Saturday, November 29, 2014

Mickey Rourke, 62 years old, drops 29-year-old Elliot Seymour

US actor and boxer Mickey Rourke after a fight with US boxer Elliot Seymour (RIA Novosti / Alexandr Vilf)

Movie star turned pro boxer Mickey Rourke, 62, scored his seventh boxing victory by dropping a man half his age in a Moscow bout. Rourke choose flashy golden gloves for the ring and managed to secure a church blessing.

Rourke knocked down 29-year-old Elliot Seymour twice, before the referee stopped the fight in the second round. During his short boxing career in the 1990s he was undefeated, clocking up six wins and two draws.
 
The Wrestler and Sin City star was competing for the first time in almost two decades. For his return to the ring, the actor reportedly shed 16kg, stunning fans with his skinny frame during the weigh-in earlier this week.

More @ RT

I am an unperson’: ‘Racist’ DNA discoverer forced to sell Nobel Prize medal

Via Ryan

 American geneticist James Dewey Watson (AFP Photo) 
His 'crime' =  “gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”
The geneticist James Watson, who has been ostracized since public comments about black African IQ in 2007, is to auction off his 1962 prize for discovering the structure of DNA. It is expected to fetch in excess of $3 million.

“Because I was an ‘unperson’ I was fired from the boards of companies, so I have no income, apart from my academic income,” said the scientist of the aftermath of the incident seven years ago, which forced him to retire from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he had worked for four decades.

“No one really wants to admit I exist,” he told the Financial Times.

More @ RT

Lincoln’s Soldiers Licensed for Any Crime

 http://emergingcivilwardotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/sherman.jpg

The 1840 Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Mississippi was burned by Northern Gen. A.J. “Whiskey” Smith in August 1864, dispatched there by Sherman.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Lincoln’s Soldiers Licensed for Any Crime

“The [Democrat Convention] elected Major-General George McClellan, Lincoln’s indecisive former general, as their candidate for president in November [1864]. Clement Vallandigham’s delegates forced the convention to accept a platform of peace with the South.

A few days after the Convention convened, the stalemate around Atlanta ended [as] Sherman advanced through the smoke into a ruined city. “Atlanta is ours and fairly won,” wired Sherman to the War Department. Vallandigham and his peace Democrats saw their platform crack [and] . . . The way to the Southern heartland lay open.

On August 22 . . . a federal force under General [A.J.]“Whiskey” Smith entered . . . Oxford, Mississippi. For the better part of the month Oxford had changed hands in vicious fighting. [Nathan Bedford] Forrest held it until forced to withdraw on August 22 after two days of street fighting. That morning a large force of [Smith’s] black and white troops occupied the town.

In a one-day orgy of looting, thirty-four stores and businesses were burned. Five homes . . . were put to the torch. Smith supervised the carnage, refusing to allow anyone to remove anything of value from their homes. [Confederate Commissioner to Canada Jacob] Thompson’s wife, Kate, salvaged the one thing she valued above all else, a photograph of their only son, Macon, before he was badly disfigured in an accident. As she clutched the photo on the lawn, a Union soldier grabbed it and threw it into the blaze.

In the official report to the Confederate War Department some days later, the commandant at Oxford wrote: “General Smith’s conduct and that of his staff was brutal in the extreme, they having been made mad with whiskey. The soldiers were licensed for any crime – robbery, rape, theft and burning.”

(Dixie and the Dominion, Canada, the Confederacy, and the War for the Union, Adam Mayers, Dundurn Group, 2003, pp. 61-62)

Gun sales boom on Black Friday: Almost 3 background checks per second

The busiest shopping day of the year also saw a major boom for gun sales, with the federal

background check system expected to set a record of more than 144,000 background checks Friday, according to the FBI.

The staggering number of checks -- an average of almost three per second, nearly three times the daily average -- falls on the shoulders of 600 FBI and contract call center employees who will endure 17-hour workdays in an attempt to complete the background reviews in three business days, as required by law, FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer said.

"Traditionally, Black Friday is one of our busiest days for transaction volume," Fischer said.

More @ CNN

Lee In The Mountains

Mind jog via comment by  Tom Stedham on The Last Salute of the Army of Northern Virginia

http://www.terryjamesart.com/images/items/enlarge/102.jpg

The whole Army rushed out to greet him and so thronged the road as to impede his passage. There was little cheering but no dearth of tears. Some wanted to hear a word from him, but if he spoke, I failed to catch his words. He waved his hand; the soldiers yielded the road and he passed on. He was very sad and perhaps could not restrain the tears.

********************************

Lee In The Mountains

Walking into the shadows, walking alone
Where the sun falls through the ruined boughs of locust
Up to the president's office. . . .Hearing the voices
Whisper, Hush, it is General Lee! And strangely
Hearing my own voice say, Good morning, boys.
(Don't get up. You are early. It is long
Before the bell. You will have long to wait
On these cold steps. . . .)
The young have time to wait

But soldiers' faces under their tossing flags
Lift no more by any road or field,
And I am spent with old wars and new sorrow.
Walking the rocky path, where steps decay
And the paint cracks and grass eats on the stone.
It is not General Lee, young men. . .
It is Robert Lee in a dark civilian suit who walks,
An outlaw fumbling for the latch, a voice
Commanding in a dream where no flag flies.

My father's house is taken and his hearth
Left to the candle-drippings where the ashes
Whirl at a chimney-breath on the cold stone.
I can hardly remember my father's look, I cannot
Answer his voice as he calls farewell in the misty
Mounting where riders gather at gates.
He was old then--I was a child--his hand
Held out for mine, some daybreak snatched away,
And he rode out, a broken man. Now let
His lone grave keep, surer than cypress roots,
The vow I made beside him. God too late
Unseals to certain eyes the drift
Of time and the hopes of men and a sacred cause.
The fortune of the Lees goes with the land
Whose sons will keep it still. My mother
Told me much. She sat among the candles,
Fingering the Memoirs, now so long unread.
And as my pen moves on across the page
Her voice comes back, a murmuring distillation
Of old Virginia times now faint and gone,
The hurt of all that was and cannot be.

Why did my father write? I know he saw
History clutched as a wraith out of blowing mist
Where tongues are loud, and a glut of little souls
Laps at the too much blood and the burning house.
He would have his say, but I shall not have mine.

What I do is only a son's devoir
To a lost father. Let him only speak.
The rest must pass to men who never knew
(But on a written page) the strike of armies,
And never heard the long Confederate cry
Charge through the muzzling smoke or saw the bright
Eyes of the beardless boys go up to death.
It is Robert Lee who writes with his father's hand--
The rest must go unsaid and the lips be locked.

If all were told, as it cannot be told--
If all the dread opinion of the heart
Now could speak, now in the shame and torment
Lashing the bound and trampled States--

If a word were said, as it cannot be said--
I see clear waters run in Virginia's Valley
And in the house the weeping of young women
Rises no more. The waves of grain begin.
The Shenandoah is golden with a new grain.
The Blue Ridge, crowned with a haze of light,
Thunders no more. The horse is at plough. The rifle
Returns to the chimney crotch and the hunter's hand.
And nothing else than this? Was it for this
That on an April day we stacked our arms
Obedient to a soldier's trust? To lie
Ground by heels of little men,

Forever maimed, defeated, lost, impugned?
And was I then betrayed? Did I betray?
If it were said, as it still might be said--
If it were said, and a word should run like fire,
Like living fire into the roots of grass,
The sunken flag would kindle on wild hills,
The brooding hearts would waken, and the dream
Stir like a crippled phantom under the pines,
And this torn earth would quicken into shouting
Beneath the feet of the ragged bands—

The pen
Turns to the waiting page, the sword
Bows to the rust that cankers and the silence.

Among these boys whose eyes lift up to mine
Within gray walls where droning wasps repeat
A hollow reveille, I still must face,
Day after day, the courier with his summons
Once more to surrender, now to surrender all.
Without arms or men I stand, but with knowledge only
I face what long I saw, before others knew,
When Pickett's men streamed back, and I heard the tangled
Cry of the Wilderness wounded, bloody with doom.

The mountains, once I said, in the little room
At Richmond, by the huddled fire, but still
The President shook his head. The mountains wait,

I said, in the long beat and rattle of siege
At cratered Petersburg. Too late
We sought the mountains and those people came.
And Lee is in the mountains now, beyond Appomatox,
Listening long for voices that will never speak
Again; hearing the hoofbeats that come and go and fade
Without a stop, without a brown hand lifting
The tent-flap, or a bugle call at dawn,
Or ever on the long white road the flag
Of Jackson's quick brigades. I am alone,
Trapped, consenting, taken at last in mountains.

It is not the bugle now, or the long roll beating.
The simple stroke of a chapel bell forbids
The hurtling dream, recalls the lonely mind.
Young men, the God of your fathers is a just
And merciful God Who in this blood once shed
On your green altars measures out all days,
And measures out the grace
Whereby alone we live;
And in His might He waits,
Brooding within the certitude of time,
To bring this lost forsaken valor
And the fierce faith undying
And the love quenchless
To flower among the hills to which we cleave,
To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee,
Never forsaking, never denying
His children and His children's children forever
Unto all generations of the faithful heart.

-- Donald Davidson

My long gone friend Baaz, said that reading this poem never failed to bring tears to his eyes.

The Last Salute of the Army of Northern Virginia

 http://practicallyhistorical.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/troianithelastsalute.jpg
  
"Having thus formed, the brigades standing at 'order arms,' the head of the Confederate column, General Gordon in command, and the old 'Stonewall' Jackson Brigade leading, started down into the valley which lay between us, and approached our lines. With my staff I was on the extreme right of the line, mounted on horseback, and in a position nearest the Rebel solders who were approaching our right.
       
"Ah, but it was a most impressive sight, a most striking picture, to see that whole army in motion to lay down the symbols of war and strife, that army which had fought for four terrible years after a fashion but infrequently known in war.
       
"At such a time and under such conditions I thought it eminently fitting to show some token of our feeling, and I therefore instructed my subordinate officers to come to the position of 'salute' in the manual of arms as each body of the Confederates passed before us.
       

"It was not a 'present arms,' however, not a 'present,' which then as now was the highest possible honor to be paid even to a president. It was the 'carry arms,' as it was then known, with musket held by the right hand and perpendicular to the shoulder. I may best describe it as a marching salute in review.
       
"When General Gordon came opposite me I had the bugle blown and the entire line came to 'attention,' preparatory to executing this movement of the manual successively and by regiments as Gordon's columns should pass before our front, each in turn.
       
"The General was riding in advance of his troops, his chin drooped to his breast, downhearted and dejected in appearance almost beyond description. At the sound of that machine like snap of arms, however, General Gordon started, caught in a moment its significance, and instantly assumed the finest attitude of a soldier. He wheeled his horse facing me, touching him gently with the spur, so that the animal slightly reared, and as he wheeled, horse and rider made one motion, the horse's head swung down with a graceful bow, and General Gordon dropped his swordpoint to his toe in salutation.
       
"By word of mouth General Gordon sent back orders to the rear that his own troops take the same position of the manual in the march past as did our line. That was done, and a truly imposing sight was the mutual salutation and farewell.
       
"At a distance of possibly twelve feet from our line, the Confederates halted and turned face towards us. Their lines were formed with the greatest care, with every officer in his appointed position, and thereupon began the formality of surrender.
       
"Bayonets were affixed to muskets, arms stacked, and cartridge boxes unslung and hung upon the stacks. Then, slowly and with a reluctance that was appealingly pathetic, the torn and tattered battleflags were either leaned against the stacks or laid upon the ground.

The emotion of the conquered soldiery was really sad to witness. Some of the men who had carried and followed those ragged standards through the four long years of strife, rushed, regardless of all discipline, from the ranks, bent about their old flags, and pressed them to their lips with burning tears.

Why Professionals Don’t “Shoot To Wound”

 
CSM Robert Prosser, Mosul, Iraq, and an Iraq Insurgent that he shot four times, and who still fought him in hand-to-hand combat. The insurgent survived.

After a self-defense shooting where the aggressor dies, we often hear the same questions asked time and again.

“He didn’t have a weapon. Why was he shot in the chest/head?”

“He only had a bat/knife/fist. Why wasn’t he shot in the shoulder/arm?”

“Why didn’t they just shooting him in the arm/leg?”

When specifically discussing a shooting involving a uniformed law enforcement officer with his duty belt full of tools, we often hear, “Why didn’t they use pepper spray/nightstick/taser instead of a gun?”

One person in a unique position to answer that question is Michael Yon.

No Dakota Soldiers for Lincoln

 http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/300*457/1berg1202.jpg

For two hundred years the Dakota and the white intruders lived side by side among what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of animals to hunt and trap.  This and the fur trade helped bridge the cultural gap, but two separate and distinct views of the world they lived in was a stern reality.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.circa1865.com

No Dakota Soldiers for Lincoln

“What was frontier to whites, the expanding edge of possibility, was to the Dakota just the opposite: the center of their world, growing smaller. Farms that signaled civilization to settlers were to many Dakotas, even to some who kept small acreages, a tool designed to fence them in, the symbol of a permanent halt to centuries of seasonal migration.

White churches brought a message of peace but were unable to absorb other beliefs, always suspicious and dismissive of the complex polytheism of the Dakota spirit world. Whites wrote everything down, mesmerized by tables of numbers; Dakotas lived by a language of spoken tales, remembered and repeated across hundreds of years.

Most of all, whites loved hierarchy, each man occupying a rung on the ladder that eventually rose to a single individual in the White House, while Dakotas operated within a shifting, dispersed power structure that defined leadership as the ability to guide a village, band, or tribe toward consensus.

Minnesota was still an infant State, only four years old but brimming over with belief in Manifest Destiny, living an irony typical of the western experience: the only true “Minnesotans” in 1862, the people who had been there first, the people whose language had given the place its name, didn’t care what it was called, where it began or ended, or how it had been made into a State.

For more than a year, white men had been killing other white men far to the south and east. A few Indian agency employees had offered to raise companies of Dakota soldiers for the Union army, but these offered had been quickly rejected at the State capital.

Many [Dakota] wondered why President Lincoln had already issued three calls for volunteer soldiers . . . unless a great many Minnesotans had already been killed.  “The whites must be pretty hard up for men to fight the South,” said Big Eagle, “or they would not come so far out on the frontier and take half-breeds or anything to help them.”

(38 Nooses, Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier’s End, Scott W. Berg, Pantheon Books, 2012, pp. 9-10)

The Atheist Crusade Against a Conservative Christian History Professor

Via Dan


Recently I received an email, the subject line of which provocatively suggested that atheists were on the “warpath” against a university professor. Intrigued, I clicked on the email and opened up the linked article. I have to admit that I was less interested in the story than I was in identifying this conservative professor and finding out what his alleged offense was. How could atheists have a complaint about a university professor? Aren’t all professors atheists, or at least hostile to historic Christianity, anyway?

Of course I’m exaggerating a little bit, but just a little bit. Other than a few high profile exceptions, such as Prof. Mike Adams who won a lawsuit alleging discrimination because he is a political conservative and an outspoken Christian, conservative Christians are not well represented among the typical university faculty, a fact that multiple surveys have abundantly demonstrated.

Why Darren Wilson’s Pistol Did Not Fire

Via Bearing Arms


Don’t want to be poor in America? Get educated, get a job, get married and have children.........


Pain is part of life as is, hopefully, joy. As we read in the book of Ecclesiastes, there is “a time to cry and a time to laugh.”

But real tragedy is disaster we bring on ourselves – disaster that comes from refusal to learn from mistakes.

How many of us know someone clearly on the path to destruction, but refuses to listen, to learn? Then the inevitable happens.

This is what we’ve got on our hands with the Ferguson, Missouri, debacle that now dominates the news.

Pick your side.

More @ WND

1967 Mercury Comet R-Code 427 CI, Unrestored with 2,004 Miles


Bare bones sleeper, the way you used to be able to order them.

- 1 of 22 R-Code Comet 202 Sedans built in 1967
- 1 of 6 known to exist today
- Original and unrestored
- 2,004 miles
- R-Code 427/425 HP engine
- 4-speed manual transmission
- High rise intake manifold
- Dual Holley carburetors
- Power front disc brakes
- AM/FM radio, deluxe seat belts
- Factory original Onyx Black enamel paint
- Painted wheels with hubcaps
- Firestone tubeless Wide Oval Super Sport tires
- Jack and spare, owner's manuals and sales brochures
- Formerly part of the Dick Bridges and Randy Hinson collections
- The 1967 Mercury was promoted as The Man's Car

More @ MECUM

F-111 Belly Landing

Via Cousin Colby

Dated. 


Teen gets no jail time in violent MOA assault

Via Nancy

 

Another deluded Useful Fool.

A teenager who severely beat former Hennepin County board chairman Mark Andrew at the Mall of America last year won't go to jail for her crime - and he's glad she won't.

Eighteen-year-old Deea LeShawn Elliot pleaded guilty to first-degree assault for attacking Andrew with a metal baton last December after her accomplice stole his cell phone. A judge on Tuesday sentenced her to 14 weeks of intensive counseling and a year-long immersion in an arts program of her choice. She won't go to jail if she meets those conditions.

Andrew tells Minnesota Public Radio he strongly believes in redemption, and the way to turn her life around is not to send her to prison.

More @ KARE

Shotgun for the wife

 

Our brilliant vice president argued that a double-barrel shotgun is the best home defense weapon for a woman.

More @ Oleg Volk