Tuesday

                    Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“No longer forward nor behind I look in hope and fear;

But grateful take the good I find, the best of now and here.”

                                  John Greenleaf Whittier

Earlier New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush returned the Heisman Trophy he was awarded in 2005. He said that he had to do it to settle his conscience. I seems that Reggie and his family was given thousands of dollars if he would attend the University of Southern California on a football scholarship. This is a gigantic no-no in the world of college football. No one has said from whence the money came but the University itself appears blameless, or at least that is their claim. They caught hell from the NCAA for recruiting violations. But I can assure you that they will not return the $48 to $50 million dollars gained when they beat Oklahoma for the national championship in the 2004-2005 season with Bush in the backfield. There was talk that the 2005 Heisman should be offered to Vince Young who came in second to Bush but the Heisman committee will just record that there was no Heisman Award given in 2005.

I saw a TV show about Moses and the 12 tribes of Israel being banished to wander the desert (probably the Negev) for 40 years after leaving Egypt...so I did some speculation. There is no definite amount given for the number of people involved in the Exodus. I am saying that the “banishment” to the desert was not a punishment at all but was planned. How could the Israelis expect to fight their way through hundreds of miles of of hostile tribal lands without a trained army or weapons? After all they had been enslaved in Egypt for 300 years (give or take) and they certainly did not have a trained infantry, archers and for sure were not allowed to have chariots and horses. I think Moses camped out in the desert to increase the size of an available army by double, manufacture weapons and most of all, the training of an army in discipline and combat tactics. They would have been annihilated if they had entered the Jordan Valley without a viable military. By the way, how could a significant number of people camp out in the desert for 40 years and not leave one archaeological site...just saying. The Exodus allegedly took place during the reign of Ramses II. This would put the time at about 1,400BC.

             This Date in History  September 20

1979 Lee Iacocca is elected chairman of the Chrysler Corporation. Lee had been fired by Ford earlier because Henry Ford II thought that Lee was just a “simple Italian immigrant”. Lee set about rescuing Chrysler from the precipice of bankruptcy. He was successful by layoffs, streamlining, “In your face advertising” and government guaranteed loans which Chrysler paid back in four years. During these four years, Lee asked that his salary be $1 per year setting an example for the other executives. After Chrysler began thriving again Lee was offered a salary of $7M per year, he said no to that offer and said “I will would take $1M a year, what the hell am I going to do with $7M a year.” Think about the raping other companies have been getting from their executives recently. We need more people like Lee.

1968 US military officials defend the use of Agent Orange and other defoliants in Vietnam. During the same news conference Dr. Fred Shirley a US Dept. of Agriculture official said the US military had severely underestimated the long term effect of these defoliants and that he suspected there would be an adverse effect on the crops that were sprayed. These chemicals were used primarily in III corps to clear out the foliage near the DMZ and borders with other countries to make it easier to discover incursions. Later on the Vietnamese people near the sprayed areas came down with unusually high rates of cancer and birth defects. I really don’t know the facts about what caused these tragedies because no comprehensive study has been done but I am convinced it was the defoliants. The US military sprayed 19 million gallons of this stuff. What the hell?

1943 The Germans had assigned the giant battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst to Norway to harass and/or stop the shipping of materiel from the US to Russia and England. The Scharnhorst left on an assignment leaving the Tirpitz alone in a Norwegian fiord. Many attempts were made to bomb the ship but all had failed so six English mini-subs were assigned the task of attaching explosives to the hull of the Tirpitz and lighting them off. On this day three of the subs were successful and damaged the ship to the point that it was out of commission for 6 months. By then better air cover for the convoys had been established and the Tirpitz was never able to fire a shot in anger.

Born today:

356BC Greek military genius Alexander the Great. He said “Remember upon the actions of one depends the fate of all.” His greatest enemy was the Persians which he always defeated. One reason was that Alexander’s troops carried lances that were about two feet longer than the Persians, meaning that in a head to head charge, Alexander’s troop’s lance points got there first. The Persians never figured that out along with Alexander’s mastery of his cavalry and engineering. The Persians came from what is now Iraq and Iran. They are still stupid.

1902  English author Florence “Stevie” Smith. She said “This Englishwoman is so refined she has no bosom and no behind.” I think we have met, Stevie.

1921 US comic Slappy White. He said “The trouble with being unemployed is that as soon as you wake up you are on the clock.” Been there, done that, have tee shirt.

Died today:

1933 English social reformer Annie Besant. She said “For centuries the clergy considered women as a necessary evil and the most revered saints were those that hated women the most.” When you say “saints” that means Catholic to me. Maybe all of those priests that were prosecuted for sexual abuse of juveniles really hated women down deep. But what do I know?

1996 Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. He said “A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.” I can’t drink Starbucks coffee, makes me too jumpy.

2005 Ukrainian Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. He said “None of my clients, not Stangl, not Mengele, not Eichmann, not even Hitler or Stalin was born a criminal. Someone had to teach them to hate: Maybe politics, maybe the society, or maybe it took even a Jewish prostitute to take them below.” Wiesenthal was a relentless pursuer of those monsters...he is no longer with us.

        Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow