Saturday, November 18, 2017

The Twilight of the Confederacy

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The infamous “Wilson Raid” into Alabama and the burning of Tuscaloosa in early April 1865 had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the war, as by March the Southern Confederacy had been all but overrun and Lee was exhausted in Virginia. Opposing Wilson’s 14,000 well-armed and equipped troopers were Nathan Bedford Forrest’s ill-equipped and scattered cavalry numbering 5,000.

Chaplain Basil Manly of Alabama was the brother of Charles Manly, the last Whig governor of North Carolina and serving 1849 to 1851. The cruel act of destroying barns and farm implements as well as killing or carrying away livestock was intended to hasten the onset of starvation among Southern civilians.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

The Twilight of the Confederacy

“In the spring of 1865, the Yankees returned to Alabama. By this point, not even the South’s most feared cavalryman, Nathan Bedford Forrest, could stop the 14,000 Federal horsemen under Major General James H. Wilson. As Forrest tried to stay between the Yankees and Selma, Wilson ordered one of his subordinates . . . to take the city of Tuscaloosa, to divert some of the Confederates 6,000 troops.

[The enemy’s] 2,000 cavalrymen swept aside the few militiamen who tried to stop them, captured the town and, while pillaging the area “burned the buildings used for public purposes at the university,” including the library, from which only a few items were saved.

The Yankees also “took away all the horse and mules they could find. They camped in our streets, that night, and next morning they proceeded to burn the foundry and factory, the miter sheds, and the bridge across the river.”

The Federals left the city just ahead of the Confederate cavalry sent to intercept them, having successfully diverted Forrest, who was soon defeated by the twenty-seven-year-old Wilson. Wilson’s victory over the notorious Forrest would have made him a hero two years earlier, but was simply a mop-up operation in the spring of 1865.

On May 23, a “body of Yankees under Col. Marsh, which have been here about a week, took their departure. The soldiers “took all the good horses and mules they could get; without compensation. Corn, meat, etc., they took from private parties, at pleasure . . .” The Northern troops were said “to be from Illinois,” and [Basil] Manly had heard that “they took a Negro out, just before they left, who had stolen a [Northern] captain’s horse, etc., and shot him.”

In the spring of 1866, [North Carolina] Governor [Charles] Manly [1795-1871] wrote to a family friend, describing what had happened the year before. His plantation, Ingleside, [near Raleigh], to which he retired in the late 1850s, was destroyed by “Sherman’s Devils.” Coming onto the property, the Yankee troops “tore the House all to pieces, broke down the plastering and ceiling, all the doors and windows, stole all the furniture, all my books and papers and the old grain omnibus with all its contents – took every mule, horse, cow, sheep and poultry, all my corn fodder and hay, burnt up fences and destroyed [my] farming tools.”

Worse still, “a great part of this villainy was perpetrated after the surrender” of the Confederacy, but, as Governor Manly complained, “no redress could be obtained.”

(Chaplain of the Confederacy, Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South, A. James Fuller, LSU Press, 2000, excerpts, pp. 304-306)

Do Conservatives And Liberals Have Enough in Common to Keep A Country Together Anymore? (No)

Via Billy
 

Country Tea Party/The Founders Would Have Been Done By Now 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” – The Declaration of Independence

Remember the woman who was fired for flipping off Trump’s motorcade? Well, she has been deluged with job offers from liberals and a Gofundme set up in her name has raised 117k dollars and counting. This seems like a small thing, but it’s indicative of where we are as a society.

There was a time when doing something trashy like flipping off a presidential motorcade would be frowned upon -- not because everyone loves the President, but because no one with class would do anything like that. Those days are gone and they’ve been replaced by non-stop trolling, outright hatred of people with differing opinions and grotesque tribalism. Gridlock has become the rule of the day in Congress for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that the Right and Left simply don’t agree on much anymore.

More @ Townhall

NC fire department refused to take down its Confederate flag. Now there’s an ultimatum.

Via Billy

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Commissioners in Montgomery County say they will restrict funding to a rural volunteer fire department that for months has refused to take down the Confederate flag that waves over it.

Debate over the Uwharrie Volunteer Fire Department’s flag has simmered for months but complaints about it go back years, according to news accounts. The department, organized as a nonprofit corporation in 1983, occupies a privately owned building but gets $19,000 a year in county money plus $400,000 annually for fire trucks.

County commissioners had previously asked the department to remove the flag. This week they delivered an ultimatum.


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article184981043.html#storylink=cpyMore @ Charlotte ObserverM

A Marine Hero - Rescue at Hill 845: The story behind "Dec. 28, 1969 Que Son Mountains, Vietnam."

Via comment by Roy Goldammer on Dec. 28, 1969 Que Son Mountains, Vietnam

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by Greg Johnson, a retired CH-46 Driver, lives in Pennsylvania. He made many of these Med-evac runs. He currently is a college professor.  
 
The Noble Warrior: Rescue at Hill 845 
  
Glancing around at the clutter in my attic recently, I decided it was time to sort through  some of the unpacked boxes associated with my military retirement and move to  Pennsylvania. A fond smile crossed my face as I gingerly pulled out aging flight logbooks. As I randomly scanned the yellowing  pages, I was surprised by the vivid and  detailed recall the numerous sorties inscribed on those pages evoked. Aviation seems to have that effect on the mind.  
 
Locked in a trance with my memories, it was the flutter of a small newspaper clipping,  surrendering to gravity, as it fell from between the pages, that snapped the spell of the moment and brought me back to reality.  The clipping was a one-line notice from the Navy Times announcing the death of my friend, David Cummings, during 1988. When I first cut out the obituary notice and tucked it away in my logbook, I mentally promised myself that one day I would tell the story of his heroics--in another place and time...    

(Vietnam 1969) 

More @ VHPA

The left's guilt trip

Via Billy


The left's inability to deal with its white guilt has undermined our national solidarity.

How did we come to be such a divided nation?  Mark Zuckerberg recently apologized for his social media's role.  Many blame the news media, some the economy.  The division is usually referred to as "ideological."  These are secondary factors.  The basic driver of the enmity is the convoluted means by which the left deals with its self-imposed white guilt.

The left tends to view people not as individuals, but as members of groups.  Leftists embrace identity politics, which lends itself to manipulation of ethnic, racial, and gender-specific groups like so many men on a chessboard.  This artificial construct of society creates an ideal infrastructure for the assignment of guilt.  The leftist elite group of secular, educated, affluent whites, cheerleaders of the new left, has been indoctrinated into believing that white privilege and white supremacist groups are the root cause of all social injustices.  These people wallow in group white guilt.  They are the ugly Americans, bearing the guilt of a racist nation, a land discovered by a racist, claimed by genocide, founded by slave-owners, built on slavery, and steeped in segregation.  America is guilty of imperialistic greed and globally usurps people of color.  "The system" is a chauvinistic old white males' club.  They need to show to themselves and others that they are innocent of and reject such bigotry.  They are the good people – civilized, enlightened, tolerant, and morally superior.

Birth Tax? 80 Percent of Obamacare Mandate Paid by Those Making Less Than $50,000

Via Billy

MIAMI, FL - NOVEMBER 01: Isabel Diaz Tinoco (L) and Jose Luis Tinoco speak with Otto Hernandez, an insurance agent from Sunshine Life and Health Advisors, as they shop for insurance under the Affordable Care Act at a store setup in the Mall of Americas on November 1, 2017 in Miami, Florida. The open enrollment period to sign up for a health plan under the Affordable Care Act started today and runs until Dec. 15. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

While Barack Obama was illegally funneling billions of dollars to big corporations in the form of health insurance companies, his indefensible Obamacare mandate still stands as a brutal tax that almost exclusively bleeds the working and middle class.

It works like this: If you are not covered by health insurance, if you do not buy something you are obligated by our fascist government to buy simply for the sin of being born, the federal government penalizes you with a tax of $675 for each adult in your household, plus an additional $347.50 for each child or a maximum penalty of $2085. Or… You will pay 2.5 percent of your adjusted gross income if that comes out to a higher amount than the per person penalty.

According to Forbes, the IRS reports that 6.67 million families are getting soaked by the Obamacare mandate. A full 5.3 million (or 80 percent) of those make less than $50,000 a year. Almost all of those families, 6.6 million of the 6.67 million, make less than $200,000 annually.

More @ Breitbart

Apple Diversity Chief Steps Down For Saying White People Can Be Diverse

Via Billy

Denise Young Smith became head of vice president of diversity and inclusion in May but she  claimed white men were as diverse as women and the LGBT community. She was forced to go

She gets fired, but still apologizes.  What a bimbo.

Apple's diversity chief is stepping down just six months after taking on the job after declaring that being minority or a woman are not the only criteria for diversity.

Denise Young Smith only took on the role of vice president of diversity and inclusion in May. 

'There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they're going to be diverse too because they're going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation,' the inaugural diversity chief said during a One Young World Summit in Bogotá, Colombia.

'Diversity is the human experience,' she said. 'I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.'

Practical Efficiency and the Death of the US

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Today, we see that justice is completely co-opted by politics, a condition no republic can tolerate, but that is very apparent, even necessary, in a democracy. Is this why the leftists continue to insist that America is a "democracy?" It is not, but the United States is constantly referred to by senators and representatives as such.

A republic depends on the deliberation of competent individuals to write whatever laws are called for by the conditions of society, not at the whim of the mob. A democracy is, by definition, a mob demanding laws by popular whim, it is a very unruly and dangerous thing.

Virginia First (& Lee!)

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I. THE name First given to the territory occupied by the present United States was Virginia. It was bestowed upon the Country by Elizabeth, greatest of English queens. The United States of America are mere words of description. They are not a name. The rightful and historic name of this great Republic is “Virginia.” We must get back to it, if the Country’s name is to have any real significance.

II. Virginia was the First colony of Great Britain, and her successful settlement furnished the inspiration to English colonization everywhere. For it was the wise Lord Bacon who said that, “As in the arts and sciences the ‘first invention’ is of more consequence than all the improvements afterwards, so in kingdoms or plantations, the first foundation or plantation is of more dignity than all that followeth.” 

III. 


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My Great Aunt Dixie added the poem below to her painting and tribute to Lee.

He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.

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Dedication on Translation of Homer’s Iliad 

by Philip Stanhope Worsley

  οἶος γὰρ ἐρύετο Ἴλιον Ἕκτωρ – Iliad, VI – 403.

 

The grand old bard that never dies,
Receive him in our English tongue!
I send thee, but with weeping eyes,
The story that he sung.

Thy Troy is fallen–thy dear land
Is marred beneath the spoiler’s heel–
I cannot trust my trembling hand
To write the things I feel.

Ah, realm of tears!–but let her bear
This blazon to the end of time:
No nation rose so white and fair,
None fell so pure of crime.

The widow’s moan, the orphan’s wail,
Come round thee; but in truth be strong!
Eternal Right, though all else fail,
Can never be made wrong.

An Angel’s heart, an angel’s mouth,
Not Homer’s, could alone for me
Hymn well the great Confederate South–
Virginia first, and Lee.

Roy Moore: Gloria Allred’s Refusal to Release Yearbook Proves Allegations Are ‘Completely Untrue’

Via Mike

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Attorney and activist Gloria Allred’s repeated refusal to immediately release to the custody of an independent examiner the original copy of a yearbook at the center of national controversy proves that “what they have alleged is completely untrue,” senatorial candidate Roy Moore stated in an interview.

The yearbook in question contains the only piece of physical evidence to be presented in the cases of numerous women who have gone public with stories alleging inappropriate conduct between Moore and teenage girls. Moore has strenuously denied the accusations.

Moore specifically pointed to the initials “D.A.” that appear after the signature on the yearbook to further demonstrate that the yearbook inscription and signature represent what he described as a forgery and “complete fabrication.”

More @ Breitbart

The Tax Bill

Via Ryan 


Raise The Black Flag


The federal tax reform coming out of Congress, spearheaded by the White House Office of Management & Budget and Congressional Republicans, masterfully eliminates state and local tax deductions, which amounts to a huge tax hike on Democratic blue states from the Northeast to Illinois to the Left Coast, shifting the beneficiaries of the federal income tax cut primarily to the GOP political base in low-tax GOP-majority states.


Thisis black flag politics in an age of schadenfreude right out of Steve Bannon’s playbook and would make Niccoli Machiavelli blush! The political Right is taking Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals’ prescriptive counsel to heart and turning it on its head for ultra-conservative ends.

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Secretive Liberal Donor Summit Increases Security, Changes Itinerary Following Free Beacon Report

Via Billy

Deep-pocketed donors meet in California to plot 2018 'resistance' and game plan

Members of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive dark money liberal donor network, appear to have moved to increase security presence and alter its schedule at its fall donor summit following a Washington Free Beacon report released Friday morning based off the group's internal documents.

The high-dollar progressive donors, who each vow to direct at least $200,000 in funding to approved left-wing groups of the alliance, are currently gathered at the posh La Costa Resort located in Carlsbad, Calif., for its three-day fall investment conference to plot their 2018 "resistance" and game plan.

Ted Cruz: Democrats' Moore-Franken double standard 'more than a little rich'

Via Billy

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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, condemned Democrats for remaining silent on the sexual assault allegations against Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., while being quick to condemn Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

"It is more than a little rich" that Democrats who have been speaking out against Roy Moore are "suddenly in witness protection when it concerns one of their own," Cruz said of the matter during a radio interview Friday, according to Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune.

Gettysburg Police address "credible and violent" threat made against Remembrance Parade

Via Billy

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Gettysburg Police and federal authorities are investigating a threat to the Gettysburg Remembrance Parade.

Gettysburg Police Chief Joe Dougherty says the threat was stated in a letter to the Gettysburg Times newspaper. Newspaper staff reported the threat to police who deemed the threat "credible and violent."

While police haven't provided details about the nature of the threat, they are taking precautions for one of the most anticipated events in the town.

"I read it and it gives me concern," says Dougherty. "With the way things are in the country today, we didn't want to take a chance and not over prepare."

This isn't the first threat to events in Gettysburg, Dougherty added, citing recent demonstrations by Antifa groups.

More @ 21

Dec. 28, 1969 Que Son Mountains, Vietnam

Via Quan Nguyen Thanh

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On Dec. 28, 1969 Capt. Roger Henry and Lt. Dave Cummings (Marine Cobra pilots with HML-367 at Marble Mt.) were flying cover for a CH-46 that could not pick up a wounded Marine because of bad weather and low cloud cover in the Que Son Mts. After an hour of trying to find the zone and position their Cobra gunship for the pickup they set down and Lt. Cummings leapt out of the Cobra and put the wounded man in his seat. The picture shows how Lt. Cummings rode back to the Navy hospital in DaNang. A week later Capt. Henry and Lt. Toby Gritz repeated an identical type of rescue during another medivac.