Bring The HEAT

And Again, Manhattan

The refrain is, tragically, a well-known one.  Muslim allowed in to this country, never cares to assimilate, repays the kindness of his new country by indiscriminately killing and maiming in the name of Islam.  

Eight dead, fifteen injured.  "Allahu Akbar" being screamed as he murdered.  Even as the activist courts invite more and more of the very ilk who perpetrated yet another horror.

"We find that the reasonable observer would likely conclude that EO-2's primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs," Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote on behalf of the majority.

4th Circuit Court Chief Judge Roger Gregory doesn't seem to understand what a reasonable observer is.  But maybe, if he had been riding his bike down the East Side bike path in Manhattan, and was now in an emergency room staring at a life forever shattered, or at the morgue, identifying the mangled remains of a loved one, he might gain some of that understanding.   But then again, maybe not.  

 

 

I'll Just Leave This Here. You're Welcome.

 

H/T to Weena, the birthday girl.  URR here.

 

The Fight for the Valley of Tears

The 44th anniversary of the beginning of the Yom Kippur War is today.  On that day, 6 October 1973, Syrian armor attacked on the northern flank of Israel, crashing through the thin IDF defenses in the Golan Heights with an infantry division and more than 200 tanks.  

At the end of the savage four-day fight, the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade counted nine operational tanks available out of the original 120.  The men had fought nearly without end for three days, with little water or food, and almost no sleep.  However, they had smashed the Syrian 7th Infantry Division, and destroyed more than 600 tanks and armored vehicles.  

Lieutenant Colonel Avigdor Kahalani, commander of the 77th Battalion of 7th Armored Brigade, recounts those grim and desperate days in his tribute book, The Heights of Courage.   The book is a must-read for anyone wanting to know more about the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the men who fought it.  

URR here.

(Added linkie)

And Now, Edmonton, and Marseilles, Again.

From CNN.  Two attacks in Edmonton.  The first, a car running down a policeman at high speed, the driver leaping out and stabbing the Officer.  An ISIS flag found in the car.  The second, a U-Haul van running a barricade.

Just before midnight, a police officer stopped a U-Haul truck at a checkpoint and recognized the driver's name as similar to that of the Chevrolet's registered owner. The U-Haul truck then sped off towards downtown Edmonton with police chasing it.

 

The U-Haul traveled on busy Jasper Avenue, which late Saturday night and early Sunday morning was full of football fans and bargoers, reported CNN partner CBC. During the chase, the truck deliberately attempted to hit pedestrians in crosswalks and alleys in two areas along Jasper Avenue," Knecht said.

 

At least four pedestrians were injured. Their conditions were not immediately known, the police chief said.

Just a bunch of Lone Wolves up there in Canada, right?  Anyone wanna guess at the religion of the two perps?   Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, of course, made this somewhat conflicted statement:

"We cannot -- and will not -- let violent extremism take root in our communities," he added. "We know that Canada's strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear."

On the first point, you could, and you did.  On the second, you kowtow to those violent extremists with your "hate speech" laws and your intentional obtuseness to the fact that violent extremism has already found its way into your cities and towns, and you have all but subsidized it.  Reap what ye sow, fella.

 

In Marseilles, yet another butchery by the Religion of Peace.  UK Sun tells us that two women were slaughtered by a knife-wielding man shouting "Allahu Akbar", which I am reliably informed translates to "my motives are unclear".   

 

 

Canada should hear the echoes of the terrible screams of those women, and of the policemen's gunshots.  Coming to a city near you, eh?  However, the leftists up there, led by Trudeau, are constantly equating criticism of Islam with the murderous conduct of the Islamists.  So, sadly, those echoes fall on the deaf, dumb, and blind personages of the willfully ignorant.   

 

URR here.

The Patriots Lost on Sunday

...and lost big.  

Sixteen of their number, players James White, Alan Branch, Brandin Cooks, Devin McCourty, , Lawrence Guy, Trey Flowers, Elandon Roberts, Duron Harmon, Jonathan Jones, Deatrich Wise, Johnson Bademosi, Adam Butler, Malcom Brown, Malcolm Butler, Stephone Gilmore, and Jordan Richards, chose to intentionally show disrespect to our flag and our country by kneeling in protest during the National Anthem.  What were they protesting?  Racial injustice, supposedly.  (You see, it is considered de rigueur by the far-left to denigrate the United States and everything about it, because in their views it fails to be the perfect utopia they have constructed in their heads.) 

Of course, most of this was done in response to President Trump's pointed remarks condemning such behavior, in which he called for NFL owners to fire players who showed such disrespect (former QB Colin Kaepernick first started this crap in its current form).  While Trump used questionable wisdom in making his remarks (he is the President, not a candidate), and while it is certainly true that such protest is legal free expression, the players kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem of the freest nation in the history of mankind, in order to protest "racial injustice", are rich, spoiled, and ignorant hypocrites.  

If "black lives matter" so damned much, why haven't those sixteen players gone into Chicago or Baltimore or St. Louis and employed some of that self-congratulatory courage to put an end to the gang and drug violence, and the overwhelming cause of deaths of young blacks.  Which is, of course, being murdered by other blacks.  Nearly every black person murdered in this country is killed by another black person.  To the tune of 93%.  Blacks are, according to the Justice Department, responsible for better than half of the murders committed in this country between 1980 and 2008, despite being slightly less than 12% of the population during that time.  Self-described "team leader" Devin McCourty?  You go first.  Put up or shut up.  

You see, the men and women who serve the country and the flag you protest while making your millions, do just those sorts of things.  They go into places that are terribly dangerous and they risk their lives every day to defend the innocent.   Save me the bullshit about this not being about money, either.  The sixteen players that showed such disrespect?  They are paid more, on average, as INDIVIDUALS (not counting endorsements) every month than a USMC Rifle Platoon earns in that same month in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Nearly twice as much, in fact.  For playing a game the rest of us played for the love of it.  Perhaps one of those sixteen could use his millions to fly to Sangin and tell the Lance Corporal walking a combat patrol in the 110-degree heat all about his "white privilege".  

Were I to possess a magic wand, I would wave it over the sixteen assholes mentioned above.  Then, they could learn about real discrimination.  Some would become Copts in Egypt, being burned alive inside their Church by the same Muslim Brotherhood that Barack Obama invited to the State Department over and over again.  Or they could suddenly find themselves as ethnic Kurds in Saddam's Iraq, seeing  themselves and wives and children buried alive by the Iraqi security forces.  Or they could be ethnic Poles, enslaved and starving, being worked to death in an Arbeitslager in Germany or a Gulag in the Soviet Union.  Or an Armenian without food or water or hope, on the death march across the Syrian desert.  Then, perhaps, they could have a taste of what hate and discrimination truly is.  But none of them know, not even a little.  Instead, they play a game for great deal of money and are treated like celebrities, simply because they possess physical talents given them by God.  

As for owner Robert Kraft, fuck you.  You are supposed to be the adult in the room.  When those players wear that uniform, in that stadium, they work for YOU.  They show such disrespect to our flag and our Anthem because you condone and approve of it.  Your players are not "intelligent" or "thoughtful".  They are ignorant, arrogant, spoiled children.  If they were intelligent and thoughtful, they would understand, in some small way, that they should kiss the ground in front of them, and thank their God they were born into this time and this place.   Into the freest nation ever on earth, bought and paid for by those who fought and died for their liberties, to end slavery and oppose tyranny.  None of those terrible things mentioned above will happen to your players, because better people than they will lay down their lives to prevent it.  Men and women for whom the flag and Anthem your players have shown such contempt for represents anything but injustice. 

The cascade of boos from people who paid their hard-earned money for a ticket yesterday showed that they understand, even if your players don't.  One would think you might have the spine to teach them.  Or tell them.  Stand your asses up and respect your country and your flag.  But you don't have that courage or that spine.   

The score of the game was immaterial.  The Patriots lost.  Perhaps they should consider a name change for the franchise.  URR here.  

 

79 Years Ago Today, the Deadly 1938 Hurricane

 

The full video from Everett Allen's masterpiece book A Wind to Shake the World.   My father was 13 at the time, and he had vivid memories of roofs blowing over his head on his walk home from grade school.  The storm took the top story off of the Whitin Machine Works research facility in Whitinsville, MA, mercifully evacuated less than an hour before.   Still, the death toll in New England, particularly on the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts, was massive.  More than 800 perished.  The 1938 Hurricane cost more than $300 million in 1938 dollars, more than $5 BILLION today.  It remains the only storm ever to hit Vermont as a hurricane, where it killed seven people.  

Anyway, worth the watching.  URR here.

 

 

The Sunken Road at Antietam, 17 September 1862

Dead of the 14th North Carolina in the Sunken Road*

One hundred fifty-five years ago this day, the seventeenth of September in 1862, occurred one of the great and seminal events of the American Civil War.  The battle is often described as a “watershed”, in that what came after would forever be different from what had come before.  It was on this day that the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George B. McClellan, slammed into the rebel Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of the incomparable Robert E. Lee, and very nearly destroyed it.   The Battle of Antietam, named by the North for Antietam Creek, and the South for the nearby village of Sharpsburg, Maryland, occurred in an area not much more than six square miles, along what is now the Sharpsburg Pike, beginning in the north in a cornfield near the Dunker’s Church, and ending at the aforementioned Antietam Creek along its southern edge. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, on a day more than twenty years ago on a muggy September morning, I ventured off of I-95 and my journey back from my parents’ house to Camp Lejeune, to make the 30-ish mile trip to the Antietam battlefield.   As was my habit, I would re-familiarize myself with a battle before walking the ground, and I had done so for this occasion.  I wanted to see the ground during the same time of year in which the battle was fought, and had not had the opportunity the previous year. 

Though I toured other parts of the battlefield in which bravery and sacrifice were plentiful, walking the cornfield along what was then Hagerstown Pike, seeing Dunker’s Church (still scarred by shot and ball), and the famous Burnside Bridge, I was drawn, in a way that can only be experienced, to the famous Sunken Road, a place now known as “Bloody Lane”.   Here was a place where the burning ferocity of the battle reached its crescendo.  The fight for the Sunken Road was one of the most savage actions of the entire war.  During it, two divisions of the Union II Corps, French’s Division on the right of the line and Richardson’s on the left, attacked south.  It was here that the brigades of D. H. Hill’s Division of Longstreet’s Corps occupied a road cut only a few hundred yards long.  Troops from Georgia and Alabama were on the left and center, respectively, while BG George Anderson’s Brigade of North Carolina troops on the right of Hill’s line. 

Hill’s Division initially repulsed the Federals all along the line.  However, “repulse” didn’t mean in September 1862 what it once did.  Instead of withdrawing to regroup for another attack, giving both the offense and defense time to recover, French’s blue troops instead set down in whatever cover they could find or quickly dig, and continued hammering and being hammered by the entrenched enemy.  There was hardly a let-up in the intensity of the firing.  Heavy casualties were inflicted on both sides.  Sumner, commanding the Union II Corps, then sent in the brigades of Richardson’s Division.  Among them was the famous Irish Brigade, composed primarily of the 63^rd, 69^th, and 88^th New York, led by Colonel Thomas Meagher.  The North Carolina regiments and the New York regiments blazed away at each other from just a few yards apart, the men in blue suffering terribly until reinforcements from Caldwell’s Brigade managed to flank the rebel troops.  Then, along with the Irish Brigade, the survivors at any rate, Caldwell’s men raked the North Carolina troops with a withering flanking fire, turning the depressed thoroughfare into a charnel house. 

Dead of Meagher's Irish Brigade*

After holding for more than an hour, the men of Hill’s Division could stand no more, and began to withdraw, leaving the dubious protection of the sunken road and making their way south toward the small farm.  The journey would be savage and deadly, as the Union troops who had never left musket range, poured a murderous fire onto the exposed rebels.  Longstreet’s line had been broken, however temporarily, and the opportunity was there for exploitation.

Had McClellan understood the situation and sent in his reserves, the Army of the Potomac may have had a chance to break the Army of Northern Virginia, (this was also likely true before AP Hill’s timely arrival later in the day to blunt the Federal attack across Burnside Bridge).   Despite the indecision in McClellan’s actions, Lee was forced to withdraw from Maryland, accomplishing little except incurring losses he could not afford. 

The lack of aggressive exploitation by the Army of the Potomac when they had Lee in a pinch is an all-too-familiar tale, but is ancillary to the significance of the fight at Antietam.  Such opportunities for victory would come again for the Army of the Potomac, at Gettysburg, and at Petersburg, and on each occasion the Union generalship could never quite ever bring itself to move quickly and decisively.   No, the significance of Antietam, exemplified by the savagery of the Sunken Road, was that the ferocity of the fighting represented a permanent change in the character of the war itself.  The stubborn valor exhibited by the respective armies at Antietam would raise the cost on both sides in dead and wounded to levels unimaginable in 1861.  

The men in blue uniforms, while not always as skilled as their rebel foes, and doubtlessly not as well-led at the levels of command that mattered, had at Antietam proven conclusively that they lacked nothing in the way of raw courage.  They had endured the worst the ANV could inflict on them, and somehow moved forward into the storm of shot and shell.  They had at the Sunken Road rousted entrenched veteran troops of the enemy, despite lacking the numerical advantage conventional wisdom demanded for such an assault.  They had mauled D. H. Hill’s brigades, forcing them back to Piper Farm.  They had handed the opportunity for victory, not just at Antietam but possibly for the war itself, to their commanders.  That their commanders did not press the advantage was crushingly disappointing, but the troops had fought their enemy in an even fight and more than held their own.  Their performance heartened the men in the ranks, for they knew that it meant (as both sides realized) that they could and would likely do so again.  The largely volunteer forces that made up the Army of the Potomac demonstrated the grit and determination and endurance and bravery needed to match Lee’s army. 

While the battle itself could be considered a tactical draw, such a realization must have much discomfited Lee and his commanders.  When taken with the immediately-preceding action at South Mountain, casualties on both sides in the two battles were enormous.  Ominously for Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, they were also nearly equal.  (About 14,500 for each side.)  With a much smaller force at his disposal, it was clear to Lee and his Lieutenants that many more such actions would end in the destruction of his army and the end of the Confederacy. 

Aftermath of the Fight Looking North at the Sunken Road*

Another aspect to the fight at the Sunken Road was the extended duration of the carnage.  The fierce fighting had lasted more than three hours.  Seldom, if ever to that point in the history of warfare in the age of musketry, had such a protracted slaughter been endured by the men of both sides.  European observers were flabbergasted by the ability of both lines of troops to absorb such punishment and continue fighting at close quarters.  The Sunken Road was the first of such large-scale bloodletting, but there would be many more to come.  At Gettysburg in July of 1863, Meade’s veteran troops fought and soundly defeated Lee and turned back his foray into Pennsylvania, at frightful cost.  A year and a day after Antietam, in September of 1863, Union General George Thomas and his Corps had held Horseshoe Ridge at Chickamauga for seven hours against Braxton Bragg’s superior Rebel forces, as his men and their foes blazed away at each other at close range.  A French observer of Chickamauga commented then that no European army could stand such punishment without shattering completely. 

The toll of the ghastly struggle at the Sunken Road is indicated by the casualty lists among those who led their men into the fight.  The action had cost D. H. Hill five of his Brigade Commanders wounded, with BG George Anderson’s being mortal, eight Regimental Commanders killed, and fourteen wounded (one mortally), producing a staggering casualty rate among Regimental Commanders and higher of 61%.  A single Regimental commander in Anderson’s North Carolina Brigade escaped death or wounding.  BG Robert Rodes, himself wounded while commanding the Georgians on Hill’s left, ended the fight with just two unwounded Regimental Commanders.  For the Union, in Sumner’s II Corps, two Division Commanders were wounded, Israel Richardson mortally.  The Commander of the Irish Brigade, Meagher, was also wounded, along with two other Brigade Commanders.  Three Regimental Commanders were killed, and thirteen wounded.  Federal casualties among Regimental Commanders and higher numbered nearly one in three.

The Army of the Potomac chased and sparred with the Army of Northern Virginia through the remainder of 1862 and 1863, trying unsuccessfully to bring the elusive Lee to decisive battle.  Each time the Federals were frustrated, and often stung by the fierceness of the Rebel counterstrokes.  In May of 1864, however, command of all Union forces was assumed by Ulysses Grant.  It was Grant, traveling as a shadow to Meade (still technically in command of the Army of the Potomac), who succeeded in grabbing hold of Lee’s shrinking but still formidable Army and never letting go.  Through the horrors of the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse, Grant hammered Lee whenever he could, eventually trapping the Army of Northern Virginia in entrenchments around Petersburg, a siege Lee was powerless to break.  From there, on a forage for food, Lee was caught in the open with his weakened army at Appomattox, and in April of 1865, surrendered his forces to Grant. 

Such an end, and the path to it, was paved with the lives of more than 650,000 souls.  Such effusion of blood was unthinkable to either side in the summer of 1861.   But after Antietam, those who understood the significance of what had occurred could not have imagined much less.  The terrible trail of shattered corpses which passed through Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor, and the Crater, and finally to Appomattox some two and a half years later, began at the Sunken Road at Antietam on this day, one hundred and fifty-five year ago.  URR here.

*All photographs are the work of the incomparable Alexander Gardner.

"God is with us all this day"

September 4th is the 50th anniversary of the death of Lieutenant Vincent R. Capodanno, CHC, USN.  He died while ministering to the wounded of Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in the Que Son Valley.   Nicknamed "The Grunt Padre", Fr. Capodanno was a revered and beloved figure to the Marines to whom he ministered.  The Marine Corps Association published a superb 2011 article about this remarkable man of courage and faith.   As did the Catholic website The Word Among Us.  

Soon after landing, Capodanno’s unit was hit hard by a force of nearly two thousand North Vietnamese. As the Marines came over the crest of a hill, they were bombarded with mortar shells and automatic weapons fire. “We’re being wiped out!” one platoon radioed back. “There are wounded and dying all around.”Hearing the message, the chaplain ran to their aid. He went back and forth, bringing in wounded men and giving Last Rites to the dying. Even though hit twice—once in the face and also in the right hand—he continued to look for wounded, telling them, “Jesus said, ‘Have faith. Jesus is the truth and the life.’”

One of the men he helped was Ray Harton, who was bleeding heavily and feared that he was going to die. Then he looked up and saw Capodanno. “I can’t explain it, but when he touched me and I heard his voice, I had a calming feeling that I have never had before or since.”Capodanno reassured Harton that “God is with us all this day,” and blessed him with his still intact left hand.

Then a wounded corpsman screamed in pain, and Capodanno ran to help. As he knelt there, a burst of machine-gun fire killed both men instantly. One of the soldiers who brought in Capodanno’s body hours later said, “He had a smile on his face, and his eyelids were closed as if asleep or in prayer.” 

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Chaplain of the 3d Battalion, in connection with operations against enemy forces. In response to reports that the 2d Platoon of M Company was in danger of being overrun by a massed enemy assaulting force, Lt. Capodanno left the relative safety of the company command post and ran through an open area raked with fire, directly to the beleaguered platoon. Disregarding the intense enemy small-arms, automatic-weapons, and mortar fire, he moved about the battlefield administering last rites to the dying and giving medical aid to the wounded. When an exploding mortar round inflicted painful multiple wounds to his arms and legs, and severed a portion of his right hand, he steadfastly refused all medical aid. Instead, he directed the corpsmen to help their wounded comrades and, with calm vigor, continued to move about the battlefield as he provided encouragement by voice and example to the valiant marines. Upon encountering a wounded corpsman in the direct line of fire of an enemy machine gunner positioned approximately 15 yards away, Lt. Capodanno rushed a daring attempt to aid and assist the mortally wounded corpsman. At that instant, only inches from his goal, he was struck down by a burst of machine gun fire. By his heroic conduct on the battlefield, and his inspiring example, Lt. Capodanno upheld the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the cause of freedom.

The Knox-class frigate USS Vincent R. Capodanno  (FF-1093) was commissioned in 1973.  While aboard USS Miller (FF-1091) I went to sea alongside Capodanno in the summer of 1983.   (She was sold to Turkey in the mid-1990s and served until a few years ago.)  

Father Capodanno is under consideration for canonization as a Catholic Saint, whose life was lived with "heroic virtue".   The Marines of Mike 3/5 on that hot September morning in the Que Son Valley might be able to answer that.  Whatever the decision, Lt Vincent R. Capodanno died a hero's death, fifty years ago this day.  

URR here.

Smoking Gun: Young Couple Arrested For Fairway Sex

The jokes write themselves.

At least he had his ball in the fairway.

She likes to play with a stiff shaft.

Hennessey reportedly stated that she and Payne “should not have been engaged in those activities within public view.”

That could be said about my golf game, too.  

The woman, the officer reported, “was on her back and the male was laying down with his head between her legs performing oral sex.”

So he was in the first cut?

He was getting in a few extra holes?

Just swinging his fairway wood?

Seems their round went from "best ball" to "scramble".  

But does he win the Bongo?

Gawd, they write themselves!

URR here.  

 

 

 

 

Raise a Glass to This Guy

The guy making the shot in Phoenix was likely MOPPed up, too.  Hard to do, yanno.  But the results are, quite literally, breathtaking.  I do believe we have another winner in the Springfield Film Festival for best short picture.  Behold.  Hans Moleman would be proud.  

URR here.