Category Archives: History

Mexifornia secedes

Posted on April 3, 2018 | 1 comment

“California has one quarter or more of America’s illegal aliens – as well as one third of the entire nation’s welfare recipients.  With a population more than 40 percent Latino, it has become Mexifornia.

“The new California motor-voter registration law that took effect April 1 transparently is intended to enfranchise illegals, who vote 2-1 for the ruling Democratic Party, in order to dissolve the American nation into a borderless, bankrupt, bilingual backwater ruled as a colony by a global progressive government.”

So, with this metaphorical first shot at Fort Sumter, this transparent secession, will Trump send in federal troops to take over Sacramento and restore constitutional order?

Via American Thinker

UPDATE: More than a million illegals have received Mexifornia driver’s licenses.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War, History, South of the Border

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The Sneed mansion

Posted on April 2, 2018 | Comments Off on The Sneed mansion

The Sneed mansion in somewhat better days, i.e. 1936. Today it’s just a South Austin ruin surrounded by development. Even Wikipedia gets its history wrong, neglecting to mention that ol’ Sebron sr. was a Confederate provost marshal whose home was the rallying point for captured deserters and other evaders of the draft, and that the attic was used as a ballroom for parties and dances. Some of Sebron’s 21 slaves are nearby in a neglected cemetery that should be some sort of SJW monument to them and their plight but isn’t.

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Posted in Civil War, History, The Ruling Class

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Just in time for Pesach

Posted on March 30, 2018 | 1 comment

“A hoard of rare bronze Jewish Revolt coins has been discovered at the recently renewed Ophel excavations. The trove of dozens of bronze coins minted during the last years of the ill-fated four-year rebellion of the Jews against Roman rule was uncovered in a cave just south of the Temple Mount…”

Giving the lie—in case one was needed for anyone but the terminally ignorant—to claims by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians that Jews have no history in the land.

Via Times of Israel

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Posted in History, Israel

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The father I never knew

Posted on March 29, 2018 | Comments Off on The father I never knew

Thomas Wictor has a cool memorial to the father he never knew.

“Although I knew of my father for fifty years, I didn’t know him at all. He will always remain a mystery to me, which is what he wanted.”

Mine too, apparently. Pop (which I never called him but seems appropriate now) was an enigma to me for at least 44 years . For a dozen or so of those years he told me he had joined the Army Air Corps to learn to fly.

I found out reading his Air Force flight records that he knew how to fly BEFORE he joined the military. Flew a light, single engine plane made by Aeronca from a little airport near the town where he was born in Mississippi.

Seems strange Pop would lie about something so simple. But Pop lied a lot. His last lie was to assure me that I had to come to his second wedding (after mother had died) because I would be his best man. When I got there and asked him what a best man was supposed to do, Pop said flatly “There will be no best man.”

Turned out he just wanted me to put in an appearance so it wouldn’t look to his colleagues and friends like his children had bailed on him. In the end only one of the three did.

Wictor’s father-he-never-knew left him a ton of money “that allows me complete freedom for the rest of my life.” Pop didn’t. He left me an old serving platter allegedly belonging to my ggggrandfather. Who’s to say if it’s true.

Not me. I knew Pop that well, anyhow.

Via ThomasWictor.com

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Posted in Genealogy, History

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The Goliad massacre

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 2 comments

Today marks the 182nd anniversary of the mass execution of 342 Texan revolutionary army prisoners at Goliad. On the order of Santa Anna which “damaged [his] international reputation and deepened sympathy for the revolution in the United States,” according to the Texas State Historical Association.

We’ve been to the old fort that was near the site of the massacre many times enroute to a vaca in Port Aransas, It’s walls are still standing–as is the chapel where the prisoners were held, so crowded that they had to stand–and they shelter a nice little museum if you’re ever down that way.

Via Texas State Historical Association

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Posted in History, Texana

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Reprise: Then and now

Posted on March 21, 2018 | Comments Off on Reprise: Then and now

From 2013 but just as valid five years later.

The UT Tower sniping has pretty much faded from local memory, but one aspect of it should be remembered for how things worked in 1966.

“After the first fifteen minutes, the sniper was pinned down by students and other civilians who’d spontaneously flocked to the university area with deer rifles.”

People were trusted, then, to do the right thing. Some didn’t, of course, but many did. Nowadays we’re all lumped in with the creeps who don’t. And we “shelter in place” like cowards while waiting for the police to arrive. Only to find out that their first priority is to go home safe at the end of their shift.

A similar Austin incident now would probably have a bigger toll than 1966’s seventeen dead and thirty-two wounded, all in those first fifteen minutes before the deer rifles spoke.

UPDATE:  The cowardly Broward County Florida sheriff’s deputies who congregated outside the Parkland high school last month while the massacre went on inside are a case on point: You can’t trust the government to do its job.

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Posted in Guns, History, Texana

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The 1945 USS Indianapolis

Posted on March 14, 2018 | Comments Off on The 1945 USS Indianapolis

Just finished reading Doug Stanton’s book “In Harm’s Way,” about the 1945 torpedoing and sinking of the Indianapolis. And the harrowing four days and five nights of the surviving crew in the water surrounded by sharks which killed hundreds of them.

Quite a good tale, beginning with the 1968 suicide of her captain Charles McVay, who Stanton ends with explaining that McVay was driven to it by the hate mail he received every Christmas from families of the dead. Makes you think about the so-called privileges of command.

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Posted in History, Library

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