LAWYERBRUCE

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Nixon had gay affair?

December 29, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

December 29 is … Pepper Pot Day

For all of you lucky recipients of Kindles, Nooks or other Ereaders be sure to order my books. I have three published to date with another work coming shortly. They are available at Amazon.com, Smashwords.com, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple and many other ebook sites. Just do a name of author search or a search by book title. That information is below. Help a struggling author.

THE END OF THE YEAR IS ALMOST UPON US.

Now, Jimmy Hoffa is under the GM Headquarters building in Detroit, Michigan. If you're looking for the bones of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, you may need look no further than the General Motors headquarters. According to a new book by Hoffa's former driver and mob goon Marvin Elkind, Hoffa's corpse rests below the cement foundation of the Renaissance Center. Elkind co-wrote Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob with a Canadian journalist, and according to one passage, reported mob boss Anthony Giacalone told Teamsters delegates to "Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys," as he nodded to the foundation of the Renaissance Center during a conference in Detroit in 1985.

Thin evidence? Sure, but the news is just as credible as any of the other theories concerning Hoffa's disappearance. From a burial under the end zone of the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey to cremation at a Hamtramck waste disposal facility, plenty of urban legends surround the union leader's vanishing act. Something tells us no one's going to be ripping up the floor boards at the RenCenter looking for musty bones anytime soon, however.

The author did not have the fortitude to print or report this information while Nixon was in power or alive. It is real easy to kick a dead man with accusations that will obviously be contested or ignored by the family.

Watergate was only one of several scandalous aspects of former President Richard Nixon's life, according to a new book by a former White House correspondent.

Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President by Don Fulsom (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.99), former correspondent for United Press International, makes several eye-catching accusations, including that the former president had a gay affair with Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a banker apparently with ties to the mob.

The allegation is especially noteworthy because, as gay news website Queerty reports, Nixon was known to have made homophobic remarks. From Queerty: When a close aide to President Johnson was caught having sex with a former sailor in a YMCA bathroom, Nixon called the man "ill," and added that such people "cannot be in places of high trust."

The new book also alleges that Nixon beat his wife and that his aides referred to him as "our drunk." Neither of these allegations is new or supported by significant sources.

The Daily Mail reports that Nixon's alleged secret lover also had a shady history of his own. According to the Mail, the FBI claims Rebozo had ties to mob bosses Santo Trafficante and Alfred 'Big Al' Polizzi. He also ran a bank that, a former mobster claims, was used to launder money.

The book's press release says that Fulsom used interviews with former White House staffers and ex-members of Congress, as well as government documents, to support his claims.

The Nixon Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The book's author Fulsom covered the presidencies of Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton during his career as a journalist. The book goes on sale at the end of January.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book is available. It makes a great Christmas present. More information will be forthcoming about my fourth book currently under construction.

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

Public EneMe

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Do you have a Salem?

December 28, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

December 28 is … Card Playing Day and National Chocolate Day

JUST A FEW DAYS LEFT!

Just don’t play Solitaire ‘til dawn with a deck of fifty-one; I won’t tell you you have nothing to do!

No witches were burnt at the stake as a result of the Salem, MA which took place around 1692.

The Salem witch trials of 1692 were protracted, grueling affairs, and by the time they were concluded in October of that year, 150 people had been arrested, of whom 31 were tried and 20 were put to death. But the present-day assumptions about the trials are fraught with misconceptions, and much of what is commonly believed to have transpired in that Massachusetts port town simply never happened. For one thing, there is no proof that bona fide witches and witchcraft even existed. Rather, what was attacked then as a rash of witchcraft would surely in a later time have been medically diagnosed as mass hysteria. It is true that children in Salem slaughtered pigs, that women made advances to their neighbors' husbands, and that ministers behaved with decidedly unministerial abandon, but these were the acts of sick people, not demons. And the splenetic rage against witches which caught up many professedly pious townspeople was part of this mass hysteria. Among the first of the Salem "witch bitches" were the young daughters of Rev. Samuel Parris and their friends, who fell under the devil's sway and behaved immorally after listening evening after evening to blasphemies and lurid stories of life in the West Indies told them by Tituba, the family slave. Soon several of the girls' impressionable young friends became similarly "possessed," and thus the epidemic spread.

Another misconception is that the convicted witches were burned at the stake. In Salem and elsewhere, hanging was the standard method of execution, although one victim was crushed to death under heavy stones. And witchcraft was not exclusively the work of women. Six of the 31 witches tried and condemned were men.

Some people believe that only in Salem were witches tried and punished. Not so. There are records of witch-hunts in nearby Andover, Mass., and in Maine. New England minister Cotton Mather had described the anguished writhing of "possessed" children in Boston four years earlier: "They would have their mouths opened so wide that their jaws went out of joint, and they would at once clap together again with a force like that of a strong spring-lock. The same would happen to their shoulder blades, and their elbows, and hand wrists, and several of their joints. They would at times lie in a benumbed condition and be drawn together like those who are tied neck and heels, and presently be stretched out, yea, drawn backwards to such an extent that it was feared the very skin of their bellies would have cracked."

While it is widely believed that during the height of the Salem witchcraft mania one could have one's enemies tried and hanged for witchery simply by innuendo, this was not always so. Many well-seated members of Salem society were accused of witchcraft and set free nonetheless. In fact the mother-in-law of Salem's Judge Jonathan Corwin was charged repeatedly with demonic acts, but never even appeared in court.

One final surprising note: The convictions of the Salem witches did not stick. On Oct. 17, 1711, an Order of Compensation reversed the attainders of 22 of the 31 convicted in Salem. The remaining nine, who had no surviving friends or relatives to plead their reinstatement, had to wait until 1957, when the state of Massachusetts finally reversed the convictions of all those not covered by the 1711 act.

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.law.officelive.com

http://lawofficeofbruceabrennan.webs.com

http://www.lawyerbruceabrennan.webstarts.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/attorneybruceabrennan

www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)

www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.

www.kobo.com

https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/dashboard

Book Titles:

Holmes the Ripper

A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction

Public EneMe?

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Let them eat fruitcake!

December 27, 2011

BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND

The news as I see it and the views as I want them.

December 27 is … National Fruitcake Day

Better late than never, but one was not born every minute according to P. T. Barnum. He must have liked fruitcake. P. T. Barnum is most often associated with the circus sideshow and the display of freaks. While this is true, he is also the founding force behind one of America's most famous circuses: Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum is also affiliated with the famous quote "There's a sucker born every minute." History, unfortunately, has misdirected this quotation. Barnum never did say it. Actually, it was said by his competitor.

Here's the incredible story. From 1866 until 1868 Mr. George Hull, of Binghamton, New York studied archeology and paleontology. Over this period of time Hull contemplated how to pull off a hoax. It seems that many an evangelist at the time had been preaching that there were giants in the earth. In June of 1868 Hull traveled back to Fort Dodge, Iowa where there was a gypsum quarry he had recalled seeing two years earlier. Even then, he had noticed that the dark blue streaks running through the soft lime rock resembled human veins. Realizing its appearance was tailor-made for his hoax and it was easy to carve, Hull hired a group of quarry workers to cut off a slab measuring twelve feet long, four feet wide and two feet thick.

In November, Hull had his gypsum wrapped in canvas and hoisted onto a wagon. Since the nearest railroad was forty miles away, it proved to be a long, difficult job. He then had the slab of gypsum shipped by rail to Chicago where he had hired a stone cutter named Edward Burghardt to carve a giant. Burghardt and his two assistants, were sworn to secrecy and agreed to work on the piece in a secluded barn during their off hours and Sundays. The instructions were to carve the giant as if it had died in great pain, and the final result was an eerie figure, slightly twisted in apparent agony, with his right hand clutching his stomach. All of the details were there; toenails, fingernails, nostrils, sex organs and so forth. Even a needlepoint mallet was used to add authentic-looking skin pores. When the carving was done, sulfuric acid and ink were used, possibly smudged like printer ink, to make the figure look aged.

The giant finished, Hull then had the figure shipped by rail to the farm of William Newell, his cousin, located near the town of Cardiff, New York. In the dead of night, Hull, Newell and his oldest son buried the giant between the barn and house. They were instructed to say nothing about it and that Hull would let them know in about a year of what the next stage was.

Luckily, about six months later, on another farm near the Newell's, some million year-old fossil bones were dug up. Newspapers around the country reported the finding. Hull was filled with glee in reading the accounts. True to his word, one year after burying the giant, Hull sent word to his cousin on October 15, 1869, to start the next stage of the hoax. Newell hired two laborers to dig a new well near his home. Newell directed them to the exact spot he wanted the well dug and went back into the house to wait -- anxiously. Sure enough, well into the day, the two laborers rushed up to the house to announce their discovery: a giant turned to stone! The laborers and both Newells carefully excavated the area surrounding the giant.

News of this amazing discovery spread throughout the valley and soon wagon loads of neighbors streamed into Newell's farm to see the giant. By mid-afternoon, Newell erected a tent around the "grave" and started charging 25 cent admission. Two days later, the Syracuse Journal (New York) printed an article about the discovery. Being greedy, Newell raised the price to 50 cents, and a stage coach company made four round trips a day from Syracuse to the Newell farm. Thousands came every day. Among the visitors were clergymen, college professors and distinguished scientists. Before long, the expert's opinions split into two theories; one side claimed it was a true fossilized human giant and the other side pronounced it an authentic ancient statue. No one asserted that it was a fake!

About ten days after the discovery, and about the time the Cardiff Giant, as the papers had named it, started receiving national attention, Hull sold two-thirds interest in the giant for $30,000 to a five-man syndicate in Syracuse, the head of which was a banker named David Hannum. The syndicate moved the giant to an exhibition hall in Syracuse and raised the admission price to a dollar a head. Unknown to them, P. T. Barnum sent an agent to see the giant and make an assessment. The particular Sunday the representative saw the giant, the crowds were abnormally large -- about 3,000 people. The agent wired the news back to Barnum and Barnum instructed him to make an offer of $50,000 to buy it. Hannum turned his offer down.

The Cardiff Giant was the most talked about exhibit in the nation. Barnum wanted the giant to display himself while the attraction was still a hot topic of the day. Rather than upping his offer, Barnum hired a crew of workers to carve a giant of his own. Within a short time, Barnum unveiled HIS giant and proclaimed that Hannum had sold Barnum the original giant and that Hannum was now displaying a fake! Thousands of people flocked to see Barnum's giant. Many newspapers carried the version that Barnum had given them; that is, Hannum's giant was a fake and Barnum's was authentic. It is at this point that Hannum -- NOT BARNUM -- was quoted as saying "There's a sucker born every minute." Hannum, still under the impression that HIS giant was authentic, was referring to the thousands of "fools" that paid money to see Barnum's fake and not his authentic one.

Hannum brought a lawsuit against Barnum for calling his giant a fake. When it came to trial, Hull stepped forward and confessed that the Cardiff Giant was a hoax and the entire story. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling Hannum's giant a fake since it was a fake after all. Thereafter, Hannum's name was lost to history while Barnum was left with the misplaced stigma of being the one to say "There's a sucker born every minute."

Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.

BRUCE A. BRENNAN

DEKALB, IL 60115

VISIT ANY OF THE SITES LISTED FOR REVIEW, RESEARCH, ORDERING MY WRITING PRODUCTS OR TO CONTACT ME.

Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com

www.brucebrennanlaw.com

www.lawyerbruce.wordpress.com

www.brucebrennanattorney.com

www.bruceabrennananddekalbilandtheworld.blogspot.com

www.lawyerbruce.blogspot.com

www.lawofficeofbruceabrennan.yolasite.com

www.lawyerbruceabrennan.com