Thursday OYSTERS

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“We all suffer hills and valleys in our lives and have to deal with them. The problem is our struggle to get to the top of the hills is overwhelmed by the avalanches into the valleys.”

                                                         Al Campbell

I made up my mind a while back that my support for our next President would have these qualifications. I am up my eyeballs in professional politicians that may or may not keep their constituents in mind in proposed legislation. It is apparently dependent upon whether or not they keep their jobs and the feathering of their nests. Not only that, in my opinion this Democratic administration is the most divisive in history. So all of this means that it will have to not be a politician nor a Democrat. That leaves me with the choices of Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson and Donald Trump. I prefer Carly because she knows how to hire a staff of experts (see Hewlett-Packard) and how to run a business. The same can be said about the bombastic Donald Trump. Carly was indeed fired as CEO but she said that when she proposed changes that would decrease the number of people on the Board of Directors they got scared for their jobs. It is agreed by all that the the US Government should be run as a business. Ben seems the most sincere but lacks the previously named assets. I think we all agree that the most dangerous pot boiler today is the turmoil in the Middle East...in my opinion Armageddon could be on the horizon if this problem is not resolved tactfully. I saw an interview with a Syrian Ambassador who was asked who was behind ISIS. He said that he believed it was a conglomeration of Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey...especially Turkey. The world will eventually have to deal with the Muslim countries that are in turmoil. As we all know, the Muslim countries do not hold women in very high esteem...that one fact gives me pause about Carly and especially Hillary. But on the other hand we cannot let other religious and tribal law dictate who our President will be. After all Israel survived with Golda Meir as Prime Minister and England with Margaret Thatcher. Both countries were challenged militarily during their terms in office primarily because it was believed that women were not as tough as men. They were wrong. I am still weighing all of this...you should too.

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 train 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 horse ranchers and illegal gun runners needed even more horses 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 then the honkies should be responsible for replacing them and the human slavery business increased exponentially 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 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 shots, 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 and threw Sir Walter and Bessy into the Tower. Sir Walter coughed up enough money to bail them both out . 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 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 wearied of paying him his pension as a knight. He resurrected the alleged crime of 15 years before and on this date in 1618 had him beheaded. Sir Walter Raleigh was 66 years old and had spent the greatest part of his life in the service of his country. In But as the saying goes “What have you done for me lately, Walt?”

Sir Walter once said “All men are evil and will declare themselves so if the occasion occurs” including James I.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow