Annual Bruce Catton Appreciation Post

Posted on | July 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Annual Bruce Catton Appreciation Post

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances…
– William Faulkner

This is, of course, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the day of Pickett’s doomed charge against the Army of the Potomac’s center on Cemetery Ridge, and Custer’s more successful charge against Wade Hampton’s cavalry brigade in the East Cavalry Field. Meade is often criticized for not pursuing Lee’s army south on the fourth day, but what critics overlook is that the Army of the Potomac had been mixed and muddled in the successful defense of Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and the Round Tops. Regiments and brigades were all scrambled together, and in fact Meade and his commanders spent the next day trying to sort out their units and get organized. This is not at all a situation like McClellan at Antietam, where he had entire corps of infantry that had done little or no fighting and were still coherent. Anyhow, this is supposed to be a book post, so let’s have at it.

In my arrogant opinion, probably the best of the Civil War historians is Bruce Catton, whose grasp of the politico-military mess that was the Army of the Potomac is unparalleled. Mr. Lincoln’s Army, the first book in his trilogy of books on that often unhappy but ultimately victorious force is on sale at $2.99 for the Kindle, and one can, of course, get used copies in hardback and paper for about the same price. His account of Gettysburg, The Final Fury, is brief – 100 pages – but covers the battle hour by hour. This appreciation post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning his trilogy covering the entire war, which begins with The Coming Fury, an excellent survey of the political tensions between the Northern and Southern states that led to secession and war.

Probably the best-known novel about Gettysburg is Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, and for good reason. Shaara shows you the commanders and the soldiers on both sides as people, blending the personal dramas into the fire and fury of the larger battle, and bringing fresh fame to John Buford and Joshua Chamberlain. The movie version, Gettysburg, is also worth watching.

There are many alternate histories of the Civil War, but for my money the best of the lot is the trilogy co-authored by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen, Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat, which starts with the assumption that Lee takes Longstreet’s advice and forces Meade to come to him by getting between Meade and Washington; the resulting defeat forces Lincoln to call on the ever-victorious Ulysses S. Grant. If Grant had failed, perhaps the future would look more like Ward Moore’s Bring The Jubilee than our current state of affairs…

Back in my wargaming days, when SPI was working on A Gleam Of Bayonets, their game about Antietam using (basically) the same system as Terrible Swift Sword, the designer referred to Stephen Sears’ Landscape Turned Red as one of his sources for information about the game, and while one might expect that Sears’ book is just a dry recitation of events, it is nothing of the kind. Instead, it gives you a ringside seat to not only the clumsy generalship of McClellan, but the hideous carnage that laissez-faire command style produced. Highly recommended.

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Category: Books

Rule Five Sunday: Ava Gardner

Posted on | July 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Rule Five Sunday: Ava Gardner

— compiled by Wombat-socho

What do we really need say about legendary actress Ava Gardner? One can only wonder how her kids with Frank Sinatra would have turned out…anyway, here she is in a pinup pic before she hit it big in Hollywood.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1764, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Path To Manhood Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: MAGA Dobbs, Barefoot Pregnant & In The Kitchen, Miranda Lambert, Westworld Season 4, Summertime, Carrie Underwood, Ghislaine Maxwell, We Own This City, The Dead South, It’s Canada Day, Krystyn Crawford, and Nina Simone.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: A Self Confessed Racist – Rachel Zegler, Fish Pic Friday – Murmaid Hunter Heather, More Cassidy, Dems Lose Senate Majority (again), July 4 BBQ Up $10, Tattoo Thursday, No Problem!, The Wednesday Wetness, She, Snakeheads Invade Western Maryland, The Monday Morning Stimulus, No Sport for the Faint of Heart and Sunday Sunrise

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: The Glorious Burden

Posted on | July 3, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: The Glorious Burden

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The less said about baseball this week, the better. We’re going to have to send a crew down to Home Depot for some new water coolers, and pray hard for Juan Marichal’s quick recovery.
On the second day at Gettysburg, Longstreet’s division tried to crush the left flank of Meade’s forces but couldn’t quite break through, thanks to the heroic stand of the 20th Maine at the Little Round Top and the suicidal charge of the 1st Minnesota, which is the climax of this excellent book by Richard Moe.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

The original cover of Richard Berg’s award-winning Terrible Swift Sword.

A Mostly Peaceful Insurrection: Deranged Pro-Abortion Mob Storms AZ Capitol
The Pirate’s Cove
The Political Hat
Sigma Frame
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Eugenie Bouchard
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive

Meanwhile…
A View From The Beach
EBL

Good-Bye, Severodonetsk!
American Free News Network
First Street Journal
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Synphaera
A View From The Beach
EBL

Important Questions the White House Press Corps Will Never Ask Joe Biden
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 06.27.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Netflix Cancels LGBTQ-Themed Cartoon
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 06.28.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Sgt. McCain: Behind Enemy Lines
The DaleyGator
EBL

Like an Old REO Speedwagon Song
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 06.30.22 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 06.30.22 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

SJW Snowflakes Melting Down Again
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.01.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

The Fourth of July and the Partriotic Return of the Big Yellow Button

Posted on | July 2, 2022 | Comments Off on The Fourth of July and the Partriotic Return of the Big Yellow Button

LITHIA SPRINGS, GEORGIA
My family and I are gathered here this Saturday for the funeral of my Aunt Pat, one of the finest Southern ladies you can imagine, and I have been asked to speak a brief eulogy at the service. My brother and I rode down with my son Jim at the wheel, while my wife flew to Florida with daughter Reagan so that they could ride up with my oldest daughter Kennedy and Kennedy’s two young sons. We’re staying in a nice hotel on Thornton Road, now a bustling commercial thoroughfare, but I was telling Jim I can remember when this was a dirt road, as were many other roads in Douglas County when I was growing up here.

Memories are of course appropriate when you’re preparing for a memorial service, and one of the things I’m going to be telling the folks at the service today is that my Aunt Pat worked in the aerospace industry. She got married at age 17 and was a mother of three young children before she was 30, when she got a home-study course and began teaching herself shorthand, which qualified her to get hired as an executive secretary at the Lockheed Aircraft plant in Marietta (now Lockheed-Martin). When you describe someone as “working in the aerospace industry,” a secretary might not be the first job that comes to mind, but it takes a lot of people doing all kinds of jobs to make all those planes. My Dad spent 37 years working at Lockheed, mainly as a dispatcher on the C-130 flight line, and it’s always a moment of pride for me whenever I see the C-130 in action — the greatest cargo airplane in the world, and my Dad helped make it. Speaking of patriotic pride . . .

Monday is the Fourth of July, and we’ll be back home in time to shoot our annual family show in West Virginia, which isn’t going to be as big as some previous years, simply because my son Jim (my main accomplice in our pyrotechnic adventures) has been very busy the past year, and we don’t have quite as many fireworks as usual.

We hope to augment this small stash on our return journey home, which is why I’ve brought back the Big Yellow Button. Even though the PayPal contribution button is always on the page, sometimes I enlarge it for the benefit of near-sighted readers who may not have noticed it before.

Our usual request for tip-jar hits is $17.76. A 1,400-mile road trip is quite expensive under Bidenflation, so if you want to chip in $5 for a gallon of gas, that would be appreciated. Of course, on the Fourth of July weekend, you might want to pay tribute to such great American patriots as Andrew Jackson or even Benjamin Franklin, IYKWIMAITYD.

Helping defray travel expenses — God only knows how much we paid for two hotel rooms, because I was afraid to ask my wife, who booked it — and also maybe adding some extra fireworks to our Fourth of July are surely worthy causes, but as always the main thing is, keeping my wife happy. She likes it when the blog actually produces revenue, and keeping her happy is always Job One, so it’s once again my duty to ask readers to recall the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Family, Shoe Leather Fund

In The Mailbox: 07.01.22

Posted on | July 2, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.01.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

First, thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in June.
Secondly, Sarah Hoyt and Bob Zimmerman are both rattling the tip jar this month, and if you enjoy either or both of their blogs, I encourage you to throw some dollars at them while those dollars are still worth something.
Thirdly, this is the 159th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Let us never forget the courage and foresight of Brigadier General John Buford.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

FFS read another book, you hoes

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: An Interesting Question From The LA Times
EBL: Kristyn Crawford Sexually Harrassed at ABC – George Stephanopoulos, Disney, and Network Retaliate
Twitchy: Brit Hume Goes Scorched Earth On The J6 Committee & Its Defenders, also, Christina Pushaw Gives Advice To Laid-Off Journalists, Whining Ensues
Louder With Crowder: Tim Allen Breaks Silence on Failed ‘Lightyear’ Movie
Vox Popoli: Spiderman is Gay, Close Your Account, and Intentio Nocendi
According To Hoyt: Wrecking Ball, also, It Is Us At The Gate
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S2 Ep26 – Historical Fantasy
Stoic Observations: Post-Racial Multidimensional Taxonomy

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: One Night in Bahrain
American Conservative: Lessons from a Turkish Coup
American Greatness: Trump Is the Greatest Man Alive , also, Buttigieg Launches $1 Billion ‘Anti-Racist Roads’ Project
American Thinker: The United States Has Become Two Countries Within a Nation
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Path to Manhood Friday
Babalu Blog: Population in Cuba sees biggest drop in 60 years, also, Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja, most powerful man in Cuba behind Raul Castro, is dead
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for July 1, 2022
Behind The Black: FCC approves Starlink for moving vehicles; rejects DISH’s request to use Starlink wavelength, Today’s blacklisted American, and In 2022 freedom continues to fuel the launch industry towards new records
Cafe Hayek: The Typical Politician Is Loathsome
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Anecdotes – The Exotic Airbnb
Da Tech Guy: Here’s a SCOTUS Case Just Waiting to Happen
Don Surber: Justices stood up to the mob. LGBT is next, also, Biden delivers his recession
First Street Journal: It seems that some “men” are really immature little boys, also, For print newspapers, tempus is fugiting
Gates Of Vienna: The Mysterious Death of Lars Vilks, The Gilt-Edged Twilight of the Abendlandes, and Can Swedish Culture-Enrichers Be Racists?
The Geller Report: Trump Still Winning Big In Polls Despite Jan. 6 ‘Witch Hunt”, also, Bill Gates $13.5 Million Farmland Purchase Triggers Outrage in North Dakota
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, The Supreme Court Term, and LRO’s Extended Mission
Hollywood In Toto: Make This Franchise Stop (Please!)
The Lid: When Chuck Schumer Fought To Keep Filibuster, also, “Over-The-Horizon Capability” In Afghanistan Was Another Biden Lie
Legal Insurrection: Yale Divinity School Claims There’s No Biblical Basis for Abortion Bans, Researchers Find College is Making Young People Less Patriotic, and “Climate Activists” Slash SUV Tires in NYC, Say Other U.S. Cities Will be Hit Next
Nebraska Energy Observer: And Then There Were None
Outkick: Miles Bridges’ Wife Shares Images Of Alleged Assault From Hornets Forward, Former Baltimore Ravens LB, Jaylon Ferguson, Dead Of Accidental Drug Overdose, and Megan Rapinoe, Who Claimed Girl’s Sporting Careers Aren’t ‘That Important,’ Will Receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Power Line: Green Dreams Dashed, Biden Brigade Misfiring on All Cylinders, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: GOP Campaign Volunteer Assaulted, also, Dem Rep Lois Frankel Threatens Small Business Owner
Shot In The Dark: Long & Winding Road, Layers & Layers Of Gatekeepers, and Think “Walz Checks” Only Gassy
STUMP: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day for 2022!
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – What Do We Owe Our Country?
This Ain’t Hell: Annual Fundraiser, Man Ordered to Stop Falsely Claiming to be Navy SEAL, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: Chasing Utopian Energy, Gravitics, and The Market
Victory Girls: Are Democrats Losing Confidence In Biden?
Volokh Conspiracy: “I Was Told There Would Be a Handbasket”, also, Justice Kagan Throws Down the Gauntlet
Watts Up With That: SCOTUS Has Crippled Biden’s EPA – But There’s Only One Way to Stop Them for Good
Weasel Zippers: Americans Should Pay More For Gas To Protect Liberalism, “I Don’t Count Drunk Driving As a Felony”, and This Is America’s New “Nuclear Waste Disposal Chief” – He Has Two Degrees From MIT (If You Can Believe It..) And Likes To Roleplay As A Dog
The Federalist: Representatives Demand Answers From State Department For Funding Atheism Abroad, The J6 Show Trial Is Lying About Election ‘Fraud’, and Biden Regime Admits On Camera – Ushering In ‘Liberal World Order’ Is More Important Than Affordable Gas
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet – Dominion Day 2022, also, Dominion Lost

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Category: Linkagery

SJW Snowflakes Melting Down Again

Posted on | July 1, 2022 | 1 Comment

Before getting to our main topic here, let me call the reader’s attention to one seemingly minor detail about that photo. See the green sign? See the fine print at the bottom? “RiseUp4AbortionRights-dot-org”? That’s a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist cult founded by Bob Avakian in Berkeley decades ago, the result of a split in the radical Left during the Nixon years. So who is calling for “ABORTION ON DEMAND & WITHOUT APOLOGY”? Commies, that’s who.

Commies want to kill your baby. Commies want to make baby killing a central premise of their political platform. But at least the RCP is honest about being Commies, whereas Democrats . . .

Well, if Democrats couldn’t lie, they’d have nothing to say at all. But because they control the major institutions of education, journalism and entertainment, Democrats are able to create an echo chamber effect where people are bombarded with propaganda from all directions, so that it takes a strong mind to resist believing Democratic myths like the “constitutional right” to abortion as the essence of womanhood.

And so we see headlines like this:

‘It’s Scary’: Students Fear Going
to College in Red States After Roe

I won’t bother excerpting much of this, as readers can click and find their own favorite idiocies in that Vice article. One that I found particularly amusing is the lead anecdote about Sasha Rosenfeld from New Jersey, who is afraid about attending Oberlin College (!!!) because it sits in the red state of Ohio. Oh, the Fear and Loathing:

Committed to attending Oberlin in the fall, Rosenfeld started talking to friends about what she would do if she needed an abortion and couldn’t access care at college. One of her friends who lives 300 miles away in Chicago offered to pick her up and drive her out of the state if she ever needed the procedure.
“If I got pregnant — no question about it — at this point in my life, I would take Plan B [or] get an abortion,” she said.

Permit me to assert that the chances of Sasha Rosenfeld accidentally getting pregnant are very close to zero, but not for the reason you might expect. No, she’s not a fat purple-haired non-binary blob, like some of the pro-abortion militants you’ve seen bemoaning the end of Roe. Miss Rosenfeld is actually quite lovely — a slender brunette with a sunny smile who ran on her high school cross-country team in Maplewood, New Jersey. The reason that Miss Rosenfeld is very unlikely to suffer an unexpected pregnancy is because she is a radical feminist whose mother is the lesbian wife of left-wing radio personality Nancy Solomon.

Miss Rosenfeld calls herself “queerspawn,” which is to say she is what folks of my generation might have called a “turkey baster” baby. Miss Rosenfeld’s existence is a sort of protest against heterosexuality, and I’m sure she would never want to disappoint her mothers by expressing anything except vehement disgust toward males. And yet, despite her lifelong anti-heterosexual indoctrination as “queerspawn,” Miss Rosenfeld is gripped with fear about the (entirely hypothetical) prospect of needing an abortion as a consequence of a (preposterously far-fetched) scenario in which she somehow conceived a child through what some of us still quaintly think of as the normal method of impregnation.

Just suppose — since Miss Rosenfeld seems willing to indulge in wild speculation — that she actually were capable of feeling sexual attraction toward a male. As I say, this is entirely speculative, as nothing in her biography or published writing hints at any heterosexual inclination. Yet if she did harbor such a desire, what are the chances she could find a heterosexual male at Oberlin willing to do the deed with her?

Call me old-fashioned, but I think one proxy for the virility of a college’s male student body is the success of their football team, and by this measure, Oberlin is a pathetic joke. Last season, their football team posted a 1-9 record, getting blown away by such gridiron powerhouses as Ohio Wesleyan (62-6), Denison (59-12) and DePauw (66-13). Oberlin’s football team is the laughingstock of a very weak Division III conference. So if it’s swaggering masculinity you’re looking for, you’re not going to find much of it at Oberlin. Even if Miss Rosenfeld were interested in heterosexual coupling (which, as I say, is mere hypothetical speculation), she probably wouldn’t have much luck at such a testosterone-deficient institution as Oberlin College. Yet the imaginary danger terrifies her.

“It’s misogyny in our world that categorizes
feminism, and feminists, as undesirable.”
— Sasha Rosenfeld

Undesirable to whom, Miss Rosenfeld? But probably no one in the echo chamber where you have been raised as “queerspawn” ever asked such a question, or was prepared to explain why this might be relevant, and certainly your worldview won’t be challenged at Oberlin. The chances of you encountering a Republican at Oberlin are not much higher than your chances of becoming pregnant which, as I say, are very close to zero. Yet how could Democrats maintain their ironclad grip on your mind without filling your pretty little head with absurd fears? So you’ll likely go on protesting on behalf of the “right” to abortion, even though the likelihood of you ever needing to exercise this “right” is infinitesimally small.

When this particular tempest in a teapot dissipates — when all the pro-choice sky-is-falling noise proves to be mistaken, and life in America goes on just fine despite the recent Supreme Court ruling — I wonder if some people will wise up to the scam by which they’ve been hustled? Probably not many. True Believers are seldom disillusioned by mere facts.

Category: Abortion