This Day in American History

Posted on | August 20, 2025 | Comments Off on This Day in American History

Before we discuss what it means — this date marking a crucial anniversary — let us first recount the relevant facts:

On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. . . .
Founded at Jamestown in 1607, the Virginia Colony was home to about 700 people by 1619. The first enslaved Africans to arrive in Virginia disembarked at Point Comfort, in what is today known as Fort Monroe. . . .
They were originally kidnapped by Portuguese colonial forces, who sent captured members of the native Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms on a forced march to the port of Luanda, the capital of modern-day Angola. From there, they were ordered on the ship San Juan Bautista, which set sail for Veracruz in the colony of New Spain [I.e., Mexico]. As was quite common, about 150 of the 350 captives aboard the ship died during the crossing. Then, as it approached its destination, the ship was attacked by two privateer ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Crews from the two ships kidnapped up to 60 of the Bautista’s enslaved people. It was the White Lion which docked at Virginia Colony’s Point Comfort and traded some of the prisoners for food on August 20, 1619.

So, you see, had it not been for the attack by these two English privateer ships, the Portuguese would have taken those African slaves to Mexico, and what would have become of them there? And what might have become of the colonists in Virginia, if the institution of slavery had never been introduced there? These alternatives are seldom discussed by those who, for whatever reason, wish to make the history of slavery an indictment of America and a permanent cause of racial grievance.

What I wish foremost to point out is something that I was taught as a schoolboy, but which our educational institutions recently seem to have forgotten, namely that Virginia, and the other English colonies in North American which later became the United States, was founded in an era of armed rivalry between European powers. For example, my native Georgia was founded in part to defend the southern flank of the Carolinas from the perceived threat of the Spanish presence in Florida.

The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch — all the maritime powers of Europe had colonies in the New World, and all of them used African slaves as part of their colonial enterprises. The Spaniards had used African slaves on sugar plantations in the Azores, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde islands. It was in the Spanish colony of Cuba that African slavery was first introduced to the New World, beginning in 1513, and by 1526, the Portuguese were shipping African slaves to Brazil.

From this beginning, the practice spread throughout the Caribbean islands and South and Central America. It was not until 1617, more than 100 years after the Spanish had brought African slavery to Cuba, that the English adopted the institution, when the governor of Bermuda began importing slaves there. All this history is ignored by those who regard the United States as somehow uniquely guilty in regard to slavery.

To explain this would require far more time and effort than I care to devote to the topic today. Readers may have noticed that I never waded into the controversy over the New York Times and its “1619 Project.” Others were outraged, but I bit my tongue rather than to say what was on my mind, namely that it was about damned time liberals finally figured out how much the North was implicated in slavery. For most of my life, Yankees have promoted a libelous myth about the South, popularizing the utterly false belief that somehow Southerners had invented slavery and had a monopoly on it. This is a subject I’ve addressed before (e.g., “History You Probably Never Knew,” December 30, 2023), and readers may recall my ironic amusement a couple of years ago when Revolutionary War hero Gen. Philip Schuyler got “cancelled.”

Slavery? In Albany, New York?

[T]he 1790 Census found 21,193 slaves in the state of New York, of which 3,722 were in Albany County, “the most of any county in the state at the time.” The Dutch patroons who settled the Hudson River valley were substantially reliant on slave labor and, the 1790 census showed, Philip Schuyler “owned 13 slaves at his South End mansion in 1790 and another four slaves worked on his farm in Saratoga County.”

Insofar as the 1619 Project made people aware that the South did not have a monopoly on slavery, and that Americans who never set foot on a plantation nevertheless derived benefits (directly or indirectly, economically or otherwise) from The Peculiar Institution, then we owe a certain gratitude to Nikole Hannah-Jones. If anyone cares to study the actual history of slavery, I would recommend the late Eugene Genovese’s remarkable Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made as an introduction. Furthermore, I recommend Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery.

People want us to get angry about stuff that happened 400 years ago, and I ain’t even got time to be angry over what happened last week.

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In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | August 20, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Is That Criminal Justice Reform Working Out?
EBL: Democrat Attorney General Gone Wild, The Brutalist, Why this fish is BANNED IN JAPAN, The Battle of Blue Licks, and Augustus: The First Emperor
Twitchy: New Documents Casts Serious Doubt On Hundreds of Biden Commutations, CNN Analyst Among Those Whose Clearances Were Yanked By Tulsi Gabbard, and Watch As Unhinged Liberal Harasses Trump Supporters Just Trying To Enjoy Their Coffee
Louder With Crowder: Male students were uncomfortable with a girl (who claims to be a boy) in the boys’ locker room, now THEY’RE suspended, also, Democrat AG caught on bodycam berating police officer, hilarity ensues
Vox Popoli: The Kenobi Years, The Dark Herald Defends THE TWO TOWERS, Implacable, and Not Martin, Not Sanderson
The Abbey of Misrule: “They can’t code this”
Upstream Reviews: Big Trouble, Little Earth

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Zelensky, Not Trump or Putin, is the Threat to Peace, also, The Kohberger Sentence Is Worse Than Death
American Greatness: Trump Approval Surges to 54 Percent After Meeting with Putin, Putin, Trump, and the Elusive “Peace”, DeSantis Blames California’s Sanctuary City Policies For Deadly Crash in Florida Caused By Illegal Alien Truck Driver, President Trump Says 275,000+ Illegal Aliens Have Been Kicked Off Social Security Benefits, and Biden-era USPS Fleet Contract for EVs Has Failed to Deliver, Time to Pull the Plug?
American Thinker: Why Trump’s Alaska Summit Was a Masterstroke of Leadership And Why the Left Can’t Handle It, Degeneracy, Progressive Neo-Puritanism, And The Little Sisters of the Poor, The ‘I’ve Had It’ Women Show Why Democrats Have Lost America, Russia’s Substantial Concessions, and Was the FBI Behind the Oklahoma Bombing?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Bolivia News
BattleSwarm: Two Democrat Fraud Theories From Tim Pool, Who Says You Can Redistrict Mid-Decade? The Supreme Court, Paxton Wants To Shut Beto PAC Down, and Trump’s D.C. Takeover Drives Crime Down…And Even Democrats Notice
Behind The Black: Webb discovers another “oldest black hole, Student suborbital rocket fails in first student attempt to reach space, Psyche snaps picture of Earth-Moon system, Scientists link near Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu to much larger main belt asteroid, and A protest of boats now intends to violate the range and prevent the next Starship/Superheavy test launch
Cafe Hayek: The Rust Belt Wasn’t Done In By Economic Competition, The Experience of Arguing With A Typical Protectionist, and A Contest: Name That Protectionist Fallacy
CDR Salamander: Sal’s “Plan Italy” For NATO…And Herself
Chicago Boyz: Book Review: Herman the German, by Gerhard Neumann (updated), Micro Mobility and Appalachian Alcatraz, and “Forget It, Big Balls, It’s D.C.”
Da Tech Guy: The Russia Reality or Why Peace, also, The Democrats are right it IS a Trap but not the one They Think
Dana Loesch: MSNBC Hopes You Forget It Was MSNBC
Don Surber: Trump – leader of the free world
First Street Journal: World War III Watch: “Well boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies!”, also, That thing that never happens has happened again
Gates Of Vienna: Shootout at an Örebro Mosque, Mohamed² Alleviates His Sexual Emergency, Cultural Enrichment News From the Low Countries, A Teenybopper Mujahidette in Paderborn, and State Department Moving to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization
The Geller Report: Muslim Migrant Rapes Woman To Death on Steps of Nashville Church, Trump, European Leaders Express Optimism for End to Russia-Ukraine War , President Trump Signs Executive Order to End Mail-In Ballots and Voting Machines, Democrats and Their Media Lapdogs Rabid Over Russia Peace Talks, and Cowardly Mainstream Jewish Groups Shy Away From Scrutinizing Mamdani
Hollywood In Toto: Obamas Cancel Cheryl Hines Over Trump Ties, Disney Ditches Spike Lee’s Colin Kaepernick Docuseries, Elephant in the Room Is the Perfect Rom-Com for Trump Era, Jimmy Kimmel Pretends to Care About Free Speech, and The Novel as the Foundation of Art
Legal Insurrection: Deadly Florida Crash Suspect is Illegal Alien Granted Work Permit by Biden Admin, Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – The Defense Puts On Its Case, Court Halts West Texas A&M Drag Show Ban as Free Speech Lawsuit Continues, Foundations Pledge $37 Million for PBS, NPR Stations, and Public Universities Allegedly Giving Millions to Anti-Trump News Site
Matt Taibbi: Activism Uncensored – The Federal Takeover of Law Enforcement In Washington, D.C., also, Nearly A Decade Later The Unmasking Scandal Comes Full Circle,
Outkick: Auburn Plants Its Flag: Four Additional National Titles Claimed, Arch Manning Pushes Back On Grandfather’s Claim He Would Return To Texas Next Season, New York Yankees Star Aaron Judge Rejects Aaron Boone’s Take on Elbow Injury, Injured Sophie Cunningham Still Mixing It Up Online, Issues FAFO To Troll Who Took Swipe At Her Sister, and Haley Cavinder & Dak Prescott’s Fiancée Drop ‘Cowboy Pillows’ To Lead Cowboys WAGs
Power Line: Land of 10,000 flakes, No mas, no mas, James Comey – Swiftie, and The Great Cheerleader Controversy
Shark Tank: AG Uthmeier Throws The Book At School Textbook Publishers
Shot In The Dark: Hennepin By Gaslight
This Ain’t Hell: Fun in the Air, DC Sammich Attacker Air Force Vet, Dreamcatcher – U.S. Navy Door Gunner in Somalia, VJ Day with a twist, and Playboy Flees California’s Hostile Business Environment
Transterrestrial Musings: The New Naval Challenge, New Guidelines On Blood Pressure, The Beginning Of The End, “Journalism” School, and Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!
Victory Girls: Ella vs Sydney – Choose Your Future, Ex-FBI Director James Comey Sends Weird Love Note To Taylor Swift, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu Is Defiant On Sanctuary Policies
Watts Up With That: Leveraging Michigan’s Assets as an Economic Growth Catalyst, Newsom Begs Oil Producers not to Abandon California, ‘Big Oil’ and Early Solar: Trying and Failing, and Short-Term Heatwaves in Britain Weaponised by Met Office Using Junk 60-Second Heat Spikes to Push Net Zero Fantasy
The Federalist: This Coalition Could Apply Pressure To Blue States Refusing To Protect Kids From Trans Mutilation, Media Insist Mail Voting Is Secure Days After MI Councilman Investigated For Stuffing Ballot Boxes, Amid Endless Streaming Silos, Live Sports Still Attract Millions Of Eyeballs, Loudoun County School Board Deserves Prison Time For Putting Trans Ideology Over Kids’ Safety, and The Media’s Ukraine-Wins Fantasy Continues Costing Lives
Mark Steyn: On the Town: Grand at the Game, Come Fly with Me, Last Chance – Jack Palance and Anthony Perkins in The Lonely Man, A Very Low Bar, and What a Difference an Election Makes

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In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | August 19, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

More good art from Gprime85

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Global Warming Scam Implodes, Thirty Degrees Below Zero,
357 Magnum: The UK’s NHS – Bureaucratic Health Care at It’s Finest, also Gang Violence Called a Mass Shooting
EBL: Fillet Lionfish like a Professional, Stuck – The Problem with Promiscuity, Cherry Tree Song, The Grape Harvest, and Terence Stamp, RIP
Twitchy: Heroic Texas Democrat Rep Refuses To Leave, Sleeps At Desk In Staged Photo, Park Ranger Who Helped Drape Trans Flag In Yosemite Fired, and Leftists Freak Out At Lamar Jackson Retweeting Charlie Kirk
Louder With Crowder: Our first NFL preseason fan brawl is all fun and games until one dude’s pants fall down, “I’d hate to be so mired in hatred…”, Denzel Washington goes off on “cancel culture,”, and Woke reporter finds new way to lash out at Sydney Sweeney
Vox Popoli: ASOS Ships, MAGA Compromised, The Jeeting of Texas, Anti-Racism is Inversive, and The Fake Peace Plan
Cedar Sanderson: The Gentle Art of Escalation, On The Mowing Of Lawns, and Dragon Month Three
Toni Airaksinen: Did The NYT Fire The “Journalists” Who Worked On The “Emaciated Gazan Child” Story?
The Bugscuffle Gazette: People who have never fought
Defending The Wood Perilous: Not The Chosen One
Upstream Reviews: Tree of Liberty
Stoic Observations: Avoid The Meta
Gab: From A Coffee Shop To A Crusade
Jim McCoy: People in The World of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the Weird Reason I Want To Meet Them

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Fourth Anniversary Review – This Is What A Government-Wide Epistemic Failure Looks Like,
Don Surber: What’s in it for us?
Elizabeth Nickson: A Little Black Girl From Tennessee Takes Down Europe’s “Aristocratic” Luciferian Pedo Scum
Matt Taibbi: Bill Maher Resorts To Cheap, Classless, Ignorant Stunt, also, Bill Maher Remains In Pucker Mode
STUMP: Updated Public Pension Projection Tool, The Changing Extended Life With Terminal Cancer

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Peer Pressure and Morality: Or, Why Do ‘Girls Go Wild’ in Daytona Beach?

Posted on | August 18, 2025 | Comments Off on Peer Pressure and Morality: Or, Why Do ‘Girls Go Wild’ in Daytona Beach?

From the headline, you might have expected me to illustrate this post with a picture of college girls twerking in their bikinis on Spring Break in Florida, so why did I choose John Stuart Mill instead?

In his most famous work, On Liberty, Mill famously described “the tyranny of the majority,” by which he meant not merely the possibility of despotic action under democratic governments, but more specifically what he called “the moral coercion of public opinion.” In other words, although we might be free to do as we please without fear of legal punishment, at the same time, we are discouraged from acting in any way that is unpopular or unconventional because we fear the disapproval of others. Mill called this “social tyranny,” and one can imagine what he had in mind when you recall that he was writing in England in the mid-1800s, during the Victorian era — a very uptight kind of environment.

As a conservative, of course, I am naturally prejudiced in favor of the kind of “repressive” social norms of Victorian England. Looking around the 21st century, we could use a lot more of that Victorian prudery.

What got me thinking along these lines was watching YouTube videos by Jedediah Bila. Most of y’all will remember her from Fox News, but in the past four years, Jedediah has moved to Texas with her husband and son and is now doing her own thing online — and it is awesome!

A lot of her content is about “gender dynamics,” and she’s laying down the cold truth about the self-defeating nature of what passes for “empowered” behavior among young women. Here she is with guest Andrew Wilson examining the phenomenon of grossly slutty behavior by girls on Spring Break in Daytona:

Obviously, girls who act like this — racking up a “body count” of 12 in a single week? — have no fear of the kind of repressive social tyranny that John Stuart Mill criticized in Victorian England. Why is that?

Even though these 304’s probably don’t consider themselves feminists, Andrew Wilson points toward the feminist-influenced idea that it’s unfair to expect women to avoid promiscuity because (supposedly) there is no such expectation for men. The attitude is, “Guys do it, why can’t we?” Refuting this attitude is as simple as pointing out the basic arithmetic — “it takes two to tango” — and getting young women to understand that men have no incentive to be monogamous when so many young women are promiscuous. By consenting to easy hookups, such women make themselves part of the problem that so many young women nowadays complain about, i.e., men who “won’t commit” to marriage.

Let us not overlook, however, the role that lack of proper adult supervision plays in this kind of behavior. If your teenage daughter is shamelessly hooking up with 12 guys during Spring Break? You have failed as a parent, and that failure began long before your daughter became a teenager. Every girl naturally desires to be “popular,” to fit in with her peers, and wise mothers strive to teach their daughters to resist such pressure. A well-raised girl will fear more than anything else her mother’s disapproval. From a young age, she has been taught to avoid inappropriate behavior. Internalizing parental values provides her with a sort of moral gyroscope, a self-guidance system that makes her capable of discernment, so that she does not mindlessly follow the crowd.

When we see these brainless sluts smiling for the camera as they boast of their Spring Break “body count,” we are witnessing the consequences of children being raised without proper parental authority.

“I’m disgusting. Maybe they were all right about me. Maybe I am a big old whore.”
— Ella Dawson

Surely you haven’t forgotten Ella Dawson, who decided that the 2016 election was about her and her herpes infection? Someone would be doing a great favor for teenage girls if they would show them the “Rake’s Progress” of Ella Dawson’s life. She was a “pro-sex feminist” at Wesleyan University (now $98,382 a year, including room and board), and has recalled the attitude she brought with her to campus as a freshman:

“There was this binary view, at least in my mind as an 18-year-old, of, you’re either someone who believes sex is part of a relationship and you’re judgmental of casual sex, or you are a sexually empowered young woman who screws whoever she wants to and does whatever she wants and can have sex without emotions,” Dawson said in an interview with The Argus. “And as a result, I was super defensive of hookup culture itself because I interpreted criticism of hookup culture as criticism of a free sexuality.”

The predictable consequences are related in Ms. Dawson’s 2022 roman à clef (a “novel” that’s really a memoir), titled Life Ruiner:

Set mostly at Wesleyan in Dawson’s junior and senior years in 2013 and 2014, “LIFE RUINER” takes the reader through a semi-linear progression of her relationship with Blake (all names were changed to protect privacy), an attractive yet troubled party acquaintance turned sexual and romantic partner. . . .
[E]verything changes for Dawson when she wakes up to itchy raised bumps on her labia, which are ultimately diagnosed as genital herpes. From this point forward, her relationship with Blake slowly devolves into cycles of emotional abuse and manipulation as he also receives a herpes diagnosis and begins to threaten suicide. When Blake reaches an emotional low at the end of the summer and the two break up, Dawson begins to replace her feelings of dirtiness and shame surrounding her STI diagnosis with understanding and empowerment. Back on campus, though, she and Blake begin hooking up again until Blake nearly overdoses on prescription drugs and alcohol and Dawson discovers that he has physically abused his ex-girlfriend, Kris.

Here’s a cruel irony — although she had styled herself an advocate of knowledge about sexuality, Ella Dawson apparently failed to realize that condoms don’t protect against herpes. In all her preaching about “safe sex” and everything, somehow this fact had escaped her notice.

Speaking of facts, let me share a few facts about herpes:

A 2010 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the herpes rate “was nearly twice as high among women (21%) as men (11%), and more than three times higher among African-Americans (39%) than whites (12%). The infection rate among African-American women was 48%.” For obvious reasons, promiscuity increases the risk of infection, and the CDC found that about 27% of those who reported 10 or more partners are infected with herpes.

So, Ella shows up at Wesleyan as a sort of apostle of sexual liberation, and by the time she graduates, she’s a used-up slut with herpes. She decides to proclaim this to the world, undertaking a crusade to “destigmatize” herpes, and is so successful that she (a) attracts national attention and (b) makes her name synonymous with herpes.

No, really, Google it — might as well call it “Ella Dawson Disease.”

When last we heard from her, Ella was calling herself “bisexual” or “queer,” by which I presume she means that because guys are no longer interested in her, she’s now desperately trying to find a girlfriend to diddle her diseased genitalia. Rather pathetic, but of one thing Ella is certain: It’s not her fault. No, she is a victim of forces beyond her control. “Valentine’s Day hits different this year,” she declared in February:

Most of us were socialized to imagine our happily-ever-after a certain way: marriage, children, homeownership, a golden retriever. This dream was never attainable for everyone thanks to structural inequity and a royally fucked economy, but in 2025 it feels even further out of reach for some, and like a nightmare to others. It is difficult to celebrate love and hope at a time when we are losing the freedom to make choices about our bodies, our futures, and our identities. . . .

(That dastardly Trump is to blame!)

As a childfree queer woman, I am not in the mood for love this Valentine’s Day. I’m feeling cynical and scared. At some point over the last decade I morphed into a heteropessimist. . . .

(She’s “morphed,” you see!)

I am pessimistic about the state of heterosexual dating. For a myriad of reasons, it is largely cis straight men who make heterosexual dating a cursed experience. . . . But my friends and I have been sexually assaulted and abused by casual partners and life partners alike. Almost every woman I care about who dates men has had a horrifying experience recently. Roughly once every six months I get a phone call from a female friend scared for her life because a man who seemed trustworthy suddenly revealed himself to be anything but.
Even men who aren’t violent still commit endless slights out of entitlement and privilege . . .
As a bisexual woman, I am making an effort to decenter cis men in my life and seek out partners of other genders. I want out of the heteropatriarchal monogamous script . . .

See, it’s the system — “structural inequity” and “the heteropatriarchal monogamous script” — which Ella blames for her woes. Her own bad judgment has nothing to do with it. All those “cis straight men” just abusing her (and her friends, too), and there’s nothing women can do about it. Has Ella ever contemplated the conundrum of why feminism, despite its rhetoric about women’s “empowerment,” so often leads women to be just like her — lonely, bitter and hopeless?

Probably not. Like feminists generally, Ella Dawson’s whole worldview is based on the idea that she is always right, and men are always wrong, and therefore anything bad that happens to her is not her fault.

So the teenage sluts go twerking around Daytona Beach, heedless of the future, convinced that they will never suffer any harmful consequences of their behavior, but if they do — well, it’s not their fault. And I wonder what John Stuart Mill would say if he could see how things have turned out. Those Victorian prudes were right, you know.

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Category: Feminism

Rule Five Sunday: All-American Girl

Posted on | August 18, 2025 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I can’t remember posting any Sydney Sweeney since the whole jeans/genes kerfluffle, so I guess it’s about time. Wonder how long it’ll be before people begin shooping her into SS uniforms and making memes featuring her with Hitler quotes a la Taylor Swift?
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Doggie Emissions Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, The Panhandling Song, Judy Is A Punk, MAGA – Trump & Putin In Alaska, North to Alaska, 80 Years Ago – V-J Day In London, When They Sound The Last All Clear, A Machu Picchu Proposal, London Irish, Irish Blood, The Sewing Machine, Sweet Virginia, Professor T, Pie to Die For, Wildlife, and Brooke Ligertwood

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Willow Hand, Fish Pic Friday – Mona Elissa, Thursday Tanlines, Gone Fishin’, The Wednesday Wetness, Love Crime, Gone Fishin’, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday and Trump Makes Peace in Armenia vs Azerbaijan, Still Working on Russia vs Ukraine.

BACON TIME: Rule Five – Boy Is It Hot

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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FMJRA 2.0: Birds Win! Birds Win!

Posted on | August 17, 2025 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Birds Win! Birds Win!

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The Reds took it to seven games, but in the end Al Bumbry and Rich Coggins were unstoppable and the O’s won the World Series in the 1973 season of Pete’s DLB league. We’ll probably get a week or two off until Pete gets the 1974 cards sorted, assigns the rookies, and calls for keeper lists, so if you want to skipper the Cubs or Expos next season, you still have time to throw your hat in the ring.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

A joyful Orioles fan celebrates Baltimore’s victory in Game 7 of the 1973 World Series.

Two Quarterbacks, Two Sacks
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: World Series ’73 Week Two
A View From The Beach
EBL
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Rule 5 Sunday: Doughnut Dolly
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL

Demonic Forces: The Reality of Evil
EBL
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In The Mailbox: 08.11.25
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 08.12.25 (Early Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 08.12.25 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Deadly Hip-Hop Drama Down Home
EBL
357 Magnum

Vegan Transgender Death Cult Update: Feds Seek Death Penalty in Vermont
A View From The Beach
EBL
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In The Mailbox: 08.15.25
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 08.15.25 (No, Really)
EBL
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending August 15:

EBL (11)
357 Magnum (10)
A View From The Beach (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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After Alaska Summit Meeting, Putin Confirms Ukraine War Was Biden’s Fault

Posted on | August 16, 2025 | 2 Comments

We all knew this, of course, and Trump has been saying it for three years, but now we have it directly from Vladimir Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the war between Russia and Ukraine would never have begun if President Donald Trump were president in 2022 instead of then-President Joe Biden.
Putin’s comments came during his joint press conference with Trump in Alaska following their three-hour-long closed-door meeting with top advisers about the war in Ukraine.
“I’d like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities,” Putin, speaking in Russian, said according to a translator. “And I said it quite directly back then that it’s a big mistake.”
“Today, when President Trump saying [sic] that if he was the president back then, there will [sic] be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that,” he said, per the precise audio translation.
Trump has long said that the war would not have happened if he were president at the time. In fact, during a CNN town hall event in May 2023, Trump said as much and that Putin would agree with his statement.
“If I were president, this would have never happened, and even the Democrats admit that. Putin knew it would have never happened, and his pipeline would have never happened,” Trump said. “A lot of things would have never happened.”
“All those dead people, both Russian and Ukrainian… they wouldn’t be dead today, and all those cities that are blown up and disintegrated right to the ground, that wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Putin contrasted his virtually non-existent relationship with the Biden administration with his “business-like and trustworthy” relationship with Trump and expressed optimism about a potential end to the conflict.
“I think that overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact, and have every reason to believe that moving down this path, we can come and the sooner the better to the end of the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.

Of course we can be sure that this will be construed by many Democrats — e.g., Adam Schiff — that Trump is Putin’s stooge, but such an interpretation is reading the situation bass-ackwards.

Let me explain something very basic about statesmanship: Plot a 4-point axis with the terms “friendly/unfriendly” and “strong/weak.” Now, if a foreign country is friendly and weak, you don’t need to worry about them as a potential adversary, but they’re also not going to be any help in a crisis. A country that is friendly and strong is a valuable ally. Now, a foreign country may be unfriendly — indeed, overtly hostile — but if they’re weak, who cares? Their hostility is impotent. Greatly to be feared, however, is the country that is both unfriendly and strong.

So, try to see this situation from Putin’s perspective. With Joe Biden as president, America was simultaneously weak and overtly hostile to Russia, and Biden’s “strategy” (if we can deem it as such) was to rely upon our so-called “European allies.” For years I’ve been saying that it’s ridiculous to refer to France, Germany, etc., as “allies,” because from a military point of view, they are utterly worthless. If push came to shove, how many combat-ready divisions could Our European Allies™ actually deploy, even in their own defense, much less at some troubled hotspot elsewhere in the world? So the idea of the Biden administration is that we would rely on Our European Allies™ to deter Russia while, at the same time, we would continually insult Russia and engage in various covert hostilities against the Putin regime. We saw the result.

In August 2021, the Biden administration enacted its disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Were these unrelated incidents? Of course not. Just ask yourself: How long does it take to plan, organize and mobilize for a major military action? About six months, I’d say. The minute Putin saw the Biden bungle in Afghanistan, that’s when he ordered his army to prepare for the Ukraine invasion. When it became apparent, in December 2021/January 2022, the Russia was building up its forces near Ukraine, what was the Biden administration’s response? Talk, talk, talk.

Putin spotted Biden for the gutless wonder he was –the typical bully-braggart, always threatening others, but afraid of a real fight — and Ukraine suffered as a consequence. Liberals with the Ukraine flag logo in their social media profiles can hate Trump all they want, but it won’t change the fact that Russia never would have invaded if it hadn’t been for Biden’s bumbling and weakness. Democrats will never admit this, but when did anyone ever expect Democrats to tell the truth?

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Category: Alaska, Donald Trump, Military, Russia