Alternative History

Down the Big Muddy

Posted on July 30, 2026July 30, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

The latest in Ross’s brilliantly conceived, deftly executed “Graphic History” series.

A Day with Young Abraham Lincoln in New Orleans, 1828
Historical Backdrop

In the spring of 1828, a nineteen-year-old Abraham Lincoln was hired by James Gentry, the richest man in Gentryville, Indiana, to help float a cargo of pork, bacon, corn meal, potatoes and flour down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. His partner was Gentry’s son Allen, four years older. Lincoln was paid eight dollars a month and a steamboat ticket home. The boat was a “broadhorn” flatboat — a big unpainted wooden box, roughly sixty-five feet long, steered by a long sweep oar, moving only as fast as the current. Somewhere below Baton Rouge, at a sugar plantation landing, seven men boarded at night intending to rob them; Lincoln fought them off with a hickory club and carried a scar over his right eye for the rest of his life. Then came New Orleans: a city of about 46,000 people, the busiest port in the South. Lincoln had grown up in the backwoods of Indiana. He had never seen anything like it.

That’s merely the beginning; read it all, you’ll be damned glad you did.

Complicit, to the Nth degree

Posted on July 29, 2026July 29, 2026 by Mike 1 Comment

Meet Lizz Wainio.

She was only twenty-seven years old. In the final minutes of her life, she did not ask her family to comfort her. Instead, Honor Elizabeth Wainio used her last phone call to prepare them for a grief she knew she would never have to carry.

Everyone called her Lizz.

Just days before September 11, 2001, she had returned from a long-awaited trip to Europe. She attended a friend’s wedding in Florence, walked through Paris, and lit a candle in a church for her grandmother.

Lizz once told her mother that seeing Paris would make her life complete.

But she believed she still had decades ahead of her.

She was a successful district manager for Discovery Channel Stores, responsible for locations across New York and New Jersey. Friends remembered her as energetic, organized, and deeply affectionate, someone who approached life with urgency and joy.

On September 11, Lizz boarded United Airlines Flight 93 in Newark for a business trip to San Francisco. Forty passengers and crew members were aboard, along with four hijackers.

At 9:28 that morning, the hijackers attacked the cockpit. The aircraft suddenly dropped hundreds of feet, and passengers were forced toward the rear.

Then phone calls began revealing the truth.

Planes had struck the World Trade Center. Another had hit the Pentagon. Flight 93 was not part of an ordinary hostage situation. The passengers understood that their aircraft was also being used as a weapon.

At 9:53, Lizz called her stepmother, Esther Heymann, using an Airfone.

Her voice was calm.

She spoke about the people she loved and tried to ease Esther’s fear. During the conversation, she said that what was happening would be much harder for her family than it was for her.

Facing death, Lizz was thinking about those who would survive her.

She also said she was going to be with her grandmother.

The call lasted about four and a half minutes. Near its end, Lizz heard the other passengers preparing to move toward the cockpit.

“I have to go,” she said. “They’re breaking into the cockpit. I love you.”

At 9:57, the passengers and crew launched their counterattack. They rushed forward, knowing exactly what failure would mean.

At 10:03, Flight 93 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Everyone aboard was killed.

Investigators concluded that the hijackers intended to strike a target in Washington, most likely the Capitol. The passengers’ resistance prevented the plane from reaching it.

Today, forty wind chimes stand at the Flight 93 National Memorial, one for each passenger and crew member. Every voice remains separate, just as every life aboard was unique.

Lizz had plans, a career, people she loved, and a future waiting for her.

But when terror took everything else away, it could not take her compassion.

Thirty thousand feet above the earth, a frightened young woman chose to comfort others.

Honor Elizabeth Wainio died at twenty-seven.

But in her final minutes, she showed what courage can sound like when it speaks through love.

A bit more here on this lovely young woman, wantonly murdered by shitheel raghead terrorists on America’s second darkest day—the DARKEST being, hands down, when NYC shitlib fools disgraced themselves and their posterity forevermore by selecting the execrable Zoran MammyDamnJammy to be their mayor.

Happily, there are at least a handful of decent New Yorkers who, despite all odds, still do retain at least a modicum of honor, dignity, and self respect.

Families of 9/11 victims want to ban Mamdani from sacred 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero: ‘unwelcome guest’
Families of 9/11 victims are demanding NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani be banned from the 25th anniversary of the attacks at Ground Zero, branding him an apologist for Islamic terror whose presence would be an insult to the memories of nearly 3,000 people murdered.

“Our objection is based on his public record — his failure to meaningfully acknowledge the horror of that day, and his employment of, support for, or association with individuals who have minimized 9/11, defended terrorists, or even suggested America ‘deserved’ the attacks,” said Giovanni Galante – whose 29-year-old wife Grace Catherine Galante was among 2,977 innocents killed by al-Qaeda terrorists.

Galante, 55, is one of the organizers of a petition drive that has collected over 1,100 signatures in a little over a week, including from at least 300 victims’ families.

Good on ya, sir, and heartfelt condolences on the loss so cruelly inflicted on you all those years ago by The Friends Of Mamdani.

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Salisbury steak

Posted on July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

The fascinating tale of Dr James Salisbury’s renowned brainchild.

alisbury steak — seasoned ground beef patties mixed with breadcrumbs or other ingredients — was invented by James Salisbury, a New York physician who was fascinated by the relationship between diet and health. In the 1850s, he conducted a series of self experiments in which he exclusively ate a single food for a few days or weeks. His first test, a diet of only baked beans, produced disastrous results: “I became very flatulent and constipated, head dizzy, ears ringing, limbs prickly, and was wholly unfitted for mental work,” he wrote in The Relation of Alimentation and Disease (1888). Next came oatmeal and other staples, but it was ground beef, which he called “muscle pulp of beef,” that finally delivered the results he sought.

His prescription was simple: broiled beef patties, served with simple seasonings such as butter, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon. This recipe, he wrote, “affords the maximum of nourishment with the minimum of effort to the digestive organs.” Vegetables, on the other hand, were not only unnecessary but also harmful in his view; Salisbury declared that vegetarians had “less nervous and muscular endurance than meat eaters.”

During the Civil War, Salisbury applied his nutrition theories to Union soldiers, who were fed a diet of beef patties instead of the usual hard biscuits, which tended to cause digestive issues. In the decades following the war, Salisbury’s diet evolved from medical prescription to one of America’s first fad diets, spurred on by the rise of wellness culture and increased public interest in healthy food. (Other notable 19th-century foods believed to promote health included graham crackers, which were originally intended to suppress the libido, and Kellogg’s cornflakes, which were served by their inventor John Harvey Kellogg at his world-famous sanitarium.)

World War I was a further boon for the Salisbury steak, as the name became preferred to the German-sounding “hamburger.” By the mid-20th century, the dish had become a blue-collar classic. Hearty, inexpensive, and easy to prepare in large batches, it appeared on diner menus and Navy cookbooks across America.

Then came the postwar boom — and with it, the rise of television. In 1953, the Swanson company introduced the TV dinner, a frozen meal packaged in a compartmentalized aluminum tray. Within its first year of production, more than 10 million trays were sold in the U.S., and the Salisbury steak was one of the TV dinner’s most enduring offerings. For a generation of midcentury families, Salisbury steak was the taste of modern life: a hot meal ready in minutes, eaten in front of the television.

The same forces that made Salisbury steak famous would later make it unfashionable. In the 2000s, Americans began to fall out of love with processed foods, in part due to growing awareness of their negative health effects. In 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a ban on large sodas in the city, and First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged children to “Move!” The Salisbury steak, which was by then synonymous with microwaved TV dinners, fell victim to its association with cheap, unhealthy meals.

That said, not all processed foods suffered this fate, and another reason for Salisbury steak’s decline may be that it was outcompeted by its more convenient cousin, the burger, which rose to prominence as one of America’s most popular and iconic meals during the latter half of the 20th century. With the spread of fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King, many customers opted for the Salisbury steak’s handheld cousin when in the mood for a beef patty.

Though Salisbury steak has faded from the cultural spotlight in recent years, it is viewed with nostalgia by many who grew up with it and can still be found in home kitchens across America.

I ate a gracious plenty of those Swanson dinners featuring Salisbury steak when I was a kid, and it doesn’t seem to have done me any harm. Not that I know of, at any rate.

Via Insty, who quips, “Dr. Salisbury had your best interests at heart.” In stark today’s crop of Goosesteppin’ Left dietary/health/lifestyle scolds, who assuredly do not.

Burning questions

Posted on July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 by Mike

Whatever pitiful handful of old-school Ainglishters may still be left ain’t gonna like the answer much, I bet.

What would Churchill think of the land of Lucy Connolly and Henry Nowak?
THE emergence of vigilante patrols on the streets of Rochdale following the release from prison of a convicted grooming gang ringleader is, at first glance, a local story. Such episodes are easily dismissed as spontaneous expressions of public anger, the predictable consequence of a controversial criminal case. Yet to do so would be to overlook the more interesting question. Why are citizens beginning to assume responsibilities that belong exclusively to the state?

The significance of vigilantism in Rochdale and elsewhere in Britain lies not in the number of people involved but in the assumption that underlies it: that the authorities either cannot or will not perform one of their most elementary duties. Political legitimacy depends as much on what citizens believe governments are capable of doing as on what governments actually do.

Taken in isolation, the events of recent years in Britain prove very little. Western democracies periodically experience shocking crimes, controversial court decisions and failures of public administration. No single episode tells us much about the condition of a nation. The picture changes when exceptional events begin to accumulate with unsettling regularity.

The Southport murders, where three young girls were killed and many others injured, sent shockwaves throughout the entire country. Beyond the horror of the crime itself came intense scrutiny of the state’s capacity to prevent such atrocities. The public debate that followed was as much about confidence in government as it was about one criminal.

None of this means that Britain stands on the brink of civil war as some commentators suggest. Such a conclusion is unsupported by the available evidence. Hyperbole makes for clickbait, after all. But what if vigilante patrols are not an isolated incident, but the first visible symptom of a broader crisis of confidence in the British state’s capacity to perform its essential functions?

One cannot help wondering how Winston Churchill, the historian rather than the statesman, would read Britain’s present predicament. In A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, he chronicled Britain as a nation shaped by successive waves of transformation. The native Britons gave way to the Romans. The Romans departed. Angles, Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans each left their mark upon the island. Civil wars, religious upheavals, industrialisation, imperial expansion followed in turn. Britain’s story did not end there. The post-war decades brought new waves of immigration from the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent and Africa, adding yet another layer to a nation that had always been shaped by change. To Churchill, these were not interruptions in Britain’s story. They were Britain herself.

Would he regard today’s anxieties as merely another chapter in that long and often turbulent history? Or would he conclude that something more fundamental is taking place – not simply another transformation, but a gradual erosion of the confidence that has long enabled Britain’s institutions to absorb change without losing their authority?

Time alone will answer that question.

Yeppers; like it or not, it most certainly will. Actually, it’s my own belief that it already has, and that it is now much too late for No-Longer-Great Britainistan to have any real hope of reversing course and saving itself.

To date, no civilization, however mighty, wealthy, successful, and/or rigorously defended has endured forever—not the Greeks, not the Romans, not the Ottomans nor the Mongols nor the Picts nor the Saxons etc etc etc. Our English cousins had a darned good run for sure, several centuries at or near the top o’ the global heap. Alas, that run is now well and truly over, and the British future now looks for the most part swarthy, anarchic, Moslem, and frankly, bleak.

Shame, disgrace, dishonor

Posted on July 3, 2026 by Mike

The view from the America-hating Left.

My local paper is honoring the semiquincentennial by running a different story every day which highlight reasons for their shame about being American. In the past week, the featured stories have included slavery, lynchings, the slave trade, the KKK, and segregation. There is no triumph in those stories about what was overcome under the stars and stripes either, just pure venom at what a sinister country this is.

But it’s long been this way. For decades it’s made me sad that the left couldn’t stop hating on America for even one day of the year, but they can’t. I recall listening to the NPR station back in the late ‘90s, and it’s Independence Day coverage was heavily focused on injustices and land theft committed against Native Americans and Mexicans. I fully understood that NPR was providing emotional support to its listeners on a very difficult day. Those of us patriotically celebrating the USA have always caused emotional distress to the left.

Because Democrats are desperately fixated on this country being built on stolen land, they’ll never accept the U.S. as being a legitimate country to take pride in. At this point, all we on the right can do is laugh at them and hope their fervent anti-patriotism propels their party into further disrepute.

Exactly, a hunnert-n-twelve percent correct. Thus:

Next up, a little history.

At the recent Texas Democratic Convention, it opened with, what else, a land acknowledgement to the native Karankawa Indians. This is what attendees heard: “I would also like to acknowledge that we gather on the traditional homelands of the indigenous peoples of the coastal bend and the area known as Corpus Christi. The Karankawa were the people of Corpus Christi Bay.”

Now listen, I’m a guy who believes it’s imperative to celebrate the good and de-emphasize the bad in those who came before us and helped shape this country, but the Karankawa were so rough that even the “civilized tribes” kept their distance.

The Tonkawas of Central Texas allied with and fought alongside white settlers because the Tonkawas were sandwiched between the Karankawas to the southeast and the Comanches to the northwest. History is complicated, but land acknowledgements aren’t. They are simple, no-cost outlets for white guilt.

They are that, certainly—and very little else, same as all the other forms of cheap virtue-signaling set forth in the Holy Church of Liberalism’s catechism. New category, one it appears all too likely I’ll be getting lots of use out of going forward: Stolen land.

Two things: lies, and whining

Posted on June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 by Mike

If it wasn’t for those, they’d have nothing to say at all.

Trump’s UFC fight a lot like 19th century lynching, Boston College historian says
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta agrees

A Boston College historian recently complained that a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House is related to the “impulse” that led to lynching black people in the 19th century.

Heather Richardson joined Jim Acosta’s YouTube show to discuss the mixed martial arts event held on Sunday, June 14, dubbed UFC Freedom 250.

Richardson, a frequent Trump critic, cited her self-proclaimed expertise on Abraham Lincoln.

She said during the Gilded Age there was no “open display of denigration of American symbols and American values” like there supposedly is now.

She then praised people like JD Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie for saying they were “offering a way forward for the United States.”

Richardson then said Trump “is deliberately tear(ing) that apart and he is doing so on the same cultural argument of course that people used to back the first Gilded age that is these cultural wars that turn white Americans against marginalized people of color.”

“Right,” Acosta agreed.

The historian then concluded:

I mean it’s not really a stretch to say that the same impulse that created the UFC fight on the White House lawn is the impulse that really pushed lynching in the late 19th century against black Americans overwhelmingly but also against Italian-Americans in Louisiana for example or Mexican-Americans in the American West or indigenous Americans in the American that idea somehow a really fake idea by the way that America is a white nation and anybody who challenges that needs to be purged from the body politic.

However, many people did think it was a “stretch” to compare a fighting match to the racist lynching of people.

Only because it, y’know, IS. Then again, though: Boston College, typically butt-ugly shitlib bint, self-proclaimed “historian”—what didja expect, anyway? As for that pseudo-historian bushwa, Mark Hemingway has ya covered.

Heather Cox Richardson is not an historian—she’s an IQ test, and anyone that takes her seriously is telling on themselves. https://t.co/Bv9nDylY6d

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator)

June 17, 2026

Oof.

“Ceasefire” continues to “hold”

Posted on June 9, 2026June 9, 2026 by Mike

Mlitary analysts confess utter bafflement as to how this could possibly have happened, given that all of Iran’s military capability had already been destroyed weeks ago.

President Donald Trump posted on TruthSocial Tuesday, “I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Hey, better get in touch with Pock-e-stawn and arrange more negotiations with the Mad Mullahs, no? After all, they’re just aching to make a “deal” that will resolve our 47-year-old Iran problem once and for all. Stay the course, Mr Preaident, and damn the torpedos!

It is good news that our men survived, but it should be obvious by now that it is incredibly dangerous to continue pretending there is a ceasefire when there is not. It puts our service members at risk. This time the Iranian regime did not succeed in killing the pilots, but what about next time?

The murderous mullahs continue to execute their own Persian people who protested the regime. The Tehran terrorists are also bombarding civilians across multiple Middle Eastern countries and encouraging their terrorist proxies to join in the bloody activities.

Gee, how very UNEXPECTED!© of them.

The main point, the essential point, the ONLY point (bold mine).

It is highly ironic that over the weekend, Trump was trying to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into not striking back against the Iranian regime and its terror proxy Hezbollah for a series of devastating bombardments targeting civilian areas. Multiple Israelis died in Hezbollah strikes last week. Iran’s other proxies, the Houthis, also joined in firing upon Israel. You can see Netanyahu’s statement below. Now, all of a sudden, Trump is discovering what Netanyahu and many of us already understood: The Iranian regime is not the least bit interested in negotiating in good faith, but it is just as determined to continue fighting and killing Americans as it is to fight and kill Israelis.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Ghalibaf (or Qalibaf), who in April was among the Iranian negotiators speaking with American leaders, bragged soon after an abortive meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, “I, as a soldier, am fighting in the realm of negotiations.” For fundamentalist Muslims, lying to the enemy is not only permissible, but praiseworthy (see taqiyya). This is why terrorists in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere have violated every deal they ever made with Israel or Western nations.

Having played along so far with Trump’s preposterous “Let’s make a deal!” delusions, I begin to wonder whether Bibi knows it or not, honestly.

“Rangers, lead the way!”

Posted on June 6, 2026June 9, 2026 by Mike

Dave Manney offers a stirring salute to Reagan’s celebrated “Boys of Point Du Hoc,” for a seriously difficult job well done.

The U.S. Army Rangers climbed into legend at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day because the mission didn’t end when the plan broke. Lt. Col. James Rudder, commander of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, led Companies D, E, and F toward 100-foot cliffs on June 6, 1944.

Their job was brutally simple: scale the cliff, seize the German position, and destroy the six guns that were zeroed on Omaha and Utah Beaches. Rudder was wounded during the fight, but he stayed in command while his men fought upward under machine-gun fire, rifle, grenade, and artillery fire.

Allied planners expected six German 155 mm guns at the top. The Rangers reached the positions and found gun pits, but the guns were moved, with telephone poles replacing them. The Germans had moved the guns south from their prepared sites before the landing.

A lesser force might have stopped there, reported the surprise, and waited for new orders.

Rudder’s Rangers kept moving.

And damned if those courageous, intrepid warriors didn’t do just that. Read every word of it, and just sit back and marvel at the kind of tough, dauntless, determined man this country once turned out en masse. If the story of how the now well-known Rangers motto came to be doesn’t make your heat beat a little faster, then you ain’t anything I’d recognize as a true American, boyo.

Manney closes his tribute thusly:

“Rangers lead the way” wasn’t a slogan in the morning; it was a record of what they had already done. Thank God for such men.

Indeed, sir. Seconded, with all my heart and soul.

Inline update! Forgot to include the link to Manney’s excellent article, which can be found here.

Update! Instaglenn links another rousing account of D-Day derring-do, this one with young Brigadier General and Medal of Honor recoipient Theodore Roosevelt Jr in the starring role. I knew about this one already; it’s more well-known than the Rangers one, I believe, but nonetheless remarkable. Another Must Read for sure, on this of all days.

Updated update! Okay, okay, dammit, I just gotta put an excerpt in.

I want to tell you one story from June 6, 1944. A story of a man who was already broken by war a quarter century earlier. He had wealth, fame, and luxury. He had no need or requirement to serve in World War II after having courageously and effectively led American soldiers in combat in World War I. He was wounded and gassed in that war, leaving him with lifelong health problems. Not one person would have thought poorly of him if he did not serve in World War II.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the son of President Teddy Roosevelt, signed up to serve anyway when World War II started. He led a regiment of the 1st Infantry Division in the campaigns in North Africa in 1943. By D-Day, he was a brigadier general and the assistant division commander of the 4th Infantry Division. Although he had severe arthritis and was partly disabled by his wounds from World War I, he insisted on going ashore in the first landing wave on the morning of June 6. He was the oldest man on the beach, the only general in the first wave, and very likely the only soldier using a cane that morning.

His initial wave landed in the wrong position — more than a mile from the beach they were supposed to hit. When he realized they were off target, General Roosevelt personally scouted the area, came back to his men, and famously declared, “We’ll start the war from right here!” At 56 years of age, with a heart condition that he had hidden from Army doctors, the general stormed that beach with a wooden cane in one hand and an M1911A1 pistol in the other.

During the entire day, Roosevelt never took cover. As the beach was being shelled and swept with machine-gun fire, he walked up and down the beach rallying his soldiers, telling jokes, and using his cane to point out where he wanted them to go. He personally led multiple assaults on strongpoints and directed traffic off the beach. Because of his calm under fire, bravery, and leadership, Utah Beach became the most successful landing on D-Day. His units suffered fewer than 300 casualties and achieved most of their objectives for Day 1.

Thirty-six days later, on July 12, 1944, Roosevelt suffered a heart attack and died while still leading men in combat.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. He rests in the section with the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division; alongside the men he led.

Well earned, richly deserved, probably long since past due, that MoH. Bless him; there walked a Real Man. I’m sure his dad was proud enough of his amazing son to almost burst from it, and smiled down from Heaven at his exploits, his bold and inspiring leadership qualities in direct command of men in combat.

The word “hero” is much overused at this point, thrown about far too lightly to suit me. But if anybody ought to be called one, it’s gotta be GEN Teddy Roosevelt Jr.

Getting the band back together

Posted on June 6, 2026June 6, 2026 by Mike

Too bad the original line-up sucked out loud also.

Funny https://t.co/qfg6VUlp2F

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla)

June 6, 2026

The essential nature of government

Posted on June 6, 2026June 6, 2026 by Mike

The Founders wouldn’t be surprised by this. Nobody else should be, either.

The city of Cape Canaveral in Brevard County has a population of about 10,000 people and encompasses about 2 square miles. In the year 2000, population in the city was about 8,900 people, and it was about 8,000 people in 1990. That’s a growth rate of 0.5% per year over the past 36 years. <—Important stat, so keep this in mind as we look at the rest of this.

The city hall was built in the 1960s, and was about 3200 square feet. It looked like this…

In 2015, construction was begun on a new, 18,000 square foot city hall at a cost of $5.5 million. That number was close to what the city spent that year in its entire budget.

Now explain to me why they needed to build this giant edifice that costs more to build and to maintain than the building it replaced? Population was only 25% larger than it was in 1980, but the city hall building needed to be five times larger to accommodate all of the extra bureaucratic employees that are now working there.

The city’s budget is now $70 million, despite the fact that the city contains the same number of residents as it did ten years ago when the budget was $5.5 million. They built a larger city hall, then filled that space with more employees. Five times the building at twelve times the cost.

Why are so many more employees needed? The cost of government was $3 million per year in 1980, or about $11 million in 2025 dollars. Why does government need to be 7 times larger than it was in 1980, even though population is only 25% larger?

Because Reasons™, of course and as always. Just who, exactly, gave you permission to ask, anyway?

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Who they are, what they do

Posted on May 27, 2026May 27, 2026 by Mike

Does Cuba’s ruling junta have death squads? DUDE, they’re Commies; of COURSE they do. The notable thing is that, rather than plying their evil trade strictly within their own borders, apparently Cuba’s thugs have taken their act on the road.

Castro’s Cuban Imperialists: As with Nicaragua’s Maduro in 2026, So, in 1973, with Chile’s Allende
In an amazing news development regarding Trump’s Venezuela raid in January, Instapundit’s Stephen Green has linked to an eye-opening post on X Twitter by @WhatJosueSays.

Intelligence reports stated Maduro “feared” taking Trump up on his deal, because he was scared to be executed by his Cuban handlers

When he was captured, he was being guarded by around 30-40 Cubans

Now why on earth would the president of a sovereign country be guarded and “handled” by guards from other countries?

Because the only colonizers and imperialists for the past 67 years, are the same ones who have blamed the US for these actions:

The Cuban Regime.

The fascinating, eye-opening story continues from there, to dop the final curtain thusly:

Venezuelan expat here, I can vouch. Throughout the 1960s the Cuban dictatorship tried to invade Venezuela 4 times; then they switched to infiltrating the armed forces, which resulted in Chávez and his 2 failed coups in 1992; and since 1999, in 27 years of chavista puppetry.

— Christian H Meier M (@ChristianHMeier)

May 22, 2026

As I said: fascinating. If Trump seriously does intend to clean up this dirty, corrupt ol’ world, I’d say he has his work cut out for him. Hell, de-corrupting this Hemisphere alone would be a truly Herculean task.

I was just about to add something along the lines of, “thank goodness our own homegrown Commie rat-bastards aren’t quite as murderous and just generally godawful as the Cuban variety,” but what with everything our domestic Reds have been getting themselves up to over the last cpl-three decades, I believe I’ll just keep my big mouth shut for a change.

A little history

Posted on May 23, 2026May 23, 2026 by Mike

Our good friend KT (of AoSHQ Pet Thread fame, among other notable things) has posted a truly awesome article memorializing the incomparable John Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, which includes among other less well-known factoids this ratcheer:

John Quincy Adams our 6th President once kept a live alligator in the White House bathtub, a wild gift from the Marquis de Lafayette himself.

White House staff had to check the tub every time before the president bathed. pic.twitter.com/NfRrpjmpR5

— HeritageBulwark (@hbulwark1)

May 19, 2026

Wow. Truly, there were giants among us mere mortals back then. GREAT work, KT!

Update! Upon further reflection, no way can I leave out the info provided about Lafayette in T’s piece.

Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, was one of the wealthiest men in France (which is to say in the world), when, inspired by the words of the American Declaration of Independence, he left the comfort and security of his home, traveled to America, and offered his service to the cause of American liberty. At age 19, he was commissioned major general, to this day the youngest person ever to hold that rank in the American army.

Lafayette soon became one of General Washington’s most trusted and capable generals. Having been orphaned at a young age, Lafayette greatly admired Washington, who became a father figure for him. And likewise, Lafayette became like a foster son to Washington, who had no biological children of his own.

To the end of his long and celebrated life, Lafayette remained devoted to his adopted county. He named his only son George Washington, and he named a daughter Virginia.

Having returned to France after the war ended, Lafayette become a key player in the cause of French liberty, and he remains a revered hero in that country as well. He was the principal author of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, modeling it on the American Declaration of Independence.

Lafayette was 67 years old when, in 1824, President James Monroe and Congress invited him to come to the United States in honor of the nation’s 50th birthday. After Washington’s death in 1799, he had given up his dream of someday returning to Virginia and living near Mount Vernon, but Lafayette was delighted at the invitation and welcomed the opportunity to return to the country he had helped.

At age 76, Lafayette died at his home in Paris. At his request, his son George Washington Lafayette sprinkled the soil from Bunker Hill over his father’s coffin as it was lowered into the ground. An American flag has flown continually over the grave ever since.

When word of Lafayette’s death reached America there was an outpouring of grief that equaled that when Washington died. Flags were lowered to half mast, John Quincy Adams delivered a eulogy in a joint session of Congress attended by the president, the cabinet, the Supreme Court justices, and the American diplomatic corps. Twenty-four-gun salutes were fired by every American naval ship and at every American military post, followed by a single cannon shot every half-hour afterwards until sunset. For six months American officers wore black armbands, and American citizens wore mourning dress for thirty days.

Hundreds of places in America, including at least 36 cities and towns, are named in honor of Lafayette.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, the “Hero of Two Worlds,” died on May 20, 1834, one hundred ninety-two years ago today.

Like I said: GIANTS. What a marvelous, inspiring story.

AT LAST, some good news!

Posted on May 22, 2026May 22, 2026 by Mike

The Hut is back, baybeee.

Pizza Hut brings back its old-school restaurant features as nostalgic customers rejoice: ‘So excited’
Back to the good old days.

2026 has proven to be the year of nostalgia. Youngsters are resorting to old-school tech like vintage flip phones and iPods. Others are returning to analog hobbies and activities.

Even beloved restaurant chain Pizza Hut is going back in time, reverting to its retro glory — red checkered tablecloths and all.

Tim Sparks, president of Daland Corporation, a Kansas-based company that operates almost 100 Pizza Hut locations across the country, is helping keep Pizza Hut alive by rewinding the clock and redecorating over 80 annoyingly modern, stark-looking locations to make them look like they did decades ago.

Red roof? Check

Red-checkered tablecloths, vinyl booths and Tiffany-style lamps? Check, check and check.

The beloved salad bar and red plastic cups will be back.

Even the old-school Pac-Man machines will return.

Unsurprisingly, customers are losing their minds over this massive change.

As well they might—although, as a few others in the NYP article point out, what WON’T be coming back is the original recipe for the various pizzas and such-like. FederalGovCo banned all the ingredients decades ago, see. For our own good, of course and as always.

Why, whatever would we do without them? Surely there must be some way we could try just to find out, isn’t there?

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory”

Posted on May 1, 2026May 1, 2026 by Mike

What, you didn’t think all those statues, plaques, and memorials being torn down, defiled, and/or otherwise destroyed the last several years was mere coinkydink, did ya?

Best think again, sport.

Upon the Soviet Union’s dismissal of 146 historians from Czech universities, Milan Hübl, among those dismissed, is said to have observed, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.” Hübl went on to predict that after a “new history” takes the place of the old “the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.” Such sentiment echoed a similar southern fear during and after the American Civil War. Confederate General Patrick Cleburne declared that, “Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by northern school teachers; will learn from northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” To Cleburne, along with many other southern patriots, such an outcome was unacceptable. When the cannons fell silent in 1865, the pen became the only weapon the South had left, and many wielded it masterfully.

Smart fella, was ol’ Pat Cleburn. Tough, brave, pugnacious, valiant—he wasn’t known as “the Stonewall of the West” for nothin’, you know.

The above is the opening ‘graph of the deep dive to end all deep dives, one that’s sure to fascinate any Civil War 1.0 buff such as myself to no end. Be warned: it’s a long ‘un, and you’re gonna want to take it all down in one go, lest by leaving and then coming back to it later you lose the essential thread of the piece. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

Truer words redux

Posted on May 1, 2026May 6, 2026 by Mike

Something to read while loading mags.

Now is a good time to familiarize yourself with the prelude to the Spanish Civil War

Because if the right doesn’t learn that particular lesson of history very quickly we’re about to repeat it https://t.co/5BjEVJbx3C

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre)

April 26, 2026

Indeed. Another timely reminder:

pic.twitter.com/gqhDbXtjBg

— Libs Hate Us (@LibsHateUs)

April 26, 2026

Get wise or get beat down.

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