“How it works”

Posted on      by      3 Comments

Mayor Mammyjammy says, like he has the least inkling.

Mamdani Unveils Innovative Plan to Tax New Yorkers to Pay for Their Low-Cost Groceries
Comrade Zohran Mamdani, the Communist Twelver-Shi’ite Mayor of New York, on Tuesday unveiled his plan for government-run grocery stores as if they were actually a good thing. Dear Mayor, who always has the best interests of The People at heart, has set aside $70 million for this foray into government-sanctioned theft and redistribution, and says that this exercise in vote-buying and making people dependents of the state will be operational in late 2027. So there’s something to look forward to, at least if you’re in the habit of collecting signposts on the highway to civilizational destruction.

In full socialist states, high walls and guards with machine guns keep the productive people from fleeing, and the threat of the gulag keeps them working. In Mamdani’s New York, the productive people will grow tired of paying for everyone’s groceries, and will leave the city. Unless Mamdani can figure out a way to tax everyone who has ever lived in New York City, his socialist grocery stores will fail.

Mamdani, however, is all for trying the socialist “experiment” again anyway, despite unanimously negative results. “New York City,” he said with grandiose ebullience, “it is time for a grand experiment once again, just as LaGuardia used government to respond to the challenges of the Great Depression, we will use government to respond to rising prices and unaffordable groceries.”

It’s time for the socialist experiment again? Really? Millions killed and millions more in the gulags weren’t enough? The killing fields of Democratic Kampuchea weren’t enough? The failed economies of the entire Soviet bloc weren’t enough? This is like doing a basic science experiment for the umpteenth time and wondering if it will come out differently this time: will the boiling water not become steam this time? No, the same thing will happen that happened all the other times. Socialism will fail again.

Mamdani explained: “Now, here’s how it works. The city will subsidize a core set of staples. A private operator will run the store, but the answer to the standards that the city will set these standards include requirements that at our stores, bread will be cheaper, eggs will be cheaper, grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation, and workers will be treated with dignity.”

That’s swell, but here is how it works also: The stores will quickly run out of the low-cost items, as the demand will far exceed the supply. After all, who doesn’t want free stuff? There will be long, long lines to get virtually anything at these stores, and after they run for a while, those who are paying for them will go broke or leave the city or both, and they will collapse. If you’re skeptical about this, note that this was exactly what happened to city-run grocery stores in Kansas City, and much of it happened also in New York City itself when a private firm ran a week-long experimental low-cost grocery store back in February.

Not one of these collectivist/authoritarian/totalitarian jackwagons ever seems to be at all interested in asking the most obvious, common-sensical questions of themselves as regards their proven-failure program. Why, one might almost conclude they’re frightened to death of the answers or sumpin’.

Odd couple

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

As a girlfriend of mine used to enjoy saying whenever somebody said that about us: couple of whats, exactly? Straight from the shock-rocker’s mouth:

I BELIEVE this photo was taken at Groucho’s birthday party at the Polo Lounge. I first met him at a charity event Frank Sinatra had organised and we sang Lydia The Tattooed Lady, which was an old Groucho song from [1939 Marx Brothers film] At The Circus. My manager, Shep Gordon, looked after him in the later stage of his life, and for a period of time we were pretty good friends — we were kinda inseparable.

He was always great company, hanging around with him was just like being in a Marx Brothers movie, like being in Duck Soup. You’d go to lunch with him and he’d open the menu, call the waiter over and say, as loudly as he could, ‘What kind of drugs do you have?’, or, ‘Can I get some dope for my friend here?’

I’d say, ‘Shhh, you can’t say that, Groucho!’ But of course you never told Groucho that he couldn’t do something because that would just egg him on more. He enjoyed the sport of it all.

We’d be having lunch and he’d say, ‘Excuse me, I gotta go torture the maitre d”, and two minutes later the maitre d’ would be looking like he wanted to strangle him. There was never a dull moment.

He liked me because I could make him laugh: if you could make Groucho laugh that was something. He was a unique entertainer, in that he could do anything — he could sing, play guitar, dance, tell jokes — and he looked at me as that kind of entertainer too. There was a certain absurdity to both of us.

Groucho came to see one of our shows once, and said, ‘Alice is the last hope for vaudeville.’ He saw me in that same tradition he came from.

Groucho would host great dinner parties, but if you had dinner at his house you had to perform afterwards. Except not in your own chosen field: if you were a singer, you had to dance, if you were a dancer, you had to tell jokes. I’d have to sing a Bing Crosby song, not a rock song, Fred Astaire would have to play piano, Mickey Dolenz would have to dance. That made it funnier for everybody. Those were good evenings.

Even in his eighties he was as sharp as a tack. I’d come back home and he’d be chasing my 18-year-old wife around the living room wearing Mickey Mouse ears, or she’d be sitting in his lap. Sheryl would say, ‘Alice, he’s 86, what is he going to do?’, and he’d look up with a smile and a raised eyebrow. He was one of a kind, and I’m proud to have known him as a friend. He was a true legend.

Stumbled across the above whilst poking around here and there, my curiosity having been piqued by the lead item from yesterday’s Memezapoppin‘ post. The above-mentioned pic:

Awwww. Odd couple indeed, no?

Ingrates

Posted on      by      1 Comment

 How sharper than a toothless child it is to have a thankless serpent. Or, y’know, something like that.

So, you may ask – if we’re not very aligned ideologically, then it must be that we bring something to the party militarily?

Well, no…actually…we don’t matter that much militarily.

The USA has about 470 ships in its navy, including 11 aircraft carriers, 69 submarines, 75 destroyers… plus 110 new ships in the pipeline.

Australia has about 30, including 3 destroyers, 7 frigates and 7 outdated submarines. The UK does a little better, with about 60.

Meanwhile, the US has over 14,000 military aircraft. A staggering number.

Australia has 252 military aircraft. The UK has 556.

The US army has just shy of 1,000,000 uniformed personnel in its military. Australia has about 45,000.
The USA spends 3.4% ($968 billion) of its GDP on defence. Australia spends 2% ($36.4 billion). The US spends as much as the next 15 largest military-spending countries (including China) combined.

The USA has a fighting culture. The men shoot things (a lot) and hunt things, the veterans get favoured in everything from parking spots to boarding planes. A uniformed young man is thanked in the street a dozen times a day.

“Oh, the Americans and their guns!” we say, in our smug way. Yes, they have a warrior culture. We do not. We don’t have to, because we’re a leech on theirs.

Militarily, we don’t offer squat.

Meanwhile, look at the way Australia works against America’s interests by loving on China. China made us rich and we stay close. This is a Marxist regime with expansionist aims.

Again, you have to spend time in the USA to realise just how vast a gulf there is between us on China.

Europe, too. They let China have their way everywhere from Germany to Greenland, all the while importing Islam and sending their own people to court for saying hurty words.

Somehow, we have landed the deal of a lifetime with the USA that says, “when the baddies come, you’ll save us ok?” Because we can’t save ourselves.

And we live in peace. But we keep gnawing away at freedoms, keep enabling China, and get flabby and disinterested about our military because Uncle Sam’s got it.

And, let’s be honest, Americans are widely looked down on. To add insult to injury, we don’t think that highly of our protectors.

So, the USA is finally saying “enough.” I am here, I can tell you what the vibe is, and that’s it. Trump is doing what people want in this regard. They’re over it.

And we come across all shocked and hard done by. We behave like people with no self-insight at all.

Yes, the global alliance system is all over the place now. From America’s perspective, it’s about time.

And I must say, though I be a proud Australian, I am forced to agree. Something has to change.

Oh, you just bet your sweet bippy it will—sooner or later, for better or worse, one way or another.

Memezapoppin’!

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading “Memezapoppin’!“ →

Iran: the REAL solution

Posted on      by     

STRONG HINT: Don’t let’s anybody get sidetracked or distracted by blockades, negotiations, or other pointless pettifoggery. There remains one, and only one, correct answer to the nagging Iran question, and it’s been the same for nigh on fifty (50) years. To wit:

To Blockade or Not Blockade, That Is the Question. But There’s Only One Answer: REGIME CHANGE.
We’ve gone from 4D chess to 4D blockades.

Will it work?

The New York Post says yes: “Trump Brilliantly Calls Iran’s Bluff — With His Own Strait of Hormuz Blockade”

Bloomberg says no: “The Hormuz Blockade Is a Throwdown the U.S. Can’t Win”

Question for the readers: Which outlet is right and which one is wrong?

Answer from the writer: Yes.

The New York Post is correct: Trump’s blockade of a blockade deprives Iran of profiting from ransom payments and/or selling any oil, thus increasing its economic suffering. It weakens one of the mullah’s biggest bargaining chips.

If you assume that Iran is negotiating in good faith, weakening the mullahs’ bargaining position makes tactical sense.

But Bloomberg is also correct: It’s extraordinarily unlikely that Trump can blockade his way to victory, especially in the short term. More likely than not, the blockade would have to last months — if not years — to bear fruit, and for a candidate who ran on the platform of “no more forever wars,” that’s not an attractive option.

Besides, the economic pain will be shouldered unevenly, with the nations that actually care about the welfare of their people screaming far louder than the mullahs. Iran doesn’t mind suffering — as long as everyone else suffers, too.

If you assume that Iran is negotiating in bad faith, a blockade of a blockade is an incremental tit-for-tat escalation that increases everyone’s pain points without bringing us any closer to a real solution.

In other words, it’s a waste of time.

Perhaps a smarter strategy is to hit the mullahs with a threat they dread far more than a blockade. I’m talking about the two words that have horrified Americans since the Iraq War of the early 2000s: regime change.

But not Iraqi-style regime change, where we plant U.S. soldiers overseas and try to build a new government from the ground up in a foreign land. That’s regime building, not regime change.

I simply mean smashing the current regime.

Under President George W. Bush, American foreign policy operated under the “Pottery Barn rule,” which meant, as Secretary of State Colin Powell explained, “If you break it, you own it.”

But why? What prevents us from breaking it and simply walking away?

What’s wrong with regime change WITHOUT regime building?

Egg-zackly, precisely so, and just what I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the plan had been right from the start. Alas, with his useless “negotiations,” his unconvincing bluster about “destroying civilizations,” and now his “blockade of a blockade” strategery, Trump seems to be wandering farther and farther afield from the lone bone-simple solution that addresses all the concerns any sensible sort might have about the still-intact Mad Mullah regime: nuclear weapons; support for terrorism; menacing anti-American and -Israel with both rhetoric and physical action; the bloody suppression and/or mass murder of anti-regime protesters; et al ad nauseum.

It still shocks me that, after a fine start which saw a cpl/three waves of Ayatollahs righteously taken out by a shitstorm of High Explosive Death From Above, Trump inexplicably halted the bombing and floundered about in search of avenues more acceptable to the namby-pamby Jurassic Media consumers of the world, resulting in the continued survival of the selfsame Mullah goobermint which had started all the trouble way back in Jimmeh Peanuthead’s day.

I say again: if Trump pulls out, declares “victory,” and leaves any kind of entity called “the Islamic Republic of Iran” still intact behind him, then the whole misbegotten enterprise was a complete waste of time, money, materiel, and American lives. The Mullahs must go. There is no acceptable alternative—NONE.

The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Posted on      by     

Welcome to Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. New posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack


New Eyrie posts go up every Monday and Friday, although the time of day may (and most likely will) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: “It’s lies, all the way down.” Links to archived Golden Oldies are findable down at the bottom of each post.

Please do consider subscribing to The Eyrie, gang; it’s free, unless you’re feeling big-hearted enough to pony up for a paid sub. Either way, paying customer or freeloading looky-loo, an Eyrie subscription is a bargain at any price, a move you won’t ever regret making.

All subscribers receive email notification whenever each new post goes live, although CF management promises not to blow up your inbox with a bunch of junk mail. Latest Eyrie offering is getatable (yes, that’s really a word—trust me!) for one and all to read and enjoy totally free of charge, regardless of subscriber status. However, a paid sub is required to unlock commenting privileges—an almighty incentive to kick loose and chip in if ever there was one. Thanks, everybody!

Recent Comments



    


    




    



    

        
Exit Swallowswell
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
And good fucking riddance, too. Now if there was only some way of ridding ourselves of the pestilential excrescence Adam Schidt…uhh, Schiff.




Swalwell suspends governor campaign amid sexual misconduct allegations
His exit came after allies and staffers abandoned him en masse.


Eric Swalwell suspended his bid for California governor amid sexual assault and misconduct allegations that threw his campaign into a tailspin, upending the race to lead the nation’s most populous state.


“I am suspending my campaign for Governor,” Swalwell wrote on X on Sunday. “To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.”


He wrote, “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.”


The Democratic congressman’s exit completed a stunningly swift collapse for a candidate who had shown signs in recent weeks of pulling ahead of a crowded Democratic field, with prominent interest groups and elected officials beginning to coalesce behind him.


But an ex-staffer’s allegation that Swalwell had sexually assaulted her, detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle report and followed by more misconduct allegations in a CNN report, led those allies to abandon Swalwell en masse as high-level staffers departed his campaign.




D卐M☭CRATs, never having been known for staunch loyalty to anyone at all once said personage starts smelling like a possible liability to them, are acting in perfectly typical fashion here. Of course, most of us will remember Swallowswell best for this truly magic moment:




So long, chump, and thanks for all the yocks.


    


    




    



    

        
How it is fucking DONE
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
Many, many heartfelt kudos for these brave young men.










These badass ROT-SEE cadets seem to have internalized the hard-to-take lesson that, with attacks committed by certain favored deranged-troglodyte groups (ie, Leftists, feral urban niggers, Moslems, AWFLs), decent folks have been in effect abandoned by the “proper authorities,” and are now fully and completely on their own. There will be no help coming, and therefore if they want to hold onto not just their uninjured hides but their very lives they’re just going to have to take matters into their own hands—in this instance, quite literally.


Kinda underscores the whole raison d’être of us 2A absolutists, don’t it?


    


    




    



    

        
It’s not that the Crackpot Right don’t know anything
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
It’s that so much of what they think they know just isn’t so.










Another found via our old boozum chum Steve Green.


The Paleosimian population has grown? Not too shabby for a people that doesn’t actually, y’know, exist, and never really did.


Update! Just had to throw in the money quote from the above-linked JPost article.




With the help of the media and Israel’s foes, the Palestinians’ claims to the Land of Israel became amplified and even accepted by a large number of people around the world –  many, if not most, of whom do not know the first thing about the Middle East.




Yeppers. Then again, that’s true of damned near all of the Goosesteppin’ Left’s agenda, in every context.


    


    




    



    

        
Stupid Leftist tricks
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
Not a lot to add to this.










If you tax them into penury, they will flee. As Stephen quips, they’re willfully turning themselves into a third-world nation, with all the peace, prosperity, and happy fun times that status implies. You’d think they’d know better by now, the stupid fools. After all, it’s not as if there aren’t instructive examples aplenty of where such idiocy always, always, ALWAYS winds up, they’re everywhere you care to look.


    


    




    



    

        
Go ahead, break my heart, whydon’tcha
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
According to my ex Suzie, who thanks to her cushy sinecure working for Meta is reliably quite knowledgeable about these matters, the Morehead City PD “tactical response” Weinermobile story is NOT real, being instead an April fools Day prank. The image itself, apparently, is an AI-generated fake. Which only serves to confirm once again the old adage which says that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.




    


    




    



    

        
Good news, bad news
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
Seems the former is always accompanied by a heaping helping of the latter.




The Retrologist’s Guide to Pizza Hut Classics
Plan your visit with this comprehensive list of locations


In 2019, Pizza Hut brought back its 1974 logo, banking on its nostalgic appeal. I figured that would be the end of it, just a simple marketing tactic soon forgotten. There were no plans announced to bring back the logo in stores, much less redesign the restaurants to look like old Pizza Huts from the chain’s heyday.


But with no fanfare whatsoever, that’s exactly what’s been happening. Pizza Hut has been taking legacy stores and converting them into “Classics.” The formula includes:


    

  1. The old logo is used in pole signage as well as at the top of the (usually but not always) red-roofed restaurant. The pole sign features the addition of the word “Classic.”
    2. 

  2. The interior features cozy red booths and old-school Pizza Hut lamps.
    3. 

  3. Stickers featuring the long-discarded character Pizza Hut Pete are found on the door.
    4. 

  4. Posters feature classic photos from Pizza Huts of yore.
    5. 

  5. A plaque displays a quote from Pizza Hut co-founder Dan Carney, explaining the concept as a celebration of the brand’s heritage.
    6. 





 




The GOOD news: I absolutely love this idea; I think it’s fantastic, and wish them every success with it. The BAD news: Hate to say it and all, particularly in light of the aforementioned good news, but Pizza Hut pizza just isn’t very good.


(Via AoSHQ ONT)


    


    




    



    

        
The America we lost
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
Threw away, more like.




When the Boston Red Sox’s legendary Fenway Park posted archival footage of 1950s Opening Day last week, the team expected a pleasant wave of nostalgia. But the comments section produced something else. The grainy clip showed thousands of Bostonians—men in fedoras, well-dressed women in coats, kids waving pennants—all lining up with uninhibited joy for a baseball game. After receiving almost 10 million views, the video was so flooded with pointed comments that Fenway had to lock it. The message was clear: The America in the video exposed the unmistakable decline of our current nation. Millions of viewers saw it and immediately understood why.


The video touched a raw nerve not just because it was beautiful but because it showed how far we have fallen in what amounts to the span of a single lifetime. The decline did not happen by accident. It is largely the direct, predictable result of decades of reckless immigration policies that prioritized volume over values and social engineering over national cohesion.


Predictably, the first instinct of critics on the left was to cry racism over these heartfelt reactions to a lost America. It is true that the crowds in the footage were overwhelmingly white. Therefore, the argument goes, any longing that scene stirs in people must be rooted in racism and xenophobia, rather than a recognition of the defects of our current cultural reality.




Yer doin’ it wrong, sorry. Try just throwing it right back in their pinched, sallow faces instead of wasting time and effort explaining things to dishonest dipshits who aren’t listening anyway, and ain’t ever going to either. To wit: Yeah, Leftist fuckfaces, I’m a goddamned racist. I also just happen to be white, heterosexual, and male(!!!) as well. So the fuck what? NOW what you gonna do, huh?!? Got anything else to say, any other insults to hurl my way, before I disassemble your weedy, fragile, vegan, Two Spirit ass with my bare fucking hands?


Onwards.




This is a lazy, intellectually dishonest dodge. Race is not the point; assimilation is. The people in that 1950s footage were, in many cases, themselves first- or second-generation Americans—Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, among others. They were people whose parents or grandparents had arrived here through Ellis Island. They did not come to recreate the old country on American soil, transforming it. They came to become American—to transform themselves. They learned the language, embraced the civic norms, cheered on the same teams as their neighbors, and played by the same unwritten rules that made public spaces safe and orderly. Baseball was not merely entertainment. It was a sacrament of a shared American identity.


That unifying force is precisely what is missing today. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu—who was booed loudly along with Governor Maura Healey on the field at Opening Day—recently declared that “you cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had … without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up.” The Fenway video is a devastating rebuttal to her. There are no Somalis visible in those 1950s stands—nor could there have been, given the timeline.




Utter, complete rubbish. This national disgrace of a Mayor should be thoroughly, deeply ashamed of herself for even thinking of trying to peddle such arrant horseshit without having a loaded gun being held to her right temple. Watch this video Driscoll put up for a small taste.










I simply can’t say this enough times, people: This nation’s tragic, appalling decline did NOT come about by happenstance, neither was it inevitable or the result of naturl processes beyond human ability to control or influence. It was done to us on purpose, with malice aforethought, by scurrilous Leftists whose intentions were neither good nor honorable.


Scurrilous Leftists who also have names and addresses, by the way.


    


    




    



    

        
Animals
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
REMINDER: This is who the D卐M☭CRATs have effectively turned Amerika v2.0 and most of Western Europe over to lock, stock, and barrel.




Someone Please Save the Mannequin From this Little Muslim Boy!
This isn’t an isolated incident in this part of the world.


A disturbing video has gone viral on Indian social media. While Jihad Watch has not independently verified the footage, several local news outlets have reported on it.


The clip shows a very young boy, not older than five or six, standing outside what appears to be a garment store. A mannequin of a young girl, dressed in children’s clothing, seems to draw his attention. The child, wearing a salwar kameez and an Islamic skullcap, then approaches the mannequin.


What follows is profoundly unsettling. The boy begins by inappropriately touching the mannequin’s face and kissing it repeatedly, then pulls at the neckline of the T-shirt, peers inside, inspects the chest, lifts the shirt further, touches the torso, and attempts to remove the jeans by tugging at the drawstrings.


All of this unfolds in broad daylight. A woman in a hijab passes by the scene without reacting, as if nothing unusual is happening. Unable to loosen the drawstring, the boy abandons the attempt and focuses again on the mannequin’s upper body, continuing to touch it repeatedly and forcefully.


The exact location of the video has not been verified; however, the Bangla-language shop signs visible in the video indicate it could be in either West Bengal or Tripura in India or in Bangladesh.


Boys raised in this pre-medieval ideology grow up exposed to rigid and problematic ideas about women, particularly notions that women must always be covered or under male supervision. They grow up seeing social media content by jihad-recruiting pages portraying women as objects whose worth or safety depends on how they dress or behave. One of their widely shared memes compares women to candy, portraying a “covered” piece as safe and desirable, while an “uncovered” one is said to attract insects. Such comparisons reduce women to objects and promote the harmful idea that a woman’s safety or respect depends on how she dresses, rather than on the responsibility of others to behave appropriately. Boys who grow up in these circles, hence, believe it is completely okay to touch, fondle, or sexually assault women who do not conform to their religious values. They are all “maal-e-ganimat,” a.k.a. war booty for them. Have you not heard of grown Muslim men being caught in a Western country for sexually assaulting girls, and the excuse they present in defense is that they didn’t know that rape was illegal? Yes, that’s exactly what we are talking about.


However, the child in the video is not an adult; he is a very young boy. At that age, children in most settings are only beginning to learn the basics; many are still struggling with the alphabet and may not yet be able to recite a simple nursery rhyme. But the skull-cap-wearing boy in his oversized kurta knows every action that translates to sexual assault in the regular world. The possibility that the boy could repeat similar behavior in the presence of a real, unattended girl cannot be ruled out.




“Ruled out”? You jest. It cannot be prevented, more like, which shitlibs don’t actually want to do anyway. Instead of wringing our hands and boo-hoo-hooing about “saving the poor mannequins from the widdle Moslem feral rapists,” it’s time and past time we started thinking about saving ourselves.


    


    




    



    

        
Remembering another Lost Cause
                    

                     Posted on       by                 

            


    

            
The moment it all started to go badly, badly wrong for the Founders’ America.




The Guns Fell Silent at Appomattox, and the Reconciliation Began
Early morning, Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865: The rebel yell of the ragged, half-starved Army of Northern Virginia rang out for the last time. Sheridan’s Union cavalry had swung around Appomattox Court House to the southwest and captured the trains carrying the food and supplies Lee so desperately needed, but it was, after all, just cavalry, and if the Confederates could break through them, recapture the supplies, and then head south to link up with Johnston’s Army, the cause might still survive.


Over the cavalry, the Rebels prevailed, but as the Union troopers withdrew and they crested the ridge, they could see solid lines of Union infantry arriving in the distance beyond them. The trap was closed.


Two days before, Lee had received the following letter:


General R.E. Lee


Commanding C.S.A.


The results of last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.


U.S. Grant


Lieut. General


Lee responded by asking what the conditions would be, to which Grant replied that “…the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against the Government of United States until properly exchanged.”


Lee replied that he would be willing to meet, not to surrender, but merely to discuss the overall terms of peace with the Confederacy. Grant, suffering from a severe migraine, simply replied that he had no authority for such a discussion, saying to an aide through the pain, “It looks as if Lee still means to fight.”


Now that the trap was closed, Lee faced the inevitable: “There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant. I would rather die a thousand deaths.”


He asked his old “warhorse,” Gen. James “Petey” Longstreet, if Grant’s terms would be harsh, but “Petey” had been an old friend of Grant back in their West Point days, and told Lee he thought not.


Upon receiving Lee’s request for an interview to ascertain the details of surrender, Grant’s headache instantly vanished. A cease-fire was arranged so the two could meet, and at last the guns fell silent. A stately farmhouse owned by Wilmer McLean was selected. Ironically, he had moved out to Appomattox to get away from the war, since one of the first cannon shots at Bull Run had gone through his living room. Grant and his officers arrived half an hour after Lee. Grant wore a private’s blouse with nothing to distinguish his status but the three star epaulettes. His boots and pants were muddy, since he was fresh from reconnoitering his lines. Lee, on the other hand, was resplendent in his dress uniform, with sash and bejeweled sword.


After handshakes and small talk, it was Lee who politely suggested they get to the matter and asked Grant to write out the terms so that they may be formally accepted. Grant began to write the draft, which read in pertinent part: “The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them…”


Then Grant eyed the bejeweled sword Lee had by his side, evidently brought to perform the humiliating act of handing it over to the victor, and continued to write, “This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses and baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”


That was it – ALL of it. Stack arms and colors, swear parole, and go home. Full amnesty.




Lee was nothing short of astonished at the unanticipated magnanimity and even personal warmth Grant extended towards himself and his ragged, weary boys that day, as would many others be in the years to come. Rightly so, I think; Grant’s tacit refusal to rub Lee’s and his vanquished army’s noses in the bitter dregs of their grinding, agonizing defeat and treat the Confederates not as a despised enemy but with respect, humility, and restraint was a brilliant first step towards binding up a national wound that could easily have proved fatal in the years following the Appomattox agreement—this, after so assiduously building for himself a reputation as perhaps the hardest of hard-war men.


In fact, Grant went from there to be roundly vilified in certain Northern quarters as either soft-hearted or soft-headed, or maybe a bit of both, for declining to harshly punish the Army of Northern Virginia and its general officer corps for their purported “treason.” “Treason,” the fire-eaters of the North snarled, even though never at any point had the Southern Confederacy evinced any ambition to overthrow the Federal government, wishing only to depart from the Union in peace and be let alone.


Which, of course, is why some of us unreconstructed Southrons still insist on referring to it as the War of Northern Aggression to this very day.


I’ve always considered Wilmer McClean’s unsuccessful attempt to remove himself from the immediate physical exigencies of war by fleeing his ancestral farm in Manassas (called Yorkshire Plantation, being used at that time by Gen Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard as his HQ) and heading further South for what he fervently hoped would be quieter, less turbulent digs near Appomattox Court House to be one of the most bizarre, intriguing, and poignant episodes to emerge from a historical cataclysm that produced a plenitude of such tales. It’s one of the many, many reasons I’ve always found Civil War history such an absorbing subject, and have read basically any and everything on it I could get my hands on since I was, oh, about 13 or so.


And as far as THAT goes, if you’re a proud son of the South and haven’t read anything by the incredible Shelby Foote yet…honeychile, what on Earth are you waiting for, anyhoo?


    


    






    
	













CF Archives
		
		

			

Categories


















Comments policy
NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.


If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit. 

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.


Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.


Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.






	



CF Glossary
ProPol: Professional Politician


Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds


Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing


Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC


	The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum


	Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for



	pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"













"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world."
	‐Henry Chinaski








	

	
 
		
		


Subscribe to CF!








Support options
 
















Shameless begging


If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:







  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

	
  


	









Correspondence	




Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc


	

All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender
Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media:


A few people worth following on Gab:




Fuck you


		
Kill one for mommy today!
Click to embiggen


Notable Quotes


"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
	
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution



Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

		
FREEDOM!!!



"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster



“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski



“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound
	

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa


	

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams




"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel




"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton


"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing


"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete


"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower


"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic


"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar


"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams


"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass


"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels


“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan


"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril


"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle




	Best of the best
	





	

	Finest hosting service
	





	



	



	



	


Image swiped from The Last Refuge



2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards




RSS feed

RSS - entries
- Entries


RSS - entries
- Comments



	
Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx


















  Copyright © 2026