Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

9/11/1683: this day marks the anniversary of the epic Battle of Vienna, at a city the Islamic troops called "The Golden Apple." King Jan Sobieski led the Winged Hussars in a charge and later wrote a letter to Pope Innocent XI saying, "Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit" - "We came, We saw, God conquered."




Sept 11, 1941: Construction began on The Pentagon.




Sept 11, 1947: Harry Truman was initiated into King Neptune’s "Royal Order of Shellbacks" after crossing the equator while returning from Brazil aboard USS Missouri. Truman was spared from most of the brutal ritual, but his aide was grabbed, shocked, painted, ducked, and paddled.

After the exhausting festivities in Rio, he and his family welcomed the rest. Mrs. Truman spent most of her time in their comfortable quarters in the admiral’s island. Daughter Margaret, in white halter and skirt, sunned herself on the surrender deck (while sailors peered from behind gun mounts) and got in an occasional game of deck tennis.

Vile Landlubber. But around the presidential party, the ship hummed with excitement. Everybody got ready for the traditional ceremony of “crossing the line,” a rite in which oldtimers take savage pleasure in initiating “pollywogs” (sailors who have not crossed the equator before) into King Neptune’s “Royal Order of Shellbacks.” The 350 shellbacks aboard busied themselves fashioning clubs out of canvas stuffed with rags, constructing a throne for Neptune, a ducking pool and other devices of torment for his victims.

At sundown, Davy Jones boarded the ship through a hawse pipe. Grinning, Harry Truman found himself indicted as “a vile landlubber and a pollywog . . . .in that, knowing full well that there are no party politics in this absolute monarchy, you are guilty of practicing the same, this crime being further aggravated by your being a Democrat.”

Gauntlets and Grease. Next day, before breakfast coffee had well settled in pollywog bellies, a full-whiskered Neptunus Rex arrived on the fantail. He was attended by Davy Jones and Queen Amphitrite (a tough, blond Marine sergeant wearing enormous falsies and rope-yarn hair). As No. 1 Pollywog, Truman was first—but was let off easy. He was merely ordered to give his autograph to each member of Neptune’s court, and to furnish his staff with Corona cigars forever. Margaret was directed to lead a group in Anchors Aweigh, which she did falteringly and off key.

But the other dignitaries did not fare so well. Big, jovial John Steelman, the President’s special assistant, had unsuspectingly come dressed in white shirt and pants. As Truman chuckled gleefully, Steelman was laid out on the tin “operating table,” prodded with an electrically charged knife, and given a gargle of quinine and lemon extract from a huge hypodermic syringe. Then he was plastered with paint, run through a gauntlet of shellbacks wielding stuffed canvas paddles, up steps with electrically charged handrails. After another gargle, he was pushed into a tilting chair and dumped backward into the ducking pool, where seven blackened sailors ducked him vigorously. Then he was shoved down a greased slide, belabored through another gauntlet, and pronounced a shellback.

THE PRESIDENCY: No. I Pollywog

After females were allowed to serve aboard combat ships the ritual was more or less banned. The US Navy still holds the Crossing the Line ritual, BUT it is voluntary and much, much more lame & tame. The 400 year old (nobody really knows when exactly it started) Proud Naval Tradition was sunk.


Sept 11, 1997: the infamous Area 51 frantic caller on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM occurred. As a work of Art, it doesn't get much better than this.




Sept 11, 1998: Rounders opened in theaters.




Sept 11, 2001: Doomsday - the world forever changed.



September 11, 2001: US Strategic Command was one week into its annual Global Guardian nuclear command and control exercise. Bombers had been armed with nuclear weapons, ICBMs and several SSBNs were on alert, and three E-4B command posts were airborne.


On 9/11, StratCom leaders were practicing for a fictional threat when real, unprecedented catastrophe struck


Laura Bush describes the PEOC on 9/11 and describes seeing ancient foldout beds in the White House bomb shelter on 9/11. From her memoir "From the Heart."




On 9/11 USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was headed to a port call in Cape Town & saw the attacks live on a US morning news show. The Captain turned around and was first on station in the North Arabian Sea by the next morning. She is the first ship to arrive on station 100 miles south of Pakistan.


Over the next few weeks, USS Enterprise conducted combat flight operations in support of Operation Enduring Freedom executing primarily night strike flight operations, including a period of 36 hours of continuous flight operations. During the 17 days, aircraft from Carrier Air Wing (CVW-8) flew around 660 missions in Afghanistan and dropped 829,150 pounds of ordnance.


In this video from Sept 11, 2001, Sen. Joe Biden Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee who on Sept 5, 2001 held a Senate hearing on the threat of Bioterrorism and the spread of infectious diseases, speaks on ABC interview starting at 58:45.



Peter Jennings asks the uncomfortable question. Biden is focused on biowarfare and also mentions Senator Tom Daschle who about a month later received one of the Anthrax letters.


A lot going on in this photo...




Stepford Biden's mind was chockablock with so much nonsense, it was nearly impossible to find a single coherent thought amidst the clutter.

Mid week Words...