The Torch Dimly Burns

Poetry.

 

 TL In Exile

VERBATIM

Liberty is the value of self. It is not a collective value. A collective value is the value of society, of the total. This is why it is so difficult to sell the children of the collective on the idea of liberty. They have been taught to fear it and as so many of our young adults are incapable of self-sufficiency, they lean toward the collective, without understanding the emasculation that comes with it.

Liberty is the ability to act within the constructs of one's physical presence without reaching another's. In older times it came with the ability to do with one's property what one wished, but that has been neutered by the same old concept of the collective. If one destroys their property, it affects the collective property value of a given neighborhood.

The collective sees objects as they are connected to others, not as they stand alone, individual. My house, my lawn, my garbage is no longer mine alone, but connected to those who might view it. This is largely where America has changed into something I do not understand, nor want to understand. It should be beyond the understanding of an American to entertain such concepts of society.

An American society is a collection of individuals, not of individuals as cogs in a collective. This society that we have now is foreign to the American experience. It has been brought over by other concepts, that of unions, where the collective acted against oppressive treatment, but it ignores the obvious solution to oppressive treatment since, in America, we have the option to work for who we want, to live where we want.

I have quit jobs that asked me to go against my morals. I have moved from towns that took up the collective banner and sang the hymns of Marx. In America there are options to abandon that which is wrong and move to where good is being done.

So, this election, this pretend choice that we have leaves us with little actual choice. It is a choice of rapid collectivism, or delayed collectivism, but collectivism has been taught and confirmed and emboldened by those who came before us, those looking to secure property values, who sought to get better wages for doing the same job, to get health benefits, etc. Let the consumer pay for it, they said.

Let someone else pay for it and we will choose collectivism until we have no industry left, but government and we will line up for our allotted meals.

It has done my heart great damage since I realized this about the American people. So far they have fallen from the days when they sought only to be left alone to do their work and reap their rewards. They want security. They want stability. They will give every ideal away to get it. Most are unaware of the trade off they are making, but even those who do, do so with alarming predictability.

The value of liberty cannot be conveyed to these people, because it contains risk and fear. As a small businessman I spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about my investment, about my economic future. It was a bold step to take and it came with breathless fears at times. Now, seeing that my fears have all come true and my company is long dead, I lament only the inability to try again. Liberty in that light cost me everything I had, but it provided for a long time the wages for several people including myself; it spread economic health to those associated with my company; it rewarded those I did business with until the very end and even now I work diligently to make them whole.

Liberty can be terrifying. But, that was America, fear and work and ultimate success. Overcoming fear, working to make those fears abate and finally success at having conquered fear.

The collective destroyed America. The fear that the collective would be harmed changed the relationship between the government and industry, between the government and finance. It all changed under my nose as I watched everyone involved in the economic disaster survive and receive benefits while millions of us individuals, who had everything our families had worked for drained out of our pockets, stood by in disbelief. We should have stormed Washington, but we waited to see if we could be saved by the will of capitalism alone, but it had died with the rest of America.

Electing Romney will not give us back liberty. It will not return the America we once knew and the economics we once trusted. He is not that man, but he can release the chains that Obama has put on the power of industry. He can support those who are left by abandoning the Marxist tack Obama has taken. I don't know anyone in this economy who has not been hurt by Obama's policies and if Romney can turn a few things around, even for the shortest time, it might put a few coins back into the pockets of those who know what to do with money if they see it again.

My prayer is that we are smart enough to take that short respite from the economic insanity of Obamanomics and put those funds to use securing our homes and fighting for a return of our ideals. Liberty may have left us, but the torch dimly burns for those who will spread the flame.

A race war of low intensity.

"......... if gangs of whites were similarly attacking blacks, I would suggest twenty years, no parole. If the victim suffered lasting damage, I would say life, no parole. The dirtballs would get the picture and stop attacking. I would then be beloved of the Washington Post for my stern stand against racism. If I suggest that blacks be held to the same standard, I will be accused of being blood brother to Julius Streicher and David Duke. See what I mean about everything being race?"

================================

 

Having just gotten home after three weeks of travel in the US, I find on the web yet more accounts of racial attacks on whites by mobs of black punks. They grow more common. How long are we going to tolerate this? Why do we put up with it at all?

Because of race. Race almost everything in America, but silently, very silently. The unendingly bad relations between blacks and whites determine even things that ostensibly do not involve race. Race determines admission to universities, what tests can be given to students in high school, who has to pass exams for promotions in police departments whether they can read or not, how many of what groups you have to hire. It determines what can be taught in the schools, what standards are required of teachers, what mode of dress must be permitted to students, even whether standard English may be required.

It is everywhere. Beneath the debate of outlawing guns lies race. Conservatives want guns to protect themselves against blacks, but can’t say so. Liberals want to eliminate guns so as to disarm blacks, of whom they are afraid but cannot say so.  If you think this is not true, tell me who people fear when they buy guns. Are liberals worried about being shot by white, forty-dive-year-old duck hunters? Do conservatives expect to find Jewish violinists crawling through their windows at night? Then whom do they fear?

The rash of high-school shootings by white adolescents is a godsend for those opposed to the Second Amendment, since it provides plausible non-racial cover for wanting to illegalize firearms. Race, again.

We decide where to live, where to eat, where it is safe to walk, where to send our children to school, by race. When we get on the subway late at night, which we hesitate to do because of race, we check the race of other passengers when choosing a car. We fear blacks, especially young ones. We cannot say it.

Racial hypocrisy is national policy. A bit back, when John Derbyshire wrote that parents should teach their children to avoid groups of blacks, outrage arose—from whites who carefully live in white neighborhoods, carefully send their children to mostly white schools, and themselves never venture into the ‘hood. The sin of Derbyshire was to state explicitly a policy which we all practice, but under a shroud of moralistic prevarication.

Now we have the wave of savage attacks by gangs of blacks against whites. As any sentient being has noticed, the government and the media diligently hide these attacks. At least, the media have done so in the past. If feral blacks beat a white man into brain damage, we hear that it was done by teenagers, or youths, or children (Whites are about half of the population of Washington, DC, and the rest are teenagers.) Race determines press coverage. But the censoring works less well now.

The flies in the ointment of suppression are the cell cam, the surveillance camera, and the internet, the only free press we have. Increasingly footage of these racial attacks appears on the web. Interestingly, more of it appears on television than was the case in the past. The news presenter will still speak of the perpetrators of flash-mob robberies as “youths” but sometimes will also show the video from the surveillance camera. This is not accidental. The rules are changing.

I once thought that the reporters playing this game of hide the racial Easter egg knew of the intense hatred for whites prevalent in the black underclass and feared that if whites knew what was going on, and reacted, an explosion would occur. This seemed to me at least arguably the best course in the face of an intractable problem. Yet many reporters, especially women, regard any notice taken of misbehavior by blacks as morally contemptible.  They aren’t cynically holding the lid on. It is a sincere ideology.

If the problem of race were stable, ignoring it would be one thing. But it is getting worse, which is another. We see now what amounts to a race war of low intensity. Is there a nicer way of putting it? Maybe “an inter-pigmental conflictual situation.”  But across the country there occur hundreds of attacks against whites by ferals, and they are brutal attacks. We are not talking of black eyes and bloody noses. These are assaults by gangs of, er, teens who repeatedly kick the victim in the head while laughing about it.

If you doubt this, I suggest reading White Girl Bleed a Lot, by   Colin Flaherty.

More @ Fred On Everything

The Second Reconstruction of the South

 

Responding to Lyndon Johnson’s Second Reconstruction initiatives assisted by liberal Republicans, Southern GOP leaders won control of their party machinery to advance the staunchly conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona for president in 1964. Thoroughly dismayed by the Democratic party’s drift into socialism as exemplified by the leftist Hubert Humphrey, Senator Strom Thurmond joined the party of Lincoln.

Bernhard Thuersam
The Second Reconstruction of the South:

“In his first address to Congress as president, late in November 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson called for “the earliest possible passage” of the Kennedy civil rights bill. The new chief executive soon made it clear that he was totally committed to the enactment of this broad civil rights measure.

In steering the bill through the lower house, Emanuel Celler, the floor manager, was assisted not only by liberal party members identified with the Democratic Study Committee but also by Republican leaders as William H. McCulloch, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Prospects were less encouraging in the Senate, given the strategic positions of Southern leaders in that body and the difficulty of overcoming filibusters. The senators from Southern States, led by Richard B. Russell, condemned the bill, particularly the provisions banning discrimination in public places. They regarded the measure as unconstitutional because it restricted personal freedom and the right to control one’s private property.

The central issue, according to Russell, was the unrestrained power the bill gave to the executive branch of the federal government, which would permit political persecution of citizens by an ambitious and ruthless attorney general and other bureaucrats. The Georgia senator argued that the proposal originated in politics, was punitive in nature, and would be sectional in its application. It was aimed primarily at the South, like the Reconstruction laws of the 1860s.

Indeed, Russell declared, “the white people of the Southern States” were “the most despised and mistreated minority in the country.” In this case the Southern congressmen reflected the feeling of the preponderance of their white constituents.

Hubert H. Humphrey, who managed the bill in the Senate, and other supporters created a sturdy coalition…The Southerners’ last hope was to attract enough conservative Republican backing to prevent the adoption of cloture, which would make it possible to end a filibuster.

As Eric F. Goldman wrote a few years later: “Senator Russell had a band of eighteen Southern senators [who] talked on and on – [and] sometimes about the bill itself, calling it, to use the phrase of Senator Russell Long, “a mixed breed of unconstitutionality and the NAACP.”

The pivotal figure in negotiations [with Republicans] was minority leader Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, with who the White House held painstaking conferences. Dirksen moved slowly toward a compromise…On June 10 the Senate adopted a cloture resolution by a vote of 71 to 29…The power of the Southern bloc had been broken. Twenty-one of the twenty-six senators from the South voted against cloture and final passage of the bill.

In its origins the Second Reconstruction was clearly the result of outside forces impinging on the South. Television news, in fact, developed into a national medium partly through its experience in the South, and many reporters and photographers first achieved recognition when they came South to cover the civil rights story. According to Robert MacNeil [of NBC], “the tone of network programming has been emphatically liberal….” Senator Russell spoke for many [Southerners] when he accused outside journalists of fostering “bitterness and hatred against Southern whites” to such an extent that it had become “a national disease.”

In his analysis of congressional reaction to the violence [in the South], David J. Garrow stresses the importance of newspaper coverage, especially stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post. In short, the news media became the primary instrument in shaping the image of the South in the nation and the world.”

(The South in Modern America, A Region at Odds, Dewey W. Grantham, Harper Collins, 1994, pp. 236-241)

A fool

John Brown and the Pottawatomie Killings 

 On the night of May 24, 1856, John Brown and his company of Free State volunteers murdered five men settled along the Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas. The victims were prominently associated with the pro-slavery Law and Order Party, but were not themselves slave owners. This assault occurred three days after Border Ruffians from Missouri burned and pillaged the anti-slavery haven of Lawrence, and two days after Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was severely beaten by Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina. The action on the 24th occurred at three different houses: 

At the Doyle farm, James and two of his sons, William and Drury, were dragged outside and hacked up with short, heavy sabres donated to Brown in Akron, Ohio. Mrs. Doyle, a daughter, and fourteen year old John were spared. The gang then moved on to Allen Wilkinson's place. He was 'taken prisoner' amid the cries of a sick wife and two children. Two saddles and a rifle were apparently confiscated. The third house visited that night was owned by James Harris. In addition to his wife and young child, Harris had three other men sleeping there. Only one of them, William Sherman, was executed. Weapons, a saddle, and a horse were confiscated from the house. While members of the rifle company, including four of Brown's sons, asserted that their Captain did not commit any of the actual murders himself, he was the undisputed leader and made the decisions as to who should be spared. 

The combination of the fall of Lawrence and the Pottawatomie killings caused southeastern Kansas to erupt into guerilla warfare. Raiders from Missouri terrorized the Free Soilers, while roving gangs of Free State volunteers inflicted similar violence upon their pro-slavery neighbors. While neither John Brown nor any members of his company were apprehended for their involvement at Pottawatomie, his two eldest sons-- who were with their own rifle company near Lawrence at the time of the murders-- were seized by mobs and nearly lynched. Jason Brown was released relatively quickly, but John Jr. was imprisoned until September. The recent events had also triggered a temporary insanity, from which he did not recover until after his release. 

Most of the books written by members of the abolitionist community in the years after Brown's own execution in 1859 downplayed this stain on the otherwise rich career of their holy warrior. James Redpath, the first in a long line of biographers who 'martyred' Brown, denounced the whole episode as a pro-slavery conspiracy to villify both the Hero and the Free Soil cause. The Reverend H.D. Fisher makes mention of the "Pottawatomie Creek disaster", but otherwise extolls the virtues of Brown's selfless crusade for emancipation. An excerpt from Fisher's memoirs, Gun and the Gospel, is not wholly factual but is nevertheless a good example of the type of literature focused on Brown after his death. Brown himself is reputed to have acted evasively whenever asked about the incident, and never admitted his direct responsibility. The Pottawatomie killings remain a gruesome and enigmatic facet of the prelude to War which took place in the Kansas Territory.

---

The primary source of this article: To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown, by Stephen B. Oates. Harper & Row, 1970.

============================

The Money Changer

Never underestimate how much damage a fool can do you. A real fool, armed with fanatic purpose s& sufficient self-righteousness, can do far more damage than a determined smart man armed only with a grudge. On 16 October 1859 John Brown, fresh from his murders in Kansas, led an attack on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, ostensibly to lead a slave insurrection. First person they killed was a free black man. They were armed by other fools, six "respectable" New Englanders, the Secret Six, including ministers. They had already sent so many rifles to Kansas that they were know as Beecher's Bibles, after the abolitionist preacher.

Brown's raid accomplished only one thing, other than his well-deserved hanging, and that was to convince all those yet unconvinced Southerners that war was inevitable. Quite an accomplishment, for a fool. It would only cost 625,000 soldier's lives & the lives of as many civilians. God save us from humanitarians who love all humanity but no man!

Good Boy!

Via Traditions and Skills of Every Day Life

Goodness, she is on a roll today!

May I have a quarter, please?

Via Traditions and Skills of Every Day Life

The Dixie Fried Bride - A Yankee living in The Deep South

Via Traditions and Skills of Every Day Life

A lot of goodies HERE.

RAND PAC (Rand Paul) Ad against Joe Manchin

But, the Neo-con  Lindsey Graham thinks all is well and attacks Rand Paul.

Justice Department seeks dismissal of Fast and Furious lawsuit

Surprise, surprise, surprise, SGT. Carter.  Fox is about as worthless as the rest, just read their benign piece.

 

 The Justice Department on Monday night sought dismissal of a lawsuit by a Republican-led House of Representatives committee demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder produce records about the botched law enforcement probe of gun-trafficking called Operation Fast and Furious. 

President Barack Obama has invoked executive privilege and the attorney general has been found to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents that might explain what led the Justice Department to reverse course after initially denying that federal agents had used a controversial tactic called gun-walking in the failed law enforcement operation. The tactic resulted in hundreds of illegally acquired weapons purchased at Arizona gun shops winding up in Mexico, where many of them were recovered from crime scenes.

Two guns in Operation Fast and Furious were found on the U.S. side of the border at the scene of a shooting in which U.S. border agent Brian Terry was killed. In a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to Congress, the Justice Department said that agents made every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico, which turned out to be incorrect. Ten months later, the department withdrew the letter.

More @ Fox

Solyndra Seeks Tax Benefit in Bankruptcy

Screw reorganization, just close the doors. Pathetic.

Not only has failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra benefited from a $535 million government loan guarantee, it’s now seeking a huge tax break as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

“Perhaps you thought the Solyndra scandal amounted to a $535 million government loan that will never be repaid,” a Wall Street Journal editorial states. “No such luck. In the latest twist, Solyndra's investors could be rewarded for their failure, thanks to a tax benefit the Administration handed out in a bid to evade political accountability.”

The Internal Revenue Service objected to Solyndra's Chapter 11 reorganization plan last week, saying its "principal purpose is tax avoidance."

The only real assets Solyndra has left are what the IRS calls "tax attributes." That’s $875 million to $975 million in net operating losses that can reduce future taxable income by as much as $350 million.

Of course tax-loss carry-forwards are worthless if a company doesn’t have profits. “So Solyndra's owners are asking the court to liquidate the rest of the business and contribute a net $6.7 million to pay off creditors for pennies on the dollar,” Journal editors write.

More @ Newsmax

OBAMA'S CHANGES! (Official Music Video)

WASP - Women Airforce Service Pilots

 

 WASP - Women Airforce Service Pilots

 Great link.  14 pages of WWII aviation pictures Checked the woman ferry pilot in 1943 closely to see if it was my mother in law. It wasn't. Here is the link to her page at the TWU archives. Fran was 93 this year. Not doing well, her memory is gone. 

Frances Rohrer Sargent

She was in WASP class 43-W-4

Terry
Fla.

General John Brown Gordon on Reconstruction

Via Jimmy L. Shirley Jr.

The Attack On Fort Stedman, And (My Great Grandfather)

==================================================

THREE MONTHS AFTER LEE SURRENDERED at Appomattox President Andrew Johnson appointed James Johnson, a highly respected Columbus lawyer, as governor of Georgia; and, assisted by the state's wartime chief executive, Joseph E. Brown, now turned Republican, the new appointee conscientiously took up the task of restoring Georgia to the Union. He promptly issued a call for a state convention, which met in October and repealed the ordinance of secession, abolished slavery and took other steps looking to the readmission of the state. Governor Johnson, however, served for only a few months, and at the regular election held in November, 1865, he was succeeded by Charles J. Jenkins, an old-line Whig.

Jenkins, although a staunch Union man, had equally firm convictions about the rights of the states; and in March, 1867, when Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the President's veto, Governor Jenkins applied to the Supreme Court of the United States for an injunction to prevent Secretary Stanton and Generals Grant and Pope from putting the act into effect in Georgia. This heroic gesture was fruitless, as the Court denied its jurisdiction; but Jenkins seemed sincerely determined to give the state an honest administration. In December, 1867, he refused to payout forty thousand dollars of the state's money to cover the expenses of the rump constitutional convention being held in Atlanta; and for this flagrant act of defiant honesty he was removed from office in January by General Meade, who had succeeded Pope as commander of the Third Military District. The Secretary of State and the Comptroller were removed at the same time, Meade appointing army officers to their places; and thus, by a stroke of the pen, Georgia was reduced to a military government.

There ensued the usual train of troubles and disorder common to the Southern States at that time. The carpetbaggers were swarming in and, together with the scalawags, soon were in control of the state government, including the judiciary. The Loyal Leagues began to blossom in all their menacing, militant mystery; and unrest among the negroes rapidly increased. Mrs. Frances Butler Leigh in her Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation tells of the ominous change in the demeanor of the negro servants after they began to fall under the influence of the League's teachings. They assumed, she said, an obnoxiously familiar air with their employers, treated the women with disrespect, worked only when they felt so inclined and threw fear into the white people's hearts by their marching about with guns on their shoulders. Mrs. Leigh wrote that in those times she never slept without a pistol under her pillow, as did women on isolated plantations throughout the South.

As a natural corollary of the growing terror, the Ku Klux Klan soon appeared in Georgia, as it had in other states. The native white citizens saw these menacing organizations led by, unscrupulous white agitators, and in their helpless political condition they felt the futility of ordinary, lawful defensive measures. John B. Gordon, late general in the Confederate army, reflected the prevailing sentiment of the native population of his state - and of the South - when he told the Congressional Committee:

“We, in Georgia, do not believe that we have been given proper credit for our honesty of purpose. We believe that if our people had been trusted, as we thought they ought to have been trusted - if we had been treated in the same spirit which, as we thought, was manifested on the Federal side at Appomattox Court House - a spirit which implied that there had been a conflict of theories, an honest difference of opinion as to our rights under the general government - a difference upon which the South had adopted one construction and the North another, both parties having vindicated their sincerity upon the field in a contest which, now that it had been fought out, was to be forgotten - if this had been the spirit in which we had been treated, the alienation would have been cured. But to say to our people: "You are unworthy to vote; you can not hold office; we are unwilling to trust you; you are not honest men; your former slaves are better fitted to administer the laws than you are" - this sort of dealing with us has definitely alienated our people. The burning of Atlanta and all the devastation through Georgia never created a tithe of the animosity that has been created by this sort of treatment of our people.”

Excerpted from INVISIBLE EMPIRE
The Story of the Ku Klux Klan 1866-1871
Published 1939
Stanley F. Horn, Author
Pages 168-170
Reprint Edition
Crown Rights Book Company
Reprinted 2001

Randy’s Right Returns From Egypt Christian Mission Trip

District of Columbia Federal per capita expenditure $67,982.10 per person.

Via Billy

 

And it produces?  Government..........

The federal government sends an average of nearly $13,000 to Alaska for every man, woman, and child who lives in the state.

According to a Census Bureau report, which covers all federal expenditures or obligations for direct payments, grants, procurement awards, and salaries and wages, by federal agencies and programs, Alaska reaps a bigger payoff in federal spending than any other state, almost double the national average of $7,223. The second place state, Virginia, gets about $700 less per capita than Alaska.

Both those figures pale in comparison with the $68,000 per capita federal expenditures for the District of Columbia. 

More @ CNN

Publix Skools

Via The Feral Irishman

Black mob picks on 'The Wrong Guy'

Via Billy

 

 

 Can't win them all.........

(Editor’s note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The links in the following report may contain offensive language.

DeAndre Felton and his crew had a problem: The mall was closed. The curfew in effect. But they were still high on drugs and wanted to have more fun. So they decided to beat someone up.

Turns out they chose The Wrong Guy.

They had just come from a local park where DeAndre and 15 others beat up two girls, sending one to the hospital with a broken arm.

So DeAndre came up with an increasingly popular idea: In St. Louis they call it the Knockout Game. In Illinois, Polar Bear Hunting.

Regardless of what DeAndre in Meriden, Conn., called it, the rules are the same all over: Find a person who looks defenseless. Then punch him. Or kick him until you get tired or he is knocked out. Or worse. Game over.

DeAndre was part of a pattern of hundreds of examples of black mob violence documented in more than 80 cities revealed in “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it.”

DeAndre knew The Knockout Game was usually pretty safe. For the attacker, that is. In Meriden, victims aren’t likely to carry concealed weapons. Nor do they fight back: As one player said in Philadelphia as his victim begged for mercy: “It’s not our fault you can’t fight.”

So when DeAndre and his gang of eight to 10 left the parking lot in a Meriden mall just a few weeks ago – soon after the park beat-down – he was confident little could go wrong when he told his friends he wanted to “beat someone up.”

They found their victim a few minutes later. Soon DeAndre and his confederate, Deshaun Jones, were peeling off from the group, heading for a guy walking home from work. Alone.

We don’t know his name or race or much else about him other than this: He was The Wrong Guy.

More @ WND

Ukraine Manufacturing Tavor in 5.45x39mm

Ukrainian state-owned firm RPC Fort (Research and Production Company Fort of the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine) is manufacturing under license a variant of the IWI Tavor chambered in 5.45x39mm Russian.

Seen pictured with the South African Milkor UBGL (40mm Underbarreled Grenade Launcher)

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are still primarily armed with 5.45x39mm chambered firearms inherited from the Soviet Union. They have adopted a small number of RPC Fort-manufactured 5.56mm Tavors, presumably in use by special forces.

More @ The Firearm Blog

Diplomacy: A series of short articles on how the different European powers approached issues of diplomacy with both Union and Confederate governments.

 

290 Foundation

VERBATIM

FRANCE: On April 12, 1861, the Civil War breaks out in the United States. It divides the Northern and Southern States of the Union, with the latter forming a new Confederation. The Confederate States stated willingness defend their rights by force is soon followed by a mobilization of the forces of the Northern government and a rapid blockade of the coastal ports feeding its rival. Faced with this unprecedented event, the imperial powers of Europe, Great Britain and France adopt similar, diplomatic attitudes. They decides not to take sides in the American conflict but despite a stated neutrality, recognise the right of belligerency on the Confederacy. This duality draws the anger of Washington, which considers the southern 'separatists' as mere rebels. Britain, with a long established commerce with the Southern States, turns a blind eye to the many blockade runners financed and operated by businessmen across England. France on the other hand seeks to establish rules for its maritime transport since its commerce ships are likely to come across vessels of both sides on their way to North America. To ensure its maritime fleet remains free of any harrassment, France states its reliance on the 1856 Declaration of Paris, an agreement prohibiting privateering but protecting neutral goods in case of war and recognizing only fully effective blockades. However, the application of these clauses is complex because the United States had not ratified the agreement and, due to the large expanse of coastline it was required to monitor, the validity of the blockade becomes doubtful under maritime law and difficult therefore to enforce. Finally, the French government was forced to review the cases of vessels dropping anchor in its territorial waters.

 

Disregarding neutrality, Napoleon III opened the shipyards of Nantes and Bordeaux to the Southerners for their ship building programme. On several occasions the Imperial Government of France attempted to propose intercession, for example in striving to overcome the serious dispute between Washington and London in the case of the Trent affair. This involved a British ship bound for Europe with two emissaries of the South being apprehended by the Federal Navy, despite the maritime rules of conflict. As the war dragged on, Napoleon III again offered his services in late 1862 and early 1863 to mediate between the North and the South - but on each occasion his proposals were dismissed and the hostilities continued.

Gradually, the Emperor who did not hide his preferences for the Southerners was tempted by the idea of recognizing their cause formally, most likely as, in addition to his sympathy for their cause, he considered that the independence of the Confederate States, seceded from the Union, would only strengthen his Mexican ambitions and the constitution of this "buffer State" offered a guarantee to protect Mexico from any annexation of its northern territories by the United States. In July 1862 and June 1863, Napoleon III unsuccessfully attempted to have England publically share his views but again, he was confronted with the disapproval of his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Thouvenel then Drouyn de Lhuys who remained hostile to the idea of a division of the American Republic.

Like so many others on both sides of the English Channel, Napoleon III was hampered and frustrated by his ministers and advisors. Unsurprisingly, his attempts to circumvent their objections by entering into direct correspondence with Ambassadors by using unofficial, personally appointed emissaries, was also doomed to failure. During the term of the American Civil War, a convoluted relationships with this major European power, demonstrated to all the deep political divisions that existed in France's government.

 

GREAT BRITAIN: British neutrality during the American Civil War was complicated and remains a difficult issue to analyze. Indeed, had Queen Victoria's beloved Albert not died tragically in 1861, his strong opinions and influence amongst British politicians may have swayed Britain to taking a more openly, sympathetic view of the South. As it was, at the heart of the matter lay British self-interest. If it had been advantageous for the Empire to openly support one side or the other, it would have done so. But despite the vocal support in Britain for both sides, and despite good arguments made by both U.S. and C.S. representatives, Britain did what was best for Britain, which was to keep itself carefully in the middle.

The war itself was bad news for Britain, no matter how they felt about the two sides. Both parts of America were important trading partners with Britain, and the cotton from the South was a particularly valuable commodity. Without cotton, England's massive textile industry would grind to a halt, and in fact once the Federal blockade of the Southern states became effective, the loss of a steady supply of cotton caused a major economic crisis. Nearly one thousand mills were forced to close, with over one hundred thousand workers made redundant at least temporarily. Many industrialists, seeing their empires collapsing, quickly obtained ships and crews to run the federal blockade carrying much needed materials to the South and returning with cargoes of cotton. Despite this urgency, confederate leaders, under-estimated the importance of their cotton in their determining British political policy and the fact that the North was also an important market for British industry. Even whilst English commercial interests endeavored to make the best of a bad situation, they were happy enough to build and sell the Confederates ships including the commerce raiders Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah, whilst engaging in a lucrative arms trade with the South for most of the war. Full recognition and support for the Confederacy presented a number of nightmare scenarios for Britain’s politicians. The U.S. made not-so-subtle hints that such a situation would make legitimate targets of Britain's huge commercial maritime fleet for privateers and bring about a state of war between the two countries. The example of what a few Confederate commerce raiders were doing to U.S. shipping was incentive enough to wish avoiding a similar situation developing among British fleets. British subjects in Canada were openly worried what a conflict between the U.S. and Britain would mean for them. Britain had already assembled a considerable military force there and if it had come to war, Canada and the border would have been the main theatre of operations for a British-American war.

Great Britain also had its relationship with other European powers to consider. France generally mirrored the British view of things but at the time, France controlled Mexico; and British intervention for a ‘rebel’ nation on that border might have caused France to adopt a very different attitude. Russia, although also technically neutral, was clearly favoring the North. Russo-British relations were still a bit delicate after the Crimean War and it was desirable for Britain to avoid antagonizing the Russians unless strictly necessary to do so.

Finally, the issue of slavery presented a moral stumbling block, though it was not the most important issue to the British. Slavery had been banned throughout the British Empire in 1833 so openly supporting the slave-owning Confederacy was problematic, unless it became very clear that the South would win the war.

In the end, neither of the two sides in the conflict was very satisfied with British neutrality. The Confederacy was denied a powerful official ally, and the Union felt that Britain bent the rules to lend too much support to the South. The very declaration of neutrality, in fact, implied a certain level of recognition and Britain moved a step closer by recognizing the South as a ‘belligerent state’ thus regarding the Confederacy as a legitimate combatant and not a mere rebellion. Great Britain's problem was not to satisfy either side, but to look after British interests and under difficult circumstances, the mother country and her Empire was successful in that. At the end of the war America was desperate to rebuild and Britain was the only country able to supply the expertise to do this. With the decimation of most of America’s whaling fleets and cargo ships, the renewed Royal Navy ruled the oceans until after the end of the First World War, virtually unopposed!

‘F**k you! Pay us Your Money!’: Lawsuit Alleges Debt Collector Berated Disabled Vet, Told Him He Should’ve Died

Via Don

 

After suffering severe spine and head injuries several years ago while serving in the U.S. Army, Michael Collier was declared 100 percent disabled, a point a debt collector allegedly decided to use against him during what sounds like the most awful phone call ever.

Trouble for Collier and his wife, Kim, began when a Minnesota-based law firm and debt collection agency “illegally garnished their savings to cover a defaulted student loan and verbally abused them when they asked for their money back,” Gawker’s Neetzan Zimmerman reports.

As a disabled Army vet, Collier’s Social Security payments are exempt from debt garnishment. However, the law firm Gurstel Chargo, which has since released a statement on this story, took funds from Kim’s savings account anyway to pay off a $6,000 defaulted student loan.

“At a court hearing back in May, a judge ordered Kim’s credit union to unfreeze her assets effective immediately after definitively declaring that her account was exempt from garnishment,” Zimmerman reports.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy for Collier. After the judge made his decision, a Gurstel employee told the disabled vet he would need to get a lawyer if he wanted to “get his money back,” according to a complaint filed on behalf of the Arizona couple. Collier decided that this was getting out of hand and figured he’d call and try to sort things out over the phone.

This is the point where everything reportedly went to pieces.

The complaint alleges the following conversation took place between Collier and an unidentified Gurstel Chargo paralegal:

More @ The Blaze

Obama: ‘We Got Back Every Dime’ of Bailout; CBO: Bailout Will Lose $24 Billion

 

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that “we got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, the government will lose about $24 billion on the bailout.

“We got back every dime we used to rescue the financial system, but we also passed a historic law to end taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts for good,” Obama said in Miami Thursday.
The Congressional Budget Office--based on figures from Obama’s own Office of Management and Budget---gives a different assessment.

“The cost to the federal government of the TARP’s transactions (also referred to as the subsidy cost), including grants for mortgage programs that have not yet been made, will amount to $24 billion,” said the CBO report, which was released on the same day Obama spoke.

More @ CNS

GOA endorses ‘Joe the Plumber’ for Congress

A leading gun rights advocate announced it endorsed the Ohio man who became known as “Joe the Plumber” in his race to represent Ohio’s 9th Congressional District in Washington.

“I’m excited and at the same time, incredibly humbled by the announcement we have received an enthusiastic and strong endorsement of the Gun Owners of America,” said Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who earned the moniker in 2008 when he confronted then-candidate Barack Obama about how Obama’s tax policies would discourage him from buying a plumbing business.

“As an avid sportsman and gun owner, I can tell you with great pride that no one in Congress will defend the Right to Bear Arms more passionately than I will,” said Wurzelbacher, who is running against Rep. Marcia C. Kaptur (D.-Ohio), a 14-term incumbent.

“The Gun Owners of America said of my opponent, ‘Kaptur has been an enemy of gun owners for nearly three decades.  It’s time to throw her out!’” he said.

More @ Human Events

South Bend pols break state law to curtail gun rights

 

Local politicians in South Bend, Ind., are circumventing state law to limit firearm and ammunition sales.

Without a complaint of a crime being committed, the nine-member South Bend City Council arm twisted a local Walmart store to follow firearm sale regulations declared in an agreement made between the two entities on June 13, 2011. Yet effective July 1, 2011 state law says “a political subdivision may not regulate firearms, ammunition, and firearm accessories”.

According to local news reports the agreement says Walmart must limit sales of firearms to rifles and shotguns used only for hunting or target practice. No “tactical guns” or “assault weapons” with its related ammunition are to be sold and all guns and ammunition, other than shotgun shells, should be kept in locked display cases.

Complaints of firearms and ammunition not stored properly together with flyers distributed by Walmart containing photos of semi-automatic rifles prompted the South Bend City Council to contact Walmart attorneys to advise them to make the appropriate changes to their gun catalog and storage units. Walmart has agreed to comply with the agreement.

Walmart can agree to whatever it wants, but the law abiding citizens of South Bend will have to go out of town to purchase firearms and ammunition that Walmart will not carry.  Well at least until some other anti-firearm institution chooses to operate above the law.

The anti-gun ideology of both the City Council and Walmart apparently trumps state law, and apparently neither care much for the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

This is how stealth gun control works.  Gun haters enact pseudo laws, use political clout, and turn a blind eye to the Constitution in order to limit gun sales to law abiding citizens.

More @ Human Events

Obama: Explain to me ...........

Via Cousin John

Viking Rune Stones In Sweden

14 pages of WWII aviation pictures

Via Cousin Colby

 

More @ Mission 4 Today

HSLDA: Light The Fire 2012

Link

Vietnam Vet's Obama Billboard

Via Tom

Michael Downing - Autumn NC PATCON 2012

Via David