Saturday, August 11, 2018
The Final Takeoff
Via KhaiCo
IN MEMORY OF Lieutenant NGUYEN MANH DUNG (VNAF's 516th Fighter Squadron)
1946 - April 30, 1975
In 1970, Lt. Nguyen was assigned to the 516th Fighter Squadron, 1st Air Division in Da Nang after completing flight training in the US. He was one of the last Vietnamese fighter pilots who flew the A-37B Dragonfly to fight courageously against the advancing North Vietnamese troops (NVAs) with T-54 tanks just before Saigon was overrun.
In 1972, his A-37B was shot down by anti-aircraft fire while he provided aerial fire support to ground units (the South VN Marine). However, he managed to bail out to safety, during the NVAs Easter Offensive.
On March 28, 1975, while Da Nang air base was in chaos, he was assigned to reinforce the 6th Air Division in Pleiku and later, in Phu Cat. This air base was evacuated thereafter.
1946 - April 30, 1975
In 1970, Lt. Nguyen was assigned to the 516th Fighter Squadron, 1st Air Division in Da Nang after completing flight training in the US. He was one of the last Vietnamese fighter pilots who flew the A-37B Dragonfly to fight courageously against the advancing North Vietnamese troops (NVAs) with T-54 tanks just before Saigon was overrun.
In 1972, his A-37B was shot down by anti-aircraft fire while he provided aerial fire support to ground units (the South VN Marine). However, he managed to bail out to safety, during the NVAs Easter Offensive.
On March 28, 1975, while Da Nang air base was in chaos, he was assigned to reinforce the 6th Air Division in Pleiku and later, in Phu Cat. This air base was evacuated thereafter.
More @ VNAFMAMN
Surveillance captures 'assault' rifle shots fired into sky
Via comment by Reborn on Today's Youth
St. Louis police released surveillance video of individuals carrying and firing weapons at a packed North City gas station parking lot.
‘Cruising’ is described as young people hanging out with friends and showing of their cars in public places. Now, police have noticed a trend in ‘armed cruising.’
Police have released video of people carrying assault rifles and firing them off into the air at the Energy Express Travel Center- Phillips 66 gas station located on North Broadway and Grand.
St. Louis police released surveillance video of individuals carrying and firing weapons at a packed North City gas station parking lot.
‘Cruising’ is described as young people hanging out with friends and showing of their cars in public places. Now, police have noticed a trend in ‘armed cruising.’
Police have released video of people carrying assault rifles and firing them off into the air at the Energy Express Travel Center- Phillips 66 gas station located on North Broadway and Grand.
Lee In The Mountains, By Donald Davidson: Re-post NamSouth 2008
Poem by Donald Davidson (1893-1968) in his own words. Originally written in 1938, eight years after his participation in writing "I'll Take My Stand" with the other Fugitive Agrarians, and the same year as his masterful "Attack on Leviathan."
I thought of my friend Bazz and decided to
post again. I sent it to him once and he replied that every time he
read this, tears would come. Gone way too young.
Bazz, his wife Rachel and Dixie at
General Pender's grave at Calvary Episcopal church in Tarboro when they
were our house guests some years ago.
Walking into the shadows, walking alone
Where the sun falls through the ruined boughs of locust
Up to the president's office. . . .Hearing the voices
Whisper, Hush, it is General Lee! And strangely
Hearing my own voice say, Good morning, boys.
(Don't get up. You are early. It is long
Before the bell. You will have long to wait
On these cold steps. . . .)
The young have time to wait
But soldiers' faces under their tossing flags
Lift no more by any road or field,
And I am spent with old wars and new sorrow.
Walking the rocky path, where steps decay
And the paint cracks and grass eats on the stone.
It is not General Lee, young men. . .
It is Robert Lee in a dark civilian suit who walks,
An outlaw fumbling for the latch, a voice
Commanding in a dream where no flag flies.
My father's house is taken and his hearth
Left to the candle-drippings where the ashes
Whirl at a chimney-breath on the cold stone.
I can hardly remember my father's look, I cannot
Answer his voice as he calls farewell in the misty
Mounting where riders gather at gates.
He was old then--I was a child--his hand
Held out for mine, some daybreak snatched away,
And he rode out, a broken man. Now let
His lone grave keep, surer than cypress roots,
The vow I made beside him. God too late
Unseals to certain eyes the drift
Of time and the hopes of men and a sacred cause.
The fortune of the Lees goes with the land
Whose sons will keep it still. My mother
Told me much. She sat among the candles,
Fingering the Memoirs, now so long unread.
And as my pen moves on across the page
Her voice comes back, a murmuring distillation
Of old Virginia times now faint and gone,
The hurt of all that was and cannot be.
Why did my father write? I know he saw
History clutched as a wraith out of blowing mist
Where tongues are loud, and a glut of little souls
Laps at the too much blood and the burning house.
He would have his say, but I shall not have mine.
What I do is only a son's devoir
To a lost father. Let him only speak.
The rest must pass to men who never knew
(But on a written page) the strike of armies,
And never heard the long Confederate cry
Charge through the muzzling smoke or saw the bright
Eyes of the beardless boys go up to death.
It is Robert Lee who writes with his father's hand--
The rest must go unsaid and the lips be locked.
If all were told, as it cannot be told--
If all the dread opinion of the heart
Now could speak, now in the shame and torment
Lashing the bound and trampled States--
If a word were said, as it cannot be said--
I see clear waters run in Virginia's Valley
And in the house the weeping of young women
Rises no more. The waves of grain begin.
The Shenandoah is golden with a new grain.
The Blue Ridge, crowned with a haze of light,
Thunders no more. The horse is at plough. The rifle
Returns to the chimney crotch and the hunter's hand.
And nothing else than this? Was it for this
That on an April day we stacked our arms
Obedient to a soldier's trust? To lie
Ground by heels of little men,
Forever maimed, defeated, lost, impugned?
And was I then betrayed? Did I betray?
If it were said, as it still might be said--
If it were said, and a word should run like fire,
Like living fire into the roots of grass,
The sunken flag would kindle on wild hills,
The brooding hearts would waken, and the dream
Stir like a crippled phantom under the pines,
And this torn earth would quicken into shouting
Beneath the feet of the ragged bands—
The pen
Turns to the waiting page, the sword
Bows to the rust that cankers and the silence.
Among these boys whose eyes lift up to mine
Within gray walls where droning wasps repeat
A hollow reveille, I still must face,
Day after day, the courier with his summons
Once more to surrender, now to surrender all.
Without arms or men I stand, but with knowledge only
I face what long I saw, before others knew,
When Pickett's men streamed back, and I heard the tangled
Cry of the Wilderness wounded, bloody with doom.
The mountains, once I said, in the little room
At Richmond, by the huddled fire, but still
The President shook his head. The mountains wait,
I said, in the long beat and rattle of siege
At cratered Petersburg. Too late
We sought the mountains and those people came.
And Lee is in the mountains now, beyond Appomatox,
Listening long for voices that will never speak
Again; hearing the hoofbeats that come and go and fade
Without a stop, without a brown hand lifting
The tent-flap, or a bugle call at dawn,
Or ever on the long white road the flag
Of Jackson's quick brigades. I am alone,
Trapped, consenting, taken at last in mountains.
It is not the bugle now, or the long roll beating.
The simple stroke of a chapel bell forbids
The hurtling dream, recalls the lonely mind.
Young men, the God of your fathers is a just
And merciful God Who in this blood once shed
On your green altars measures out all days,
And measures out the grace
Whereby alone we live;
And in His might He waits,
Brooding within the certitude of time,
To bring this lost forsaken valor
And the fierce faith undying
And the love quenchless
To flower among the hills to which we cleave,
To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee,
Never forsaking, never denying
His children and His children's children forever
Unto all generations of the faithful heart.
A Minority Party Blunders into War
William H. Seward lost the Republican presidential nomination to a political novice from Illinois, and was quietly licking his wounds while that novice was ignoring the secession crisis in Springfield. As Seward was the creation and protégé of New York newspaperman Thurlow Weed, he might have exerted party leadership to bring on a constitutional convention of the States to properly settle the issues. Tweed was no friend of secession, but saw signs that the conservative South was open to negotiation – as the Crittenden Compromise offered. Seward deferred to Lincoln, and Lincoln stumbled into war.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org The Great American Political Divide
A Minority Party Blunders into War
“Aside from misconceiving the importance of the secession movement, the Republicans were also placed at a great disadvantage by their lack of experience as a majority party and their lack of a leader to chart their course for them. The crisis overtook them before they could remedy these defects.
It demanded that they produce a formula to save the Union, and made this demand at a time when they had never even borne the responsibility of appointing a postmaster. They were yet a minority party, not destined to assume office for three months to come.
They had never been anything other than a minority party, skilled in opposition tactics, steeped in opposition psychology, unused to responsibility, unaccustomed to the formulation of policy. Unprepared as they were to cope with a crisis, they clung to their nominal position as a minority group and shrank from taking affirmative action. The future belonged to them; they alone could pledge it; and consequently they alone could wield the initiative.
This handicap might have been overcome by clear-cut and decisive leadership. But in the moment when an unexpected crisis and unfamiliar responsibility fell simultaneously upon Republican congressmen, they found themselves with no unquestioned leader. Abraham Lincoln was, of course, the elected chief, but he had been silent for more than half a year.
Mr. Lincoln was, in the eyes of many simply an ex-congressman from Illinois, now President-elect . . . Certainly they gave no sincere allegiance to the unknown quantity from Springfield, and if anyone held the position of leadership it was Lincoln’s rival, William H. Seward. Seward had been the leader of the Republican party, and especially of the Republicans in Congress, for nearly six years . . . and probably the most intelligent member on the Republican side of the Senate.
The moral grandeur of “lost causes” held little appeal for him. Consequently, he became a superb politician, a master of artifice, equivocation, and silence. With Lincoln silent in Springfield, the public gaze turned upon Seward, the leader in Congress, and, as rumor had it, the next Secretary of State.
Had Seward been prepared to act vigorously at this juncture, he might have exerted an enormous influence. But he was, himself, inhibited at this critical moment by his reticence in assuming leadership so soon after his defeat for the [presidential] nomination, by his underestimate of the crisis, and by his anxiety not to take any step that would impair his prospective influence with the new administration.
Amid this welter of confusion [in Republican ranks], Congress at last convened [in] joint session [to hear President James Buchanan] set forth his belief that the States cannot legally secede, but that the Federal government could not legally restrain them; in it he recommended that Congress call a constitutional convention . . .”
(Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, David M. Potter, Yale University Press, 1942, excerpts pp. 80-82)
Happy Days
My Brother Henry with his wife Jessica and Daughters Antonia (L) and Claudia (R).
(Clickable)
(Clickable)
South Africa risks 'Zimbabwe-style land chaos'
Via Billy
Markets reacted negatively and the currency, the rand, has continued to plummet over the last week.
This is because the plan has invited comparisons with the chaotic land reform programme across the Limpopo River in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which saw scenes of violent evictions of mainly white farmers.
Shockwaves are still being felt in
South Africa after President Cyril Ramaphosa's controversial
announcement that the country's constitution is to be changed to
explicitly allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.
This is because the plan has invited comparisons with the chaotic land reform programme across the Limpopo River in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which saw scenes of violent evictions of mainly white farmers.
More @ BBC
Zogby: Secessionist Sentiment Remains a Plurality Among Likely Voters
Amidst the growing intensity and louder calls for independence around the globe, John Zogby Strategies once again conducted a nationwide poll on the topic over the July 4thholiday. We asked 1,001 likely voters the following question:
Which of the following is closer to your view?
Statement A: If a majority of residents within a given state prefer to have the final say over their destiny without the control of Washington D.C., then let them have it – it is their right.
Statement B: If residents within a given state were to take such a drastic measure and secede from the United States, the Federal Government would be justified sending in the military to prevent secession from taking place.
More @ LRC
COMING SOON TO THE USA? A Month Before Election Sweden’s Leftist Govt. Obtains Right to Silence Critics on Facebook
Via Billy
A month before the upcoming elections Sweden’s Social Democrats party obtained the approval from Facebook to silence opposing voices.
Voice of Europe reported:Sweden’s government has been given a direct hotline to Facebook to remove “unreasonable things” and “problematic campaigns”, news outlet Samhällsnytt reports, and this is just in time to silence their opponents in the upcoming elections.
More @ The Gateway Pundit
Stolen Plane In Seattle Crashes After F-15 Engages In Chase, Reports Say
A stolen plane has crashed in Seattle after at least one military fighter aircraft engaged in chasing it, according to multiple local media outlets.
Seattle–Tacoma International Airport reported that "An airline employee conducted an unauthorized takeoff without passengers at Sea-Tac; aircraft has crashed in south Puget Sound."
"We've confirmed a Horizon Air Q400 that had an unauthorized takeoff from SeaTac around 8pm has gone down near Ketron Island in Pierce County, WA," Alaska Airlines said in a statement. "We're working to confirm who was on board, we believe there were no guests or crew on board other than the person operating the plane."
More with videos @ The Daily Wire