COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Today is the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War


View of the flag-raising over Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, Charleston, South Carolina, April 14, 1865, with the arrival of Major General Robert Anderson at the end of the Civil War.

Today is the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.

It marks one-hundred and fifty years since shots were fired at Fort Sumter, SC, the beginning of the Civil War. You can bet the liberal media and the Left will portray this and following anniversaries to suit their past and current agendas.

Regardless of how and why it really happened, the re-interpretation of the roots of The Civil War begins today, as will the meaning of its conclusion. It will be a three year onslaught of the truth to twist those  events that cannot be disputed to fit the current PC agenda which can. Our children will not grow wiser but will be more indoctrinated as the full weight of teacher unions falls into their predictable formation of malleable truth.  Actual truth will have as much a chance of surviving the next three years as a gut-shot Confederate soldier at Antietam had of  surviving three nights.

42 comments:

  1. The UNION fought and died, paid for with blood and treasure to put an end to slavery. Many wealthy NORTHERN industries were destroyed by the UNION putting an end to it.

    Coupled with the 40 acres and a mule, the Emancipation Proclamation both did what was needed.

    Black America OWES the UNION a thank you for their liberation.

    If they seek redress for slavery? I'd suggest go talk to the ARABS who conducted the majority of african slave sales.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We could give any African American a ticket to LIBERIA if they seek redress for their ancestors slavery..

    It was founded and colonized by freed American slaves with the help of a private organization called the American Colonization Society in 1821-1822, on the premise that former American slaves would have greater freedom and equality there.[5]
    Slaves freed from slave ships were also sent there instead of being repatriated to their countries of origin.[6] These colonists formed an elite group in Liberian society, and, in 1847, they founded the Republic of Liberia, establishing a government modeled on that of the United States, naming Monrovia, their capital city, after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States and a prominent supporter of the colonization.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe (such as Iberia and southern Italy) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa. People traded were not limited to a certain color, ethnicity, or religion and included Arabs and Berbers, especially in its early days.
    Later, during the 8th and 9th centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, most of the slaves were Slavic Eastern Europeans (called Saqaliba). However, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of regions and included Mediterranean peoples, Persians, Turks, peoples from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, Berbers from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of African origins.
    Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa, until slavery was officially abolished in 1970

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jeeze - it was only about 85 years in the past when some of us here were born.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hostilities broke out when Rufus's ancestors tried to impose a Federal Health Care system on all the states.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The religious practices, social customs and cultural standards of the Americo-Liberians had their roots in the antebellum American South. These ideals strongly influenced the attitudes of the settlers toward the indigenous African people. The new nation, as they perceived it, was coextensive with the settler community and with those Africans who were assimilated into it. Mutual mistrust and hostility between the "Americans" along the coast and the "Natives" of the interior was a recurrent theme in the country's history. The Americo-Liberian minority worked to dominate the native people, whom they considered savage primitives. The immigrants named the country "Liberia", which in Latin means "Land of the Free", as an homage to their freedom from slavery.

    Continuing WiO's link, the first sentence above conceals an unconfortable truth which is some of the American blacks tried to set up a slave society there themselves.

    dwr

    ReplyDelete
  7. April 12 was a big day in history.

    1864 – Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.

    1865 – Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.

    1945 – FDR dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.

    1954 – Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in New York City.

    1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.

    1961 – The Russian (Soviet)
    cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).

    1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Saudis are cutting oil production…just to show us they still care.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 1954 – Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in New York City.

    The beginning of our fall?.....

    dwr

    ReplyDelete

  10. There have been only four other occasions over the last century when equity valuations were as high as they are now, according to a variant of the price-earnings ratio that has a wide following in academic circles.


    The late 1920s, right before the 1929 stock market crash

    The mid-1960s, prior to the 16-year period in which the Dow went nowhere in nominal terms and was decimated in inflation-adjusted terms

    The late 1990s, just prior to the popping of the internet bubble

    The period leading up to the October 2007 stock market high, just prior to the Great Recession and associated credit crunch

    ReplyDelete
  11. Trump could blow the whole thing out of the water if he runs as an Independent, allowing Obama to win again. His ego could be the downfall of the country, worse even than Rock Around The Clock. We can't stand another four years of this.

    dwr

    ReplyDelete
  12. Die then.

    Or suck it up.

    The United States will not fall apart if Obama is reelected. It has not fallen lower than it was, in November of 2008. In fact the economy has been in recovery, the DJIA reclaiming lost ground.

    Unemployment is falling, not the US.

    Certainly the country is not any worse off than it would have been, if that conservative "Maverick" McCain had been elected.

    The "problem" is the unchecked power of the Federals, not the President that wields it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Rock Around The Clock

    I can't stand this damned condo. Nice little unit but the folks upstairs - whites - party around the clock. One Saturday night was the last straw, after 7 hours of what sounded like barbells bouncing on the floor, boom blasters, and drunken shouting, I'd had enough. Got up the next morning, waded through over 40 Bud Light cans strewn around, and straws (sniffing coke?) and went and filed an anonymous (!) complaint with the condo association. Was told when they got back to me the owner was kicking them out after the semester, just when I'm leaving for the east. Hope the dotter has better neighbors. These long cold winter nights here have always tended people towards authentic drunkeness.

    dwr

    ReplyDelete
  14. Them damned "Federals", that you pimped for. rat's here, I'm goin' back to bed.



    dwr

    ReplyDelete
  15. Top tax rates on ordinary income, dividends, estates, and gifts will remain at or near historically low levels for at least the next two years. That's thanks in part to legislation passed in December 2010 by the 111th Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.

    "This is clearly far and away the most generous tax situation that's existed," says Gregory D. Singer, a national managing director of the wealth management group at AllianceBernstein (AB) in New York. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

    For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate—what they actually pay—fell from almost 30 percent in 1995 to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29 percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.

    ReplyDelete
  16. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan has demanded that the United States steeply reduce the number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Operations forces working in Pakistan, and that it halt C.I.A. drone strikes aimed at militants in northwest Pakistan. The request was a sign of the near collapse of cooperation between the two testy allies.
    NYTimes

    ReplyDelete
  17. The Sauds cut back on oil production and the Pakistani want US out of their country.

    We must be winning.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I'd rather suck it up, than constantly being a whiner and complainer.

    The Democrats in the Congress buying into the "Wolf Emergency".

    That is the telling point, those that want to remove wolves from the Endangered Species list are Democrats and Socialists

    ReplyDelete
  19. The battle between the Federal government and the people of the various States, part of the historic truth that will be overlooked on the Sesquentennial of the War of Northern Aggression.

    Or, as would be more accurate
    The War of Federal Aggression.

    ReplyDelete
  20. .

    It's kind of hard to argue with the rat this morning.

    I'm going back to bed.

    .

    ReplyDelete
  21. Read:
    "The Coming Fury" by Bruce Catton.

    Slavery was an after thought, as a cause of the Civil War.

    That it now is the celebrated cause of that conflict, revisionism that has been going on for 146 years.

    ReplyDelete
  22. .

    Saudis are cutting oil production…just to show us they still care.

    Jeez, Deuce. You know I'm a quiet guy and rarely complain about much. However, I am bemused by your posting style. At times, you post entire columns that require 3 or 4 separate posts due to length. Then you turn around and give us statements like the one above with no attribution.

    The comment itself is interesting in spite of the fact that the FT reported less than a week ago that the Saudis had increased production.

    I could find no mention of it in Google, the WaPo, or the NYT.

    Where did you see it?

    .

    ReplyDelete
  23. Interesting comments by some that dont have a clue about what they talk of...

    "The United States will not fall apart if Obama is reelected. It has not fallen lower than it was, in November of 2008. In fact the economy has been in recovery, the DJIA reclaiming lost ground. "


    Somehow the DJIA is the measurement of the nation's recovery?

    Somehow the person spouting such nonsense certainly KNOWS that the DOW is not a "fixed" set of stocks. The companies are removed and replaced...

    I would also think the spouter of such nonsense would concede (that person wont) that the actual share prices of the LIMITED number of companies that represent the DJIA share prices have been inflated do to BOTh the decline of the value of the dollar and the injection of BILLIONS via QE2 and suck into the market....

    But dont question the those that sound like Cliff Clavin of Cheers...

    Just accept the fact that 99% of what is spouted is pure nonsense...

    ReplyDelete
  24. Democrats, Socialists, and Gag Reflex. Wolves should be hunted to control the population where it is needed.

    Hunters should by the tag and spend the money, injecting revenue into the state and fed coffers. Let the states and feds set the quota limit, just as it does with other game animals.

    I know many, many people who feel the same way, and they ain't Democrats or Socialists.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Tuesday April 12, 2011 10:54:13 PM GMT


    SAUDI-OIL/ (UPDATE 1)
    * Saudi cuts output back to around 8.5 million bpd -sources

    * Kingdom pumped 9-9.2 million bpd in March on Libya outage

    (Adds background on Saudi production commitment)

    DUBAI/KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, April 12 (Reuters) - Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia has quietly cut production by around 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), two Saudi-based industry sources said, from its output increase in March when it offset lost Libyan crude.

    The kingdom produced 9-9.2 million bpd during at least part of March, a third industry source said.

    "Saudi is now producing around 8.5 to 8.6 million bpd, and the reason for the drop is just slower market demand," said a Saudi-based industry source.

    The sources would not say when output was reduced.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I sometimes post with my mobile phone. Therefore the brevity, never fiction, unless it deals with TBB Wolf.

    ReplyDelete
  27. The Saudi announcement did make MSNBC

    ReplyDelete
  28. Demand for gasoline has declined in th U.S. for 5 straight weeks according to Mastercard.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Wolves are just the current issue, as concerns the Federal management of the various States in the Union.

    One either believes the Federals should be micro-managers of State affairs, or not.

    Those that think that the Federals writ is to preserve the "National Heritage" are Socialists.

    Those that believe private property is the cornerstone of US exceptionalism are not.

    ReplyDelete
  30. The market always responds Well Ahead of the API numbers (due out this afternoon.) I'm guessing someone leaked a really "bearish" report.

    ReplyDelete
  31. The IMF, yesterday, lowered U.S. and Global 2011 Growth Estimates.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Nay Quirk, arguing with him is not hard, it's just that sleep is much more profitable.

    desert rat said...
    Wolves are just the current issue, as concerns the Federal management of the various States in the Union.

    One either believes the Federals should be micro-managers of State affairs, or not.

    Those that think that the Federals writ is to preserve the "National Heritage" are Socialists.

    Those that believe private property is the cornerstone of US exceptionalism are not.


    Who really wants to argue with such simplicity? It ain't worth it.

    dwr

    ReplyDelete
  33. .

    In fact the economy has been in recovery, the DJIA reclaiming lost ground.

    It is interesting to note that the percentage of leverage (barrowing to invest in stocks) is at its second highest level ever.

    When the FED sets it up where you can barrow at such low interest rates it makes sense to leverage up.

    Until it doesn't.

    (I've set up stop limit orders on all my stocks and am starting to move more into cash.)

    .

    .

    ReplyDelete
  34. Pick the yardsticks you prefer.

    That the Federals manipulate the economy, beyond question. The question revolves around how they do the job.

    The Republicans, when they controlled the Government, well, they fumbled. The Democrats have manipulated a recovery, of sorts.

    The long term trends, not good.
    However, in the long term, we're all dead.

    Enjoy life, while you can.

    ReplyDelete
  35. USA Today - ‎

    Donald Trump says he will "probably" run for president as an independent if he doesn't win the Republican nomination.


    Reality television stars, they sure are entertaining.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Donald's TV ratings really did trump Mrs Palin's.

    A three way race, shades of 1860.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Given that there was and still is no defined legal procedure for secession, the question was at best in ambivalence at the time of the Civil War. So yes, how many people could be persuaded to accept secession as a state right is relevent. As a result of the War, the answer is that no state has a right to secede.

    ReplyDelete
  38. The kingdom produced 9-9.2 million bpd during at least part of March, a third industry source said.

    "Saudi is now producing around 8.5 to 8.6 million bpd, and the reason for the drop is just slower market demand," said a Saudi-based industry source.

    The sources would not say when output was reduced.

    ReplyDelete