Monday OYSTERS

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”

                                                Victor Hugo

I got a call from one of my old piping buddies this past weekend. He is one of the first on my blog subscriber's list. He told me that I was one of the last real conservatives out there that he paid attention to more rather than Rush Limbaugh...it was bullshit but I enjoyed hearing it. We discussed me romantically pursuing Rhonda Rousey but we mutually agreed that it would not be to my advantage. He also said that I should reconsider my endorsement of Carly Fiorina. The reasons given was that while she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard she obtained a 56 foot, $4 million yacht while being responsible for outsourcing 3,600 American jobs overseas. The facts are that when she took over HP they had 122,000 employees. During the next four year she downsized that by about 36,000 employees. Cutting dead wood and improving efficiency is one thing, sending American jobs overseas is another. I am not worried about the boat but the outsourcing struck a nerve. I may have to change horses...we will see. By the way Carly has a present net worth of about $56 million. My friend is a Trump fan. By the way when he is not on the road, this friend lives in Chucktown (Charleston, SC) and has been known to gather in a circle with several of us in Richard's, a biker bar in Mount Pleasant, and sing Folsom Prison Blues at the top of our collective lungs with Johnny Cash on the jukebox. It was an example of male bonding at its best.

This is an example of us becoming the “nation of the offended”...it sickens me. I am neither pro-hunter or anti-hunter but I read a story about a woman that lives next door to a hunter. On occasion he would bring home a deer and pull it up on an A-frame rack in his back yard and “dress it out”. This really means beheading, skinning and deboning. The hunter probably “field dressed” (disemboweled) the deer where it fell. His neighbor left a note on his door that she was offended at the sight of the deer's corpse and head. This reminds me of a story I read about a coed university that had separate dorms for men and women. The women sent a complaint to the dean of men that they were offended by the sight of men in their dorm across the quad taking showers and walking around in the nude with the shades open. The dean sent back this response. “Taking showers is mandatory, looking is optional.” The optional part could be said about the neighbor of deer hunter. It is obscene to continue to look at something that is offensive to you personally and then complain about it...that is being arrogantly spoiled and not worthy of any consideration. I knew this person a while back that said to me “Did you see that program about Auschwitz last night?” I said no but I had seen those films before. He said “That was one hour of the most offensive films I have ever seen.” I said “Let me get this straight, you watched a film that offended you top to bottom for an hour and you did not change the channel?” I was offended by his stupidity.  By the way, the lady that complained about the deer hunter should go see where her steaks, pork chops and chicken breasts come from.

One of my pet peeves: Some people that say “I could care less”. Really...how much less could you care? It is “I couldn't care less” dumb ass. They can't even get an insult right.

This Date in History November 2

1863 Major General John C. Fremont is relieved of command of the Western Department of the Union Army. Fremont was an interesting character. He was born in Savannah, Georgia and raised in Charleston, South Carolina and attended the College of Charleston. He was kicked out of school because of “idleness and lack of attention” but he excelled in mathematics and secured a position with the US Navy teaching mathematics. He was the illegitimate son of prominent Virginia socialite Janice Whiting who got knocked up by a Frenchman from Norfolk, Virginia named Jean Fremon. It was later on the John changed his name by adding a “t” and a comma over the “e” in his last name. John joined the Union army in 1838 but made a great career move by marrying Jesse Benton. Jesse was the daughter of powerful Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. As a result of his father-in-law’s influence, John was assigned three different expeditions of discovery. He started by mapping the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers that had been explored earlier by the Lewis and Clark expedition but they did not map the area like Fremont did. The next two were in the American west which he also mapped and proved to be of incalculable help to the pioneers that followed. It is believed that he was the first honky to lay eyes on Lake Tahoe but he did not do it alone; he had guidance from mountain men like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. Fremont was superb cartographer but his expertise in combat was suspect. At the outbreak of the Civil War, again with his father-in-laws influence, he was named commander of the Union Army Western Department based in Saint Louis, Missouri. Soon thereafter a Union army commanded by US General Nathaniel Lyons ran up against a CSA army commanded by CSA General Sterling Price at the place called Wilson’s Creek. It was a massacre, y’all. The Union army was cut to pieces, including General Lyons. That Union army fled into the four winds in a complete rout. General Fremont was assailed for not providing Lyons assistance. Fremont was stung by this criticism and fought back by declaring martial law and chose to free the slaves in the state of Missouri. This act was way more than he had authority for. Not only that, it put A. Lincoln and the Republicans between a rock and a hard place. There were four slave holding states that had not seceded and they were Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. When Fremont freed the slaves in Missouri, he really pissed off the slave owners that had voted not to secede and join the Confederacy into thinking that maybe they really should. When Fremont’s actions in Missouri reached Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland the fires of secession were again kindled. Lincoln knew he had to do something so he requested Fremont to rescind his order. Fremont refused and that forced Lincoln to relieve him of command and Lincoln rescinded the order himself. They really did not know what to do with Fremont so they gave him command of a small army and sent him to a safe location, or so they thought, in West Virginia near the Shenandoah Valley. Soon after his arrival in West Virginia, the US army sent three separate armies, including Fremont, into the Shenandoah Valley to kick CSA General Thomas J.”Stonewall” Jackson and his army out of the valley. There is an upside to this for Fremont. He was included in the details of one of the greatest military actions ever documented when Stonewall Jackson defeated and routed not only Fremont but the other two armies as well. It took an enormous amount of grit, endurance and determination by Stonewall’s troops and well as his unquestioned military genius. After having his ass handed to him by Jackson, Fremont retired from military service. In 1864 he was approached to challenge A. Lincoln for the Republican nominee for president but he declined. After the war he became the territorial governor of Arizona. He died in 1890 in New York. Fremont delivered some of the most important geological information ever discovered to this country. He was just did not have a military mind.

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow