Thursday

                           Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Happiness is not the absence of problems; it is the ability to deal with them.”

                                             Stacy Keach

Trivia question (s) of the day:

1. Who was the fastest player in NFL history? 2. Who ran the fastest 40 yard dash in the combine? Answer at the end of the blog.

A while back a containerized cargo ship docked at the municipal docks in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Early one morning the security cops arrested two unauthorized aliens walking away from the ship. These guys were stowaways inside one of the containers from the Dominican Republic. Both of these jackasses had been previously convicted of crimes here in the United States, did hard time and then were deported. They were handed over to Federal authorities. By the way, there originally were three of them but one of them died in the container and was left to rot by his buddies. Hell yes, let’s allow the unrestricted flow of Latino aliens, they will make great citizens.

Last week down in Columbia, SC a food delivery truck was re-fueling at a Sonoco station when the driver went inside for personal reasons. When he came back, the truck was gone. That’s right, someone was really hungry. The truck was found the next day just a few miles away. All that was missing was some food. Times are tough, y’all.

A while back the state of Utah offered a man on death row that was nearing his assigned execution date either the poison needle or a firing squad. He opted for the firing squad. Later on a firing squad was assembled and this convicted killer went to meet his make air conditioned. If you think about it, five rounds of 30.06 ammo simultaneously entering your chest causes death more instantaneous than the 20 seconds it takes for the poison. I do not see what all the hoopla is about, how about some sympathy for this animal’s victims.

Here is an item that should install confidence in the present bureaucracies. A while back the state of Louisiana had bought a number of barges that have a vacuuming device aboard that is very effective in gathering oil off water surfaces to combat the oil spill by the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The United States Coast Guard forbade these barges from going out into the Gulf because there were not enough life jackets aboard each vessel. These barges stayed in port for four days before the Coast Guard would give them the nod. They eventually ended up on site and operating. There is an old proverb that says “You do not worry about draining the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators.”

This Date in History June 21

1782 On this date the Congress of the United States adopted The Great Seal. On the front of the seal is a bald eagle holding an olive branch in his right talons and arrows in his left. This represents that Congress has the power to work for peace or make war. There is a shield on his breast with red and white stripes with a blue field above. The eagle’s beak holds a ribbon with the phrase E pluribus Unum on it, this Latin for “Out of Many, One”. There is a ray burst on top of the eagle encircling 13 stars. One might think this represents the thirteen original colonies but it doesn’t. It represents the concept that a “new nation has joined the other countries of the world” and indeed we did.

1964 Earlier two civil rights workers from New York named Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman and arrived in segregated Mississippi. They were working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and their purpose was to try to register black voters. After their arrival in Neshoba County they were joined by a black Mississippi native named James Chaney, also working for CORE. In January Schwerner organized a successful boycott of a few businesses in Meridian, Mississippi and had been instrumental in the surge of black voters being registered. As a result of this the Grand Wizard of the KKK, Sam Bowers, put a contract out for Schwerner’s life. On June 16, 15 Klansmen descended on a black church, beat the crap out of a lot of people and burned the church to the ground. Schwerner had used the church as a rallying place to get the blacks to register to vote. He was not there that night he and the other two had gone to a training seminar in Ohio. On this date they returned to Mississippi they found out about the burned church and went to the site to talk with blacks that attended the church about what happened. After this they headed back to Meridian. They were stopped and arrested by the Deputy Sheriff of Neshoba County, Cecil Price, for suspicion of arson. They were using the church burning as an excuse to lock them up long enough to notify the Klan where they were. After 7 hours in the slammer and denied any phone calls, they were released and they resumed their trip toward Meridian. Awaiting them at the edge of the city of Philadelphia, Mississippi, which was the county seat of Neshoba County, was two car loads of Klansmen. They stopped the civil rights worker’s car and killed them all. After it became apparent to the relatives of the three that they had disappeared under ominous circumstances, they called the FBI and agents from that agency descended on Philadelphia like a swarm of locusts. They found the ringleaders of the murders and put them on trial for murder in a Philadelphia courthouse with a Mississippi judge presiding. They were all convicted but the judge did not sentence them to any punishment saying that they were provoked by “outsiders”. The shocked FBI went one step further and sued the ringleaders for a violation of the Constitutional right of the three. They were all convicted and went to prison. The bodies of the three workers were found buried in an earthen dam that was under construction.

1990 On this night in northwestern Iran, an earthquake with the magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale begins on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The resulting devastation kills 50,000 and injures over 130,000. There was a stretch of a series of villages 80 miles long on the coast of the Caspian Sea that every building had collapsed and every person was killed.

Quotable Quotes:

“Always acknowledge a mistake, this throws those in authority off guard and give you the opportunity to make more.”

                                                Mark Twain

“Politics is more dangerous than war. In war they can only kill you once.”

                                           Winston Churchill

Answer to the trivia question:

The fastest player in NFL history was Bob Hayes of the Dallas Cowboys. Bob was gold medal winning sprinter in the Olympics. The fastest documented 40 yard dash in the combine was by Bo Jackson at a blistering 4.12 seconds.

                 Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow