When the Optics no longer matter...

III Patriots

VERBATIM

I despise the word Optics as used by the kewl-kids inside the Beltway these days.  It simply means "The way things look to the public".  Politicians, by nature, worry about how every action will look to the public, especially those at home who will pull levers again next election.

But I warned immediately after the election that I am now willing to put a timeline on Implosion: Four years or fewer because the Bad People want to be in power to control the crash and to "re-build" America in their image.  Their image is a Red image.  Not Republican Red, but Communist Red.  The Bad People also know a massive reset is needed for either side to win.  For Liberty to truly die in America, there will have to be chaos to facilitate the coming Stalinist/Maoist purge.

I offered a simple metric for people to determine if my assessment was correct: Watch and see if those in power dismiss the Optics of their actions.  When they no longer care how it looks back home, it is because they do not plan for the folks back home to be relevant next election cycle.

Benghazi is proving to be an immediate affirmation that my assessment is correct.  At any other time in America, Benghazi would already be spoken of in terms of an Impeachable Offense.

In Washington when a political power struggle takes place, the victor almost always permits the vanquished to "resign" with some dignity in place.  But the crowd in power today did not permit Patreus to resign with dignity, "To spend more time with his family".  The crowd in power today is a bare-knuckle crew who play for keeps.  No, the victor in this power-play forced Patreus to eat it in public.  And he ate it.  (That he ate the infidelity and the utter iron-fisted nature of his dismissal tells me that they have more in their pocket on the guy, and this was still letting him off the hook a bit.)

The White House does not care that every single politician, bureaucrat and American who pays attention to politics understands that Patreus was kept online at the seat of CIA for political reasons, and once the potential political damage was mitigated (Obama won) they crushed him.  We all know he was sacked because he challenged the White House on Benghazi, he had damaging knowledge about Benghazi, and we all see the politics at play...and the players do not care that you know what they did and why they did it.  They want you to know that even the Director of CIA can be crushed with a whim. 

They do not care that you know they did it to bury the details of Benghazi.

The Secretary of State of the United States simply dismisses the House investigation and refuses to discuss Benghazi with them due to "scheduling conflicts".

Again, an absolute dismissal of the Optics, from a woman who has a legitimate shot at the Oval in 4 years.  And in less than a week from the election the brazen disregard for Optics is on full display, even by career politicians such as SoS Clinton.

Three major players have the details that could (and in any other time would) likely lead to rumbles of Impeachment for Benghazi: The White House, the State Department, and CIA.  (Some military folks surely have bits and pieces, but probably not all of the details in one place)

CIA is shut down.  State can't fit it into the schedule.  And the White House will never talk.  Noone in the military with knowledge will ever talk - not after watching what just happened to 4-Star Wonderkid Patreus who had his sights on 2016, and would have been a serious contender.

I am convinced that my original assessment was correct.  The clock is ticking.  Those in America who admire Stalin and Mao have a plan, and it will be executed without another meaningful Presidential Election. 

A genocidal purge is imminent, and those who intend to be Masters afterward no longer bother to care what the public may think.

When the pretense is dismissed, you'd better recognize...

Kerodin
III

Southern Comfort Zone

Via Cousin John

Conservatives and Chronic Leftist Liars

Via Bernhard

“What do you call a man who loves his country but is not so enthusiastic about the government that confiscates half of his income? Who takes care of his own family but is not sure why, through tax policies and affirmative action, he is also supposed to take care of the children of other people he does not know? Who believes in charity but believes it begins at home and does not extend beyond the borders of the United States?

Who wishes peace and prosperity to the people of the Third World but does not necessarily want to bring them here? Who admires the brave struggle of the Israeli people but does not see why American money and military clout have to be used to do to Palestinians what was done to Jews in the past? Who wishes no ill to anyone else’s religion but wonders why non-Christians can use a government-funded by mostly Christian taxes to teach anti-Christianity in schools and eliminate Christian symbols and prayers from public places” 

I would call such a man, no matter what party he belongs to or principles he espouses, an instinctive conservative. Leftists, however, particularly the leftist tentacles of the institutional octopus of hate that is strangling both civilization and freedom, would call him a bigot and an antisemite.   It is an easy trick of propaganda to portray all natural affections in the dark colors of prejudice….[but] to change the value of words is a more ambitious project. There was a time when prejudice did not mean hatred of other races….

To speak of a “conservative mind” in America is somewhat misleading. The average American does have a conservative heart, but his mind has been so addled by bad teachers, bad books, and bad ideas that he often feels guilty if he prefers to limit his charity to his neighbors, if he resents the money squandered on public schools, in he does not share in the general glee over the massive immigration that is transforming the country of his fathers into something he cannot recognize.  He is easily intimidated when the left condemns this vague, inchoate mixture of family loyalty and patriotism as the bigotry of the “extreme right. “  

Reduced to the clichés of politics, conservatives are guilty of hating and oppressing non-European racial and ethnic groups, persecuting non-Christians (especially Jews), exploiting an impoverishing the working classes, destroying the environment, and waging destructive wars. 

Leftists, by contrast, promote racial and religious tolerance, work selflessly for the welfare of the working classes, preserve the environment, and, to cap it all, they always “give peace a chance.” Leftists know this to be true, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Leftists like to apply the “fascist” label to conservatives, and, in the process, the equate fascist with Nazi, a lie they can get away with because the leftists who control our schools make sure that Americans grow up stupid, ignorant, and helpless. On the other hand, leftists scream bloody murder if their own principles are described as Marxist, socialist, or communist – which they are. 

Our [conservative] fathers and grandfathers told race jokes and belonged to restricted clubs; [leftists] fathers and grandfathers shilled for Stalin or the equally bloodthirsty Trotsky. No, we are not perfect, and yes, conservative societies have, on occasion, betrayed their deepest principles, and committed terrible crimes.  They, since the days of Robespierre, have committed mass theft and mass murder on principle. 

And, when the lack the power to kill and rob, they make do with corrupting the young with pornography; destroying marriage with feminism and homosexualism; undermining our morals with Freudianism and behaviorism; warping our sense of beauty with free verse, abstract expressionist painting, and Bauhaus architecture; and, if we dare complain, they cry, “antisemite,” as if Jackson Pollock or the Bauhaus architects were Jewish.

Yes, in addition to their other fine qualities, leftists are chronic liars about every subject they discuss, from Athenian democracy to second-hand smoke. Even the term they use to describe themselves, liberal, is a lie. American liberals are non-revolutionary socialists, and their allies to the left are unreconstructed Marxists. We ought to forgive them, I suppose, because they have no choice. When your entire worldview is based on counterfactual assumptions about human nature – the equality of the sexes, the immorality of private property and status, the artificiality of the family, etc. – you cannot help lying about everything, whether the subject under discussion is women in the military, the danger of asbestos, the “epidemic” of father-daughter incest, or the effectiveness of public education.

Why should any conservative care if he is attacked by the leftists of the $PLC, the ADL or those of the New York Times? These people have lies in their mouths, blood on their hands for the great genocides of the 20^th century, and guilt on their consciences for the seduction of the innocent and the destruction of our civilization. 

Our task, as our late friend Mel Bradford put is, is to remember who we are and stop our ears against the siren song of the revolutionists, which have proved to be not the anthems of a new dawn, but a message of hate and filth that leads to destruction.”

(Hatemongers, Thomas Fleming, Chronicles Magazine, July 2004, excerpted, pp. 10-11 – www.chroniclesmagazine.org, July 2004)     

Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin's Grave in Père Lachaise

Via Carl

Rues de Paradis

 

Judah Philip BENJAMIN

Born Saint Thomas West Indies August 6 1811

Died in Paris May 6 1884

United States Senator from Louisiana

Attorney General, Secretary of War and

Secretary of State of the Confederat States

of America. Queen's Counsellor, London

Stuff Southern Women Say

Via The Feral Irishman

LANGUAGE!

 

Nguyen Van Kiet: Awarded Navy Cross for rescue of LTC Iceal Hambleton (BAT 21)

Link

 

 Petty Officer Third Class Nguyễn Văn Kiệt and Lt. j.g. Thomas R. Norris. Norris was awarded the Medal of Honor and Nguyễn was recognized with the Navy Cross. 
 

They took an abandoned sampan and cautiously searched the river shore for two more hours without success. They reluctantly returned to their forward operating base to rest and hope they would be more successful the next night.^[1] Forward air controller Harold Icke on Bilk 11 fixed Hambleton's position during the day so Norris and Nguyen could find him that night.^[5]

On the night of 12 April, Norris and Nguyen found a deserted village and clothing which they used to disguise themselves as fishermen.^[6] They took advantage of the abandoned sampan to row quietly up the river. Even in the pitch dark and dense fog, they could see large numbers of North Vietnamese soldiers and tanks on the shoreline. Traveling upriver in the sampan, they broke out of the heavy fog and found themselves under the Cam Lo bridge. They had passed Hambleton's position more than 30 minutes ago. Turning around, they finally found Hambleton sitting in a clump of bushes, alive but partly delirious. Sunrise was coming, and although Norris thought it best to wait until dark to return downriver, Hambleton needed to be evacuated immediately. Despite the risk, they hid Hambleton in the bottom of the sampan, covered him with bamboo, and started downriver.^[1]

Their sampan was soon spotted by North Vietnamese troops, some of whom fired at them, but Norris and Nguyen could not afford to return fire. They traveled down river and Norris called in air support to eliminate the North Vietnamese shooting at them from the northern bank. They rescued Clark and Hambleton, but Walker was discovered and killed by the NVA before they could return to rescue him.
A book was written about Nguyen's heroism by William Charles Anderson, the book was later adapted into a 1988 movie, Bat*21. In 1999, after the release of considerable classified information, a second book, The Rescue of Bat 21, was published by Darrel D. Whitcomb. Nguyen emigrated to the United States, and, as of 2008, resided in Washington State.

 

   Nguyễn Văn Kiệt on left

Thomas R. Norris in 2008

Six months later, in October 1972, Norris sustained a near-fatal head wound in combat while protecting forces evacuating to his rear. A South Vietnamese soldier saw his severe head injury and left him, believing that Norris was dead. Fellow Navy SEAL Michael E. Thornton, upon hearing the news, went back intending to recover the body of his fallen comrade, only to discover that Norris was still just barely alive. Thornton was recognized with the Medal of Honor for his actions; he was the first person in more than a century to receive the Medal of Honor for saving the life of another Medal of Honor recipient. Norris received the Medal of Honor from President Gerald R. Ford in a White House ceremony on March 6, 1976.

“The Communists may have thought they defeated South Vietnam, but I have shown that they are rotten to the core with corruption.”

That's the absolute truth.  They make the Thieu government look lily white.

Link

On June 3, 2004, at Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon's Long Binh execution ground, Vietnamese mafioso Truong Van Cam was shot with four of his lieutenants for ordering the murder of a rival crime lord.
An anti-communist soldier during the Vietnam War, “Nam Cam” (“Cam the fifth sibling”) survived a communist re-education camp and ingratiated himself sufficiently with the powers  to ensconce himself as a wealthy and influential power broker within the country through the late 1970′s and 1980′s.

Nam Cam emerges from court after hearing his death sentence on June 5, 2003.

His arrest in 2001 for ordering a hit in a characteristic underworld turf war mushroomed into a vast corruption scandal, implicating a network of official protectors who ran interference for his criminal syndicate.

More than 150 people stood trial with Nam Cam — including “two expelled members of the 150-member Communist Party central committee, the former head of the state radio system, and the former director of police in Troung Nam Cam’s base of operation, Ho Chi Minh City Saigon.” (Source)

The doomed capo reportedly indulged the comfort of gloating that “the Communists may have thought they defeated South Vietnam, but I have shown that they are rotten to the core with corruption.”

Maine Public School Kids Get Lesson on Homosexual Foreplay

 Last Resistance

VERBATIM 

 

Mainers went to the polls yesterday to vote on a number of issues, but perhaps none as heated as Question 1 (that is after the heated issue of Romney v Obama).  Question 1 was an initiative to legalize same-sex marriages in the state of Maine.  Sadly, it passed by a 53% to 47% margin, making it the first time a same-sex marriage measure was passed by popular vote of the people.


In 2009, the Maine legislature passed An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom which was signed into law by Governor John Balducci.  Before the act took effect, a referendum to repeal the law was launched.  By a margin of 53% to 47%, the people of Maine voted to repeal the legislature’s same-sex marriage act.

In the summer of 2011, gay rights groups in Maine began collecting signatures to get the issue back on the ballot.  After collecting nearly double the amount of required signatures, they succeeded and Question 1 was placed on the yesterday’s ballot.

To help inform the public on the issues of same-sex marriage and homosexuality, Gorham Middle School Principal Robert Riley invited Proud Rainbow Youth of Southern Maine (PRISM) to give a presentation to the students during their Diversity Day.  Instead of the hearing the expected discussion on tolerance, the students and faculty were presented with graphic explanations of gay and lesbian sexual acts.

Needless to say, the parents in this town of about 15,000 people that lies a mere 11 miles east of Portland, are in an uproar over what their children were exposed to.  One such parent, Kristy Howard told local reporters:

“I don’t want my child taught heterosexual foreplay, let alone homosexual foreplay in school. I don’t think it’s the place.”

 Principal Riley felt everything else went well except that one ‘little’ incident, he sent a letter of apology home with every student.  However the damage has already been done and I don’t believe what happened was just an accident.  Gay activists are actively trying to recruit children to their perverted and sinful lifestyle.

Daniel Villarreal, a gay columnist wrote:

“Recruiting children?” You bet we are.  [Conservatives] accuse us of exploiting children and in response we say, ‘NOOO! We’re not gonna make kids learn about homosexuality, we swear! …But let’s face it–that’s a lie. We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it… Can we please just start admitting that we do actually want to indoctrinate kids?”

Parents be warned because the gay movement is targeting your children and actively trying to recruit them.  In states like California and Massachusetts, children are already being taught pro-homosexual curriculum.  Many public school libraries have books for the students to check-out that portray homosexuality as being more normal than traditional heterosexual relationships.

What happened in Gorham Middle School could happen in your child’s public school.  Are you prepared to fight against it or are you going to allow your children to be exposed to sexually explicit homosexual material?  You’re the parent.  You’re the one responsible for your children’s education and spiritual wellbeing.  Parents – It’s all up to you.

Florida Says It’s OK That Minorities Don’t Read Well

Last week the Florida Board of Education decided to institute a new set of standards for grading students reading prowess in their state. Florida’s new student achievement goals are designed to take into account the unique family life and socioeconomic background of different races and there effect on student reading scores. In other words different races will be graded differently because as we all know we are all products of our environment.

Florida like most states has been struggling with substandard minority reading scores for some time. Last year in the sunshine state, 69% of white students tested at grade level on the state FCAT test. Hispanics came in second at 53% while less than 40% of black students managed to prove they could read at grade level.

In an attempt to meet the terms of waivers granted to Florida (and 32 other states) from provisions of the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” (as well as bridging the minority student to non-minority student achievement gap); Florida is lowering reading standards for minority and some poor students. Apparently in Florida kids don’t have to read at the same grade level anymore especially if their black and poor. Oh brother!

More @ The Last Resistance

Top 3 Weapons To Survive The Apocalypse

Plea Deal For Jackson Jr. Would Include Jail Time

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy......... He's the culprit responsible for the libel and slander of our Confederate soldiers in the national parks.  Hope he gets committed to Bellevue.:)

 

Newsmax

VERBATIM

Jesse Jackson Jr. is currently being treated for health issues and while some have questioned whether he could ever return to Congress, a plea deal on charges of misuse of campaign funds may guarantee he does not return to Washington.

The just-re-elected congressman is negotiating a plea deal for misuse of campaign funds that would include resigning his seat in Congress, repaying the money, and spending time in jail, reported CBS Chicago.

Since June, Jackson has been on leave while receiving treatment for bi-polar disorder. He was re-elected last Tuesday despite not campaigning while taking care of his health.

Illinois Congressman Danny Davis told Reuters in October that Jackson appeared frail and emotional when he saw him and there was no way to know if he would be able to return to his seat in Congress.

"I think this rest at the Mayo Clinic may be just what the doctor ordered and may be just what he needs," Davis said. "But you can't tell."

The plea deal, currently being negotiated, would include Jackson resigning for health reasons, pleading guilty to misuse of campaign funds and repaying campaign contributions that were allegedly used for personal items.

Based on similar cases in the past, he likely will serve some jail time, according to the CBS report.


© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Dragon's Teeth, Sown.

Via WRSA

I don't see the wheel turning for 10 or 12 years, but when it does it will be an outraged and vengeful Millennial demographic, likely libertarian with no care whatsoever for social issues, that will be dragging all of our asses, Democrat and Republican alike, off to be shot.

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

What happened November 6th? Well, Obama won, if you haven't heard. What didn't happen? The White House didn't flip. The Senate didn't flip. The House didn't flip. $2 billion later, nothing much changed. The GOP garnered even more governorships, and more statehouses. No big shit there. We all know there's no power beyond Washington anymore, so those are just Miss Congeniality contests.

But what happened? Two things.

Tactically
The Democrats beat the Republicans like runaway slaves on the ground game. They hustled, they got out the vote, for better or worse they isolated demographics and played upon their fears and ignorance. That's all fair. Democrats live politics. They are community organizers. It's what they do. And they did it very well. And they had the Chicago Machine behind them, as formidable a force as politics has ever known. They steal, they commit fraud, they commit crimes. But they don't even have to, to win. They just do that for fun. Republicans can't get up enough activists for a sandlot baseball game. You can't win the game if you don't show up.

And speaking of baseball, I've voted in 10 presidential elections now. Won 5, lost 5. That's batting .500. If I'm a professional ballplayer I'm in the fucking Hall of Fame. As I am not a professional ballplayer I am the median outcome in a cosmic game of coin flips.

Strategically
This is where it gets hairy.

More @ Velociworld

Warsaw Rocked by Independence Day Riots

Via  szhaman

Media Ignore New Emails Released Before The Election Detailing Obama Energy Dept. Corruption

 

One week before the presidential election, a Congressional committee released Obama administration emails that showed a pattern of political pressure from President Barack Obama and others in his administration. The emails indicate favoritism toward Democrat politicians and donors in the awarding of federal energy loans.

The mainstream media chose not to report on the emails, even though just days before their release, Obama had flatly stated in an interview that politics played no part in awarding the loans

In the old days of hard-nosed journalism, i.e., before the Age of Obama, if the president was caught lying about his involvement in a government payola scandal, it would have been front page news and led the evening newscasts of the broadcast networks.

Not anymore.

Even with the release of an email in which an official says what, in a different media era, would become a catch phrase for administration corruption: “What’s a billion, anyhow?”

Even with the release of emails showing President Obama personally involved in awarding loans.

Even with the release of emails explicitly stating loans were given to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid win his reelection bid in Nevada in 2010.

Even with emails showing Obama donors got help from Vice President Biden in securing loans.

Even with all that and an election on the line, there was no coverage from the mainstream media. The emails were only reported by a trio of conservative media outlets: The Washington Examiner, Human Events and The Daily Caller.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released the emails, accompanied by a summary memorandum, on October 31. The emails and memorandum and other material were also made available to the public on the Internet.

Excerpts from the memorandum that failed to move the mainstream media (emphasis added):

More @ Breitbart

UPDATE: Partial Recount in Tight Florida House Race Between West and Murphy

Florida officials have ordered a partial recount in the race between Republican Allen West and his challenger Democrat Patrick Murphy. As we reported yesterday, there was over 100% turnout in several precincts in St. Lucie County, Florida. The election officials in that county announced late yesterday that there would be an emergency meeting Sunday morning at 7 AM.

It turns out this emergency meeting was set up to recount the ballots cast during early voting. It is estimated that roughly 37,000 early ballots were cast.

West, who has refused to concede the race, is currently trailing Murphy by 2,442 votes, according to the latest results from Florida Division of Elections. On its website, the agency says West has garnered 164,448 votes to Murphy’s 166,890.

"There are possible irregularities in St. Lucie County," claims Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a Florida lawyer volunteering for the West campaign who has been quoted on the issue. "On Sunday we'll have a chance to recount the early votes and that's a good start to preserving the integrity of the democratic process."

West's campaign said in a Saturday statement it was pleased with the news of the partial recount.
"This decision should help shed light on the situation of this election," the statement said. "This is the action we were seeking to ensure the results of this election were fair and accurate."

West's campaign had said earlier Saturday that issues with the voting in St. Lucie County meant the race was still undecided.

"Late on Election Night, Congressman West led by 1,700 votes," West for Congress said in a statement. "Following the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections’ decision to recount thousands of early ballots after a technical glitch, the margin shifted by 4,000. In order to ensure that votes were not doubled counted, we have requested that the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections make public the poll check-in books to ensure the numbers of ballots cast matches the numbers of voters checked-in at the polls."

More @ Townhall

Clinton Turns Down Request to Testify on Benghazi Next Week

Nothing to see here, move along now...........

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has turned down an invitation to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee next Thursday on the Benghazi attack.

A committee update this evening indicated that Michael Courts, acting director of International Affairs and Trade for the Government Accountability Office, will be testifying followed by a RAND Corp. analyst.

The committee indicated further witnesses could be added, but the State Department confirmed that Clinton won’t be one of them.

“She was asked to appear at House Foreign Affairs next week, and we have written back to the chairman to say that she’ll be on travel next week,” said department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. She did not answer a question about whether Clinton would be willing to fly back from Australia to address either the Foreign Affairs panel or the Senate and House closed-door intelligence committee hearings getting to the root of the Benghazi scandal.

“The Committee plans to hold the second segment of this hearing the week of November 26, 2012 and will request Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testify before the Committee at that time,” the Foreign Affairs Committee said in an advisory.

Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) wrote Clinton on Tuesday to demand that the State Department respond to the panel’s requests for information on Benghazi.

“It is disappointing that we have yet to receive any response from your Department and that we are receiving more information from the press than from the Administration,” Ros-Lehtinen wrote.

More @ PJ Tatler

Veteran's Day

They also serve who only teach their kids right from wrong and how to work for a living.

--Horace Smith

Invalid Macon boy's diary 1861 - 1865

Via Nan Scott

 

 Fascinating

On a blazing Wednesday in July 1862, an invalid teenager from Macon, Ga., opened the journal he was keeping to make his daily entry. “Terribly hot,” he wrote. It was so hot that beads of his sweat fell onto the page.

He tried to rub them off, but they smeared the ink. Mindful of his readers, he explained, “notwithstanding we have just eaten a nice melon . . . perspiration pours off me and drops on the book.”

 

A century and a half later, LeRoy Wiley Gresham’s smudges still mark the page, in a kind of communion with students of his remarkable record of the Civil War, the collapse of the Old South, and the last years of his privileged but afflicted life.

It is a chronicle — in neat, legible handwriting — of the excitement of the war’s early months, the seeming endlessness of the conflict and the approach of the dreaded Yankees as they steamroll through Georgia.

From his rooftop, LeRoy sees the smoke and hears the booming of cannons in the distance. At night there is the glow from burning houses.

The Library of Congress is featuring selected pages of Gresham’s little-known diary as part of an extensive display of its voluminous Civil War material to mark the sesquicentennial of the war years.
The exhibit, which opens Monday, is called “The Civil War in America,” and includes more than 200 items — maps, song sheets, letters, photographs and the contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets the night he was assassinated.

As for Gresham’s journal, numerous Civil War diaries exist, and some are famous. Those of South Carolina belle Mary Chesnut and New York lawyer George Templeton Strong are among the best known.

But Gresham’s apparently has never been published, the library said, and it offers a unique view of the war and an intimate personal story. The library acquired it in the 1980s from family descendants.
The diary also speaks about slavery and its demise — about “servants” and “valets,” always in the background and almost always referred to by first name only, Howard, Eaveline and “Mammy Dinah.”

And it is the saga, in seven volumes, of a precocious, delicate boy who was a voracious consumer of books and newspapers, but who was often confined to a special wagon that was pulled about town by slave.

Crippled by a broken left leg years before, and tormented by what sound like bedsores, and a host of other infirmities, LeRoy is exposed to a full range of Victorian remedies — opiates, whiskey, syrup of lettuce, spirits of lavender, and various powders, plasters and poultices.
Little of it works.

From his wagon, he can only watch the other children play “town ball,” a precursor to baseball. He has to be carried at times — he weighs 63 pounds — and in one case his mother drops him. He is often despondent.

“I feel more discouraged [and] less hopeful about getting well than I ever did before,” he writes on March 17, 1863, at the age of 15. “I am weaker and more helpless than I ever was.”
And on Feb. 7, 1864: “It seems to me that as I grow older, the dreary, monotonous life I lead seems more burdensome. If I just had some regular employment I could get along better.”

More @ Washington Post 

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

Via comment by Terry

The 1842 Inn

 The house, built in 1842 by John Gresham, is a fine specimen of Greek revival architecture. Mr. Gresham, a former mayor of Macon, attorney, judge and cotton merchant lived in the home until 1900 when it was purchased by the B. F. Adams family.

The Adams family made significant changes, which include extending the front porch and erecting columns as well as installing parquet floor and Victorian tile insets on the fireplaces. The Victorian Cottage, which sits across the courtyard from the main house, was moved onto the almost 2 acre property to supplement the main house in 1983. The Cottage consists of nine fully furnished guest rooms with 12-foot ceilings, original heart of pine flooring and a large front porch overlooking the courtyard.

The inn now consists of nineteen guest rooms, hospitality parlors, service facilities, as well as a courtyard and porches for entertaining. 

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28 more signatures needed

Via John Tuten

 

Demand the VMFA return the Confederate Battle Flags to the portico of the Confederate War Memorial

Sign HERE

Treason? You Decide …

Via David @ NC Renegade

We have all heard emotional charges that various public officials are ‘traitors’ or are guilty of ‘treason’. Most of us either concur, out of an emotional ‘knee-jerk’ response, or else consider the charge ridiculous on its face, all depending on our partisan position.

Our exercise in logic today is a simple one. Let’s consider the issue of treason allegedly committed by various of our public officials from a position of reason rather than emotion. First, let’s define our terms, then we can connect our ‘dots’.

Treason 1. Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, esp. the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. 2. A betrayal of trust or confidence.

The United States Constitution – the foundational law of the United States of America.
The Oath of Office: “… to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Question #1: When one elected to public office places his or her hand on a Bible and swears before God and his/her fellow citizens to protect and defend the Constitution, and then proceeds to write or support legislation in direct violation of that Constitution or issues executive orders in direct violation of that Constitution, or fails to defend the Constitution against those who do,  is that not a direct betrayal of trust or confidence? And, if that is a direct betrayal of trust that said official will uphold his/her oath to protect and defend the Constitution, does that not qualify as treason?

Question #2: Can you name a Federal elected official not guilty of treason? A state official? A local official?

Question #3: Assuming you’re having difficulty answering question #2 in the affirmative for at least a simple majority of said elected officials, what do you intend to do about it?
Remember, “Freedom isn’t free.”

$11.5K for 10:11/9:50 '84 Monte Carlo

More @ Racing Junk

Braindead populace: 53%: Husssein's highest job approval rating since July 2009

More idiocy @ Rasmussen