Monday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

                                      Dr. Seuss

Thanks to D., M., and Your Honor for b'fst...It is good to see y'all.

Scotland has banned genetically modified crop growing...our country insists on it.   

I watched most of the debate like about 24 million others. I think Donald's remark to Megyn Kelly was meant to be “She had blood in her eyes” and he screwed it up and refuses to admit it. This was indeed a misunderstanding typically blown out of proportion by the media. I also agree that she and the others asked questions that was just meant to embarrass him. But after all is said and done I am leaning toward Carly Fiorina. She also is not a career politician and is well polished, exudes self confidence and is not intimidated by anyone. Being the ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard is a plus on her resume'. By the way, she had lunch with us Greenvillians this past Sunday at Tommy's Ham House. Joe Biden was in South Carolina also but at taxpayer expense. He was on vacation at an exclusive resort on the coast near Charleston known as Kiawah. He goes there a lot. He was seen recently visiting the Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston.

On August 9, 1969 four people named Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle and Linda Kasabian had dinner at the El Coyote Mexican restaurant near Los Angeles, California. After dinner they drove up into the Hollywood Hills and stopped at a house at 10050 Cielo Drive. It was a house that was previously owned by a record producer but now it was being leased by movie producer Roman Polanski and his wife actress Sharon Tate. Polanski was out of the country so Sharon had a few of her friends over that included Voytech Frykowski, Steve Parent, hair stylist Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Tex Watson and company break into the house with Tex wielding a long barreled .22 caliber pistol and the three women with long knives. For reasons not truly known, Tex and the girls begin slaughtering everybody in the house. Two of them make it out into the front yard trying to escape but Tex ran them down and dispatched them with a shot to the back of the head whereupon one of the girls jumps on the corpses and begins repeatedly slicing and stabbing. In the meantime inside the house even more horror is committed by the women when they begin stabbing and strangling the 8 month pregnant Sharon Tate and the other two. All five of the occupants of the house are killed and disfigured. The next morning the house keeper showed up and saw the bodies on the lawn and called the LAPD. No one can imagine the reason for all of this because two days later supermarket executive Leon LaBianca and his wife Rosemary are found cut to pieces in their Hollywood home. Both the Tate and LaBianca murder scene had words like “Death to pigs” and “Helter Skelter” written in blood on the walls so the cops knew the perpetrators of these murders was the same. The Prosecutor assigned to this case, Vincent Bugliosi, determined that the murderers were members of a cult led by a man named Charles Manson that lived on the Spahn Ranch out on the California desert. The ranch was not a ranch at all; it was just a bunch of buildings that were used in movie sets from time to time. Anyway, eventually the entire cult was arrested except for Tex Watson who had fled to, you guessed it, Texas. Prosecutor Bugliosi struggled to find a motive and here is his theory: Charles Manson wanted to commit random murders hoping the public would believe it was blacks that were the killers and the mother of all race wars would erupt and he and his little group would stay hidden in the desert and would be on top after it was all over. Manson somehow arrived at this conclusion by listening to the song “Helter Skelter” on the Beatles “White Album”. How could this jackass believe this and be sane? The answer to that is he isn't sane. He is crazy as a shit house mouse. Anyway, the whole thing blew up when Susan Atkins was arrested on a stolen car wrap and chose to brag to her fellow inmates about her participation in the Tate and LaBianca murders. Susan scared the hell of the inmates and they passed on the information to the cops and it was all over. All of the participants are still in prison to this day except for Linda Kasabian who eventually rolled on the others including Charles himself in return for a shortened sentence.

This Date in History August 10

1846 In 1826 an Englishman named James Smithson died and his will stated that if his only nephew died without and heir, then all of his fortune would be bequeathed to the United States to be used to create a Smithsonian Institute dedicated to the collection and distribution of knowledge. Well, sure enough Smithson’s nephew James Hungerford did indeed die without an heir. The United States was at a loss as to how to proceed with this windfall. So in 1836 US President Andrew Jackson sent diplomat Richard Rush to England to negotiate for Smithson’s assets. Rush returned to America two years later with 11 cases of booty that was valued at $500,000 after the gold coins were melted down and formed into ingots. The US politicians were still squabbling about the gold and what should become of it (typical politicians) then US President James K. Polk signed the Smithsonian Institute Act and then there was no doubt what the gold would be used for. The strange part about this whole scenario is that Smithson had never set foot in America but today there are 11 buildings that are known as being part of the Smithsonian Institute all named in the honor of a man we never knew.

1977 On this date the NYPD arrest a beast named David Berkowitz. This animal had gained the nickname of “Son of Sam” from the signature on his writings during his year of terror administered to the people of New York City. He decided to start murdering people because his neighbor’s dog, a black Lab named Harvey, had told him that it was time for him to kill. The owner of the Lab was a man named Sam Carr and that is where Berkowitz got “Son of Sam” as a sobriquet. He was known to be responsible for at least 15 killings and that many more wounded. This seems very lucky because he used a .44 Magnum revolver. The NYPD organized a group of detectives known as the Omega Group whose sole purpose was to capture “Son of Sam”. The police got a break when a witness told the police that she saw a man similar to the description in the newspapers near the location of one of the shootings. She also said that she saw the police writing parking tickets there also. The police back tracked the parking tickets and came up with David Berkowitz whose car had been ticketed. It was just a day or two later that he was arrested. He happily admitted to the murders and when the police captured him coming out of his apartment, he said that he was on his way to kill some more. They found a 30.06 rifle and a .44 caliber revolver. Ballistics proved that it was his revolver that had fire at least six of the fatal shots. He was tried, convicted and given six twenty-five to life sentences. He will not see the light of day again. Like I have said in the past, let me designate the penalty for monsters such as this. I promise that crime would decrease precipitously.

1877 Earlier Amanda McFarland and her husband, a Presbyterian minister, had settled in the northwestern United States to minister to the Indians in that area, especially the Nez Perce. After a few years Amanda’s husband died leaving the relatively young Amanda in the wilderness alone. She made her way to the settlement of Seattle where she met another Presbyterian minister that had a church there. The minister told her that the Indians in what would later become southern Alaska had never heard about Christianity so Amanda decided to go there. She somehow made her way to the rugged Fort Wrangell and began a ministry. She achieved the trust of the natives there and became an important counselor to the different tribes in the area. Finally a male evangelist arrived at the Fort and assumed most of Amanda’s duties but she stayed and continued to befriend the natives. She died at the age of 80 in 1912 being highly revered by her friends.

         Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow