Friday, March 29, 2019

West Wing Reads

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The Trump-Russia Collusion Hall of Shame

“The news that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III ‘did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government’ has left a lot of people in Washington with a lot of explaining to do,” Marc Thiessen writes in The Washington Post.

The worst offenders are those who had access to classified intelligence and lied that they had seen actual evidence of collusion, Thiessen explains. “We have long since passed the point where Americans expect objectivity from the press. But we should hold our elected and appointed officials handling sensitive national security issues to a higher standard.”

Click here to read more.

“Catherine Toney began February in prison and ended the month with a job at Walmart after White House adviser Jared Kushner called the Arkansas-based retailer on her behalf,” Steven Nelson writes in the Washington Examiner.. “Toney, 55, is believed to be the first woman freed by the FIRST STEP Act, which President Trump signed in December.”

“The Mueller report confirms that the Obama administration, without evidence, turned the surveillance powers of the federal government against the presidential campaign of the party out of power,” James Freeman writes in The Wall Street Journal. “It’s time for Mr. Obama, who oddly receives few mentions in stories about his government’s spying on associates of the 2016 Trump campaign, to say what he knew and did not know about the targeting of his party’s opponents.”

“Support for a southern border wall among conservatives has jumped since President Trump came to office, reaching a new high of 99 percent,” Paul Bedard reports in the Washington Examiner. “The survey . . . found that support for Trump’s border wall has increased 85 percent since he became president.”

Drew Dix on Bao:"It was a humiliating way for a warrior to go and I often think of him"



I had a picture posted of Bao eating but somehow it got deleted and I can't find it online.  He's sitting at a circular table eating out of a rice bowl (he's the only one in the picture) with chopsticks in case anyone has better luck.  Thanks. A case of beer to anyone who finds it! :)

The book is excellent, but ends with a sad note. One of his warrior's, Bao, went into the hills to continue fighting the Communists after the end. Years later, the Communists told Bao's sister that if he and his men turned themselves in, then they would grant them amnesty. Unfortunately, he believed them, and when he came to Chau Doc to surrender, they immediately took him to the marketplace and promptly executed him. Drew Dix ends his book with the follow words. "It was a humiliating way for a warrior to go and I often think of him" 

Watch as 60,000 Bump Stocks Are Destroyed


This Tuesday marked the launch of a new holiday, “National Destroy Your Bump Stock Day.” To celebrate the occasion, 60,000 bump stocks were crushed by an industrial strength shredder at a recycling facility in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) oversaw the destruction of the reciprocating stocks, which were supplied by Texas-based retailer RW Arms.

More @ Guns America

Michael Avenatti, Pedophilia And A Fainting Heiress: NXIVM Sex-Cult Trial Gets Surreal

Via John


Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman had a dramatic day in court Wednesday where the accused NXIVM sex-cult financier fainted in response to being asked if she'd secretly retained lawyer Michael Avenatti.

The 39-year-old daughter of late Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman (whose funeral Hillary Clinton spoke at) pleaded not guilty last July to charges of racketeering, money laundering and identity theft for NXIVM - a secretive multi-level marketing company founded by Keith Raniere, who was arrested last March along with Smallville actress Allison Mack on federal charges which include sex trafficking, forced labor, wire fraud conspiracy, human trafficking and other counts.

Mack allegedly procured women for Raniere - who required that prospective "slaves" upload compromising collateral into a Dropbox account. One such recruit-turned-coach was India Oxenberg - daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg, who met with prosecutors in New York in late 2017 to present evidence against Raniere.

More @ Zero Hedge

A German's View on Islam

Via Mike

Image result for "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke 1729-1797

Worth reading because this is by far the best explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His references to past history are accurate and clear. The author of this email is Dr. Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist--a man, whose family was German aristocracy prior t...o World War II, and owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of our world had come.

My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual, prior to World War II, was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians, most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt. Yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Islamic prayers have now been introduced into Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa too while the Lord's Prayer was removed (due to being so offensive?! To whom? Not to the vast majority of Canadians!).

The Islamic way is only peaceful until the fanatics move in.

In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food products in your local supermarket. Foods on aircraft have the halal emblem, just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding throughout the world.

In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of ?no-go? zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuses to acknowledge British law.
As for we who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts -- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Anyone who doubts the seriousness of this issue and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand.

So, I beg you, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on in the hope that thousands, world-wide, read this, think about it, and send it on - before it's too late . . .. because we remained silent

Thursday, March 28, 2019

The French Lady: A Most Agreeable Gentleman


“Fatti Maschii Parole Femine

In July of 1861, Union troops aboard the Chesapeake Bay steamer the Mary Washington found the “privateer” Colonel Richard Thomas Zarvona hiding in one of her cabins.  Aided by some sympathetic passengers, he had removed the bottom of each drawer of a dresser and had curled himself up inside of it.  Zarvona’s arrest brought to an end a brief but brilliant career in the Southern forces.  With a two-day expedition on the lower Chesapeake in June of that same year, he had stunned a complacent North and delivered to the South one of her earliest naval victories.         

Zarvona was born Richard Thomas in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. His boyhood home, the Patuxent River plantation Mattapany, had been the site of a late 17th century battle between loyalists to Lord Baltimore and Protestant rebels who wanted “to proclaim the new king and queen.” Because it was a tradition among the wealthy families of Southern Maryland, Thomas likely attended Charlotte Hall Military Academy, the alma mater of Raphael Semmes and Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. At sixteen Thomas entered West Point, but at the end of his first year—during which he accumulated 189 demerits—he left, and, to the relief of the Academic Board, did not return. Traveling abroad for a few years—believed to have been a soldier of fortune in the Far East and Italy—he was back home at Mattapany when Lincoln’s troops began moving into Maryland in April of 1861.   

Desecrating Graves in Raleigh

Image result for Women of North Carolina, Confederate Veteran, May 1898,

The Ladies Association of Wake County, North Carolina was formed as the Northern commander in occupied Raleigh ordered Southern dead removed from their graves or he would have them dug up and the remains thrown into a nearby roadway. Gen. Lawrence ‘O’B. Branch’s wife, during the early occupation of Raleigh, overheard that all Southern officers above the rank of captain were to be hung, which included her husband.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide

Desecrating Graves in Raleigh

“The following extracts were made from a paper by Mrs. M.L. Shipp, in the woman’s edition of the [Raleigh] News and Observer, May 20, 1895, in regard to the most prominent association of the State: “The Ladies Memorial Association of Wake County was formed in 1865, when it was necessary to remove from the grounds of the Pettigrew Hospital the remains of the Confederate soldiers buried there.

It was but a short while after the federals took possession of Raleigh before the Mayor was notified that they admired the spot where rested he Confederate dead, and ordered that they be moved at once, or they would be thrown out in the country road.

A town meeting was called, and the association formed, Mrs. L. O’B. Branch being made President . . . A resting place [at Oakwood] was selected for the reinterment of the beloved dead, and, with the help of the young men and boys of the town, the work was successfully accomplished. The graves were comparatively few at first, but none were safe from Sherman’s “bummers,” as there was scarcely a new-made grave anywhere but what was opened by these men, in search of treasures . . .

Many Confederate dead from the country were moved this spot, and the grounds were laid off and improved by [Sergeant] Hamilton, a soldier of the Confederate army who lost both eyes from a wound. To raise funds to care for the Confederate dead and erect a monument to their memory . . . it was reported that contraband articles such as Confederate flags, a strand of Gen. Lee’s hair, pictures of President Davis or any Confederate general . . . [the constant fear was] the sudden appearance of a bluecoat with orders to search the room for these contraband articles.”

(Women of North Carolina, Confederate Veteran, May 1898, excerpts pg. 227)

[Photos] The Small-Town Placidity of Hue in 1966


Little did they know that the Communist would massacre 8,000 of them two years later.


Neat perpendicular lines of trees that make up the Imperial Palace grounds, the meandering Perfume River hugging central Hue, clusters of red-roofed houses like tiny Lego pieces scattered across a bed of green: the aerial view of Hue in the 1960s evokes a sense of small-town placidity.

Of all metropolises in Vietnam, Hue is among the few that have managed to resist the lure of towering high-rises. In the span of decades since the photos in this collection were taken, the central city’s skyline hasn’t changed all that much. Every morning, throngs of students in áo dài and white shirts still cross Truong Tien Bridge to get to school while elsewhere at the city’s many historical landmarks, tourists amble along the many tree-filled pathways to marvel at past architectural genius.

Taken by American soldier Ted Dexter in 1966, these images show a serene and orderly Hue, a far cry from the hammajang neighborhoods of Saigon during the same era.

More @ Saigoneer

Nellie Ohr met Christopher Steele at Mayflower Hotel the day before FBI's Trump-Russia investigation began

Image result for Nellie Ohr met Christopher Steele at Mayflower Hotel the day before FBI's Trump-Russia investigation began

Nellie Ohr — Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s wife — met with Trump dossier author and former British spy Christopher Steele the day before the FBI launched its Trump-Russia investigation.

The meeting took place at the Mayflower Hotel, which was described by President Harry Truman as "Washington's second-best address." President John F. Kennedy once kept an apartment — and a mistress — there. In 2008, Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York used an assumed name to book room 871 and meet a prostitute.

A newly released congressional transcript reveals her research on connections between Russia and President Trump, the Trump family, and Trump associates while she worked at Fusion GPS. She declined to answer most questions about her husband, who served as an unofficial back channel between Steele and the FBI.

DFC Winner Nguyen Quy An, Kingbee 219th / T, is welcomed at Travis California Air Force Base

Via KhaiCo Vu

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