Wednesday, July 28, 2021

WONDERFUL! A father had a proud parent moment when his son Jake sang the National Anthem at his preschool graduation.

Disunion Sentiment in Congress in 1794


John Taylor was born in Orange County, Virginia, in 1750, one year before James Madison, and the boys were neighbors; but Taylor afterwards moved to Caroline County, where he lived for the rest of his life, and died in 1824, at the age of seventy-four years. To distinguish him from others of the same name as himself he was called John Taylor of Caroline. He was an officer in the Revolutionary War, and ranked with the foremost men of his State. He did not approve of the Constitution, but was not a member of the State Convention in which its ratification was so bitterly contested. December 12, 1792, he took a seat in the United States Senate made vacant by the resignation of Richard Henry Lee, and served until he resigned in 1794. In 1803, from October 17 to December 13, he filled an unexpired term by appointment, caused by the death of Stevens Thomson Mason, and again he served from December, 1822, to his death in August, 1824. He was in the State Legislature several times, and in 1798 introduced the famous Virginia Resolutions which Madison had prepared. He was one of the conference of Jefferson, George Nicholas, Wilson Cary Nicholas, John Breckinridge, and Madison, at which it was determined to formulate the creed which the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions announced. He was always a consistent state rights man, and the preservation of the division of power between the general and state governments was the keynote to his political belief. The federal party,” he said in one of his newspaper letters, to Thomas Ritchie, printed in *“The Spirit of Seventy-six,” March 27, 1809, “were in favor of a government founded upon a balance of power between the departments of the government, their opponents of one founded upon its division between government and the people, and between two governments.” It is not known whether he was an emancipationist, as nearly all the leaders of thought in Virginia of this period were, but he denounced any interference with slavery by the general government, and the fear that there would be such interference, if the policy of the general government should be shaped by an unchecked majority, was really the fundamental cause of his insistence upon state rights.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

*My friend and I were going to open a bar of the same name in Saigon but when we arrived the day of the takeover with two 22K BTU Carrier air conditioners, the owners wouldn't answer the door. :) Evidently they had been bought off by the competition. When we went to sell them we had a good offer, but when they found out the pair had been built in Singapore instead of the US, they backed out.

No Equality Other Than Political

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Mr. Justice [Henry] Brown, after stating the facts in the forgoing language, delivered the opinion of the court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)

“This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the State of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. (Acts 1890, No. 111, p. 152).

The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts with both the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for crime, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits certain restrictive legislation on the part of States.

More @ Circa 1865

Sandy Hook Families Offered $33 Million Settlement by Gun Maker Remington

 

Via John "This is a really bad precedent.   What is Remington thinking? From here on out, every person harmed by someone using a Remington firearm will be going to Remington with their hands out. Failing a handout, they will sue......as will every other gunmaker be sued.  Incredibly stupid move, Remington. Wait till Ford and Chevy get sued for drunk drivers who were driving their cars.......this is a VERY slippery slope, and we're already sliding."

Via Ed "This is such a bullshit - blame the gun manufacturer because somebody misused one.  We better sue baseball bat mfrs also. It's always the liberals that do these crimes- so they want laws to protect Innocent citizens from themselves- from they themselves going wacko.  We better ban all knives, also. Chefs will have to find a different way to cut food.  Actually, we better ban everything.  Ignorance prevails- look at our country's leadership. It's a pathetic joke."  
 
******************

Two of the bankrupt firearms manufacturer’s insurers are backing the offer of $3.66 million each for nine families, a person with knowledge of the case said. 

Remington Arms Co. has offered to pay nearly $33 million to settle claims that its marketing practices were in part responsible for the Sandy Hook school massacre that left 20 first-graders and six faculty dead, according to court documents.

The now-bankrupt gun maker proposed a settlement of $3.66 million apiece for nine families who lost loved ones in the 2012 shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in a series of filings made in Connecticut Superior Court Tuesday.

Josh Koskoff, a lawyer representing the families, said they were considering their next steps.

"Since this case was filed in 2014, the families’ focus has been on preventing the next Sandy Hook,” Mr. Koskoff said in a statement. “An important part of that goal has been showing banks and insurers that companies that sell assault weapons to civilians are fraught with financial risk.”

Lawyers for Remington didn’t respond to requests.
 
More @ WSJ

Remembering Anthony Bourdain and His Passion for Southeast Asian Food

 

Bourdain's mother, Gladys Bourdain, told The New York Times: "He is absolutely the last person in the world I would have ever dreamed would do something like this."[131]

Anthony Bourdain meant many things to many people. 

To those that worked with him, he was a unique storyteller, a skilled conversationalist who had the ability to talk with anyone and everyone. He traveled adventurously and extensively, inspiring people from around the world to do similarly, proving to be an unashamedly authentic voice.

But on June 8, 2018, the world lost that voice

More @ Saigoneer

GRNC: Oppose discharge ban

The latest threat to North Carolina gun rights appears to be a coordinated effort by multiple county commissions to virtually end shooting on private land, with two hearings coming up on August 5th and 12th. Only you can end this cancer before it spreads!

This new attack by gun ban leftists seems to be firearms discharge ordinances designed not to provide “reasonable public safety” as proponents claim, but instead to create wide swaths of areas within counties where the lawful discharge of firearms for training, recreation and pest control are prohibited.

The first and most immediate threat is in Guilford County, where a newly elected Democrat majority on its county commission is debating just such a discharge ban, with a public hearing scheduled for next week, August 5th.What this draconian discharge ban does:

ð  Defines anyplace where a gun is discharged, including your own land, as a “shooting range;”

ð  All but bans hunting anywhere within 150 yards of virtually any structure;

ð    Bans even shooting a rat in your own barn with a .22 rifle;

ð  Prohibits all moving targets, including not only shooting at varmints, but also simple moving targets such as a metallic “dueling tree”

ð     Bans each and every discharge of a rifle or pistol unless a berm 2 feet thick and 4 feet above the target is used; and

ð    Ends all training for concealed handgun permits or other defensive firearm training at outdoor ranges.

The Guilford commissioners will claim we are wrong, but they will be lying because the sleight of hand they are trying to pull lies within the ridiculously over-broad definitions of what constitutes a “shooting range or gallery,” as well as other definitions.

We need you to contact Guilford commissioners REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU LIVE!

This ordinance cannot be allowed to create a precedent which will undoubtedly be followed by other left-leaning county commissions.

More @ GRNC

Biden Motorcade Greeted by Jeers and Middle Finger Salutes Arriving in Pennsylvania, VIDEO

 Via sw44magnumman

 

The people of Pennsylvania showed up to greet the installed occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, upon his arrival in Pennsylvania – which he calls his home state.  The illegitimate office holder was scheduled to speak at Mack Truck Plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately for those who are attempting to manage the White House, the jeers, boos and middle finger salutes from the crowd was not exactly what they were looking for.

More @ The Last Refuge

An Ottoman supply train still resting where it was ambushed by Lawrence of Arabia 104 years ago on the Hejaz railway

Via GUNBB

           hejaz-railway-5

The Hejaz railway that ran from Damascus to Medina, through the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia, was one of the principal railroads of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and a vital route across the desert. The railway was built in 1900 at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was supposed to extend all the way to Mecca in order to facilitate pilgrimage to the Holy city. But its primary motive was to strengthen the empire’s control over the most distant provinces of the empire.

The railway reached only as far as Medina, some 400 kilometers short of its destination, when the First World War broke out and all construction works came to a grinding halt. When the Arabs, led by the strategic British officer T.E. Lawrence, better known as the Lawrence of Arabia, rose up in revolt against Turkish domination, the railway became the principal target. Today, large sections of the railway lie abandoned in the desert with tracks swallowed up by the sand, and carriages and engines toppled over and overgrown with shrubs.

More with many pictures @ Amusing Planet

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Calls Out Anti-Asian American Discrimination in U.S. During Trip to Singapore

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Reports of anti-Asian hate crimes have risen 149% in the U.S.’s 16 largest cities over the past year, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino. The biggest increase has happened in Democrat-run and dominated New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called out anti-Asian American discrimination in the United States during a trip to East Asia this week to reassure allies and partners.

“Our partnerships draw strength from our shared belief in greater openness, and our belief that people live best when they govern themselves. Now, our democratic values aren’t always easy to reach. And the United States doesn’t always get it right,” he said.

More @ Breitbart

Our Communist America To Be?

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Barring decisive intervention by Almighty God, I see no prospect of retrieving the America that was.  The enemy is not merely entrenched, he is embedded.

Our entire structure is infested with the termites of communism and worms of self aggrandizement.  Judiciary and Executive, thoroughly rotten, to the keel; Legislative has always been corrupt, and now is professionally corrupt to the nines.  Every agency and department serves the Party and its pretenders.

There is no reclaiming any of that territory lost to the enemy.  Not with the small minority of elderly people with experience of what America was rally like, when a free country.  

The enemy controls the hopelessly ignorant majority.  The mask wearing idiots, the shot takers, a menagerie of fools and dupes.  About 60% overall. The enemy has gotten away with both the greatest fraud in history, and the greatest electoral theft in American history.  They fully intend to replace
us with a more docile, undemanding population.  Immigration and the prodigious birthrate of their replacement peoples will ensure that.  That's the Plan.

There's no recovery from here.  The only option is open, armed rebellion and nobody is going there.  Period.  JFK said "Those who prevent peaceful protest, ensure open revolution" and it was true when he said it.  It's still true now, but the power of the State and the Oligarchy is orders of magnitude what it was in his day.  Back then, they had to physically follow you around, take photos, do real wiretaps, it took years to build case.  No wonder it was easier to just blow you away.  They could always make it look like a gangster hit, and make you look like you deserved it.  (They still use the technique)    
transceiver

Waiting it out is no option at all, though it seems an attractive idea, compared to close quarters combat against trained troops in the suburbs.The Soviets held sway for seventy years, the Nazis for twelve, Fascists for twenty, ChiComs for seventy themselves, Castro & Co sixty plus.  There will be no overnight restoration.  2022 will not see the chains unbound.  The GOP is no bastion of liberty or repository of hope.  You may lead them to the field, but you will not get them to charge that hill.  They are the tame 'opposition'.  The Iraqi army of politics.

Political separation is one recourse, let Texas declare her independence again, without recourse to the 'just us' system.  Prepare the ground, Arrange public referendum, - allowing ONLY TEXANS of twenty years' residence to vote.  No Calif***ian Fifth Column, no New F***ers to shit in the soup.

~~4Branch

Dems dare public to question cops and undeterred public pushes back


Surprise! Capitol officer complaining of Jan. 6 riot revealed as BLM activist

The controversial January 6 Commission opened its hearing on Capitol Hill with police officers angrily describing their confrontations with violent and vulgar Donald Trump supporters, but testimony that would normally move the public to tears comes after the same Democrat leaders who invited the officers excused months of violent riots across the country and used the Jan. 6 riot to impeach President Trump.

It did not help, either, that a black police officer who claimed rioters acted horribly racist toward him has a recent trail of praising fear-left Democrats and hating Republicans, including Trump himself.

More @ ONN

Greg Abbott Orders Texas National Guard To Begin Arresting Illegal Immigrants

 Via Billy

PHARR, TEXAS - JUNE 30: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks alongside former President Donald Trump during a tour to an unfinished section of the border wall on June 30, 2021 in Pharr, Texas. Gov. Abbott has pledged to build a state-funded border wall between Texas and Mexico as a surge of mostly Central American immigrants crossing into the United States has challenged U.S. immigration agencies. So far in 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 900,000 immigrants crossing into the United States on the southern border. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

As Abbott seeks to crack down on illegal immigration into the U.S., President Joe Biden is struggling to contain a flood of illegal immigrants crossing into the country from Mexico. On Tuesday, news broke that the Biden administration released roughly 50,000 illegal immigrants into the interior of the U.S. without scheduling a time for their asylum claims to be heard in court

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to arrest immigrants caught illegally crossing the state’s southern border from Mexico Tuesday.

Abbott outlined his order in a letter to Major General Tracy R. Norris, Adjutant General of the Texas National Guard, directing the guard to assist the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in arresting illegal immigrants.

More @ The Daily Wire

A 1944 Christmas miracle for General Patton

Via David

 

Patton used to pray nightly to a painting of two men he thought were God and Jesus but were really Civil War heroes Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Hymel said. George Sr.'s father had commanded a Confederate regiment during the Civil War and was killed in Winchester, Va.

 In early December 1944, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., commander of the United States’ 3rd Army, stood with his troops at Germany’s doorstep. He’d pushed his men across France toward Germany with furious speed during summer and early fall, but in the last months, as he drove through France’s Lorraine region toward the Saar River, progress stalled. Fuel and supplies were running short, and perhaps even more deviling, the weather wouldn’t cooperate. Driving rains had mired his troops and grounded the fighter planes and bombers needed for air support.

                                                                More @ LA Times

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll

Exclusive: Trump brushes off opinion polls showing Joe Biden in lead for  president | Reuters.com

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, sponsored by The ANTIFA by Jack Posobiec, for Wednesday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Biden’s job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 26% who Strongly Approve of the job Biden is doing and 42% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16. (see trends)

Review Of Ken Burn's Vietnam PBS Series by Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Sang: " An one-sided, half-truth documentary unworthy of watching." Repost

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 "My observation had been posted on Yahoo but was removed 15 minutes later."

 COMMENTS ON THE VIETNAM WAR DOCUMENTARY FILM

Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Sang

I was fortunate to be part of a joint PBS and local library panel to preview the Vietnam War Documentary by filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick who had spent ten years to complete the eighteen-episode series, which the PBS will air on September 17, 2017.

Although being anxious before an audience of more than 200 participants (mostly American-born except for my young assistant, Dr. Gwen Huynh) I decide to continue with the discussion thinking it is an opportunity to express a Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces soldier’s view about the war inspire of my limited language skill.

After the presentation, each of the panelists was asked one question. The Film features a North Vietnamese veteran named Bao Ninh who says that there was no winner during the Vietnam War. The moderator asked me to comment on the interviewee’s statement.

To me, in order to determine who won and who lost the war, one needs to answer three fundamental questions: (1) what was the goals of the involved parties. (2) What price did they have to pay? (3) The overall assessment of the war.

A- Goals of Involved Parties

1. According to the Pentagon Papers (Pentagon Papers is a nearly 4,000-page top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1967. An American activist and former United States military analyst, Mr. Daniel Ellsberg, released it through the New York Times in 1971. The document was declassified on May 5, 2011, and has been on display at the Library of President Nixon in California. ), the US got involved in the Vietnam War was to encompass the Communist China, not to help defend South Viet Nam's independence, which was the ruse for the US containment strategy at the time.

2. The North Vietnam’s goal was to "liberate" South Viet Nam by force and to use it as a springboard to spread International Communism throughout Southeast Asia, which was also Ho Chi Minh’s goal since 1932 when he was the leader of the Indochinese Communist Party. Le Duan, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), who was believed to have said, "We fight the Americans for the USSR and China", must have followed this goal to the letter. If so, the statement represented the true mission of the Communist leaders.

3. On the contrary, the goal of the South Vietnamese leaders was to defend the country’s independence and sovereignty. Since the North Vietnamese Communists enjoyed maximum supports from the USSR, China, the Eastern European Communist Block, and even Cuba, South Viet Nam had no other choice but accepted assistances from the United States and other capitalist countries to fight against the Communist invasion.

B. Casualties

1. US casualties included 58,307 KIAs, 1948 MIAs, 303,604 WIAs, and $168 billion spent ($1,020 billion according to some other estimate) for the war. At the peak of the war, the number of the US forces in Vietnam reached 543,000. The other sad thing about the outcome of the war was that the very people who had welcomed the US soldiers who had taken part in other foreign wars would turn around and showed their disdains for the ones returning from Vietnam. Lately, efforts have been made to rectify the wrongs of the past, but the wounds that the Vietnam vets have endured are never going to completely heal.

2. The NVA casualties included 950,765 killed in action, nearly 600,000 wounded, and an estimated 300,000 missing in action. During the war, North Vietnam was one of the five poorest countries in the world. The war also killed two million civilians in North and South Vietnams.

3. The Republic of Vietnam’s casualties included 275,000 soldiers killed in action and about 1,170,000 wounded. The number of missing persons could not be tallied because the RVN had surrendered on April 30, 1975.

C. WINNER AND LOSERS

1. From these observations, I concluded that the United States was the winner because she had achieved the strategic goal of containing Communist China, even by bargaining away the lives of others, including her own servicemen and women.

2. From the same observations, I told the audience that North Vietnam was definitely the loser. After having spent a tremendous amount of human resources including the death of nearly one million soldiers, two million civilians, and almost six-hundred thousand soldiers wounded in action and three-hundred thousand missing North Vietnam ended up dragging the whole country down the poverty pit after the war had ended. Moreover, they lost because their attempt to help China subvert the whole Southeast Asia had failed.

3. The Republic of Vietnam was the loser because it had surrendered unconditionally on April 30, 1975. According to an interview with General Frederick C. Weyand on June 12, 2006, however, the war had been lost not because of the incompetence of the ARVN, but because of the political leaders in Washington D.C. In other words, the RVN had won the battles but lost the war because of the Allies’ betrayal.

4. In conclusion, I told the audience that both North and South Vietnamese people were the losers. The Vietnam War was actually a Communist proxy war initiated by Ho Chi Minh, an internationalist, who had played the role of an enforcer of the Communist ambition of world domination. The war caused unspeakable suffering to the Vietnamese People and deep wounds to the country that have not healed 42 years after the war had ended.

To a participant’s question about the current psychological consequences of the war, I simply answered, "Forty-two years after the war has ended the winning side still considers the conquered their enemy."

Despite the purported time spent on researching and collecting materials, the film still comes across as a worn-out Communist propaganda. It still shows the picture of Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting the Viet Cong (VC) Bay Lop on the street of Saigon, the incident in which Lieutenant William Key ordered the massacre of 128 civilians, and the villagers burnt by Napalm bombs. My question is why didn’t the filmmakers show the scene of the VC shelling on March 9, 1974, that had killed 200 pupils of Cai Lay Elementary School and the massacre of almost six thousand innocent people of Hue during the VC ‘Tet’ Offensive in 1968? To the film’s claim that Napalm bombs produced by Dow Chemical Company were used to kill innocent villagers, my answer is that that was the unfortunate but unavoidable casualties of the war, any war. The Kim Phuc incident is not unlike the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Kosovo in 1999 or the "friendly fire" that killed the US and Allied forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria etc. In other words, mistakes in wars, though regrettable, are inescapable. The US mainstream media has chosen to ignore that fact and shamelessly piled on one lie after another. No wonder President Trump disdains them so much.

After the seminar, historian Bill Laurie talked with me about the fact that Bay Lop had been a terrorist who had killed six relatives of General Loan’s subordinate just before the "execution" incident. To him, General Loan action did not violate the Geneva Convention. An Unlikely Weapon  & Behead All Those Who Insult Free Speech



It would have been possible for the US to withdraw her troops from the Vietnam Theater before 1969 if the then Commander in chief of the US forces, General Westmoreland, had not applied the "search and destroy" tactics. Military commentators criticized General Westmoreland ("the General Who Lost Vietnam by the media) for his use of massive forces, tactics that are only effective when the enemy accepts the confrontation, to fight an elusive enemy who avoided large operations by moving deeper into the jungles or across the borders of Laos and Cambodia.


Had skillful commanders such as General Harold K. Johnson and General Frederick C. Weyand been in charge, perhaps the American troops could have been repatriated sooner without more casualties and the US would still have succeeded in the attempt to contain Red China. If that had happened, the casualties that both Vietnams suffered would have been less and the hatreds would not have lasted as long.

Military aid for South Vietnam also reflects the US "washing off the hand" policy. The aid package that had been at $2.8 billion in 1973 was wound down to $1 billion in 1974 and $300 million in 1975, (This was the supplemental request as How Well I Remember: 700 Million For SV in 1975 &  The Fall Of Saigon April 30, 1975: 37th Remembrance a time when SVN more than ever needed all the helps it could get to fight against the NVA invasion. The story did not end there. In December 1974, the US Congress decided to cut off all aids and the Republic of Vietnam, without means to continue the fight, succumbed to the enemy on April 30, 1975. Except for the Communist "Liberation Army" myth bragging about its soldiers "catching" the US airplanes with bare hands, no army in the world that I know of could win a war without necessary weapons and resupplies.

No one can change the history. Those who waged wars on behalf of the international Communists must accept their responsibility for the destruction of the country. History will judge their actions and our descendants will know the truth despite the Communists’ efforts to skew the historical facts.

In order to fight against China’s aggression, the Vietnamese Communists must harness the national strength by reconciling with the people as a whole, and their victims, in particular. Otherwise, they will be a party to the demise of the country.

In conclusion, this is a one-sided, half-truth documentary unworthy of watching. My observation had been posted on Yahoo but was removed 15 minutes later. Let us hope that Mr. Burns and Ms. Novick would have a change of heart and be more factual in their next project about the Vietnam War. (Fat chance as I had  predicated it would be akin to his 'Civil War'.)

For those interested, an earlier post of mine was  Vietnam War: A Guide To The Perplexed

Many articles on FNC Here