one. Finally, someone aboard the B-36 called us on a discrete frequency (only used by Moody control tower) and said “This is Oatmeal 19, I am the B-36 just east of you. We are out of Ramey (Puerto Rico) and are on orders from higher headquarters...out.” All Bill and I could do is tell everybody what had just happened and to wait about ten minutes, if fuel allowed, before returning to land. The B-36 disappeared over the horizon northbound. About ten minutes later operations resumed as usual. By the way, Ramey AFB has since closed at the request of the good people of Puerto Rico. They did not like the noise and the possibility of one of those B-36's crashing. After the people of Puerto Rico realized that millions and millions of dollars would be gone due to the loss of Air Force personnel spending their Yankee dollars there, they wanted to recant their request but it was too late.

Here is an interesting fact. One of the first retailers of automotive gasoline was a man named Phillips in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He want a catchy name for the fuel and decided on Phillips 66. The reason? His first gas station was on the immortal Route 66.

This Date in History March 25

1774 On this date the British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act which was part of the so-called Coercive Acts. The Boston Port Act closed the ports of Boston and Charleston, SC to any shipping not condoned by the British navy, a blockade if you please. The Boston Port Act also had a glimmer of hope for the Bostonians in that if the city coughed up the equivalent $1 million dollars to repay the English merchants for the loss of their tea in the Famous Boston Tea Party, they MIGHT lighten up on the blockade. That was baloney because the British brought up the military commander of the British army in the Colonies, General Thomas Gage, and made him the Governor of Massachusetts. The Bostonians and the colonies in general saw correctly that this was the first step toward martial law and England’s attempt to isolate New England and Boston in particular from the rest of the colonies. It did not work, y'all. The rest of the colonies gathered together and began sending supplies to New England via different avenues and the colonies overwhelmingly decided to tell those British merchants to suck it up because they aren’t repaying them shit for the lost tea. If you take all the things the British Parliament burdened the colonies with collectively, it is a wonder the Revolutionary War did not start before Lexington and Bunker Hill. In addition to the Boston Port Act they gave us the Stamp Act which decrees that every scrap of printed matter must have a British designed stamp on it at a cost to the colonists. The income from the Stamp Act was to be used to finance the British Army in the colonies. In other words, the colonists were going to provide pay for their own invaders. Parliament also passed the Quartering Act. This act decreed that it was the responsibility of the colonists to provide quarters for the British troops to stay in, the colonist’s own homes if necessary. There were other acts but these three were the most obnoxious and clearly led to the Revolutionary War and the creation of this great experiment in freedom known as the United States of America.

1634 On this date the English passenger ships Ark and Dove arrive near the western shore of what is now Maryland and the passengers go ashore and establish the town on St. Mary on St. Clements Island. The land east of the Potomac had been given to George Calvert on proprietary basis by King Charles I. Meaning George Calvert owned the land if he would share the profits from these lands with the King. Calvert was also titled Lord Baltimore. The first settlers had an agenda. They wanted to provide a refuge for the Catholics being persecuted in England. This was OK with King Charles I because he loathed Catholics. As with all that have a religious agenda there were problems that arose and it was true here also. Along came more and more Puritans and they began challenging the freedom of religion that was part and parcel of the establishment of this colony in the first place. The Puritan wanted to dictate the “proper” religion for the settlers and as you might suspect, fighting broke out. The Governor William Stone stepped in and put a band-aid on the problem and said that all that believed in Jesus Christ were welcome into Maryland. This law did not last long as y'all know but eventually more and more religious tolerance crept in and now we have an amalgam of religions in that state as with most of the rest of this great nation. Well, not so much here in Greenville. Puritans abound here, by several other names but still Puritans.

Born today:

1940 One of the most recognizable morons in existence, Anita Bryant. She said “If gays are granted rights, then we will have to grant rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with Saint Bernards and even nail biters.” I had forgotten why I made up my own religion, now I remember.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow