Monday, June 1, 2015

Ludwell Johnson: Master Southern Historian

college-of-william-mary

Life and Work

Why Read Ludwell Johnson?

Both Ludwell Johnson’s style of work and choice of subject matter strongly recommend him to our consideration. As a working historian he is calm and measured, with just the degree of detachment that historical work ideally requires. As he puts it, “trying to identify cause and effect is, to me, the very soul of history.”[1] A careful scholar, he does not hurry toward ideological conclusions serving contemporary projects. Nor does he “read” the minds of historical actors (even Lincoln’s) but seeks reasonable inferences from a preponderance of historical evidence. In addition, Johnson has a humane and civilized style, deceptively simple but not without quiet wit, pointed comment, or an occasional twist of the historical knife. His writing reminds one of the generation of historians that included Carlton J.H. Hayes and Robert C. Binkley.

Finally, for those who wish to understand American history, it is fortunate indeed that Johnson has concentrated on perhaps the most important period of that history – the so-called Middle Period[2] – which includes the most important war in our history, that of 1861-1865. In Johnson’s telling, account of that war entails treatment of its long aftermath and lasting consequences – legal, institutional, economic, and ideological.

Life and Career


Latest GDP Report Proves that Obama is Purposefully Destroying America

Via Joe

https://nathanbickel.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/obamahisagendaredbackground.jpeg


I told you so. Forget Islamic State. Forget Al Queda. Forget Putin. Forget China.

The worst threat to America is Barack Hussein Obama.

I’ve screamed from the highest mountains for almost seven long years that we have a drug dealer in the White House. Obama is dive-bombing our nation’s economy.

Except this isn’t one plane and a couple hundred souls. Obama is taking the entire American economy and all of us down with him.

I’ve told everyone and anyone who would listen for almost seven years that Obama is following the exact plan he learned as my college classmate at Columbia University Class of 1983. The plan is called “Cloward-Piven.”

More @ The Blaze

1967 Dodge Coronet Super Stock: Butch Leal's California Flash

 http://blog.cars-on-line.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1967-Butch-Leal-Dodge-Coronet-Super-Stock.jpg

After successfully campaigning both Chevy and Ford drag racers Butch Leal attracted the attention of Chrysler’s Director of Racing Bob Cahill, who put Leal into this 1967 Dodge Hemi Coronet Lightweight, one of the 16 Hemi 4-speed WO23 Coronets specially built to carry the Mopar colors in NHRA Super Stock competition. Both Cahill and Leal have certified the authenticity of this ultra-rare factory Hemi racer, which began life in White with a Black interior, a hood scoop, insulation, radio and heater delete, a 4.80 Dana rear end and modifications to increase the durability of its Street-spec 426/425 HP Hemi engine.

Today the car is completely restored to as it was originally prepared by Leal himself, a piece of Mopar and drag racing history campaigned by one of the sport’s most prolific and successful drivers.

More @ MECUM

Tarboro, NC: Army combat veteran's call for help lands him in jail

Via LH

 http://media.sunherald.com/smedia/2015/05/31/11/41/Mx6dd.AuSt.77.jpeg

Why in the world has he been in the country jail for five months? Insane.

For years, Ryan Broderick has been trapped inside his mind, watching a constant reel of explosions that rocked the Army vehicles he had scrubbed of blood during three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since January, Broderick has been stuck inside a real jail, fortified by cinder blocks, surrounded by barbed wire. The government that Broderick upended his life to serve locked him up in Edgecombe County, about 75 miles east of Raleigh.

In the eyes of federal officials, Broderick posed a threat to America and should be treated as a criminal.

Broderick, 31, of Fayetteville, is being prosecuted for comments he let fly during a call to speak with a counselor at the Veterans Affairs suicide crisis hotline. He was frustrated and sleep-deprived.

His words were clear: If he didn't get the help he needed for his post-traumatic stress disorder, he would bring a gun to the VA hospital and Fort Bragg and start shooting.

BBC: The Slaughter of Innocent Germans After WWII


PBS’s “The Civil War”: The Mythmanagement of History

Via SHNV

 
DAILYKENN.-- Speaking at the commencement at Washington University in St. Louis, filmmaker Ken Burns played the white-guilt card to its fullest; apparently one last opportunity to infect the minds of white college students with the cultural Marxism virus. We counter white guilt with what whites built. 27.4% Of Lynchings Were White 

As a filmmaker specializing in history Burns surely is aware that thousands of free black slaves owned slave labor, that the first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer in Virginia, and that white innovation has saved countless of black lives.

In the September issue of the American Historical Association’s newsletter, a rave review predicted that the PBS production “The Civil War” might become “the Gone With the Wind of documen­taries.” After watching almost all of it, I would suggest Uncle Tom’s Cabin as its fictional alter ego. But let us not (like “The Civil War”) be unfair. It is probably the best of the various kinds of “Civil War” tele­vision extravaganzas to appear so far. As anyone who watched the others will know, this is faint praise.

When Boswell asked that arch-conservative Dr. Samuel Johnson who was worse,
Rousseau or Voltaire, Johnson replied, “Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.”

Cornered Cat

Via Oleg

 
Oleg Volk

Some folks say the most dangerous place in the world is between a Mama Bear and her cubs. It may be so. I’ve never met a Mama Bear, myself.

The most dangerous place I ever stood was between a cornered cat and an open door.

WACO II: Houston Lawyer Retracts Accusation

 http://www.agingrebel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Looney-wide.jpg

A Houston lawyer named Paul Looney (above) retracted a press release he issued yesterday that had alleged prisoners rounded up after the Twin Peaks massacre two weeks ago were being coerced into signing a statement that the police “had the right to arrest the inmate and that he/she will not file a lawsuit against McLennan County and/or the City of Waco.”

Looney’s initial release appears to have been a publicity stunt. In this afternoon’s release, issued about 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time, Looney congratulated himself for reaching a “a reasonable bond…with only minor conditions” for his clients, a married couple named William English and Morgan Allen English

In the last paragraph of this afternoon’s release, Looney states, “It has been determined the District Attorney’s office was not involved in yesterday’s attempt to get defendants to waive their rights of litigation in exchange for bonds.”

NC: Cruisin’ to the Cape Carteret Car Show

Cruisn-To-The-Cape-2015-ROT

When: Saturday, June 13th


Where: Mac Daddy’s in Cape Carteret – Click here for directions


Times: Show starts at 9am; Cutoff is 12pm; Trophy presentation is at 2pm


Entry Fee: $20


VIP Parking (Not Showing): $20


FREE FOR SPECTATORS!


 The first 100 drivers get a FREE dash plaque and t-shirt!


Corvette Raffle: Purchase a raffle ticket for a 2000 Corvette with less than 7,000 miles on it! This was donated by Parker Boats to benefit the C-Q Crystal Coast Hospice House.

 corvette-auction 

 Pics from the 2014 Car show Show slideshow

More @ WNCT

Message to NC lawmakers on on illegal alien license bill HB 328 & HB 562 Second Amendment Affirmation Act

Via Mike

http://www.latinorebels.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/MINE.jpg

Since the public will not be allowed to speak at tomorrow morning's House Finance Committee meeting in 544 LOB when Rep. Harry Warren's illegal alien license bill HB 328 comes up for a vote, please help to make sure each Republican lawmaker is aware of the following information.

 1. HB 328 has a deceptive title and deceptive language that tries to conceal the main purpose of the bill, which is to give driving licenses/permits to illegal aliens which will once again magnetize NC to illegal immigration and help facilitate illegal immigrants taking jobs it is illegal for them to possess! Illegal aliens are already consuming over 1 Billion dollars of our state taxpayer resources each year--just imagine that number going up when word reaches Mexico City, Juarez, São Paulo, and Tegucigalpa that NC is one of 14 states to give licenses to illegal invaders!

 2. As many of you are aware, I am a prior employee of the NC General Assembly and a campaign consultant for Democrats and then later Republicans. I can tell you for a fact that approximately 83% of all NC voters oppose giving licenses or any kind of taxpayer benefits to illegals, and any lawmaker voting in the affirmative for HB 328 is going to quadruple their chances of facing primaries in 2016.

 3. Several citizens and a professional videographer will be on hand for tomorrow morning's vote on HB 328 in the House Finance Committee in LOB 544 at 8:30am. Any lawmaker responding with a Yea vote on HB 328 licenses for illegals bill will be documented in video and the video will be widely publicized statewide and nationally shortly after the meeting.

 Furthermore, if HB 328 passes the Finance committee, excerpts of each lawmaker voting for the illegal alien license bill will be broadcast via Internet marketing directly into their hometowns and home districts in the coming months.

 My experience as a campaign consultant, my political science degree from ECU, and my first hand involvement with the overthrow of illegal alien amnesty supporter Eric Cantor last year makes me a source you should believe when I tell you that any GOP lawmaker voting in the affirmative for HB 328 tomorrow or in a later vote on the NC House floor can be removed from office in the 2016 primaries with approximately 1/20th of the funds the incumbent can spend.

 Eric Cantor was on the wrong side of the immigration debate and, while he outspent his GOP primary challenger Dave Brat in excess of 20 to 1, he still lost by a landslide of more than 10 percentage points!

 Every GOP lawmaker considering a vote for Harry Warren's HB 328 needs a crash course in what happened to Eric Cantor because this is what they will be facing in 2016. We plan to circulate the voting records and video documentation of each Republican lawmakers who sold out the 4 out of 5 of their constituents who oppose HB 328.

 We know that the powerful lobby influences, including the farmers and the Mexican consulate and other business interests, are all promising to protect those GOP lawmakers willing to vote for HB 328, but all that money and power cannot protect Republicans from the wrath of the voters that will follow in 2016 if HB 328 is ever signed into law in North Carolina!

The main focus of the 2016 elections in North Carolina will be a war among Republicans over the issue of illegal immigration if HB 328 is not defeated in Finance on June 2, 2015!

 William Gheen
 AMERICANS FOR LEGAL IMMIGRATION PAC
 www.alipac.us
  Post Office Box 30966, Raleigh, NC 27622-0966
  Tel: (919) 787-6009 Toll Free: (866) 703-0864
  FEC ID: C00405878

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A full House vote for H562, the “Second Amendment Affirmation Act,” is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, June 2nd 


This is encouraging news, but Michael Bloomberg’s paid anti-gun pressure groups have already announced that they will be slinking around the legislative buildings in an effort to pressure your representatives into ignoring the will of the people of North Carolina.  That means: 

WE NEED YOU! 
 
Stand for Your Gun Rights on Tuesday 


More @ GRNC

NC: Jefferson Davis

Via Billy

http://civilwartalk.com/attachments/jefferson-davis-on-the-yankees-jpg.11928/

Ms. Gore,

From time to time my Alabama brethren will amuse me with articles from the opinion section of  "Alabama. com" site. Most of the articles I receive address various topics of Alabama Confederate history. Often times these articles exhibit a "designed agitation" whose purpose is to provoke the passions of irascibles on either side of an issue - probably for the author's amusement. Unfortunately, passion often clouds perspective, allowing misinformation to flow freely. This is often validated by reader's comments.

As a resident of North Carolina, I seldom provide commentary. However, elements of your May 31st article on Jefferson Davis' birthday beckons my desire to opine. Before suggesting a holiday "die", why not lay out all the facts as to why it was started? This is especially true of MLK.

If memory serves, I believe I have responded to you before.

You wrote: "Robert E. Lee's birthday, which is commemorated in January on the same day as Martin Luther King day." Whether intentional or not, this is one of those "agitation" statements. It infers that Lee's birthday is observed as a slight to the observance to MLK, when historically just the opposite is true. More on this below. Fact is, Lee's birthday was observed long before the birth of MLK. Most towns shut down government, businesses, and schools to attend parades, speeches, and picnics to remember Lee.

You mention Jefferson Davis was not a native of Alabama. That is true. However, neither was MLK, who instead hailed from Atlanta, Ga. Credit goes to Ted Kennedy for forcing the MLK national holiday issue, with the primary opposition coming from my former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, though some northern officials privately objected to Reagan. As a slight to Helms and the South, the 3rd Monday in January was chosen to observe MLK day - colliding with the observance of Lee's birthday.

The most significant difference between observing  Davis and MLK is the information available on each man. Davis is an open book, albeit selective for the South bashers who omit context. Using his political clout, Kennedy made sure the investigations regarding MLK's Communist dealings (ironically ordered by President John Kennedy and conducted by his Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Ted's brothers respectively) were sealed till 2027. Any rational person should beg the question - what do they not want us to know? If he was such a great man, a man truly worthy of a national holiday, why is there executive, legislative, and judicial maneuvering to conceal a major portion of his record from public scrutiny? A good read here:

Lastly, you mention Davis' capture, imprisonment, and trial - or rather trial that never was. On the question of treason, which is the usual word cast toward anyone who served the Southern-Confederacy, the non-trial of Jefferson Davis by the US government proves beyond a moral certainty that no one who served in the Confederate government or armed forces ever committed treason. I offer the below article written by my father on this subject many years ago. I pray you find it instructive.

Best Regards,

Jimmy Ward
___________________________________________________________________

The Famous Trial of Jefferson Davis - the trial that never was

When the War Between the States ended, the victorious Northerners viewed Jefferson Davis, as the former President of the Confederate States of America, much differently than others who had served the Confederacy.

For example, when Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, the meeting between the two generals was amicable. Lee was received and treated with courtesy as a senior officer. The terms were so apparently lenient, with Grant conceding to Lee’s requests on behalf of his soldiers, the surrender was referred to as “a gentleman’s agreement.”

However, even after signing a loyalty oath, Lee and other former Confederate Army officers and members of the CSA government were later disenfranchised and treated as second-class citizens. But in the eyes of the northern public, Jefferson Davis was set apart for still a different kind of treatment.

On May 10, 1865, about a mile from the town of Irwinville, Georgia, Federal troops captured Davis. With his arrest on that spring morning, his government ceased to exist. His wife, Varina, and their children were sent to Savannah, where she was kept under virtual house arrest and forbidden to leave the city. Because the soldiers, carpetbaggers and Union supporters treated the Davis children so badly, Varina arranged for them to go to Canada along with her mother.

Davis had been taken back to Virginia and imprisoned in Fort Monroe, where he would stay for the next two years. At first, he was bound in leg irons. Guards watched him around the clock but were not permitted to speak to him. He was allowed no visitors; a light burned in his cell day and night; and his only reading material was a Bible. His treatment was a clear violation of the Bill of Rights.

Many Northern Congressmen and newspapers were nothing short of vicious in their public attacks of Davis. They wanted to see him tried for treason and hanged. In one article, and in one very long sentence, the New York Times referred to Davis by every insulting comment and offensive name that was fit to print. Rhetoric far outran legal reasoning.

But if Davis was in an unusual legal predicament, so was the United States government. The dilemma faced by Washington was how to handle the Davis case. The government under Lincoln had created its own major obstacles by spending four years proclaiming that secessionists were “traitors and conspirators.” The U.S. military had silenced opposition to the administration by closing down newspapers that dared challenge the party line or to make the slightest suggestion that secession might be legal. Thousands of Northerners had been jailed for exercising their First Amendment rights, and those thousands had friends with long memories in the Northern bar.

Northern lawyers were angry for having their clients locked in prison with no civil rights as guaranteed by the Constitution; having civilians tried by military courts for non-existent crimes; having a government that ignored the Supreme Court, setting itself above the constitutional plan of checks and balances. They didn’t like having to beg the president for justice for clients convicted by phony courts-martial or locked up for long periods without any trial. Under Lincoln, the U.S. government had become tyrannical, and certainly anything but a free and constitutional society.

The best lawyers of the day were willing to volunteer to defend Jefferson Davis, because they were angry at the way Lincoln’s government had trampled the Bill of Rights and the Constitution for four years. Even those who didn’t believe in secession were repulsed by the conduct of the Republican administration and the U.S. military.

Charles O’Connor of New York, one of the most famous trial lawyers of the era and a man of great stature in the legal profession, volunteered to be Davis’s counsel. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, would be the trial judge.

But interesting things began to happen, and the government’s dilemma became even worse. University of Virginia Law Professor, Albert Bledsoe, published a book, “Is Davis a Traitor?” Bledsoe methodically took apart the case against secession, delivering a solid blow to the prosecutors and dampening their zeal to try Davis. Prosecutors actually began to look for a way to avoid trying him without vindicating the South.

Then another method was decided on for prosecution. The attorney general would bring in outside, independent counsel, as we have seen in modern times, such as in Watergate or the Clinton scandals. The government needed someone of great standing in the legal community to be the lead prosecutor. It chose John J. Clifford. But after reviewing the case, Clifford withdrew citing “grave doubts” about the validity of the case. The government could “end up having fought a successful war, only to have it declared unlawful by a Virginia jury,” where Davis’s “crime” was alleged to have been committed.

President Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, thought the easiest way out would be to pardon Davis, as he had pardoned many other Confederates. But Davis refused, saying, “To ask for a pardon would be a confession of guilt.” He wanted a trial to have the issue of secession decided by a court of law — where it should have been decided to begin with — instead of on battlefields. Most Southerners wanted the same.

Northerners either forgot or were unaware of a great secessionist tradition in America. Southerners were not alone in their view that each state had the right to determine its own destiny in the Union. The procedure for joining the Union also applied to withdrawing from the Union.

That thought harkens back to an editorial by the Cincinnati (Ohio) Daily Inquirer, in the summer of 1861, after the “traitor” label was let loose by the North: “The Republican papers are great on treason. . . . It is treason to circulate petitions for a compromise or peaceful readjustment of our national troubles . . . to question the constitutional powers of the President to increase the standing army without authority of law . . . to object to squads of military visiting private houses, and to make search and seizures. . . to question the infallibility of the President, and treason not to concur with him. . . It is treason to talk of hard times; to say that the war might have been avoided. It is treason to be truthful and faithful to the Constitution.”

A year after John Clifford withdrew, the government appointed another special counsel, Richard Dana of Boston, who had written the novel, “Two Years Before the Mast.” But after reviewing the evidence, he agreed with Clifford; the case was a loser. Dana argued that “a conviction will settle nothing in law or national practice not now settled…as a rule of law by war.” Dana observed that the right to secede from the Union had not been settled by civilized means but by military power and the destruction of much life and property in the South. The North should accept its uncivilized victory, however dirty its hands might be, and not expose the fruits of its carnage to scrutiny by a peaceful court of law.

Now, over two years after Davis’s imprisonment and grand jury indictments for treason, the stage was set for the great public trial of the century. Davis had been released from prison on a $100,000 bond, supported by none other than Horace Greeley, the leading abolitionist writer in the North and a former Lincoln supporter. Greeley and a host of others were outraged at the treatment Davis had received, being locked up in a dungeon for more than two years with no speedy trial.

Since two famous special counsels had told the government its case was a loser, finally, none other than the Chief Justice, in a quirk of Constitutional manipulation, devised an idea to avoid a trial without vindicating the South. His amazing solution was little short of genius.

The Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted, which provided that anyone who had engaged in insurrection against the United States and had at one time taken an oath of allegiance (which Davis had done as a U.S. Senator) could not hold public office. The Bill of Rights prevents double jeopardy, so Davis, who had already been punished once by the Fourteenth Amendment in not being permitted to hold public office, couldn't be tried and punished again for treason.

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase secretly passed along his clever argument to Davis’s counsel, Charles O’Connor, who then made the motion to dismiss. The Court took the motion under consideration, passing the matter on to the Supreme Court for determination.

In late December 1867 while the motion was pending, President Johnson granted amnesty to everyone in the South, including Davis. But the Davis case was still on the docket. In February 1868, at a dinner party attended by the Chief Justice and a government attorney, they agreed that on the following day a motion for non-prosecution would be made that would dismiss the case. A guest overheard the conversation and reported what was on the minds of most Southerners: “I did not consider that he [Davis] was any more guilty of treason than I was, and that a trial should be insisted upon, which could properly only result in a complete vindication of our cause, and of the action of the many thousands who had fought and of the many thousands who had died for what they felt to be right.”

And so, the case of United States versus Jefferson Davis came to its end — a case that was to be the trial of the century, a great state trial, perhaps the most significant trial in the history of the nation — that never was.

What This Hollywood Actor Just Said About Guns Will Have Liberals In An Uproar

Via Eric

Image credit:  Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

Actor Vince Vaughn recently spoke openly about his views on the Second Amendment.

Speaking to GQ Magazine UK in an interview published Monday, Vaughn said he is in favor of “people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government. It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual.”

Much, much more! @ Western Journalism

TEXAS TYRANNY: WACO JUDGE AGREES TO LOWER BIKER's BOND – IF THEY SIGN A CONTRACT VOWING NOT TO SUE FOR WRONGFUL ARREST“

Via avordvet

 Waco Shooting

It appears the public defenders office in McLennan County is involved in this scurrilous activity,” said Paul Looney, a Houston attorney with Looney & Conrad, P.C. “I’ve never seen anything like the lawlessness that the authorities have perpetrated on these people and now to add insult to injury they are trying to cover their own tracks in exchange for bond.”

  Earlier today, detainees in the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco were told that in exchange for bond reductions, they must sign a document stating the Waco police “had the right to arrest the inmate and that he/she will not file a lawsuit against McLennan County and/or the City of Waco.”

On the two-week anniversary of the “shootout at high noon” at the Twin Peaks restaurant between motorcyclists and law enforcement officers, at least 170 people remain detained on $1 million bonds.

This latest information was reported to an attorney representing at least one of the detainees

Defense Official warns that DoD Directive allowing the use of military force against U.S. citizens is latest step towards martial law

Via LH

2015-06-01_0314

In a stunning revelation published by a mainstream news outlet, an anonymous Department of Defense official has revealed their belief that a DoD Directive outlining military support to civilian authorities is the latest step towards President Obama eventually using military force against the American people.

The quote from the defense official was published in a now viral report that detailed the 2010 DoD Directive and how it could be used, under authority from the President, to unleash the might of the US military onto the civilian population.

“This appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens,” a defense official told the Washington Times.

According to the report, another anonymous US Official also claimed that President Obama considered using the military during the Bundy Ranch standoff but eventually decided against it.

Directive No. 3025.18 – “Defense Support of Civil Authorities”

The Confederate Government Never Surrendered–and “Reconstruction” Continues

Via Billy


On Saturday, May 30, AD 2015, my wife and I attended a ceremony sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was to commemorate the fact that Shreveport, as the headquarters of the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi, was the last Southern city to surrender when the shooting part of the War of Northern Aggression had concluded. The ceremony took place at the Caddo Parish Court House in Shreveport, in front of which stands a beautiful Confederate monument.

Quite naturally, the politically correct and professionally offended do not like this monument. It “offends” their progressive sensibilities. Had they been able to do so they would have carted it off to the historical trash heap long ago.

NC: A Living History: The War Between The States: Alamance County and North Carolina: The Lost Cause Saturday June 6th 2015

Via Bernhard


May is Baltimore's deadliest month in more than four decades

 http://media2.abc2news.com/photo/2015/06/01/16x9/May_is_Baltimore_s_deadliest_month_in_mo_3012110000_19058532_ver1.0_640_480.jpg

Must be those dern white, right wing terrorists.............

 (Population: 900,000 in 1972, but only 600,000 today.)

Baltimore City's 43rd homicide for the month happened just after 11 a.m. in East Baltimore. Casings mark the spots where bullets flew, hitting two men in the back on Collington Avenue.  Police say one man died at the scene, and the other walked to the hospital.  

May is now the deadliest month on record in 43 years. There haven't been this many homicides in one month since August of 1972 when 45 people were killed.

"A small number of individuals that wreak havoc in our communities have no code of ethics, killing our children," said Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.

More @ WMAR

DOJ: “Nice Website You Got There, Be a Shame If Something Happened To it”….

 Loretta lynch

Previously the DOJ was only going so far as to call the Tea-Party right-wing extremists so they could be easily targeted by the IRS. Now the DOJ intends to push the envelope further by attaching the “right-wing” label to Islamic Jihad. The truth is fundamentally opposite. Totalitarian regimes are on the far left of the political and governmental continuum. But lets not allow facts to mess up a good propaganda campaign.

Tank drag race

Via u_96

Gender aesthetics determine customer choice

Via Brother Henry

Shopping

What determines whether a product is a best-seller or a veritable flop? The answer, it seems, could have a lot to do with the integrity of the product design. Specifically, much can depend on whether the item has been successfully “gendered” — that is, it displays properties that can be classified as either masculine or feminine.

This is the conclusion from the latest piece of research from three academics at St Gallen in Switzerland — Miriam van Tilburg, Theo Lieven, and Andreas Herrmann — and Claudia Townsend, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Miami School of Business in the US.

Consumers are more likely to buy a product if it displays either feminine design characteristics (light-coloured, slim, lightweight, with curved lines) or male ones (angular, robust, heavy, dark-coloured), says Prof Townsend. Those products that combine aesthetics from both groups are less likely to be attractive, and therefore less likely to sell.

More @ FT

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 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXja7ucl15Zz6yVJ7Hk2nzKCX1pB6r5eiWFmnnEPxpKCdWLsKvvN8ftAAd5iZdhizITtkYjMVA12PW6yU28qkWwE5tSZcoZbjNuVReP6s2YsfueTMzI1AuadMt7oV9BhnvqeCALUFSo3lV/s1600/P1020224.JPG
Claudia and my Brother Henry

Emails Raise Questions of Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding

Via Jeff


The Daily Signal has exclusively learned that the government agency responsible for enforcing Oregon’s anti-discrimination law appears to be working closely with a powerful gay rights advocacy group in its case against Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa.

Communications between the agency, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, and the LGBT organization, Basic Rights Oregon, raise questions about potential bias in the state’s decision to charge the Kleins with discrimination for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.

In April, a judge for the agency recommended the Kleins be fined $135,000.

Overzealous police force make it illegal to stack rocks in Boulder County.

Via Horace


 

Boulder has really been going overboard with the unnecessary rules lately. First, there was the controversial e e-cigarette ban that made it so the only place you could smoke a tobacco product in Boulder was ... outside of Boulder. Then, they banned dispensary coupons. Yes, coupons, the widely known source of evil and immmorality. You read that right.

And now, Boulder has extended its 1984-style government reach even further into the personal lives of its people by ... drum roll, please ... banning the artful stacking of rocks.

More @ The Rooster

Police chiefs group offers drone-use policy

Via avordvet

 https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Uploads/Graphics/693-0521093514-Drone-policy.jpg

Dated 

Model law enforcement drone guidelines: No weapons, limit deployment, keep them in operator's sight

Police agencies across the nation are increasingly using drones to improve public safety, but need clear operations policies and limits to win public trust, experts said at a law enforcement conference in San Diego.

To that end, a model policy on use of drones – or “small unmanned aircraft systems” – was rolled out Wednesday by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The policy, which could be adopted or revised by any law agency, sets out specific procedures for deploying a drone, lists restrictions on its use, details how data would be retained or deleted and how operators should be trained.

LA Times: Men Carry Guns to Address ‘Social Insecurities’

 Jennifer Carlson, author of the book "Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline."
Jennifer Carlson, author of the book “Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline.”

(Editor’s note: I had a chance to interview Ms. Carlson about her op-ed and her book, check out the interview here.)

An interesting op-ed in the Los Angeles Times argued that men around the country carry firearms to address “social insecurities far beyond crime.”

In other words, your reason for carrying a firearm is not rooted in practical self-defense, rather you carry because you’re compensating for your inability to bring home the bacon on a consistent basis.

Jennifer Carlson, the author of the article, wrote, “As men doubt their ability to provide, their desire to protect becomes all the more important. They see carrying a gun as *a masculine duty and the gun itself as a vehicle for a hardened kind of care-work — caring for others by shielding them from danger, with the threat of lethal force.”


* Does that mean it's a feminine duty when females carry?  Just curious..........:)

17 Southern Mom-isms That Everyone Should Know

 

You know we love us some Southern mamas and their Southern true-isms. If you were lucky enough to grow up Southern, you’ve probably heard all of these bits of wisdom! And if you are anything like us, sometimes when mama used one of these, we were confused. It wasn’t until adulthood that we fully understood the meaning of these gems.
Here are 17 Southern Mom-isms That Everyone Should Know
1. “Don’t you get too big for your britches.”

Mom used this when we started thinking a little too highly of ourselves.

Archeologists unearth 40 Confederate corpses in Virginia cemetery 154 years later

 Now, some 150 years after the Civil War, the bodies of 40 Confederate soldiers discovered at Old City Cemetery over the past two months will receive a proper memorial

The bodies of 40 Confederate soldiers unearthed in the last two months will have a proper memorial around 150 years after they fought during the Civil War.

Ted Delaney, the assistant director of Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg Virginia, along with a team of archeologists also found the areas where Union Soldiers were buried and then disinterred in 1866.

Delany told reporters that his team discovered an area of the cemetery called 'Yankee Square' that had both red and orange squares that he deemed were Confederate soldiers' graves.

Patriotic Festival At Virginia Beach Oceanfront

Via Susan

Patriotic Festival At Virginia Beach Oceanfront

The Waco Killing Fields Massacre II: A premeditated, Federal assault designed to kill first and arrest the survivors.

 https://saboteur365.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/waco-shooting-bikers-on-concrete.jpg

I was thinking of riding my Honda Shadow 1100  to Twin Peaks today to have some wings and enjoy the sports on TV on this gorgeous Memorial Day Weekend.  The sun was shining, and the temperature was a perfect 82 degrees.  I rode by the mall, with only moderate traffic and saw a couple of other bikers out doing the same thing I was doing; riding with no particular place to go.

I was riding alone and was not with any other bikers, but we always exchange the extended two-fingered peace sign as we pass one another on the roads winding through the countryside and through the cities of America.

As I made the turn onto the frontage road along the busiest shopping center in town, I noticed two police vehicles in the parking lot.  One was a cruiser with black wheels and the new, aggressive paint scheme.  The other was a black SUV with a light bar on top.  I rolled through the parking lot in a Pavlovian state of mind, thinking about the delicious wings they serve and the beautiful and cheerful servers they have with this biker-friendly franchise.

Then I remembered Waco.