Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

American men in the 19th century and even the early 20th did not marry until they could support a wife and children. Look through your own family and you will probably find that many husbands were as much as 10 years older than their wives. Men would marry around 27, their wives 16 or 17. Then for some reason that changed.

 

Couples marry nowadays when they really don't have a pot to piss in. They immediately start pumping out kids and expect someone else to help them. They borrow themselves into debt and buy everything "on the drip". Maybe it's time for that to go and return to the older ways.

 

 

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

You mean we can print our own currency too? How about Cavs and Flashers?

 

They'll be redemable in gold coins ... filled with chocolate.

 

 

 

All right. Now those are worth something! Love those gold covered chocolate coins! Can I trade in baht for them?

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

Steve,

 

The thing is, if the dollar goes kaput, and supposedly the Chinese and others are trying to get the dollar no longer to be the world currency petro exchange... when the dollar collapses who will buy the Chinese products when we can no longer afford to?

[Flashermac]

Gee ... you mean the US would have to go back to producing things again instead of buy crap from the PRC?

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

 

State Rep Simpson files anti-body-scanner bill

 

 

 

A freshman Representative filed a bill to penalize airport body scanner operators: Including TSA agents.

 

Can they do that to a federal agent? Bill author Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) thinks so. And he's not alone, with 18 co-sponsors from both parties (see list below) and a few organizations.

 

The bill, HB 1938, makes it a civil penalty for anyone working in a locally owned airport to install or operate whole-body imaging equipment -- "including a device that uses backscatter x-rays or millimeter waves, that creates a visual image of a person's unclothed body and is intended to detect concealed objects," the bill read.

 

The penalty is capped at $1,000 per day per violation.

 

The bill is supported by the Travis County Republican Party, the Travis County Libertarian Party, ACLU-Texas, and Austin-based Texans for Accountable Government which pushed for a city of Austin resolution against the scanners.

 

Simpson may also have the backing of U.S. Congressman John Carter of Texas, a member of the U.S. House Appropriations and Homeland Security committees.

 

[color:red]"On Thursday I met with U.S. Congressman John Carter ... to discuss strategies for stopping the federal Transportation Safety Administration’s implementation of unconstitutional and unreasonable searches of U.S. citizens as a condition of travel," Simpson wrote in his weekly blog post.[/color]

 

If it becomes law, Texas will be one of at least two states opposing the measures, including New Jersey and New Hampshire.

 

A press conference on the bill originally scheduled for Monday has been postponed.

 

Co-authors so far include: Reps. Jose Aliseda (R-Beeville), Leo Berman (R-Tyler), Joe Deshotel (D-Beaumont), Allen Fletcher (R-Tomball), Dan Flynn (R-Vann), John V. Garza (R-San Antonio), Larry Gonzales (R-Round Rock), Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City), Charlie Howard (R-Sugar Land), Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs), Jim Landtroop (R-Big Spring), Jodie Laubenberg (R-Rockwall), Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), Debbie Riddle (R-Houston), Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston), and James White (R-Hillister).

 

 

 

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[Flashermac]

 

Whatever happened to separation of church and state?

 

 

US tax payers fund foreign mosques

 

 

[TroyinEwa/Perv]

Didn't watch the video but is that a joke? I probably don't understand the meaning but politicians have been flaunting their religious beliefs since I can remember.

[Steve]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110304/us_time/08599205598100

On Civil War Anniversary, Confederate Group Stirs Debate

 

Interesting article. I know there are a couple forumites who have an interest in it.

 

My best friend in college was very proud of his being the ancestor a confederate soldier. He also hated the klan for turning the confederate flag into a symbol of hate. He used to joke he hated the klan more than blacks do.

 

Anyway, he had mixed feelings. He said he admired that many fought proudly as any soldier would but acknowledges that had the south won, it would have kept slavery going longer and he hated that legacy of the south.

 

Soldiers respect other soldiers who fought bravely and valiantly at times I've been told. Maybe some of you vets can confirm that. I've heard that some vietnam vets respected the fighting spirit of the NVA and the viet cong.

 

One thing I would find strange personally would be if I was a vet of a side in a war that was deemed the side that had an unjust cause in the first place by history at least. Confederate vet, German vet from WW2. In some ways one could argue that American vets in the Vietnam war fought on the side that had an unjust reason. Apologies to vets of that era. Just that there are many that said we shouldn't have been there in the first place but that's not to take away from those that fought proudly for their country.

 

 

[Flashermac]

The Civil War was actually two wars. It was begun by die hard slavery backers of the deep south without putting secession up to a popular vote. The ordinary southerner wasn't much interested in fighting for slavery and a lot of them were pissed off about not getting to vote on it. But when the Union Army began burning and looting, it became hard not to fight. You defend your home and family. You've never heard about Athens, Alabama? It was one of the most pro-Union cities in Alabama in 1861, until the Union Army changed that:

 

 

<< The citizenry of Athens may not have minded the Union army in their midst. The town had previously displayed considerable Unionist sentiment. Townspeople had voted for the Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas in the 1860 election and had burned an effigy of Alabama's virulent secessionist senator William Lowndes Yancey during the secession debate. Athens mayor W. P. Tanner later stated that the Union flag had remained atop the courthouse for more than two months after the state left the Union. Tanner also noted the citizens of the town found the occupying Union soldiers to be orderly and restrained.

 

The peaceful occupation that the citizens of Athens had enjoyed ended on May 1, 1862, with the appearance of the Confederate First Louisiana Cavalry. These troops easily pushed the Union force out of town and toward Huntsville, and the withdrawal of the Eighteenth Ohio quickly turned into a rout. During the retreat, some members of the Ohio unit believed that the citizens of Athens acted in concert with the Confederate cavalry by firing on the retreating Union columns.

 

According to Colonel Turchin's court martial proceedings, Union soldiers on the return trip to Athens the following day reportedly threatened revenge. Many soldiers were under the impression that General Mitchel wanted the town punished. The Eighth Brigade, under the command of Turchin, who was born in Russia and trained in its finest military school, stacked its arms on the courthouse lawn and proceeded to carry out what they believed were their orders.

 

The primary target for destruction was the Athens business district. The troops broke into the drugstore of William S. Allen and destroyed his medical library as well as surgical and dental instruments, and the soldiers stole parts of skeletons from the office. They also stole some $3,000 worth of goods from Madison Thompson's grocery store and destroyed the interior of Peterson Tanner and Sons Dry Goods. The Federal soldiers extended the criminal activity into the homes of Athens residents, and two Union soldiers were accused of raping a 14-year-old slave girl at the home of Charlotte Hines.

 

Turchin was relieved of his command and ultimately court martialed for dereliction of duty in the destruction of Athens and other offenses. Although he was found guilty, Turchin was later promoted to general and thus above the authority of the court. Athens would be occupied for the remainder of the war. At the end of his trial, Turchin advised that the Union armies should live off the land to destroy the South's resources, as was the European custom of war making. >>

 

 

This is what we think of in the South when we talk about the war. My own family was burnt out - almost everything they had stolen. I grew up hearing stories about it. A friend's grandfather told him about how his family lived in a cave because the town of New Hope, Alabama had been totally destroyed by fire by Union troops. Not one single home or building was left standing. As a result, I cannot view the war the same way as you do. To a white southerner, we were reduced to poverty. To a black southerner, it was the war that brought freedom. We have a common heritage, but from a different perspective.

 

 

p.s. Care to explain this?

 

<< In some ways one could argue that American vets in the Vietnam war fought on the side that had an unjust reason. >>

 

 

So South Vietnam was wrong to oppose a takeover by communist guerrillas supported openly supported by Hanoi? If Hanoi was so wonderful, why did hundreds of thousands flee after 1975 even at the risk of their lives? Previously, in 1954-55, about one million had fled from the North to the South, unwilling to live under communism. It's one thing to say the US should have stayed out of the conflict, but it is quite another to say Hanoi was right to crush those who opposed its one party dictatorship.

 

 

p.p.s (Can't same I'm not persistent. )

 

 

I was active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans years ago when it was an historical group. We marked graves and skirmish sites and studied local history. Since then a new sort has taken over the SCV, the neo-Confederates who know beans about history. Most of the members I knew have dropped out because they no longer felt comfortable with the new folks.

 

 

[Flashermac]

 

I left off the end of the quotation!

 

 

<< Some historians have recently postulated that Union leaders, both civilian and military, including President Abraham Lincoln, began to realize the possible efficacy of harsher policies toward the rebellious South based on Turchin's exploits. Such policies resulted in General William Sherman's "March to the Sea" and General Philip Sheridan's despoiling of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, depriving the Confederacy of needed provisions.

 

[color:red]Although these acts hastened the end of the Civil War, they also became engrained in the southern memory, fostering the views that became embodied in Lost Cause ideology.[/color] >>

 

 

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