Teen stopped by TSA for gun-themed purse

Picture

A Jacksonville teen may want to rethink her wardrobe accessories after she said she was prevented from boarding a flight because of her purse design.

Vanessa Gibbs, 17, said officials with the Transportation Security Administration at Norfolk International Airport stopped her during a security screening because they said her handbag -- which has the shape of a gun designed on it -- was as a security risk, WJXT-TV reported.

According to the TV station, Gibbs said she had no problem going through TSA screening at Jacksonville International Airport but was stopped as she was headed home from a holiday trip in Virginia.

"It's my style. It's camouflage. It has an old western gun on it," Gibbs told the TV station. "She was like, 'This is a federal offense because it's in the shape of a gun.' I'm like, 'But it's a design on a purse. How is it a federal offense?'"

Gibbs said after agents figured out the gun was a fake, she was directed to check the bag or turn it over.

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The Banality of Everything

An absolutely wonderful, but sad piece.
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Gates Of Vienna
Verbatim Post

A little over forty-eight years ago, on the morning of November 25, 1963, a casket containing the body of President John F. Kennedy left the White House on a horse-drawn caisson and traveled slowly to St. Matthew’s Cathedral. It was accompanied on foot by members of the funeral procession, including the president’s widow. After the funeral mass the procession resumed, crossing the Potomac to Arlington Cemetery, where President Kennedy’s body was interred.

Virtually everyone in the country who was not present at these events watched them on television. The occasion resulted in any number of photographs that remained iconic for decades afterwards: The flag-covered casket resting on the catafalque in the Capitol; the tiny Kennedy children standing hand-in-hand with their mother; a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy behaving with suitable gravity and decorum, bearing up stoically, weeping when appropriate, and walking slowly in the procession behind her husband’s body; the Kennedy brothers standing solemnly at the graveside; little John Jr. saluting his father.

In the years afterwards, of course, all those icons were demystified, one by one. Except among the most hardcore romantic liberals, the Kennedy myth disappeared. At the same time, as irony and cynicism became predominant in popular culture, respect for solemn ceremony and public decorum declined.

To look back on the footage and photos from November 1963 is to gaze through a window into a different world. As L. P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

My story. BT

John Kennedy's Assassination

I was a pledge of KA (Kappa Alpha, spiritually founded by Lee) at Randolph-Macon at the time, and remember someone walking into German class stating that Kennedy had been killed, and for some reason the professor laughed. At any rate, I wanted to go to the funeral but couldn't find my Big Brother to get permission, but was told by others that surely it would be OK. Of course when I came back it turned out it wasn't and I got to burn leaves all night. At Arlington I climbed a tree to get a better view, and was quickly surrounded by the Secret Service who told me to come down and asked what I was doing up there! I remember watching TV at the fraternity house, and when I went to the bathroom, I missed Oswald getting shot.

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

Fast-forward to December 2011.

Yesterday I read a news story from Texas about one of those all-too-common domestic tragedies: a man shot his wife and four children before killing himself. The response of the surrounding community to this horrific event is shown in the photograph below.

Tableaux of this nature have become de rigueur in the wake of incidents involving violent death. Whether inflicted by other human beings, caused by accidents, or brought about by natural events, the violence provokes the same response: flowers, candles, and teddy bears heaped at or near the site of the tragedy.

This form of public mourning was already in evidence in the aftermath of 9-11. It has become even more frequent over the course of the past decade, with piles of teddy bears guaranteed to appear as soon as the circumstances of the event become publicly known. The greater the death toll — or the more horrific the method of slaughter — the larger the heap of stuffed animals, candles, flowers, and cards. In the wake of the July 22 massacre in Oslo, the pile of commemorative bric-a-brac appeared to cover acres of public space.

To investigate this phenomenon any further runs the risk of appearing mean-spirited and curmudgeonly. It is certainly difficult to deny the sincerity of the feelings expressed by the mourners through the medium of teddy bears and floral cards. One presumes these memorial heaps are created by people who generally mean well, who are overcome by their emotions and can find no more suitable method of dealing with them.

But how did we come to this? How did our public reactions to tragic events become so insipid, so maudlin, so inescapably trite?

At some point between the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the death of Princess Diana in 1996, the accepted form of public mourning shifted away from formal ceremony using time-honored rituals. The solemn state funeral gave way to Elton John and stuffed animals. The Book of Common Prayer was discarded and replaced by schlock, kitsch, and hackneyed sentimentality.

Inspiring oratory has all but disappeared from public occasions. Politicians and preachers deliver bromides. We are regaled with clichés and bombarded with truisms.

We are, in a word, awash with banality.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Then there are the candlelit vigils. The worst tragedies bring out masses of people who carry candles in public spaces after dark and leave them on walls and sidewalks where the TV video crews can capture them for the late-night news. The more deliberately vile the slaughter, the larger the vigil.

This is one of the most meaningless rituals of our time. A terrorist blows up a bus full of school children, and the standard response is to light a candle and stand in a public square for the television cameras.

Does that make sense?

What makes it a meaningful action?

It was not so long ago that abominations such the mass murder of children provoked a different reaction from the general populace in Western countries. Instead of candles, torches were carried, along with whatever weapons came to hand. Under such circumstances local political leaders were hard-pressed to prevent the dispensing of rough justice.

But not any longer. We are more civilized now. We light candles and heap up flowers instead.

One does not have to approve of vigilante action to recognize that the pitchforks-and-torches response is more rational and more sane than the candlelight vigil. Knee-jerk sentimentality in the face of deliberately-inflicted mass slaughter is evidence of a deep mental dysfunction at the collective level. Our societies seem to have lost the ability to respond effectively to forces that threaten them.

In immunological terms, we no longer produce antibodies that will engulf and destroy deadly invaders.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Teddy Bear and Candle Syndrome is part of a larger process of cultural degradation that has proceeded unimpeded over the past half-century. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, time-hallowed customs and institutions have been eroded and disappeared.

One may posit various causes for the deterioration of our common culture. The patient efforts of the Frankfurt School and its “long march through the institutions” are often cited as a major source of cultural destruction. And the near-disappearance of publicly expressed religion has taken its toll — without the spiritual insights and rituals of religion to contain our grief, we are left without meaningful guidance in our behavior.

The largest portion of blame, however, may be assigned to the emergence of new communication technologies. The ubiquity of television — which performed such an important function for Americans during their solemn mourning on November 25, 1963 — eventually dissolved most of the cultural glue that held our social traditions together. It opened up the younger generation to stimulation and excitement at a level never previously known. It created, through both advertising and general programming, a yearning for the glamorous and exotic sensual world repeatedly depicted on the glowing screen.

The medium itself changed between 1950 and the end of the century. In its early years television was like visual radio, with announcers and actors standing in a static setting and talking or acting in front of a relatively fixed camera. Over the decades, however, the cutting and pacing of television images became steadily more frequent and frenetic. During their most formative years, young minds were presented with these rapidly changing visual and auditory stimuli for hours every day. Neurological studies have shown that the fast-paced cutting actually causes changes in the physical structure of the brain. Children raised under such circumstances grow up processing information in a different manner than they would without television. This long-term effect is independent of the content of the programming — it depends solely on the medium itself.

New interactive means of communication have been inserted into this fertile mental environment over the last twenty years. Cell phones, texting, notebook computers, hand-held devices — all of these media have increased the fragmentation of communication and further shortened the interactions between people. Lengthy and thoughtful exchanges with others become less frequent, and commonly-experienced events are replaced with networking and “cocooning”.

None of these changes has removed the need for emotional satisfaction and catharsis, however. Human nature has not been abolished. When terrible events strike, there are no longer any common rituals to help contain the disturbing emotions that arise. The suffering individual turns to those sources of information with which he is familiar — television, Facebook, Twitter, and so on — and finds his way into the crowd converging on the public square or bomb-blast site, holding a teddy bear and a candle. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the new rituals have poured into the emptiness left by the departure of the ancient ones.

The form of these new rituals is dictated by the feminized zeitgeist, which demands the inhibition of all expressions of negative or violent feelings. The shaking of fists is out. The laying on of flower bouquets is in.

We have become a teddy-bear people.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The cheapening and coarsening of public culture long predates the arrival of television, of course. Writers between the wars frequently bemoaned the commercialization and materialism of their times. In his 1938 poem “A Week to Christmas” (Part XX of a much longer poem, “Autumn Journal”) Louis MacNeice wrote disparagingly of “gimcracks in the shops”. Presumably he was thinking of a toy shop such as this one, on Wine Street in Bristol, photographed during the Christmas season of the same year:

If the poet were carried forward in time to the Christmas season of 2011 — which began not in December, but in October, and includes virtually no references to Christ — would he be astonished at the level of further gimcrackery to which Western culture has descended?

Would he realize that, culturally speaking, his own time was halcyon compared with our own?

Would he understand that the Socialist sentiments he shared with his fellow interwar poets bore a large share of the responsibility for the destruction of Western culture — which is now all but complete?

So here we are, closing out the Year of Our Lord 2011 with reindeer and snowmen and Santa Clauses and all the other gimcracks.

Here we are with heaps of teddy bears and candles whenever another gunmen kills eight or ten people in his former place of employment.

Here we are with tattoos, piercings, ghetto gear, texting, reality TV, “get over it”, and “whatever”.

It’s no wonder that Islam is making such inroads into the Western world. Our spiritual vacuum can scarcely be filled with stuffed animals and flowers.

But nature abhors that vacuum, so it will be filled with something.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Fourth year.
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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Carolina Beach Music: Memories

The Day Hitler Blinked

Via Looking In The Mirror

Day and night for a week in early 1943, hundreds of unarmed German women did something that was unheard of in Nazi Germany.

They stood toe-to-toe with machine gun-wielding Gestapo agents and demanded the release of their Jewish husbands from Adolph Hitler’s murderous grip. The men were locked up in the Jewish community center in the heart of Berlin, victims of Hitler’s "final roundup" of German Jews.

The women's courage and passion prevailed: As thousands of other Berlin Jews were crammed into cattle cars and transported to Auschwitz, the Jews married to “Aryan” German women were set free.

But even today, more than 50 years after the Nazi reign of terror, few Germans acknowledge the significance of protest on Rosenstrasse, the street where the dramatic showdown took place. To admit that unarmed women saved 1,700 Jews from deportation would be to challenge postwar Germany's consensus that ordinary citizens were powerless to curb Hitler's anti-Semitic rampage.

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Using Google Maps as a Rangefinder

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

Gunmart
Verbatim Post

Found out that you can do this just the other day. If you need to know distances at your regular honey hole and dont have a rangefinder, then this is a great option. Probably wont work out too well for you archery guys, but its a great way to range open territory. Its very accurate. I checked it on a couple of football fields and its accurate to tenths and sometimes hundredths of a yard.

Basically, you just have to make sure the distance measuring tool is enabled in the "Maps Labs" section. Then click on the tool in the lower left hand corner to start measuring. Click "I'm Feeling Geeky" to get a drop down menu to change things over to yards (or meters if you like), and then start plotting points. Its that easy.

Holder's Coverups

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

While some in the news media say Eric Holder’s involvement in the controversial ATF gun-running program known as Operation Fast and Furious is “only the tip of the iceberg,” Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue says he “was way ahead of the curve” in pointing out the attorney general’s involvement in shady activities. He points to a scathing 4-page letter (PDF) he sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Dec. 19, 2008, as proof.

In the letter, Trentadue told the chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee the following:

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NC: Free speech? Put a plate on it

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has managed to block North Carolina from issuing license plates with a “Choose Life” message because the state legislature declined to also issue “Choose Death” plates.

U.S. District Judge James Fox didn’t put it that way in his Nov. 28 injunction, but he did agree with the ACLU that the absence of an opposing plate violates the First Amendment. The problem arose because lawmakers refused to authorize the “Respect Choice” plate that Planned Parenthood wanted as part of its ongoing culture of death.

The ruling prompts the question of whether every expression allowed on a license plate must be accompanied by a contrary view, sort of a Fairness Doctrine for motorists.

North Carolina offers an “In God We Trust” plate. Can’t you see the state ACLU director coming unglued while stuck in traffic behind that? The lawsuit practically writes itself, with blather about “separation of church and state” and a lack of respect shown for Satan.

In Virginia, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offers an AFL-CIO plate with the slogan “Union Labor,” but drivers can’t purchase a plate for “National Right to Work” whose headquarters are visible from the Beltway in Northern Virginia. Maybe the Right to Work folks just have not gotten around to applying for theirs.

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Cain announces he’s suspending his campaign

The Cain train has come to a stop.

Republican candidate Herman Cain is suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination to avoid continued news coverage of allegations of sexual misconduct that is hurtful to his family.

“I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distractions and the continued hurt caused on me and my family,” Cain told several hundred supporters gathered at what was to have been the opening of his national campaign headquarters.

Cain’s announcement came five days after an Atlanta-area woman claimed she and Cain had an affair for more than a decade, a claim that followed several allegations of sexual harassment against the Georgia businessman.

“But because of these false and unproved accusations, it has paid and had a tremendous painful price on my family,” Cain said, with his wife, Gloria, standing behind him on the stage.

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Islamist Tide Re-emerges?

An initial article of ours on the issue of the Islamic resurgence in the Middle East was entitled, "Western Elites Secretly Still Building Islam." You can see it here.

At the time it caused a bit of controversy but we believed it to be accurate. And it doesn't seem any less so today. As we have learned from covering these events, much of what governments and think tanks state about current events is actually the OPPOSITE of reality.

So it makes sense. If Western elites explain that the West is at war with "radical" Islam, you ought to lift the covers to find out if the West is actually building up the threat it claims to be trying to eradicate.

See, the elite's dominant social themes are only implemented for one reason, it seems: to create world government. Anything that aids in this effort is promoted relentlessly. And it certainly – regularly – helps the elites to have an ongoing war, a big one, too.

It's a two-part process. In order to move toward global governance with all due speed the Anglosphere power elite has to create a growing global economic depression, or so it seems. (Out of chaos, order, etc. ...)

But when young people have neither jobs nor hope, you might run into trouble. You might end up destabilizing your OWN back yard. And for this reason, war becomes a very attractive option.

War is, in fact, the best possible solution if you're trying to continue to build a new world order. No room for protest, really. It kills many of the best and brightest and generally puts unruly youth into a kind of military confinement where they are watched and drilled rigorously.

Within this context, then, we're not surprised that militarism is on the rise. Islam is obviously the preferred target and the West's antagonism to Islam has been growing for a decade now.

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Caesar's Motorcade In Virginia

Southern Nationalist Network
Excerpt

One small glimmer of hope I would like to pass on to my fellow Southerners and Southern nationalists today comes in the form of a short video an anonymous Virginian posted on YouTube. I do not know the person or what he believes. He may just be a mainstream Republican who wanted to signal his opposition to Obama. But the manner in which he did so gives me hope. He used our flag – the symbol of our people and culture – to publicly defy Obama. In the below video a massive caravan of security forces can be seen passing through rural Virginia. This was Obama’s motorcade. Notice the over-top security. It would seem as though a modern day Julius Caesar is passing through the hinterlands of Gaul. The person shooting the video stands by the road holding a Confederate flag. This is the sort of defiance we need to encourage. Obama is not one of us. He and the government he leads daily oppose our interests.

Reforming DC is impossible. Resistance is necessary. This is the simple message we can spread throughout the South. And the symbol of our defiance to the Feds should be the most recognisable symbol of the Southern people – our battle flag. It turns off exactly the right people and excites exactly the right people. If a Leftist, Federal-firster, a Yankee retiree or a van full of illegal aliens drives through a neighbourhood and spots several Confederate flag they knows they are not in friendly territory (this is a great way to help save your neighbourhood, by the way, by keeping the wrong people out). On the other hand, if a Southerner walks into a bar and sees a Confederate flag on the wall he knows he’s amongst friends and with his own kind. Every time a Southerner rides through his neighbourhood and sees Confederate flags it registers (if unconsciously) that he is home. While our flag is the perfect symbol of who and what we are, Obama is the perfect symbol of all that we oppose, even if as far as policy he is no worse than most of the rest of the politicians and bureaucrats in DC. Whoever follows him will likely disgust Southerners as well, but (especially if a moderate, pro-Empire Republican like Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney gets in the White House) perhaps not with the same intensity as with Obama. This is a golden opportunity we have for another year, possibly five more. Let’s make the most of it!

Long-time enemy of Southern heritage in hot water

Rebellion
Verbatim Post

Am I indulging in a little Jessefreude as I watch Jesse Jackson, Jr. sweating in front of the news cameras, denying he's a crook? No -- I'm positively wallowing in it. This just gets better day by day:

ABC News quoted federal law enforcement sources saying the son of the civil rights leader is the candidate identified by the FBI as willing to spend up to $1 million to secure the Senate seat.

"Senate Candidate 5" is listed in the FBI complaint, which includes a compendium of wiretapped conversations involving Blagojevich and his allies, as being named by the governor as an option for Obama's Senate seat because he would pay or raise money to Blagojevich's re-election campaign.

According to the affidavit, in a Dec. 4 recording of Blagojevich with an unnamed adviser and unnamed fundraiser, the governor says he may be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provides Blagojevich with something "tangible up front."

If Blagojevich ran for re-election, Senate Candidate 5 would "raise money" for the campaign, the affidavit alleges.

"Blagojevich said he might 'get some (money) up front, maybe' from Senate Candidate 5 to insure Senate Candidate 5 kept his promise about raising money for Rod Blagojevich. (In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, Rod Blagojevich described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: 'We were approached "pay to play." That, you know, he'd raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a senator,'" the affidavit reads.

While it's good to see any lefty politician get his comeuppance, we in the South are particularly gratified to see the Blago "Pay-to-play" scandal unfolding the way it is, with more surprise treats than the dessert table at a family reunion. Jesse Jackson, Jr, you'll recall, is one of the few politicians who's openly anti-Southern. If you go to a Civil War battlefield these days, you will no longer see the story of the brave soldiers who fought and died. Instead, the National Park Service presents the battle in the simplistic terms of the forces of freedom and enlightenment versus the eeeevil forces of slavery. We can thank Jesse Jackson, Jr,. (the son of the esteemed Reverend Jesse Jackson) for that. Jesse Jackson Jr. represents the Chicago area in Congress, and he introduced the legislation that makes all Civil War battlefield parks reinterpret what they tell visitors. Here' a selection from Jesse Jackson Jr’s remarks to employees of the National Park Service, in which he explains his reasons behind the legislation:

“I learned very early on that politics in Congress has a lot less to do with Democrats and Republicans, left or right, liberal or conservative, and a lot more to do with North and South.

I listened very carefully to the rhetoric, not only of Democrats but also of Republicans. And I wanted to know more about the underlying currents of this North-South political dynamic. I went on three different tours of Civil War sites in the eastern theater.

As I sought and probed answers to very difficult questions from some members of the National Park Service, many of those who did not know I was a member of Congress, informed me that in order to change their opinion about what they saw and did, it would take nothing less than an act of Congress.

So, less than one session later, I have given those folks their act of Congress. Now let me try to tell you my perspective once again. This time with the force of the law. Racism or states rights, that is, states rights as a cover for racism, is a major reason prohibiting us from building a more perfect union. Whatever you feel about Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, moderates on economic issues, or liberals and conservatives on social issues, no period in history is greater in defining who we see ourselves as today as the Civil War. So, into the interior bill, I introduced language to put the battles in a particular context.

I believe in the year 2000 that it is clear that the crisis will be resolved only when every American is: provided with economic security--employment, health care, education, and housing. Not long ago I proposed an amendment to the Constitution of the United States granting every American the right to an education of equal high quality.

I am arguing for more social programs; my colleagues are arguing for more tax breaks. All are part of the dynamic that this event--the Civil War--created for contemporary American politics. As Garry Wills has suggested in his marvelous book on the Gettysburg Address, the interpretation of Gettysburg battlefield has most to do with redefining the nation in the context of the Declaration of Independence rather than in the context of the Constitution.”

Congressman Jesse Jackson understands very well what Southern heritage is all about, and what it would mean to eliminate it. The Southern political tradition is opposed to big government. It is opposed to socialism. If you want socialism, if you want the government to act as an armed nursemaid for the entire population, and provide for them from cradle to grave, then Southern culture and tradition most certainly stand in your way. It's what Alexander Stephens once said, "The Cause of the South is the Cause of us all." And he was right. If leftists like Jackson and Obama have their way, Lincoln's Revolution will be brought to its natural conclusion, which Jesse Jackson tells us means the redefining of the Constitution, and the redefinition of America.

Which is why we fight.

Public Schools: Strong on Burping, Lax on Beatings

Godfather Politics

Verbatim Post

What do you get for burping in our public schools today? Well, you know, burping is a serious offense, not some minor infraction. It poses serious danger to the teacher and the other students in class, and in general can lead to irreparable damage. Which means that a boy who burps – obviously, because he wasn’t spotted early enough by the school psychiatrist and ritalined into behaving – must be arrested, hand-cuffed, and sent to a juvenile detention center for correction. That’s what happened to a 13-year-old boy at Cleveland Middle School in Albuquerque, NM. His parents weren’t notified about the arrest until much later; after all, if they sent the boy to a public school, they should have known that they have surrendered him to another authority, so why inform them.

Of course, such measure is expected for a school where some time ago another boy was forced to strip in front of five adults because he had $200 in his pockets. His explanation that he was going shopping after school was rejected; his plea to first call his mother was denied.

And the same school district was sued for handcuffing to a chair a 7-year-old autistic boy.

Well, let’s not judge the public schools too harsh. Sometimes they are lax, when there are some minor violations and no danger to the students is involved. For example, regular harassment and beatings of girls in the bathrooms done with sadistic brutality and even filmed for the enjoyment of other students. Like the case at Ludington Middle School in Detroit where a girl was repeatedly harassed and savagely beaten by other girls. And even filmed. And the school was “cool” about it. After all, of what danger can such beating be to the students? They are just kids, you know.

Like a friend of mine told a co-worker of his when asked about the socialization of his homeschooled children: “Oh, we socialize them alright. We take them to the bathroom once a week, beat them up and take their breakfast money.” The co-worker’s face went pale and she never talked about it again. Later my friend found out that it actually happened to her daughter in first grade; another first-grader cornered her, beat her up and took her breakfast money.

The public school system was started by liberals, it is run by liberals, and the whole ideology behind public education is liberal and socialist to the core. From Horace Mann and John Dewey to our own day, the purpose has never been education. Its purpose has always been to separate children from their families and thus make them blindly obedient to the state. There has never been a scientific or economic foundation of the necessity to have government-run schools – in fact, all the facts have always spoken against it, just like facts in history speak against government-run businesses and economy in general. The inspiration for our modern system of government schools came from one source only: The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx where a system of government education that takes the children away from their parents is one of the points in the program for Communist takeover of the Western civilization.

And millions of American parents, clueless and negligent about their children’s education and well-being, have freely consented to give their children into the hands of their own enemies.

Of course, many parents are now discovering that such surrender of parental rights comes at a price. And the price is that the schools implement exactly what Communism is all about: Tyrannical power over the children, and encouragement of the basest animal instincts with the goal of turning the children into mindless animals for easier control by the state. Public schools are about government control, and re-education; yes, re-education in the same sense as Hitler’s concentration camps.

Many parents will read about the examples I give above and will comment that the public schools have failed in delivering what they set out to deliver in the first place. But that is incorrect. The fact that the school bureaucrats can do the things described above with impunity, and the fact that the parents are powerless to react and reverse the process means only one thing: that the public schools have been wildly successful in their agenda of establishing their control over the children, and in destroying the legal rights of the parents. The system works, and it delivers exactly what it was meant to deliver: tyranny, oppression, immorality, generational war, and blind servility to the state. It was meant to be a concentration camp, and it is turning into a concentration camp. And every parent that send their children there, is deliberately turning them into inmates.

Wake Up!

Via The Feral Irishman

Hard Times Preparedness
Verbatim Post

I went to High school with the writer of this article and have had disagreements with him about his liberal views on Face-book. I even warned him in 2009 we needed to vote them all out for stealing our liberties (He thought I was nuts back then). Looks like another light bulb just came on inside the beltway!

The Sentinel

Homeschool or die

Vox Popoli
Verbatim Post

I'm about as cynical about the basic concept of public schooling as it is possible to be. And yet, the American "education" system still regularly manages to surprise me to the downside:

A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch. The first grader’s mother, Tasha Lynch, says she was shocked by the school’s decision.

“He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment,” she said.

Lynch’s son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.

“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,’” said his mother.

Lynch described a phone call she received from the school explaining that the case will be treated like sexual harassment, due to what it considers inappropriate touching.

“‘Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,’” Lynch said the school told her.

Apparently the schools wish parents to teach their children to die when they are being choked. Or something. In any event, it does suggest an alternative strategy for kids who are being bullied. The moment that a bully lays so much as a finger on you, charge him with sexual harassment. That should keep him and his parents busy for the next few weeks... and if he dares to say anything about it later, it's a simple trip down to the counselor's office to lay a second charge.

Of course, if you're a parent, what on Earth are you thinking to leave your children in what has clearly become a complete madhouse? I know, I know, your school is different. The teachers are excellent. Your kids are more than fine. And you know absolutely everything that goes on inside their school building for 36 hours every week, right?

Parents of kids in public school are almost uniformly idiots, at least in this one regard. They always claim to know everything about their children's schools, and yet I've never met a single one who could even tell me the ratio of teachers to administrative staff or the average number of children in a classroom. Most of them can't even tell me what classes their kid has, let alone his daily schedule. Yeah, you totally know what's going on there.

Hitler: On OWS, the FED, Wall Street, Government, Rights & Ron Paul

Hitler has become a Libertarian!
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Via Borepatch

Big Bird calls bullcrap on the Obamas

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

"My Tram Experience" in France

Via Sarah Maid Of Albion

Volkhart Sagitta: Luftwaffe Courier Car 1944

This compact streamliner appeared in the most inappropriate year - 1944

Based on the KdF Wagen Typ-60 , aka VW Beetle, it was designed by KC Volkhart as a fast courier car for Luftwaffe (German Air Force). Body, designed by Baron Reinhard von Koenig-Fachsenfeld, was built by Helmut Fuchs Niederwenningern / Ruhr. Thanks to its low drag coefficient (0.17 only) the streamline body allowed for speeds up to 150 km / h. The engine, mounted at the rear, was the standard VW 1.1-liter boxer, 24.5 hp.

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King of the Castles + Upstairs, Downstairs and In Between

Via Ann, Belle Grove

Arcaid/Corbis

MODELED AFTER THE CHÂTEAUX of France's Loire Valley, Biltmore outshines the mansions of Newport, R.I. and the estates of South Florida, enticing us back to an alluring past whose edges have been sanded smooth by time.

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Photograph by John Spinks

THE DRAWING ROOM at Eastnor Castle near Wales, which brings in nearly $5 million each year from events and other activities.

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The Best Day of Fishing Ever!

Roundabout via Cousin Colby

Four young Sitka black-tailed bucks fell upon good luck Sunday as they were pulled from the icy waters of Stephens Passage, Alaska by a group of locals on Tom Satre's 62-foot charter vessel. Four juvenile Sitka black-tailed deer swam directly toward the boat.

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The 25 Least Influential People Alive

25. President Obama

Okay, so we're cheating a bit with this one. He did order the raid that wiped Osama bin Laden off the face of the earth. But then he used that surplus of political capital to let everyone in Washington stick a boot in his ass. This is a man who should be the most transformational figure of the century. Hell, he promised to be that. Instead he wields all the power of a substitute teacher at night school.

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The Power of Fear

SHTF School
Verbatim Post

Most of the questions from people who do not know too much about war is about fighting and shooting of course, man to man fighting.

Some of the worst experiences are from street fighting with stable (more or less) lines of separation between enemy groups. Fighting where there is no real chain of command, real information on positions of enemy, or even real information on positions of your comrades. Not to talk about some kind of support, like logistic, or artillery or air back up.

So if man holds position with rifle in basement of abandoned apartment building of some 6 – 8 stores, and enemy is at distance of some 20 meters, same like you, hidden in basement of abandoned and burned building, or even watching trough some small hole in wall from third floor in some destroyed apartment, and every sound is maybe sound of your death, that can change a man.

Some people literally lose their mind in situation like that, watching, scouting, every second alert.

Most of the folks in some period even did not had real sleep, it was more like some kind of half awake state, delirium, like in trance, after some time folks just shoot on any kind of suspicious thing, without too much checking. Being scared for long time does that to humans.

Funny thing that i realize, folks today basing their ammo stock on fact that they calculate possible chances for shooting at enemy, in real life folks shooted all the time, to shoot someone, to relive stress, to make someone aware that they still alive, to scare someone…

Yes you need a lot of ammo because you won’t be only shooting at someone, shooting becomes a sort of communication as well.

In some places and in some locations, people shot regular following their own schedule, of course with pattern changing, it was a way to keep people away.

Usually during the night and bad weather all things would become even more confused, so people would just go into the enemy territory because taking stuff from other group, using holes in walls between apartments or even sometimes ropes to climb on some other building and attack some positions, not in order to conquer it, but in order to aquire things like food, ammo, weapon, cigarettes etc.

Like in nature when the night comes predators become active. Hungry man can be evil beast.

At the beginning when most of the folks did not know too much about any weapon it was pretty usual to use some kind of “false” weapon. It is for example when 3-4 men held position in some destroyed house with one rifle and one pistol, they would use some pipe, or even piece of exhaust thing of wood stove, disguise it in window, cover it with something, so when someone look from 100 meters distance it looked like big weapon, sometimes like RPG, sometimes like sniper position, it depends on imagination of looker and ability of folks to decorate and of course also depends on peoples knowledge about weapon.

I know, sounds stupid, but it works (so i guess it is not stupid any more).

(Not at all. Confederates used this successfully with tree trunks painted black on the end and protruding from their positions. BT)

When you approach some building and you spot on third floor something that looks like rifle barrel pointed in your direction, you are not going to think about philosophy or agriculture, you are going to switch your survival mode and play safe. You do not want to find out if this thing can blast you to pieces or not the hard way.

It is easy to laugh about man who sought dirty water pipe from 100 meters distance, pointed in his direction, smartly placed on some sand bags and think it is m48 rifle.

In reality it is scary.

So again even “stupid” things work. In a dangerous situation even harmless things can look threatening, use that to your advantage.

The British Called - They Want Their Guns Back

Re-post from 06 Dec 2008

07 Dec Just found out from my brother (He got his Economics MA at LSE, and is married to an English girl) that they were visiting in England at this time and joined the march/protest.
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The British Called - They Want Their Guns Back