•   Musings and History

    Quote of the day:
    “My neighbors love it when I play my piano; they throw rocks and break my windows so they can hear me better.”
                                               Les Dawson

    There is some question about why there was not an autopsy performed on SCOTUS justice Antonin Scalia. I don't know about the county where he died in west Texas but in the piney woods of northwestern South Carolina it is this. If the coroner that makes the initial examination of the corpse decides the cause of death as being “natural causes” then there is no autopsy, but if the cause of death cannot be determined or is suspicious then there is an autopsy.

    We often hear the phrase “get the hell out of Dodge”. That phrase began back in the 1880's when Wild Bill Hickok was the sheriff of Dodge City, Kansas and vicinity. Bill was ruthless and cut no one any slack. If he said “come with me” you had better start trotting or risk getting you brains knocked out or worse. If you found out that Bill was coming after you, you either surrendered immediately or “got the hell out of Dodge”. There was one incident where Bill was called to a disturbance at a bar by a crowd of Texas cattle drovers that had just arrived after three months on the range and they were obviously hammered. Bill came in and told them the party was over and it was time to go to bed. The trail boss took one step forward and Bill capped him with one shot to the forehead. The best thing for the trail boss to have done was to....you know.

                        This Date in History February 17

    1865 On this date United States General William T. Sherman and his army of 60,000, in his continuing campaign against innocent and defenseless civilians, entered the state capitol of South Carolina after an orgy of rape and destruction. Two days before CSA General Wade Hampton III had pulled out of Columbia knowing that if he stayed and fought his small cavalry unit would be swarmed under and annihilated. Sherman's army took great pleasure and were very meticulous in their destruction of this city because they felt that it was South Carolina that was first to secede and provided the impetus for all the others. This method of “burnt turf” warfare was advocated by both General Ulysses Grant and President Lincoln. Y'all will need to remember that Abraham Lincoln issued a “call to arms to preserve the union” after the secession began. The US army had its ass handed to it by the Confederates in the first few battles of the Civil War and then the northerners pressed Lincoln to allow the Southerners to form their own country so as to stop the slaughter. Lincoln then saw that patriotism was not going to get the job done so he switched horses and said the war was about freeing the slaves which changes the impetus from patriotism to a matter of conscience. Now when the US Army has a chance at barbarism with impunity they say they are punishing those that led the secession. That was baloney; they are back on the other horse again. They were just doing rape and pillage because they could get away with it, politics not withstanding. But mankind’s history is full of similar events from the wars between the Mesopotamian city-states, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Tutsis vs Hutus not to mention what happened in Darfur. Mankind’s history is full of atrocities against the innocents and it appears to me that there is no end in sight.

    1995 On this day the ferry Neptune departed Jeremie for Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This boat was only 150 feet long with three decks and was carrying 1,200 people and farm animals. Normally the trip takes 12 hours. The bad thing was that this boat was licensed for only 650 people, had no life rafts, no life preservers and no emergency radio. About half way to Port-au-Prince a storm arose and the bottom deck began to become awash because of all the extra weight. The passengers, animals in tow, fled to the top deck. Y’all can guess what happened next. Most of the passengers got on one side and the boat capsized. Haiti has no Navy or Coast Guard so those people are out there on their own paddling around and hanging on to the boat. Finally the United States sent a Coast Guard cutter and they rescued about 350 people. The rest were lost...what a nightmare.

                  Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow