If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
A member of the Honour Guard stands next to a coffin with the body of Ukrainian Armed Forces member Valerii, who was killed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, during a funeral ceremony in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 8, 2022.
"FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!"
Let's be clear: The war was about slavery, from first to last. And after the gun stopped firing, the war continued in multiple ways that all-too-often includes violence and murder.
"Senate Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the republic itself. I'm not naive enough to think they would hold Democratic presidents to the low standard they've applied to Trump, but all future presidents will be able to point to Trump to justify ..."
Tragically brilliant.
"... this is probably the granddaddy of all product placement movies, far more egregious than even Joan Crawford's conspicuous scattering of Pepsi bottles in Strait Jacket ..."
"Basically, amoral social climber from poor background seduces poor factory girl, gets her pregnant, wants to marry a rich socialite and so kills poor factory girl by smashing her in the head with his tennis racket and dumping her body in a lake, fakes a canoe accident, trips self up by being basically an idiot, dies in electric chair after mercy is refused by Governor Charles Evans Hughes."
"It's a magnificent bit of cinema and well-worth watching, especially on this day. It freshly reminds you of just exactly how incredible the achievement of half-a-billion people, represented by three men, was, in an incredibly difficult decade."
"It's hard to think of a better illustration of the end of the European theater of war free of the pernicious and ubiquitous American boo-yah of so many countless war films."
"It's well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone's part at this particular moment in the country and society."
"Konrad Wolf's 1968 feels like a real 1945; he takes us back to his youth and we're submerged in the fog that he had to navigate through once upon a time."
"You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language."
"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
"Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries."
"Many states whose sovereignty is threatened are now finally waking up to the danger. But is it perhaps already too late to do anything about the seemingly over-mighty corporations?"
"The information presented is stark and perhaps unsettling."
Immoral, indecent, inhumane. ... We are running concentration camps and human beings are dying.
"It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy. For if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. ..."
"An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves."
"The film itself is fairly representative of the period and shows how far ahead of her time Garbo was ... that she could shine in spite of rather stilted dialogue, in a non-native language shows just how great an actor she was at the height of her career. It wasn't bad, and I might have another look under certain conditions, but I probably wouldn't buy it for the DVD collection, unless Criterion gets hold of it."
I just caught this from two years ago on The Guardian‘s website. Two years behind, that’s about my speed. But it is a fascinating...
"DEEPLY OFFENDED that a child refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance bc freedom is all about mandatory loyalty oaths."
The city of New York photographed every building in the five boroughs for property tax assessment purposes. The city's photographers took more than 700,000 pics as a result.
We're finally getting some « spectacular stuff » released into the public domain on New Year's Day (screw you Disney!).
It’s two years old, but I’m just seeing it for the first time. It’s « one of the best visual “explainers” » I’ve seen...
Whew. Long title, fabulously fascinating graphic.
100 years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns along the 440-mile line stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea fell silent. The war started 1 August 1914 just as German Chancellor Otto von Bismark once famously predicted around 1884, by "some damned fool thing in the Balkans;" in this case, the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a city of agony in the 20th century). But on 11 November 1918, it was finally "all quiet on the Western Front."
In the next few days, there will be much remembrance of the events of 100 years ago—the end of World War I. Not as much in the U.S., where World War I is like the Korean War, a largely forgotten conflict, even though 115,516 Americans died between 1917-1918, along with over 320,000 sickened, most in the influenza epidemic of 1918.
"There are obviously many websites on WWII weapons, and many on post-war weapons, but I have always been fascinated with WWII weapons being used after the war."
Here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:
A message in a bottle on the roof of a Goslar, Germany, cathedral was found by the grandson of the writer. An authentic lesson...
"On every airline flight, a crew member talks to passengers in the exit rows to see whether they can, as Federal Aviation Administration regulations specify, “pass expeditiously through the emergency exit” if needed. Given how passengers have grown in inverse proportion to the spaciousness of airliner seats, anything like “expeditious” evacuation of an entire airliner seems doubtful."
[Edited two days later to fix some typos and unclear, stream-of-consciousness-type unclear phrases.] During the recent effort to rename the Russell Senate Office Building,...
On 1-Jun-1945, six weeks after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, new U.S. President Harry Truman convened a meeting to update the status on and...
I pretty much wish I had remained disconnected from FB while also being innovative enough to stay connected to the real people in my life without Facebook's corrupting middle man kleptocracy. I sense that there is another housecleaning coming; my involvement will need to be further curtailed. I'm thinking of what we can do next ... there are far better possibilities, surely, than this unholy mess of greed and venality.
A Democratic Socialist explains «what Democratic Socialism actually is»: Not just a return to the halcyon days of the New Deal. “I’m a staff...
Remembering Bill Schock on his 100th birthday … and the 52nd anniversary of Braniff 250 in Falls City. Also … feeling old from …...
"There is a discrete left-opportunist trend that seeks to throw all developments in Cuba post-1959 into the dustbin and forget about it. This does as little for us as the right-opportunist line; both fail to grasp the full reality of revisionist corrosion and capitalist restoration in Cuba, although one cloaks itself in stultified theory."
Back in 2014, I included a chapter in my book detailing Bill Schock's war experiences as they related to his reporting on the crash of Braniff International flight 250 in 1966.
«This is Bill’s final column» out of countless ones he wrote over 71 years for the Falls City Journal. With this column, he said...
This is kind of like how I feel about my (possibly four) upcoming surgeries: I don’t want to do this, but I have to,...
I have been attempting to read «Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History» since it came out in 2000. Instead, I've read «William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich» twice. Nothing wrong with anything I've read of Burleigh's work; quite the contrary. In fact, it has to do with how big the book is; the first edition is 950-plus pages and weighs a ton and I've had hand/wrist problems since, well, 2000. And I have Rise and Fall on Kindle.
"Seventy-five years ago today, a group of young German idealists, students who had dared to speak out against the Nazis,… Posted by Steve Pollock...
In need of some … lighter moments around here, we checked out the new Google Arts and Culture Face Map app to see what…...
Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.