150 years ago today, the War Between the States, a/k/a the Civil War, began with the shots fired upon Fort Sumter by the Confederate States of America. The following day, at the direction of President Lincoln, the commander of Fort Sumter, Maj. Robert Anderson, surrendered the fort to the Confederates under Gen. Pierre Beauregard.
Today, Fort Sumter has been preserved as a National Park. Here’s an image of where the first shots of the Civil War were fired:
Smell the hypocrisy.
Whale on the beach! Whale on the beach!
High-profile tax cheat Charlie Rangel criticizes the so-called rich for not paying their fair share. That’s right. The man censured by the House of Representatives for not reporting income from his villa in the Dominican Republic actually criticized other Americans for not paying their fair share of taxes.
I’d say “Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot” but some idiot leftist might claim that would be raaaaacist! And yes, there are 5 a’s in Raaaaacist!
Folks, we don’t make this stuff up.
Students in a Chicago Public School are prohibited from bringing their lunch from home because government thinks it knows how to feed kids better than parents do.
Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.
“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.
Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”
Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: “Do you see the situation?”
At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.
In a word, institutional food is horrible. Awful. Disgusting. School cafeteria food. Dorm food in college. Hospital food. Military food. Prison food. In college, the only way the cook’s meatballs should have been served is with a racquet. How bad? The cook left his dental floss in the kitchen and the cockroaches hanged themselves.
But no, government knows best, as evidenced by this government nitwit:
Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.
“Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” Carmona said. “It’s about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception.”
Excellent quality of food???? Just what color is the sky on her planet? It’s all about control. Government control of what children — and eventually the rest of us — are allowed to eat.
Like in all stories like this, it’s easy to find out the real reasons the Nanny State Food Nazis leaped into action: follow the money.
Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district’s food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.
It’s been a dirty little not-so-secret for year. The more students a school can get qualified for “free (read: taxpayer paid)” or “reduced (read: taxpayer subsidized)” lunches, the more money gets kicked back from the federal government to that school or district — wait for it — to be spent in any manner that school or district chooses. It doesn’t have to be spent on actually feeding the students. Of course, Chartwells and its fellow food providers are involved in the money laundering and kickbacks as well.
Check this parent out. He’s all excited over the Nanny State controlling and feeding his children:
[P]arent Miguel Medina said he thinks the “no home lunch policy” is a good one. “The school food is very healthy,” he said, “and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food.”
The only ones who should control what kids eat are the parents. Not the state. Not educrats. Not school administrators. Not gummint union teachers.
By the way, they are coming for the rest of us. The likes of the First Yeti, Moochelle, and Mike Huckabee are taking aim at imposing government control and restrictions on what American adults eat. Remember this? From 2008 in Mississippi, two Republicans and a Democrat proposed making it illegal for restaurants to serve fat people. Again, this is not from The Onion.
The idea was eventually dismissed as it became a nationwide laughingstock, but when have we ever known liberals to give up after a defeat? A minor setback, they claim.
To paraphrase Ah-nold …. they’ll be back.
On this day in 1865, the bloodiest war in U.S. history came to an end as Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The surrender took place in the McLean House, which has since been reconstructed as an historic site.
Here’s the exterior as it looks today:
Here’s the parlor where the meeting between Lee and Grant took place:
The surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia did not mean that the Civil War actually ended. Fighting took place in other parts of the Confederacy, due in no small part to the 19th century communications. The last battle of the Civil War took place May 12-13, 1865 in Texas and ironically resulted in a Confederate victory. A little more than a month later, on June 19, 1865, word of the Emancipation Proclamation reached Galveston, Tex.
By the way, for Civil War buffs, this is an interesting page with images of various Civil War sites from the 1860s (drawings and early photographs) and how they appear today.
Maybe they should be reciting the lyrics of the 1980s hit Too Much Time On My Hands from Styx.
Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, the Oregon State Legislature gets “rickrolled.” They recite the lyrics to the Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up.
Here’s the original music video:
And this is pretty clever. Rick Astley himself rickrolls the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2008.
On this date in 1974, Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time career home run record by hitting his 715th career home run off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Here’s Milo Hamilton’s legendary call along with footage of the historic home run:
Aaron would retire after the 1975 season with 755 HRs as baseball’s all time Home Run King. Aaron will always be part of Milwaukee, having been on the World Champion Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and the National League pennant-winning team of the following year and finishing his Hall of Fame career with the Milwaukee Brewers.
And no, no steroid-taking cheater will ever hold the title of baseball’s all time Home Run King.
The Other McCain has it nailed.
We have indeed become a Food Stamp Nation, with more Americans on food stamps that at any other time since the program’s inception 45 years ago.
Menu prices in restaurants across the country are about to go up, thanks to rising costs, especially fuel.
The cost of beef has gone through the roof, coffee prices are at a 13-year high, and even produce grown right here in California is more expensive than usual.
Grocery prices rose by more than 1 1/2 times the overall rate of inflation in 2010, according to government statistics, and economists predict that it will be even worse this year. For months consumers have grappled with higher prices at the supermarket, while restaurateurs pulled out every kitchen trick they could to absorb food inflation costs.
Well, the party is over. Experts say restaurant-goers can expect to see as much as an 8 percent increase in their checks.
And that may not be enough to keep the big chains alive, let alone the small independent eating places. Already suffering from flagging sales and low profit margins, record-high food prices – brought on by low supplies of corn, soybeans and wheat – could be the coup de grace for many restaurateurs.
A lot more of this:
And this:
And this:
Of course those energy prices — which Our Lord and Savior said would “necessarily skyrocket” are doing just that. Gas prices have gone up by 100 percent since Transfiguration Day in January 2009. That’s leading to higher food prices in grocery stores, since products don’t magically appear at your local grocer. They arrive by truck, and trucks are powered by diesel fuel. Hello? Hello? Anyone home? Bueller? Bueller?
Wholesale food prices have gone up by 1.6 percent in February and are at their highest levels since the Ford administration. Food prices alone went up by 3.9 percent in February. Win The Future = Whip Inflation Now. Epic FAIL.
Speaking of energy prices, oil hit a 30-month high at $108 a barrel and shows no sign of going in the other direction.
Of course, a bunch of Joseph Goebbels clones can come out and do their impression of Kevin Bacon from Animal House — “Remain calm! All is well!” — and try to con the American people into believing them instead of their lying eyes.
Which brings us to this classic blast from the past courtesy of RSM. Our friend Peggy Joseph, a/k/a Peggy the Moocher:
Kinda like the freeloaders in Detroit looking for the “Obama Money,” their own personal stash of cash courtesy of The Messiah:
And a riot broke out at this event between the freeloaders:
We have indeed become a nation of moochers and parasites. Remember what Alexis de Tocqueville said:
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
The lazy, unmotivated voters who believe they are entitled to a share of whatever others have and earn have figured out how to vote themselves a share of OPM. Elect politicians who promise to punish achievers. As the old saying goes:
Robbing Peter to pay Paul will guarantee Paul’s vote.
And it’s all about power. The power to tax is the power to destroy. The current tax structure is little more than social architecture. Reward one behavior, punish another. The Ruling Class fears breakthrough ideas like the Fair Tax and the Flat Tax. Why? Because it destroys the power it has over the American people.
The 2010 election was just the first step. The 2012 election is the real watershed election. We will see if the American people really have the cojones to take the country back from the class warriors hellbent on destroying it for their own personal gain.
On this day in 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis motel.
Dr. King was in Memphis supporting striking black garbage workers and was staying at the Lorraine Motel, a place he stayed frequently. The previous night, he gave a speech which included the following passage:
Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
En route to dinner the evening of April 4, King stepped out onto the balcony outside his motel room when a single rifle shot rang out. The bullet entered King’s right jaw and, traveling through his neck, severed his spinal cord before stopping in his left shoulder. He was pronounced dead at 7:09 p.m. local time.
The Lorraine Motel was converted into the National Civil Rights Museum in 1991. Originally built in 1925, longtime owner Walter Bailey maintained Rooms 306 and 307 as a shrine to Dr. King and his wife, who died within days of the assassination. In the early 1980s, a private group took ownership of the building and later acquired the property facing it, including the rooming house from which James Earl Ray fired the fatal shot with the intent of preserving it for history.
Here’s a current photo of the balcony where Dr. King was shot:
In 1984, U2 issued the song “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” about Martin Luther King.
Apparently using Mafia-like racketeering and extortion tactics against small businesses didn’t pay off, so now the union thugs are taking a different tack, one sure to produce the same results: stiffing wait staff in restaurants and making sure the truly working poor know it was Da Union that stiffed them.
From Badger Blogger:
It’s a busy Friday night at a popular local hangout in Muskego, WI. Tables full of hungry diners, like the Margarita glasses in their hands, are repeatedly emptied and refilled.
A table of four finishes their meal, and is presented by their waitress a bill in the amount of $123.49. The restaurant’s invoice provides helpful gratuity suggestions; dollar amounts totaling 15, 18, even 20 percent.
Yet one diner, picking up the tab for his entire table, elects instead to leave a $12.00 tip – representing just over 10 percent of the bill’s total – but only after writing the words “UNION MEMBER” just below the gratuity line.
The owner of the restaurant, Tres Locos in Muskego, said the patrons were overheard discussing whether to pull this stunt and that the idea came from the union.
So let’s get this straight: Da Gummint Union bullies think it’s a good idea to stiff wait staff, who under state law are only paid $2.33 per hour plus tips to make a point that they are now too poor to tip fairly because they are being asked to pay into their pensions and contribute to their health insurance premiums.
Now that’s a winner. Yeah, right. As much a winner as Charlie Sheen was in Detroit.
Here’s the actual tip left on a bill that exceeded $123:
Has to be a union teacher or a product of a gummint-run skool. Check the math. Duhhhhhhhhh! Epic FAIL. 2 + 1 = 4. Only when telling the union thug that 2 + 1 = 3 might damage his self-esteem. Didn’t even have to carry anything and still got it wrong.
Here’s what was written beneath the gratuity line:
Say “Sieg Heil” to the nice people.
If I hadn’t seen this, I would have thought it was an April Fool’s joke, or from The Onion.
In Delaware, the Gestapo is ripping out basketball hoops from people’s yards and confiscating them based on an anonymous complaint filed by what is apparently a politically connected individual.
With no college basketball until Saturday night, hoops fans are riveted over this video of Delaware police and DOT officials — armed with a front-end loader and a massive dump truck — tearing a basketball hoop out of a family’s front yard and carting it away, despite the protests of the angry parents.
The basket was one of several hoops in the neighborhood that were found to be in violation of “right of way” laws because they were too close to the street.
When Melissa McCafferty noticed DOT workers removing the baskets from other homes on the street, she climbed the pole in her front yard to prevent them from tearing it down, then alerted the news media. (Delaware Online got the amazing photos and video.)
The workers left, but later returned with police officers who threatened to arrest the McCafferty’s if they interfered.
The most shocking part? At one point a female officer tells McCafferty’s husband that the pole will be removed from the ground, but left in the family driveway. However, once the pole was out the ground, workers took it away while the officer claims she never told them that. All this despite the news cameras capturing the whole incident.
Here’s the amazing video showing the Gestapo officers, including the Fraulein thug blatantly lying to the people then, along with other Gestapo officers telling the man and his wife that they had to go back into their house and not stand outside on their own property. Why? Because they were yelling at the Gestapo thugs who lied to them and confiscated their property without due cause.
Someone needs to remind the Delaware state police and the Delaware Department of Transportation of something called the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You remember that one, don’t you? It’s the one that had the Left’s panties in a wad because it wasn’t being extended to foreign jihadists. Tools like Russ Feingold and enablers like John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty thought that foreign jihadists deserved the protection of the U.S. Constitution, while clearly the Left and its fascist police state choose to ignore it when it comes to the rights of American citizens.
Yes, to these folks, foreign jihadists have more rights under the Constitution than do U.S. citizens.
Says Warner Todd Huston:
This is the nanny state we’ve built. In Delaware you are not allowed to own a basketball hoop in front of your home and if you have the gall to erect one anyway, why the state’s stormtroopers will come to your home with thousands of dollars worth of cops, trucks, and personnel to steal your poll and backboard. I suppose the kindly state overlords of Delaware would rather kids be sitting in their homes playing video games where they belong, eh?
Delaware, of course, is a state completely run by Democrats. Democrat Governor. Democrat-controlled Legislature. Democrat Representative. Two Democrat U.S. Senators. Former Senator is Vice President Chia Pet himself, Joe “Plugs” Biden. And yes, Mike Castle was pretty much a Democrat too, just with an “R” behind his name. Republicans had a chance to pick up the seat formerly held by Biden but the likes of Karl Rove and other Beltway GOP sorts killed the chances of the conservative to win the seat. They’d rather have it held by a “bearded Marxist” than a conservative.
Democrats love the oppressive power of the state to force compliance and punish anyone who doesn’t bow, scrape and grovel at the feet of the state.
They’ve created Delaware, which now has shown it can violate its citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights without a peep from the establishment.
