ABC’s Joy Behar: Historical Illiterate

October 5, 2011 | Filed Under ABC, Civil Rights Act, Civil War, Conservatives, Democrats/Leftists, Education, GOP, Government, Corruption, History, Liberals, Media Bias, Race, Republicans, Warner Todd Huston | 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Sadly, ABC’s The View is what passes for as “intelligent” conversation on TV, these days. The View yacker Joy Behar’s blather is also indicative of the historical illiteracy of the far left in this country.

Herman Cain made an appearance on the coffee klatch show today and genius Behar had this comment about the history of the Republican Party for him:

The Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.

This comment is ignorant in a million ways.
Read more

Obama’s Veritable Intercontinental FAILroad

July 8, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Journalism, Liberals, Media, Media Bias, President, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, maybe John Sexton and I both gave Obama a little too much credit on this “intercontinental railroad” gaffe? When he and I wrote about this little gaffe we both assumed that it was no big deal, that it was juts a slip of the tongue — and an easy one to make at that — but that it was evidence of how the Old Media gave Obama a free pass on mistakes. But now it is starting to look like Obama really doesn’t know the difference between the words “intercontinental” and “transcontinental.”

The first incident that John found was posted at Verum Serum a few days ago. He found a video clip of Obama calling the famous American railroad line finished in 1869 an “intercontinental” railroad. Of course it was not intercontinental at all as it was fully contained inside but one country: ours. It was, of course, a transcontinental railroad as it ran across our own country from coast to coast, bringing our nation into one more easily traveled land mass for the first time.

Now, when John and I first saw this gaffe we imagined that it was less evidence of Obama’s stupidity and more evidence of the Old Media’s penchant for covering for any Obama mistake simply because the gaffe had never been reported by the national news. Obviously Obama’s verbal mistakes are not ballyhooed like those mistakes made by conservatives and this little incident was an example of that.
Read more

When is a Gaffe Not a Gaffe? When Obama Repeats it Over and Over

July 8, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Government, Corruption, History, Journalism, Liberals, Media Bias, President, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By John Sexton of Verum Serum

That silly gaffe that I discovered a few days ago turns out to have been one of as many as half-a-dozen occasions where the President told the same story and made the same error. Here he is giving a commencement speech at the University of Michigan on May 1, 2010:

Reuters reported on the speech including the bit about the “intercontinental railroad”, but apparently no one caught the gaffe. Of course it was a transcontinental railroad, not an intercontinental one.

Obama made the same mistake again at a March 2011 fundraiser for Sen. Nelson. Politico reported the quote but, like Reuters, somehow missed the gaffe:

“My favorite Republican, Abraham Lincoln, happened to be from my home state, but he was a good president,” Obama told the crowd of Democrats who had paid some big bucks for the pep rally. “He was a guy who invested in the intercontinental railroad, and land grant colleges, and the National Academy of Sciences,” he paused, “in the middle of the Civil War!”

The gaffe spread to other members of the administration. As I noted yesterday, David Axelrod repeated the same mistake last weekend. But it turns out VP Biden repeated it as well. As you can see here, Time magazine reported Biden saying it, but like Reuters and Politico, missed the gaffe:
Read more

David Axelrod Agrees: Lincoln Built an ‘Intercontinental Railroad’

July 6, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Journalism, Liberals, Media Bias, President, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By John Sexton of Verum Serum

When I caught the President talking about President Lincoln’s “intercontinental railroad” in an interview he gave in February, I thought it was just an off-the-cuff gaffe. But it turns out his former chief political adviser made the same mistake just this weekend at the Aspen Ideas Festival (full video here):

It’s not surprising that both men would occasionally misspeak. It is surprising that both would use the same example, i.e. Lincoln’s “intercontinental railroad” as an example of big government stimulus spending, and make the same verbal gaffe while doing so.

You have to wonder if both the President and Axelrod got the same talking points memo from someone at the Center for American Progress or another friendly progressive think tank. And assuming they did get the handy political illustration from a common source, you have to wonder why neither of them caught the error (replacing transcontinental with intercontinental).
Read more

Obama’s Lincoln/Railroad Gaffe, why Did Old Media Ignore This?

July 3, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Government, Government, Corruption, Journalism, Liberals, Media, Media Bias, President, TV News, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

In keeping with the many dozens of gaffes that Obama has made over the years, Verum Serum found another one from last February that has, with the help of the Old Media, slipped under the radar. Just more proof that Obama’s constant gaffes go unreported by the Old Media while they search high and low for the same sort of misspeaking from Republicans and conservatives.

Apparently the smartest president in history thought that Abe Lincoln built an intercontinental railroad in the midst of the Civil War.

Listen, Abraham Lincoln helped build the interstate, er the intercontinental railroad in the middle of the Civil War because he understood this was going to be important.

For being the smartest person in human history, Obama sure can be a dope sumtimes, kain’t he?
Read more

A Whiff of Secession and Nullification

June 14, 2011 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Liberals, Nanny State, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

In May Rasmussen Reports took a survey of a thousand adults asking if they believed that States have the right to secede. “One-in-five Americans believe individual States have the right to break away from the country, although a majority doesn’t believe it will actually happen.”

That a Tea Party movement sprang to life in the midst of the protests against Obamacare and then was instrumental in transferring political power in the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cannot be dismissed. People—lots of them—are increasingly wary of the central government, particularly one that has burdened them with more debt in the last three years than in the entire prior history of the nation.

In October, Pelican Press will publish “Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century” in which a number of scholars edited by Donald Livingston, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, examine the implications of secession, possibly by regional groupings of States, from the present federal government.
Read more

Evil Confederate, German, Nazi, Racists Invades Mind of The Atlantic Writer

June 3, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Anti-Americanism, Anti-Semitism, Civil Rights Act, Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Education, Entertainment, Germany, History, Journalism, Liberals, Magazines, Media, Media Bias, Slavery, Warner Todd Huston, WWII | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum has a troubled little mind. He seems to be an excitable sort, too. I say this because during this 150th anniversary of the American Civil War he strangely sees evil Confederate, German, Nazi, racists at Civil War events. He might want to see a therapist about this. Either that or he’s just another left-wing writer that is striving so hard to find something, anything, to write about that he’s put aside common sense and instead decided to illicitly impute any manner of absurd motivations to Germany’s Civil War reenactors. You know, because he wants to be considered the thoughtful type, because this sort of tripe is what passes for intellectualism in journalism.

Appelbaum’s article on Germans that reenact the American Civil War is entirely absurd, of course. He imputes all sorts of motives, dark and evil, to a mere hobby. He sees shadows of low and dangerous undercurrents to this pastime and desperately tries to tie a plethora of evils into the harmless fun of dressing up as a soldier from some 150 years ago.

Appelbaum finds that many Germans reenact the American Civil War in Germany as Confederate soldiers and this troubles him. He notes that Germans that reenact the American Civil War as Confederates are play-acting contrary to their own pre-WWII cultural history because few Germans fought for the South in the conflict. In this he is correct. But after getting one thing right, Appelbaum launches off into paroxysms of agonized fantasy. One gets the feeling he is not writing to explore truths but is writing to get the knowing and concerned nods of other wacky leftists like himself.
Read more

U.S. Rep. Roskam Marches in Wheaton Memorial Day Parade

May 30, 2011 | Filed Under Air Force, Army, Civil War, Coast Guard, Cold War, Congress, Conservatives, DuPage County, GOP, House of Representatives, Illinois, Illinois State Government, Korean War, Marines, Memorial Day, Military, National Guard, Navy, Peter Roskam, Republicans, Revolutionary War, Warner Todd Huston, WWI, WWII | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Memorial Day Parade, Wheaton, Ill- Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam (R, 6th District) walked in the Wheaton Memorial Day Parade to some applause and ended the exercise by speaking to those assembled at the Wheaton Cemetery to commemorate those that have served us in peace and war and those who gave their last full measure so that we could remain the last best hope of the world.

The weather could not have been better as the parade stepped off this morning. The skies were clear and Summer temperatures had finally arrived. As the route rolled on the heat did tend to rise, though. Still, compared to the dismal weather we’ve seen the last few months, this Memorial Day was a welcome respite.

Rep. Roskam had a group of about fifty supporters march with him and I joined them to document the event. As we walked the distance from downtown Wheaton to the Wheaton Cemetery it was obvious that the congressman had many fans along the route. There were surprised smiles and a healthy amount of applause as the congressman and his lovely wife led the contingent.
Read more

Wash Post’s Cohen: GOP Should Compromise… Like They Did With Slavery?

May 11, 2011 | Filed Under Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, GOP, Government, Corruption, History, Journalism, Liberals, Media, Media Bias, Newspapers, Patriotism, Republicans, Slavery, Warner Todd Huston, Washington Post | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Richard Cohen is what passes for an opinion editorialist in the Washington Post — not a learned one, just a bloviating one. Cohen’s latest, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism,” is at the same time as self-loathing as it is historically stupid. Not only does this nonsense Cohen ladled out upon us all serve an example that you don’t have to actually know anything to be in our modern Old Media establishment, but it is evidence that the profession of editor is long dead.

In his ten paragraphs Cohen indulges every left-wing trope that one can find. Whites are all racist, we don’t do enough for “the poor” in America, Christianity is the root of all evil, and it all started in the 1850s when the Republican Party was born. Most ridiculously, Cohen a-historically seems to think that the art of compromise died in American politics when the GOP was born. This last bit alone is guffaw worthy to say the least.
Read more

Was Lincoln REALLY a Secret Atheist?

April 17, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Bible, Christianity, Civil War, GOP, History, Religion, Republicans, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here we go again. This sort of nonsense that passes for journalism rehashing our history, and badly at that, always comes up when there’s some sort of anniversary in the offing. This time it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War which gave Discovery News an excuse to cast Lincoln as the new atheist hero all based on a “rediscovered letter.”

This “rediscovered letter” is, as Discovery News and Emily Sohn claim, “raises questions about Abraham Lincoln’s views on religion.” Sohn tries to lead readers into imagining that Lincoln was a closet atheist because the letter claims that Lincoln’s religious views were “driven not by faith, but by politics.”

The letter in question was written by Lincoln’s law partner and close friend — at least a close friend before he became president — William Herndon. Herndon made a cottage industry for himself out of being Lincoln’s close friend after the president’s assassination styling himself as Lincoln’s official biographer. He spent years traveling around the country talking to people who knew Lincoln in order to write the definitive biography of the president.
Read more

New Book Drags Abe Lincoln’s Race Ideas Back Up

March 6, 2011 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Civil Rights Act, Civil War, History, RightPundits.com, Slavery, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

No president’s views of race relations have elicited more spirited conversation than Abe Lincoln’s and his complex views are again the subject of conjecture. A new book about Lincoln’s ideas on sending America’s negro population to another country, a policy called “colonization,” has been penned by a researcher at George Mason University showing that Lincoln pursued the policy long after other researchers said he had dropped the idea.

The argument has raged for decades over just what our 16th president thought about black people. Did he hate them or love them, did he respect them or dismiss them, did he think they were equals to whites or inferior? Did he care if they were enslaved or was he an ardent abolitionist? The argument has raged and with this book rages on still…

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.
Read more

Senator Jim Webb: The Hypocrisy at the Core of the Democrat Party

February 10, 2011 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Civil War, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Elections, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Liberals, Republicans, Senate, Virginia, Warner Todd Huston, West Virginia | 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

Virginia’s Junior Senator, Jim Webb, is already hanging up his senatorial career. One term was enough for the so-called moderate Virginia Democrat. He’s announced that he will not run for reelection. But the fact that he got elected at all shows the essential hypocrisy at the heart of the Democrat Party. Webb, you see, is what many might consider a “neo-confederate.”

If Jim Webb had run for the Senate from Virginia as a Republican in the modern era he could never, ever have gotten elected no matter which party the state is leaning toward at any given time. Yet Webb was given a pass for his neo-confederate sympathies and allowed to sail to election back in 2006.

What about all this “neo-confederate” business? Well, back in 2004 Webb published a book titled “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.” This book was very friendly to the old Confederacy of our Ciil War era.
Read more

Salon’s Rant about Rush, Race and Reconstruction

November 18, 2010 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Civil War, Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Liberals, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Slavery, Society/Culture, Western Civilization | Comments Off

-By Michael Zak

Today, Steve Kornacki, news editor at Salon, published a lengthy denounciation of the Republican Party, and of Rush Limbaugh specifically, on the subject of civil rights The title of the article is Dittoheads, race and denial. Kornacki makes a pretense of setting the record straight about the civil rights movement, but instead he imparts his own lefty spin. Rather than go through the article point by point, I’ll let just a few observations serve to illustrate the overall duplicity.

The very image atop his article is a lie. It portrays a Republican, Rush Limbaugh, on the Confederate flag despite the fact that the Confederates were Democrats.

Hey, Steve! How about speaking some Truth to Power? Your article should have admitted the fact that the Confederates were Democrats. You could also admit the fact that you, as a Democrat, are a member of the Party of Slavery, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan.

The historical argument he makes is based on another lie:
Read more

Brutal Fisking: NC NAACP Chapter Pres. Alleges Tea Party is as Racist as Democrats

October 22, 2010 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Civil Rights Act, Civil War, Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, History, Liberals, NAACP, Race, Slavery, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Duane Lester

The NAACP has released its unbiased report on racism in the Tea Party and has unexpectedly found it is racist.

Hardly surprising.

The president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter, Rev. William Barber, went far enough in his condemnation of the group to be noticed by the Washington Post:

“We have to have particular concern about supremacy attitudes, violence, hate language, particularly when it’s rooted in notions of restoring or taking back or redeeming the country,” Barber said. “Because, in the American social-historical-political psyche, we have historical markers that tell us how dangerous this is to be given legitimacy.”

For instance:

“We know in 1867 when the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, laid out its political purposes, it was about restoring and re-enfranchising, if you will.”

“And then when you go to the Reconstruction Era, you find this same attempt to spew this division, this hate language out…. ‘We need to restore America. We need to take it back.’”

Barber moved on to 1963. “When George Wallace used this language and themes of division, very vitriolic hate language,” Barber said, “Medgar Evers was killed in June of that year… We had the bombing of a church, four girls were killed at Sunday school and then we had a president assassinated.”

It’s hard to believe I have to do this, but I guess I do, at least for the good Rev. Barber.
Read more

K. Carl Smith, the Conservative Messenger

October 21, 2010 | Filed Under Budget, Civil War, Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Elections, Federalism, Frederick Douglas, Free Trade, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Human Rights, Liberals, Property Taxes, Race, Republicans, Slavery, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

With phrases like, “reigniting American’s passion for liberty,” and “saving our party will save our country,” what’s not to like?

K Carl Smith, The Conservative Messenger from Wetumpka Tea Party on Vimeo.

You can see Mr. Smith’s website at: http://www.conservativemessenger.org/.

One of his interesting contentions is that the federal government is the modern day slave master. He also contends that Frederick Douglas is the father of the Republican Party.
Read more

Dressing Like A WWII German Soldier on Weekends Proves How Rich We Are

October 20, 2010 | Filed Under Civil War, Democrats/Leftists, Government, Government, Corruption, History, Holocaust, Slavery, Society/Culture, Warner Todd Huston, Western Civilization, WWII | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

First of all, despite all the chest puffing by sports-freaks and rock-music geeks who want to say that Civil War and WWII reenactors are “weird,” the very fact that there are such things as reenactors at all — not to mention sports nuts or music fanatics — is proof that westerners are well off, rich if you will. The existence of Civil War and WWII reenactors is great evidence that the United States is a success.

But first, let’s face the facts. Civil War and WWII reenactors are not any stranger than people that wear those silly looking bicycling clothes with the pointed hats and the skin-tight little pants. They are no goofier than those nut cases that paint themselves in their team colors and spend thousands of their hard-earned wages on time-wasting sports games. Reenactors are no stranger than model railroaders, Internet aficionados, joggers, fishing devotees, health nuts, scrapbookers, model airplane fliers, and any number of the other thousands of hobbies that Americans invest all their free time and spare money into.

And that is just the thing, isn’t it? That Americans have so much spare money and time to waste on hobbies really does show how successful we are as a culture.
Read more

Republicans Repealed the Fugitive Slave Act

July 5, 2010 | Filed Under Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, GOP, Government, History, President, Republicans, Slavery | Comments Off

-By Michael Zak

On this day in 1864, the Republican-controlled 38th Congress repealed the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. The law had enabled slave catchers to operate freely in northern states and to kidnap any African-American residing there. Merely by attesting that the person was an escaped slave, a slave catcher could chain him and drag him away to a southern slave market. Moreover, the law required all free people as well as all local and state and federal government officials to assist slave catchers.

A pair of Democrats, Senator James Mason (D-VA) and Senator Andrew Butler (D-SC), had written the Fugitive Slave Act.

The bill repealing the Fugitive Slave Act was written by a Republican congressman from Ohio, Rufus Spalding. A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed it into law.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Abraham Lincoln, 1864
Read more

2nd Amendment Rights Finally Considered a Right for Black Chicagoans Too!

June 28, 2010 | Filed Under 2nd Amendment, Civil War, Constitution, Cook County, Democrats/Leftists, Freedom, Government, Government, Corruption, Guns, Illinois, Liberals, Mayor Richard Daley, Rights, Slavery, State Government, Warner Todd Huston | 3 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

At long last the 2nd Amendment has been considered a personal right per the Supreme Court of the United States. In McDonald v the City of Chicago the Supreme Court has ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that Chicago’s gun banning laws are not in keeping with the right to self-defense as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. After 200 some years we are finally accorded our rights officially. Further, the Court found that the 2nd Amendment was meant to protect the very people that Mayor Richard Daley and his comrades are trying to forcibly disarm: black Americans. (See PDF of Decision)

The decision threw out the Seventh Circuit ruling upholding Chicago’s gun ban and ordered the Seventh to revisit its decision. This new ruling does not specifically strike down Chicago’s gun ban but the opinion leaves little room for the Seventh to up hold Mayor Richard Daley’s gun banning efforts.

One of the main questions before the Court was whether or not the 14th Amendment served to shore up the rights in the 2nd. The Court found that it did, indeed. In fact, it is interesting to note that the ancestors of the very people that the 14th Amendment was meant to specifically protect — newly freed slaves, called freemen — are today those that Mayor Richard Daley and others like him want to disarm. Daley and his ilk want to disempower blacks and other minorities and tie them plantation-like to their government authority.
Read more

All White Swim Meet Celebrates 8 Years of Excellence

June 3, 2010 | Filed Under Children, Civil Rights Act, Civil War, History, Liberals, Race, Sports, Warner Todd Huston, Western Civilization | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

It’s smiles all around for the National White Heritage Swim Meet held since 2003 near Raleigh, Durham North Carolina. This year nearly 750 swimmers have come from as far away as Florida and Illinois to compete.

“Look at all the people,” said Kenny Cross of Raleigh. “This is where champions are born.”

The all white swim teams were created in an effort to raise interest in swimming in white people. Of course, everyone is welcome….

Wait. Does this make you uncomfortable? Does an all white swim meet make you uneasy and raise the specter of racism? Is it wrong to have an all white swim meet?

Only they aren’t… all white, I mean. They are instead all black.

Still feel the same way?

If not, why?
Read more

Will Admiral Ackbar Replace School’s Confederate Mascot?

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under Children, Civil War, Education, Entertainment, Frederick Meekins, Government, Corruption, Mississippi | Comments Off

-By Frederick Meekins

Students at the University of Mississippi are campaigning to make Admiral Ackbar from “Return of the Jedi” the school’s new mascot.

The school banished its old mascot Old Reb, an elderly Southern gentleman in Confederate garb, because of “negative connotations of the old South”.

If the Rebel Alliance had the same backbone as these radical multiculturalists, Vader and Palpatine would have conquered the galaxy without even having to build a Deathstar.

Frankly, there is no pleasing these malcontents.
Read more