Chamblee54

Georgia executed Curtis Osborne this week.
The story is here. The murders took place in 1990.
Executions are set to become routine. The Supreme Court has ruled that lethal injection is an acceptable method for offing convicts.
As live apartment fire notes:
The Department of Corrections tries to have at least one media witness to every execution. There’s a print reporter from middle Georgia who witnessed dozens of them. It seems a distasteful assignment. We once saw an AJC reporter leave the Jackson prison grounds in tears after witnessing an execution.
It’s also an important assignment (in spite of increasing media disinterest– WAGA covered the execution with a 25 second reader). The blunt-instrument power of government is on no greater display than when it puts a human being to death. Eyewitness accounts ultimately led to the demise of the electric chair. Pieces like the one written by Cook will keep lethal injection under legitimate scrutiny as well.
One wonders about the deterrent value of an execution eighteen years after the crime. When the crime occurred, the Braves were in last place, Daddy Bush was President, and Saddam Hussein was preparing to invade Kuwait.
The execution did not bring the victims back.
Mr. Osborne alledgedly killed Arthur Jones because Mr. Osborne did not want to hand over $400 he had made selling the victim’s motorcycle. Linda Lisa Seaborne was there at a bad time.
The reports do not say what happened to the motorcycle.

A popular local radio whiner got on the subject of phrases today. The expressions today were words that said, when you heard them used, that you were listening to an idiot. The ones suggested by the listeners were about what you could expect:neo cons, social justice, global warming and the like. When I am driving the truck, I don’t have time to call in. I did have an answer.
Whenever I hear the phrase “main stream media” or “msm”, the light goes off in my head. Do not pay any more attention to this moron.
The radio whiner in question works for Cox Enterprises. Cox owns the local monopoly fishwrapper, a network affiliate tv station, and lots of other things. That sounds pretty mainstream to me.
The whole thing about liberal media is a joke. The print and electronic story mongers are profit driven corporate things. That is their bias. And where is the bias in the stock market charts, want ads, or baseball standings? This is what the fishwrapper is made of. Any news stories are just something to put between the ads.

So, I am writing this while listening to a Tom Waits performance. It is called Storytellers, and Mr. Waits tells a story before each song. I suspect that the story has nothing to do with the song, but is just good to tell entertain the audience. The bar probably did a good business while he told stories.
The pictures I put up with the posts have nothing to do with the text. These images came from a snowstorm last January. I took my camera up to Peachtree Road, started at the funeral home and went over to Oglethorpe. Turning around at the gothic stadium, I went back down the street toward Chamblee proper. Todays selection includes a statue from the antique collectibles yard. Statues are like cemetery people, in that they are not camera shy, and never mind standing still to pose.
So Tom Waits has a swear jar in his house, where you have to put a dollar in if you cuss. He would put a ten in and not ask for change. This concert is at the Airport in Burbank CA. Laugh In was from Beautiful Downtown Burbank, but Mr. Waits didn’t make it past the airport.
As the church sign said, ” When your ship comes in, will you be at the airport?”
I saw Tom Waits at a concert once. Tim Curry was playing at the Agora Ballroom, and I was wandering through the balcony. Mr. Waits was playing the next night, but I was too slack to attend. I saw Mr. Waits and some people sitting at a table. I asked this guy who looked like a guard if that was Tom Waits. “No, it just looks like him”.

The sixties were a great time to be a kid. As long as you were too young for a Vietnam Vacation, there were kicks to be had.
One of the more enduring legends was the dirty lyrics to “Louie Louie”. Recorded by an obscure band called the Kingsmen, the song was a massive hit in 1963 ( It never was Number One). When WQXI put out lists of the greatest songs of all time, “Louie Louie” was at the top of the list. This is despite, or because of, the raucous sound. The song was recorded in one take, when the band thought they were playing a rehearsal. The vocals are difficult to make sense of, and rumored to be obscene. No one was ever quite sure why .With the garbled sound on the record, the listener could hear almost anything they wanted to.
The Governor of Indiana, Matthew Welsh, banned radio stations from playing the song in that state.
On February 7, 1964, Attorney General Robert Kennedy got a letter from an outraged parent about the lyrics to “Louie Louie”. An F.B.I. investigation followed. After thirty months of investigation, the Bureau concluded that they could not make sense of the lyrics, and did not know whether it was obscene.
There was a girl on my street named Carol. A tomboy who could whip most of the boys, she had a pet skunk named Napoleon. Carol claimed to have heard a band at Lenox Square play “Louie Louie”. “He said the words real slow so you could understand them. I can’t repeat what he said,but it was dirty”.
Here is a transcription of the lyrics.

Louie, Louie Oh no, me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, said, ah
Louie, Louie Oh, baby, me gotta go
A fine little girl she waits for me Me
catch a ship for cross the sea.
Me sail that ship all alone Me never think how I make it home.
Ah, Louie, Louie No, no, no, no, me gotta go.
Oh, no. Said, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said we gotta go.
Three nights and days I sail the sea Think of girl, oh, constantly.
Ah, on that ship I dream she there
I smell the rose, ah, in her hair.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ we gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, we gotta go.
[Yelled] Okay, let’s give it to ’em right now! [instrumental]
Me see Jamaica, ah, moon above.
It won’t be long, me see me love.
Take her in my arms again, I got her; I’ll never leave again.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
But, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, ah, we gotta go.
I said we gotta go now, Let’s get on outta here.
[Yelled] Let’s go.
Transcribed by David Spector Sept. 2000 Public Domain

If anyone reading this can explain what was so dirty about that, please tell me.
Thank you Wikipedia for your help in assembling this.

Today is the observance of Memorial Day. According the invaluable Wikipedia, this holiday began as Decoration Day. It was intended to honor the soldiers who died in the Union Army during the War Between the States. It was expanded after World War I to honor casualties of any war or military action. As the story unfolds:

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth.
General Logan had been impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day and decided the Union needed a similar day.”

In the South, Confederate Memorial Day was observed. The day chosen was April 26. On April 26, 1865, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union General William T. Sherman.
Of course, in the intervening years, Memorial Day has become the start of summer, and a time of great merriment. The question arises, does this day honor the Confederate soldiers who did not come home?

Before we get too far along, I should say out loud that slavery was not a good idea. It was terrible for the African Americans. It was backwards economically, and dragged the South into a war which damaged it for many years post bellum.
The War Between the States had several causes, slavery being one of the important ones. Once the Union won the war, this is the cause that the history books mentioned.
Many of the men who fought for the Confederacy did not own slaves. The slaveowners were a dirty bunch. Not only did they brutally enslave the Black people, they got the poor whites to fight in the war.
There is this problem in history of the soldiers who died fighting for the losing side. We do owe our freedoms and way of life to the soldiers who sacrificed in battle. But what to make of these Confederate soldiers who died so their rich neighbors could keep their slaves? They are just as brave as the Union troops, often fighting with less food, weapons and clothing.
The modern side to this dilemma is the Vietnam Vet. Often drafted, sent to fight a war which few wanted, these brave soldiers have been dumped on. While the war did not end well, they are every bit as valiant as those who fought in other conflicts.
When (and if) the current conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan are over, it is hoped that the troops who served there will be treated with honor.

The radio whiners were discussing the oil executives talking to congress about their profits recently. A congressman proposed a special excess profits tax, which upset the whiners. ( It has long been suspected that these radio talkers are on the oil industry payroll)
Your gentle reporter heard this talk, and a light bulb went off in his head. What about a special tax for the contractors in Babylon?
Before we get any further, I should say that I oppose a special tax for war profiteers. While the “Daddy Warbucks” tax would feel good to impose, it probably wouldn’t improve honesty or make the war less expensive. The companies would do some accounting magic, call the assets something else, and get the same return on their investment. In fact, this tax might even make the process more costly.
Money is a weapon in war. The ability to fight depends on the ability to finance. A robust at home economy is needed to pay for a war, and for the interest on the money that is borrowed to pay for it. Arguably, when you steal from the war effort, you are committing treason.
This war has been outsourced like no other. Many of the chores once done by conscripted soldiers are now performed by well paid contractors. Many of these contracts are “cost plus” which means that the contractor gets all of their money back plus a percentage of profit. Their is no incentive to be efficient.
As TomPaine.com reports:
“What followed was a U.S. corporate invasion of Iraq.
While some 150 U.S. companies received contracts for work in Iraq following the invasion, the big reconstruction winners (after Halliburton) were: Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, Calif. ($5.3 billion); Fluor Corporation of Aliso Viejo, Calif. ($3.75 billion); Washington Group International of Boise, Idaho ($3.1 billion); Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, Louisiana ($3 billion); Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, Calif. ($2.8 billion); Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. ($2.5 billion); and Contrack International, Inc. of Arlington, Va. ($2.3 billion).
These seven companies are responsible for virtually all reconstruction in Iraq, including water, electricity, bridges, roads, hospitals and sewers. One reason for their failure was that companies, such as Bechtel, came to Iraq with the hopes of ultimately winning contracts to privatize the services they were hired to rebuild. Because many U.S. contracts guaranteed that all of the companies’ costs would be covered, plus a set rate of profit—known as “cost-plus contracts”—they took their time, built expensive new facilities that showcased their skills and would serve their own needs were they to run the systems one day”

Another take is from a blogger nickleberry-huxtable:
“War is a gift from heaven for these corporations. Their everyday `peace-time’ activity is rampant enough, but the checks and balances on their activity still chafe. War provides a chance to avoid these checks, it releases massive amounts of money and creates a chaos of unaccountability and lack of regulation. In the midst of all this, money can leak away in bundles and be quietly directed towards those who desire it most – the greedy rich.
A warning though: This is not to say that this is the reason we went to the war in the first place, or even that it was a factor in the decision to go to war. Instead it is simply the case that war tends to throw up situations of chaos which can be easily exploited by the wealthy and powerful. When war is prosecuted by people who have a vested interest in maintaining this chaos (as is often the case) this exploitation increases”.
While doing research for this feature, I found an article at commondreams.org, about prostitution in Iraq.

“Another major change has been the reliance of the U.S. military on private contractors, who have now surpassed the number of soldiers in Iraq. … Less attention has been paid to how private contractors are changing the nature of military prostitution. In the best known example, DynCorp employees were caught trafficking women in Bosnia, and some indications suggest that similar acts may be taking place in Iraq.”
Getting back to the radio whiners, their silence on war profiteering is most curious. ( I can think of an exception. Laura Ingraham has said that Brown and Root is losing money feeding the troops in Iraq.)They would much rather lambast domestic critics of the war. The truth is that war profiteering is hurting the war effort. It makes the war much more expensive, and is costing America resources that could be used in the war effort. It hurts morale among our troops, who see the contractors growing rich while the soldiers risk their lives.