Monday, December 22, 2014

Christmas 1864: The last at the Confederate White House

The Confederate White House

Everyone has finished their Christmas banquets, exchanged gifts, with families giving enough toys to children to fill a small store. The volume of toys given by parents and others to two little toddlers can make one almost feel guilty at the largesse, though happily so at the joy of children and teenagers alike.

And then our thoughts turn to Civil War days, with which there is no comparison. Families separated, loved ones dying and dead, news of absent family difficult to obtain. It made for a less than merry day in many households, particularly in the hard-hit South.

Consider this letter written by Varina Howell Davis, wife of President Jefferson Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy. It was first published in the New York World in 1896 and has been republished many times since. It provides one of the best authentic recitations of how it really was during those dark, cold days, at the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia.

“Rice, flour, molasses and tiny pieces of meat, most of them sent to the President’s wife anonymously to be distributed to the poor, had all been weighed and issued, and the playtime of the family began, but like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky came the information that the orphans at the Episcopalian home had been promised a Christmas tree and the toys, candy and cakes must be provided, as well as one pretty prize for the most orderly girl among the orphans.”

“The kind-hearted confectioner was interviewed by our committee of managers, and he promised a certain amount of his simpler kinds of candy, which he sold easily a dollar and a half a pound, but he drew the line at cornucopias to hold it, or sugared fruits to hang on the tree, and all the other vestiges of Christmas creations which had lain on his hands for years.”


Toys for the Orphans

More @ CDN

Prince Napoleon: Liberty No Longer Sacred to Republicans

http://civilwarsaga.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/PrinceNapol%C3%A9on_Joseph_Charles_Paul_Bonaparte_painting1860.jpg

As the Southern States departed the old union to form a more perfect one, they took with them the old Constitution of the Founders -- leaving the North to its own peculiar political revolution. As Prince Napoleon observed in 1861, the North behaved as a European monarchy would, calling its unhappy subjects “rebels,” and brutally suppressing those seeking liberty.
Bernhard Thuersam, Circa1865

Liberty No Longer Sacred to Republicans

“In Washington, the field was left free to the partisans of the Union and also to the men of the Republican party—the party that led Lincoln to the presidency—because of the departure of most of the Senators and Representatives of the seceded States. Therefore, Congress and the Cabinet are in almost complete agreement as to the necessity of waging war to its bitter end. The Confederates are to be treated as rebels—as if they were the subjects of a monarchy instead of the citizens of a republican confederation. In a word, they have to be vanquished by arms, in the style familiar to old Europe.

This great determination, coinciding with the ascension of the Republican party to power, marks the beginning of a new era for American society. It launches her on a road — from which her founders and older statesmen would certainly have withdrawn –filled with dangers, but which might also lead her to supreme greatness. Mr. Lincoln and his friends seem to have decided to go ahead without worrying too much about the somber predictions of the Democratic party, which lost the last election, and which evokes, at every turn, the memories of the past — Washington, Jefferson, Monroe and Jackson.

“What are you doing?” the Democrats inquire. “You trampled down the fundamental principle, basis of our success and power — the principle which recognizes the freedom of each State within the confederation, just as each citizen is free within each State. By riveting the State to the confederation, with an indestructible chain, by denying the State a right to secede, you prepare the way for the enslavement of citizens by society and for the destruction of individualism. No liberty is sacred to you any longer.

In the name of the public good you are changing the American republic into something similar to what the Convention made of the French Republic (the ideal of political and administrative unity). We will become a pale copy of our elders rather than the precursors of a new humanity. The military element responsible for your triumph will be needed to keep you in power. You are going to travel the same road as the French Revolution, and you will be lucky if you can also find, under the scepter of a soldier of genius, order and glory in obedience instead of the degrading catastrophes illustrated before your eyes by the military regimes in Mexico and the South American Republics.”

All these historical prosopopoeias leave Mr. Lincoln’s friends rather cold. I suspect them of being rather ignorant of what is called philosophy of history. Without worrying too much about general principles, they run to where the house is burning and throw onto the fire all that they can lay their hands to in order to put it out. Their financial inventions to raise money would cause laughter even among the most ignorant in economics.”

(Prince Napoleon in America, 1861, Camille Ferri Pisani, Indiana University Press, 1959, pp. 44-46)

How Bo Dietl outsmarted four muggers & more

 How Bo Dietl outsmarted four muggers

Famed investigator Bo Dietl used his trademark tough-guy attitude to avoid being mugged by four men in Midtown.

Former NYPD detective Dietl, a Fox News consultant, was exiting beloved journo watering hole Langan’s pub near the news network’s studio in the early hours of Thursday morning after appearing on Sean Hannity’s show.

More @ Page Six

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

 Famous Cop says New York City Mayor Should Resign

“I was at a promotion ceremony yesterday at One Police Plaza and he got two people clapping for him. This guy is a disgrace. He’s divided this country and this punk Sharpton here marching around last week with those demonstrations. ‘What do we want, dead cops?’ Well, they got two dead cops. And you now what? This guy went to Cuba in 1994. He should take his wife, de Blasio and go back to Cuba and live there!”
 

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

NYPD’s Cop Union: ‘We Have Become a Wartime Police Department’ after Two Officers Slain
 
The New York Police Department has declared “war” after two officers were killed Saturday in their squad car while taking part in an anti-terrorism drill by a gunmen said to be taking revenge for the death of Eric Garner.

The accused Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who reportedly took his own life after the killings, is said to be connected to the Black Guerilla Family prison gang, who police recently warned were gunning for police.

Saying “There’s blood on many hands,” the head of the NYPD’s police union, Patrick Lynch, placed much of the blame on the Mayor’s Office and formally asked Mayor Bill de Blasio not to attend the funerals of the slain officers for appearing overly sympathetic to Eric Garner protests.

Blaine Keeps Waving the Bloody Shirt

 http://graphicwitness.org/group/pkopout.jpg

On January 10, 1876 in the United States Senate, Georgia Senator Benjamin H. Hill replied to bloody-shirt waving James Blaine’s contention that Northern soldiers were tortured in Southern prisons.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Blaine Keeps Waving the Bloody Shirt

“In 1876, eleven years after the South surrendered, Mr. James G. Blaine of Maine, stood up in Congress and poured out “a lot of hate-born lies as malignant as human tongue ever uttered or human brain ever concocted:”

“Mr. [Jefferson] Davis,” cried Mr. Blaine, “was the author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville. And I here before God, measuring my words, knowing their full intent and import, declare that neither the deeds of the Duke of Alva in the Low Country, nor the massacre of St. Bartholomew, nor the thumb screws, and the other engines of torture of the Inquisition, begin to compare in atrocity with the hideous crimes of Andersonville.”

Mr. Hill’s reply: “If nine percent of the [Northern] men in Southern prisons were starved to death by Mr. Jefferson Davis, who tortured to death the twelve percent of the Southern men in Northern prisons?” (See Secretary Stanton’s statistics).

(Truths of History, Mildred Lewis Rutherford, Southern Lion Books, 1998, pp. 100)

Temptations - Silent Night

This is my favorite version of this song. It's the most beautiful version. The "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" intro is from Floyd Cramer's medley. First released August, 1980, on the Temps. Alb. "Give Love At Christmas." The single was released in 82. The lineup for this version was: Otis Williams, Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin (born David Melvin English), Richard Street, Glenn Carl Leonard.

Obama Admin. Allowed Cuban Spy’s Sperm to Be Exported So His Wife Could Get Pregnant

Via Joe

Screen Shot 2014-12-22 at 2.48.52 PM

Cuban-Americans are seething after it was reported Monday that the Obama administration authorized an operation in which sperm from an imprisoned Cuban spy was transported to Panama for the purpose of impregnating his wife, another Cuban who many suspect of also being a spy.

The story is raising questions about whether the Obama administration went too far to accommodate the needs of a spy who was facing two life sentences in prison in the United States.

More @ The Blaze

NYC Comrade Mayor Bill de Blasio - the Reddest of the Reds

Via comment by Anonymous on Bernard Kerik: De Blasio, Sharpton 'Have Blood on ...

 

INTRODUCTION

Early Life and Name Change

Bill de Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm Jr. on May 8, 1961 in New York City and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shortly after graduating with a bachelor's degree from New York University in 1983, he legally changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, adding his mother's maiden name to his identity. In 2002 he changed his name for a second time and became Bill de Blasio.

Radical Parents

Historian Ron Radosh describes de Blasio as: (a) "a far left radical whose ancestors are the New Left and the Communists"; and (b) "a bona fide red diaper baby" who, "like many of his generation ... kept his parents' ... pro-Communist politics not far from his heart." Both of de Blasio’s parents were far leftists—most likely, members of the Communist Party USA or some of its numerous front groups. His mother, Maria de Blasio, worked in the early 1940s at the Office of War Information—a U.S. government agency staffed largely by pro-Soviet leftists who depicted the USSR in a positive light. 

Ferguson Rioters: They Better Rebuild the Businesses We Looted Or There’s ‘Gonna Be Hell to Pay’

Via Joe


Maybe I was wrong about my estimation of 80 IQs, must be lower.

Unbelievable.

The Ferguson punks who looted and burned to the ground dozens of stores during the Mike Brown riots in August and November are demanding that those businesses rebuild those wrecked stores, OR ELSE.

And of course the Progressive media laps it up and blames YOU.CBS interviewed three of these fine youths in Ferguson, Missouri this week. One protester “Gunny” warned city officials:
“To be honest, if they don’t come and restore these neighborhoods for these people, like when you gotta go travel miles to Walmart and to get gas and stuff like that, it should be right here. If they don’t restore this community for people who stay here it’s gonna be hell to pay…”
    More @ Top Right News

Video: Bike crash caused by a deer


Freak accidents happen all the time, but rarely are they caught on film. Cyclists know that they have to be extremely careful, because there is very little between them and the asphalt.

Obama Approval Among U.S. Service Members Plummets To 15%

 

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces have never had a lower opinion of President Obama, acceding to a Military Times poll of its readers published today.

Just 15 percent of active-duty Military Times readers approve of Obama, down from 35 percent in 2009 and 28 percent just last year.

More @ Townhall

Bayonets Secure Lincoln’s Re-election

 http://www.lincolncollection.org/media/19826/soldiers_voting.jpg

Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 “was closer than either the popular or electoral votes” indicated, and without the soldier vote in six crucial States, Lincoln would have lost to George B. McClellan. The slim margins of Republican victory in most States “were probably due largely to the presence of soldiers as guards and as voters at the polls,” and had Illinois, Indiana Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York’s votes gone to McClellan, “he would have had a majority in the electoral college despite Lincoln’s popular plurality.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

Bayonets Secure Lincoln’s Re-election

“Throughout the summer [of 1864] the Union prospects were in a decline. Grant’s armies, despite repeated reinforcements, made no headway, and the casualty lists from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor mounted alarmingly. Sherman, maneuvering in the mountains of Georgia, seemed totally useless. July and August saw Republican hopes at rock bottom.

Early in July . . . The [Republican] Pennsylvania Governor [Curtin] was “down on things generally,” and on the War Department in particular. Already Curtin had told Lincoln that he would not consider himself responsible for raising troops or for carrying elections. Pennsylvania was 80,000 men behind [its quota] in troops and the Governor believed the draft would meet general opposition from Republicans as well as from Democrats.

At the same time [Massachusetts Governor] John Andrew was disgusted with the situation and was hoping to find some means of getting both Lincoln and [John] Fremont to withdraw in favor of a third [Republican] candidate. The consensus seemed to be that the war languished and Lincoln would not or could not bring peace. War-weariness and a desire for peace was everywhere.

[New York Times editor Henry J.] Raymond asked [Simon] Cameron’s advice . . . let Lincoln propose to Jeff Davis that both sides disband their armies and stop the war “on the basis of recognizing the supremacy of the constitution” and refer all disputed questions to a convention of all the States! Raymond went to Washington to lay the proposal before the President, but Lincoln did not accept it.

Sherman’s victory before Atlanta reinvigorated the Republican campaign. The President wrote to Sherman to let Indiana’s soldiers, “or any part of them, go home to vote at the State election.” This was, Lincoln explained, in no sense an order. Sherman understood that it was a command. He sent soldiers home, and on election day in October the soldiers gathered at the Indiana polls. The Nineteenth Regiment of Vermont Volunteers voted in Indiana that day, but many a Democrat found his vote challenged. When the votes were counted, [Republican Governor Oliver P.] Morton had been elected by a majority of 22,000.

On that same day the need for Lincoln’s aid was illustrated in Pennsylvania. There it was thought not necessary to send the soldiers home. [Governor] Curtin . . . determined to appoint some Democratic commissioners to collect the soldiers’ votes. As the commissioners passed through Washington, however, the Democrats among them disappeared, under [Secretary of War Edwin M.] Stanton’s orders, into the Old Capitol Prison.

Lincoln conferred with Cameron and [Alexander] McClure and asked [Generals] Meade and Sherman to send 5,000 men to Pennsylvania for the November election. The generals sent 10,000, and Lincoln carried the State by nearly a 6,000 majority, while the soldiers in the field added 14,000 more.

[Illinois Governor Richard Yates] appealed to Lincoln to send troops to vote. It was essential to elect a [Republican] State Senate, three congressional districts depended on the soldiers, and even the Presidential and the State tickets were unsafe without the uniformed voters. Defeat [for the Republicans] in Illinois, added the Governor, would be worse than defeat in the field. Under such pleas the soldiers came, and Lincoln carried his home State by 189,496 to McClellan’s 158,730.

[Many] soldiers voted Democratic in their camps only to have their votes switched in the post offices. Without the soldiers New York would have remained in the Democratic column. Maryland’s vote was clearly the product of federal bayonets. Ohio was safe for Lincoln, and the election clerks at home merely guessed at the distribution of the army’s vote.”

(Lincoln and the War Governors, William B. Hesseltine, Alfred A. Knopf, 1955, pp. 376-382)

Al $harpton's Marchers: "What Do We Want? Dead Cops!" / Giuliani: Anti-Police 'Propaganda' Led to 'Assassinations'

 https://3-ps.googleusercontent.com/hk/9dO3E1tyAM9FEJoQjUgzLfLy1j/www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/xsharpton-blood-575x563.jpg.pagespeed.ic.qCGEey1UAWifIzylTHOv.jpg

As Obama civil rights advisor Al Sharpton frantically tries to distance himself from the revenge execution style slayings of two NYPD officers Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, keep in mind that just one week ago protestors at his march in New York City were chanting, "What do we want? Dead cops! When do what them? Now!"

More @ Townhall

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

The shooting deaths of New York Police Department officers Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, were assassinations that came after months of propaganda about how the police are the enemy of the black community, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Sunday.

More @ Newsmax

Gun Control Cultist Calls For Children To Steal Parents’ Firearms, Bring Them To Schools


Director Rejina Sincic has created a disturbing video, advocating that teens commits multiple felonies—several of which could lead to injury or death through negligent discharge of the weapon—because of her own hysterical, irrational fear of firearms.

In the video, a boy steals an unholstered (presumably loaded) firearm from his mother’s room, drops it unsecured into his bookbag, and then carries it to school. After class the boy pulls the pistol out of his bookbag and puts it on his startled teacher’s desk, saying, “Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house.”

Police on alert across America after murder of NYPD officers

 http://static3.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2052062.1419119515!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/gang21n-7-web.jpg

Wear bulletproof vests. Avoid posting inflammatory statements on social media. Don't make arrests unless you have to. Don't patrol alone.

Those are some of the warnings police departments and unions around the country are giving to the rank-and-file after two NYPD officers were ambushed and shot in their patrol car in broad daylight Saturday afternoon.

More @ Fox

Top 5 Guns for Santa

 

Does Santa carry? I have no idea if jolly old St. Nick packs heat while he is out spreading joy on Christmas Eve. If not, he should think about picking himself up a gift while he is in town. I am talking about a handgun for protecting himself, Mrs. Clause, the reindeer and the elves. The North Pole isn’t exactly the most hospitable environment. Other than the cold, there are the polar bears to contend with, and not the cute cuddly ones in the Coca-Cola commercials. There is also the abominable snowman to think about. And if Superman’s Fortress of Solitude is really up in the Santa’s neck of the polar waste, he might encounter all manner of evil villains out to prove their mettle against the Man of Steel.

5 handguns that will get the job done up in the Arctic.

 1 Freedom Arms Model 83

More @ Guns America

Congress quietly saved internet freedom in CROmnibus

Via Sioux

 http://www.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2014-12/193624_5_.jpg

The $1.014-trillion Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 (HR 83) may have been a 1,200-page cave-in on funding containing crony-capitalism goodies for the lobbyist class, but at least one gem was buried in the manure.  Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal spotted it:  The U.S. Congress has saved the Internet from President Obama. The White House had planned to end American protection for online freedom next year, but Congress used its power of the purse in the recent omnibus budget bill to nix the plan. That should delay any change at least until 2017. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting elected president on a platform of putting the Internet at risk.

Alabama town comes together to defy atheist group’s targeting of Nativity

Via Jeffery

 "Rally at the Manger" in Rainbow City, Alabama (Photo: Rep. Mack Butler)

The perpetually offended out-of-state atheists group that recently targeted an Alabama town’s Christmas parade and football game prayers is back again, this time going after another Alabama town’s Nativity scene.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation recently sent a letter to the mayor of Rainbow City, Alabama, urging him to remove the Nativity scene currently located at City Hall.

‘Race Pimp’: Hollywood Actor Excoriates Al Sharpton Following Murder of NYPD Officers — and Has Something Pointed to Say About the Second Amendment

Via Joe

 http://static1.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2053257.1419261741!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/woods23n-4-web.jpg

Actor James Woods sounded off Sunday against Al Starpton, President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in the wake of the murder of two NYPD officers over the weekend, taking to Twitter to ask if “race pimp Sharpton” is “eating caviar” following their tragic deaths.

“I’m putting wings on pigs today” – Cop assassin Ismaaiyl Brinsley,” Woods wrote, quoting the shooter’s horrific comments on social media. “Is Race Pimp Sharpton eating caviar this morning?”

More @ The Blaze

Collards

Via Sioux "I just fixed my first-ever batch of collard greens- made them with a smoked turkey wing- delish!"

Gloucester Cathedral Choir - In the Bleak Midwinter



Yearly

Driver Shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ While Running Down City Pedestrians in a Half-Hour Spree, 11 Injured

Via Joe

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2014/12/22/1227164/042968-261230a4-8960-11e4-a68f-3946861404f8.jpg

A driver shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest”) while running down pedestrians in Dijon, France, Reuters reported.

The man injured 11 people Sunday, two seriously, during a 30-minute spree in which he targeted pedestrians in five different parts of the city, the BBC reported, citing French media. The lives of the two people seriously injured are reportedly not in danger.

Witnesses said the driver, about 40, also indicated he was “acting for the children of Palestine”, an unnamed source close to the investigation told AFP news agency. He was arrested and is “apparently imbalanced,” having spent time in a psychiatric hospital.

More @ The Blaze