Donald Trump tells dogs to "sit down"

Dated

Saigon girls before 1975

Via Long Điền‎ 

 

Gun Battle at Ban Karai Pass: Fire in the Night Sky

Late in evening of February 22, 1967,  at the Royal Thai/U.S. Air Commando air base  at Nakhon Phanom (NKP), Thailand, fire trucks, ambulances, and other emergency, service, and Air Police vehicles rolled into place on the taxiways of the 6,000-foot pierced steel planking runway. One of the 606th Air Commando squadron’s A-26 attack-bombers returning from a combat mission on the border of Laos and North Vietnam had been badly damaged in a ferocious gun battle with North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns. With their landing gear unusable, one of their two engines shut down, a fuel leak, and one of its main landing gear tires burning, their choices were grim.

More @ The Times Examiner

Stranger in a Strange Land (Excellent)

 

 The Abbeville Institute

 Cordial relations between the sexes–between ladies and gentlemen–is non-existent. 

I recently relocated–with any luck, temporarily–to a sprawling metroplex of a city of almost seven million, within an even more massive state.

I’d believed I understood globalism and loss of identity. I thought I had made an uneasy peace with the reality of modernism and destruction of memory.  I had no idea.  Not only is there no regional culture here—one of common language, mores and manners–there is not even an American one.

Stores, restaurants, and other establishments ring loudly with the sound of Spanish. New to the city, I ask questions, and rarely chance upon a fluent English speaker.  Even in the upper-income neighborhood in which I’m staying, it is rare to see an American flag.  Get lost and venture to outlying neighborhoods and whole blocks of stores have signage only in Spanish. Even the do-it-yourself car wash speaks to you in Spanish, though I keep telling it to stop. 

There is a distinct feeling that almost everyone has come from somewhere else, and not a similar place.  An untattooed, unpierced body is infrequent.  Pink is the most common hair color. Amorphous masses of bodies abound–male, female, or something in between. Cordial relations between the sexes–between ladies and gentlemen–is non-existent.  Instead, there’s a strange ambiguity that feels desolate. The atypical Normals look at each other with recognition.  And a kind of wistfulness. 

Courtesy is rare.  A Louisiana girl, I am accustomed to pleasant greetings and warmth, a shared desire to connect.  Here, greetings are often met with silence or suspicion.  Even a drive-through smoothie shop is an empty experience; I recently attempted small talk at the window, trying mightily to connect.  I left feeling unseen, and sad. 

I expressed this disquietude one evening to a friend of common origins.  We were at a large eatery with loud music playing. A mass of activity was before us but nothing resembling authenticity.  A place with no name. I told my friend I was searching for a shared American culture. That place, I reminded him, where people come together though common conviction, values, and rituals. Where memory unites. That thing that regional culture used to offer.

“You’ll meet all kinds of people,” he assured me. “I don’t want to meet all kinds,” I replied. “I just want to meet my kind.”    

He didn’t understand me. But when I looked closely at his visage, I detected a melancholy, one born of resignation.  He, too, through necessity, settled here. One becomes accustomed to that which one cannot change.

 All over America, in small towns and large—but Southern towns are bigger targets—leftist transplants are scheming with dreams of transformation. They know how we should live, what our mode of transportation should be, what we should eat, how much property we should own, where we should park, how many children we should have (not many), how they should be educated, and whom we should befriend. The list is endless. There is, of course, a policy for each important item, if we could just wake up and recognize their genius.

What they’re not interested in is creating real, organic, economic growth. They’re not proponents of individual prosperity that would make it possible for people to stay home, find good jobs, rear families. That would come dangerously close to front porches, rocking chairs, human connection, and Gramps and Grandma just down the block.  It would mean tradition.  Instead, big government do-gooders love crony capitalism, which benefits a handful, but to their way of thinking, the right handful. These modern-day carpetbaggers should be resisted like the vermin they are.

Me, I’m still taking my stand.  I want to—and will again–live in a place where people remember who I am, who know where I began. Where folks remember-or know someone who remembers – that my father smoked cigars while he watched football, his children cheering, that my grandfather was a crusty old businessman who’d give you the shirt off his back, that the smell of summer magnolia is most pungent right after a rain. Where someone still remembers my French-Canadian grandmother, Maman, the unexpected mention of her bringing me to tears.  A place where the poignant hymn of growing up may be sung and past, but somehow still lingers.  When a man was still a man, and not afraid to be one.  When children were called home at dusk and heard,” Put your toys away, wash your hands, respect your mother, and “Yes, sir, every time.”

When I was about 20, a boy we had grown up with in the neighborhood took his life.  My grown brother wept, lying on the floor at my father’s feet, my father’s hand upon his head, until he was expiated, cleansed. It was a display of the purest, most exquisite grief.

My mother is an enigma.  A stunning, Catholic, South Louisiana belle, she met my father in little theatre in North Louisiana.  He was a gregarious Baptist, and Marine-Corp tough.  He thought perhaps they wouldn’t marry when my mother’s brother, Uncle Rob, under the influence, provoked him almost to blows one night. My father was restrained, but said angrily, “I could have killed him.”  “I would certainly have understood that,” she replied. The wedding came off, with so many Catholic clergy on the altar my father said no man had ever been so married in the history of the world. 
Uncle Rob, a former World War II pilot, and my father, completed their lives the best of friends.     
When we grew up, my seven brothers regaled us with tales of their boyhood, their lifelong buddies adding to their stories of mayhem and madness.  One of my seven brothers, a virtuoso athlete, had a habit of straddling onto a sturdy magnolia branch outside his second-story bedroom window, a branch that led to the trunk, and then to a near-perfect drop into the darkness after curfew. My parents never tired of recounting the expletives they heard one night when my brother realized the branch was gone.  It has never grown back.

My four sisters and I are very different. Our lives are beset with imperfections and the human failures that deeply afflict every life.  But we are connected by one undeniable truth, maybe the only one that matters.  We saw true sacrifice and devotion.  We saw grit. Even as girls, we learned how to appreciate the best of manhood.    
 
I will live again, and die, where the old dreams, greatest joys, and saddest tears are remembered. In that place where memory lives.

No, this is not home, can never be. I will live again where my beloved dead are buried, put flowers on their grave, and by the mere act of remembering, bring them to life again. Where people recognize each other, even if we are not all the same. Most of all, I want to live where yesterday is revered, and where heroism is still honored. 

If we lose common language and culture, we betray those whose lives made ours possible. We turn our backs on them. There can be no deeper shame.

Chesterton wrote, “Tradition is the democracy of the dead.” If, so, we have denied our forebearers their justice.  We have wronged them. We have capitulated too easily to the spirit of the age.
I am in this city for my livelihood. I often wonder if it’s a Faustian bargain for which my soul will ever forgive me.

I’d believed I understood globalism and loss of identity. I thought I had made an uneasy peace with the reality of modernism and destruction of memory.  I had no idea.  Not only is there no regional culture here—one of common language, mores and manners–there is not even an American one.

About Leslie Alexander

Leslie Alexander is the descendent of a Confederate veteran and a Revolutionary War soldier. She brought a small bit of Louisiana earth with her to Dallas. More from Leslie Alexander

Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson Reveals He Was Hired to Investigate Trump in “Fall of 2015” – Claims Memos From Steele Dossier Made Their Way ‘Directly to Obama’

 

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson revealed in a new book titled, “Crime in Progress” which is set to be released next month that he was first hired to investigate Donald Trump “in the fall of 2015.”

Simpson also claims that memos from the Christopher Steele dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton and her camp made its way directly “to President Obama.”

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Nolte: Watch Chuck Todd Admit He’s Suppressing News

 

 So all of a sudden, if you are “only” a businessman who flew around the world on the vice president’s airplane to cut sweet, foreign business deals for yourself, you are an untouchable private citizen the media won’t ever report on? No matter how shady the deals? No matter how much the vice president’s influence was involved, you are off-limits to media reporting?

The public unraveling of Chuck “the presidential race is over” Todd continued last week when the Meet the Press moderator bragged about suppressing news.

This was actually the second time last week that proved President Trump has thoroughly broken Chuck Todd, has undone the poor guy to a point where he keeps publicly humiliating himself with bizarre behavior.

More @ Breitbart

PART 1: CNN Insider Blows Whistle on Network President Jeff Zucker’s Personal Vendetta Against POTUS

Rand Paul Calls For Probe Into 4 Democratic Senators Over Threats To Ukraine

 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) called for a probe into four Democratic Senators on Sunday over a letter that they sent to Ukraine in 2018 that threatened to withhold aid from the country if it did not continue to investigate President Donald Trump

.More @ The Daily Wire

Commentary: Data Disrupts the Deep State Narrative

Via Terry

by Robin Burk

The deep state, and the administrative elites more broadly, are in deep digital trouble. And so are their current narratives. But it’s not clear they fully realize it yet.

We all love a good story. Stories delight us, reassure us, carry us away to another world. They are hypnotic. We narrow our focus, ignore our outer senses, and experience an imagined reality instead.
Most of us no longer spend cold winter nights sitting close to a fire as the old stories are told in the dark—as a voice hidden in the shadows embellishes the tale, frightening or entrancing us. But we’re surrounded by stories nonetheless.

More @ The Tennessee Star

ARMY M/SGT MARK ALLEN PASSES.

Via  Susan Lee

 

 Master Sgt. Mark Allen of Loganville, Ga. was shot in the head by a Taliban sniper in Afghanistan while on a mission to recover celebrated left-wing icon, military deserter, and traitor to his Country and Team, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on July 9, 2009.

He was left paralyzed, unable to speak, wheelchair bound and dependent on 24 hour care.

6 Fellow Soldiers eventually were killed in the search: Staff Sergeant Clayton Bowen, 29, of San Antonio, Texas; Private 1st Class Morris Walker, 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; Staff Sergeant Kurt Curtiss, 27, of Murray, Utah; 2nd Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, 34, of Dallas, Texas; Staff Sergeant Michael Murphrey, 25, of Snyder, Texas; and Private 1st Class Matthew Martinek, 20, of DeKalb, Ill.

Bergdahl was later recovered after being exchanged for 5 senior high ranking Taliban terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay by the Obama Caliphate.

The event was triumphantly celebrated in the White House Rose Garden by The Grand Mufti, Barack Obama, on May 31, 2014, along with Bergdahl's parents. It was widely attended and acclaimed by the liberal mainstream media.

“Sgt. Bergdahl has missed birthdays and holidays and the simple moments with family and friends.” ~ Barack Obama

“Sgt. Bergdahl Served with Honor and Distinction. ~ Susan Rice

“He’s a dirty rotten traitor." ~ Presidential candidate Donald Trump

Bergdahl faced up to life imprisonment, but was instead dishonorably discharged, reduced in rank, and fined $1,000 per month from his pay for ten months with no prison time.

Shannon Allen wept as she testified at Bergdahl's sentencing, "We can't even hold hands anymore unless I pry open his hand and place mine in there. He's lost me as a wife. Essentially, instead of being his wife, I'm his caregiver."

The judge did not give his reasons for the sentence.

After sentencing, President Trump tweeted, "The decision on Sergeant Bergdahl is a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military."

Allen is survived by his wife, Shannon; son, Cody; and daughter, Journey, who according to Shannon, loved to climb into his wheelchair and sit on his lap.

He was 46.

Newsletter 016

DOJ IG Report to be released Friday Oct. 18th - More than FISA abuse involved

Via Billy

Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo told Congressman Doug Collins (R-GA) on Sunday that the DOJ IG report on FISA abuse will be released Friday October 18.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been working on a report documenting the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] abuses by Obama’s corrupt DOJ and FBI during the 2016 election targeting Donald Trump.

“It’s as thick as a telephone book,” Bartiromo said. “More than just FISA abuse.”

More @ The Gateway Pundit

Mexico Military Police Halt 2,000-Strong Migrant Caravan on Its Way to US

Via Billy

HUEHUETAN, Mexico—Mexico’s military police on Saturday halted and turned back a caravan of up to 2,000 migrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America, hours after they embarked toward the United States, according to Reuters witnesses.

The migrants had departed before dawn from Tapachula in the southern state of Chiapas near Guatemala despite an ongoing crackdown on migration on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

More @ The Epoch Times