Caption: Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war. Subsequently, he became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination on March 15, 44 BC, at the Curia de Pompeo in Rome.
SPQR
Old Blighty – bluster and bluff or what?
“The UK is ready and willing to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our troops on the ground if necessary.”
I keep hearing this and reading it. They have a total of 18,000 troops medically fit to deploy, so send them to Ukraine to save the Ukrainians from the Russians. Don’t just talk about doing it, send the few soldiers you have to die there. Their families will be proud that they died for a good cause. Maybe the 250,000 Ukrainian draft dodgers living under emergency visas in the United States (many receiving government assistance, free medical care and subsidized housing) will take heart from their deaths and will return to save their country?
I’m sure that after the destruction of the Royal Army, somebody will send troops to defend the British Isles, right? Maybe the Poles? There are a lot of Polish people living in Britain now, and the addition of 18,000 military-age Polish males would be welcome there. With so many Polish people living in the UK these days, the arriving Polish troops wouldn’t have much of a language barrier – except with the many Arabic speakers, but I’m sure they’ll get along.
Bullet Points:
** In 2024, trade between the US and the UAE totaled $34.4 billion, with US exports to the Emirates making up nearly $27 billion. The UAE is the US’s third-largest trade surplus, globally. Key sectors driving this vital trade relationship include technology, AI, life sciences, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, financial services, and space.
** A federal court awarded $90,000 each to two former St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) employees who sued the district after their requests for religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate were denied, St. Louis Today reported. The employees were among 43 plaintiffs who sued in June 2022, alleging that SLPS violated their First Amendment rights and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, as well as federal and state civil rights laws.
** (Highway to Hell) The American trucking industry today is in trouble. Wages have flatlined for decades, while deadly accidents have steadily increased. These trends share the root cause: the massive influx of cheap, poorly trained, foreign-born drivers.
** The democrats need to calm down. Elon Musk can’t become president unless he can find the guy who made Barack Hussein Obama’s birth certificate.
** Nearly 80,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services have about a week to decide whether to accept a $25,000 buyout to resign from their jobs. Workers cannot start opting in until Monday and have until 5 p.m. on Friday to submit a response for the so-called voluntary separation offer. The email was sent to staff across the department, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration in Maryland.
** I once asked an E.O.D. guy if his job was stressful. He said it wasn’t. Either he was right, or it wasn’t his problem anymore.
** The Israeli attacks on Iran left the oil fields and export terminals alone, along with Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. The Iranian economy is crippled and the population angry at their continued poverty. Iranians know that their government has spent nearly $30 billion to establish themselves in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. That is all gone, along with weapons plants and air defense systems. What remains are hunger, poverty and an angry population. IRGC commanders have been warning the government that they do not have enough troops to put down widespread uprisings and a growing number of IRGC men are reluctant to kill Iranians to protect an unpopular government.
** Education, vouchers and teacher’s unions.
** No, this isn’t a joke. I have been asked to give a three-day (one class per day) lecture at a middle school in Southern California on slavery, the War of Northern Aggression, and what it meant then and what it means now. I tried to clarify—you mean, uncensored? Yes, tell them what happened and what it means. Wow, elections have consequences. Will I do it? Yes, I will. Will I speak truth to topic? Yes I will.
When You Require Emotional Support
US Trade Policy with Canada
Three news items resulted from a recent interview with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Number one: He recognizes an election coming in 90 days in Canada, wants a new federal leader, and would rather negotiate a pan-Canadian deal than province by province as he’s doing now.
Number two: He wants to reduce the current heat and rhetoric between Ontario and the US. This is a smart move because Ontario is a very important trade partner to 17 different states.
Number three: What I find so interesting is that I heard Howard’s first cracks about saying, “What if we merged the economies?” Merging the economies is a huge opportunity to ward off China, and that’s the beginning of that road.
Note: If the US and Canada have a meeting of the minds, will the Canadians eject all of the PRC agents living in China? Will they be willing to imprison or deport all of the members of the known 4,000 criminal foreign gangs now in Canada to Make Canada Safe Again? As VDH sets out below, Canada is a socialist country. The US has no interest in incorporating Canada into the US. (Maybe we’d take Alberta)
Identify the Vehicle
1
2
3
This one shouldn’t be difficult
Identify the Weapons
4
Parting Shot
h/t PaulM
End
Poles in England – maybe they could start having Winged Hussar parades. That’ll help, I’m sure :)
I wonder if the Muslims (who run Old Blighty now) would consider winged hussars inclusive? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxlRJsQ7p2k
More like this: pinterest.com/pin/202450945729995626/
They need to reproduce fast to save the planet.
4 The weapons are PPSh-41 sub machine gun and PTRS-41 anti tank rifle that fired a 14.5 (.57 cal) by 114 mm round.
Yes, absolutely.
You beat me to it. I was asleep.
Judging from the skinny bayonets sticking up in a couple places, a couple Mosin-Nagants are present as well.
Public education in Texas shuffles huge amounts of money into a bureaucracy that uses tax money to support the bureaucracy that shuffles money. That, and the introduction of the lottery supposedly was to boost money for education. Where does it go, and how is it doled out? I haven’t a clue, and I’m sure I’m as clueless as over 95% of people living in Texas. I do know the larger the city, the larger amount spent per student and the lower the amount of students with a rudimentary education necessary to function in society. Continuing on to higher education just seems to be prolonging the inevitable for most students, and a huge waste of money for parents and society.
Vouchers are being introduced to the table, and many involved with the public education debacle are upset about how home schoolers will receive money too. That will conflict with the huge amounts of money supporting the furnishing of food for students. That, and from what I understand, increases the demand for better teaching, since home-schooled children are better educated. With a bigger demand for stay-at-home parents, the grip of Marxism is lessened and propaganda is removed.
If it’s anything like everywhere else in the US, it goes into vast, overwhelming
numbers of six-figure-salary administrative positions, whose job appears to
be to make everything worse.
*
When I was a kid, (’66 – ’84) the average High School around here had:
(1) Principal – paperwork stuff, mostly. Politics.
(1-2, class size dependent) Vice Principals – discipline, to include slapping around the little thugs that needed it.
(2 or 3) office staff – did most of the work that the Principal signed, and made sure the school ran.
(1) Nurse – if a kid got hurt, decided if they were lying.
(1 – 2) Guidance counselors – jack shit, AFAICT.
*
Nowadays, they often have more than one Principal, as many as a half dozen Vice Principals, Probably the same staff,
usually 2-3 “health professionals”, a half dozen guidance counselors, and entire Psych department, a bunch of weird
people I can’t really even describe to interface between admin and the teachers, and a bunch of Zampolits to promulgate
Marxist thought and convince the kids that they are hermaphrodite space unicorns or some shit, and also that it’s
cool to have some sort of psych diagnosis and IEP, so they can hire more people in the Psych department.
*
The schools also usually have a ball field that’s nicer than Shaefer Stadium was, when a friend’s dad would sometimes take
me with them to see the Pats on company tickets. And a giant ground crew with a half dozen machines to take care of it.
*
Meanwhile, teachers generally have to buy the school supplies for their classes out of pocket.
–
Fun times.
– Kle.
I have two daughters who teach 6th grade in different schools. They buy supplies out-of-pocket.
Don’t forget, no shop classes or physical skill classes but lots of ‘arts magnet’ bullscat. Because we obviously need more people with ‘theater’ skills than metalworking and woodworking and auto repair skills.
X10 (all of the above…same here Kle, and you didn’t want to mess with the Assistant P. Plus, parents were involved and controlled the curriculum at School Board meetings.)
My Freshman year in high school I was denied the Basic Shop class I had signed up for. It was replaced with a study hall. When I asked my “counselor” about it, he blew me off with “Shop is for dummies. YOU’RE going to College!”….
I got home in tears, and I swear it was the only time I was happy to hear my Mom say “Wait till your father gets home”. Dad called the school and made an immediate meeting with the “counselor”.
Dad was a Tool and Die Maker, and read the “counselor” the riot act.
I got my shop class, and the “counselor” hated me all four years.
😊
Identify the Vehicle:
1. Centurion AVRE 165
2. Not my thing.
3. Raupenschlepper Ost experimental variant
Identify the Weapons:
4. PTRS-41
Who had “Schumer gets shived by AOC” on the Ides of March marked on their calendar?
Better to Give John Wick a few Puppies than to Harm 1 in his Presence!
I Hope and Pray we will all Be John Wick Over the Horrible Treatment of Our Country’s Resources !
Poles in the UK-Wonder if the Poles will do any better with Hindi and Urdu than with Arabic? Then there’s Scottish Gaelic to deal with.
I’m sure once the Poles have a few Tennets ales and taste the wonders of Neeps and Tatties then Gaelic will sound exactly like Polish and all will be grande.
*
Good luck with the three days in modern education.
Good luck indeed.
——-
https://americanbuddhist.net/2025/03/14/a-teachers-perspective/
X2…I’d sit in if I could (but that requires going INTO California – heh). Had great history teachers, having grown up in Colonial central SE Pennsylvania, could see the history while getting the instruction. Betting LL will masterfully engage the class…hopefully they’ll appreciate the lessons.
Starting from a false premise of Northern aggression. :-)
Better say all that stuff now before the anti-Uniontism Hate Speech laws kick in.
—
When The Narrative, er, I meant The TRUTH is so important, and so self-evidently true, yet simultaneously so fragile that those who dare question it must be silenced, jailed, and unpersonned, something is deeply screwed up. If I claim that the USA did not nuke Japan (twice, yet) am I a nuke denier, or am I an idiot? The proper response to stupid or wrong or plain hateful speech is more speech that discredits the stupid/wrong/hateful speech. Jailing people for saying stupid/wrong/hateful things makes anyone not a freaking idiot wonder what is being hidden.
Well, if you look at the facts that the northern states, which were industrializing right and left, wanted to control the South’s ability to manufacture goods, much like how England wanted the Colonies to not have the ability to manufacture goods, there is that very strong argument that some of the basis of the ACW, on the South’s part, were economic in nature not including slavery.
–
There are a lot of issues on both sides of the divide that contributed to war.
The monied interests in the North and South could not compromise and a war resulted. At issue was the question that once confederated/unionized, the Federal Government maintained that the once sovereign states couldn’t not opt out of the federation. If that issue had been raised after the Revolutionary War there would never have been a United States. Times change, elections have consequences. The slavery issue was one of many but it wasn’t the reason for the war. The soldiers for the north and south didn’t die for slavery.
I am reminded of this scene.
——
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSqidipbpBo
Ides of March- Exactly. To that end I felt it necessary to share the following morning thoughts from my brother (East Coaster), who – unlike myself – tends to see things for what they are without emoting or editorializing. Longer than even my typical comment but worth saying out loud (LL approved hogging the blog):
—
“Ok, so…more ‘philosophical bullsh**’ from me…
–
Trump…apparently…met with Hokul from NY…the self described ‘resistance governor’ to the Trump Agenda…
Trump put Zelensky in his place…
Trump told the Europeans ‘no more allowance’ so you can build socialistic societies…
Trump told Canada…even out tariffs and close your border…
Trump told Panama…it’s ours
Trump told the communist dictator in Columbia…I’m gonna tariff the sh** out of you..
Trump told the Maine governor…$400M of Ed funding gone unless the trans thing goes away..
Trump told the EU to stop buying oil from Russia and stop giving him money to kill Ukrainians…which is what buying his oil does…
–
And ALL the ‘educated’ and ‘worldly’…and…and…and…Are up in arms because he’s so in your face crass about it…
–
But…think about it…’economics’ is the linchpin of…everything…
–
The reason NO ONE can imagine no IRS sh** is because they don’t see the simultaneous chess move of generating MORE revenue from new sources…
Which is what he and Lutnick and Bessant are doing…
–
2 months in office…has done more than the last 3 combined…because he isn’t making personal side deals to make money corruptly. He’s already wealthy. And….they tried EVERYTHING on him…humiliation…indictments…possible jail…bankruptcy…and…finally…assassination…
–
He beat them ALL…NO ONE ELSE…no other ‘politician’ could have done that…ALL the rest of them are too soft…Ivy League…lazy…greedy and insecure…
–
Think about it…Vance…a SELF MADE Ivy Leaguer…from poor Appalachia…military…Hegseth…Princeton…military…Lutnick…ALL of his employees died on 911…he rebuilt AND paid all those spouses and families (still is)…Bessent…PE guy…cut his teeth under Soros…somehow emerged as a conservative…but KNOWS how all these guys think…act and…react.
–
It IS now or never. What is amazing is they all seem like they are rowing in the same direction….don’t give a sh** what the media says about them…most of them are already ‘rich’…And I think the #1 thing is EVERY ONE of them are great communicators and can think on their feet…
–
I think Rubio impresses me the most…never saw that coming…He went from ‘little Marco’ to SOS…which tells ya something about Trump…
–
For the first time…a Republican outsmarted the Dems on the CR thing…they KNEW the Dems would get blamed and that they could then decide who is ‘essential’ and who isn’t….that’s never happened in my lifetime.”
***
There was more…but that bit covers it fairly comprehensibly lest we forget what has been in done in short order by the very man The Cabal tried to destroy. God’s hand for certain. I for one, am grateful and pray for His providence over this man…Our President. And…for once in a very long time I am looking forward to the next 2 weeks of Ides of March (may have come in like a lamb here but DC is feeling the “Big Dog” lion). I suspect the next 2 weeks and 2 months should be very interesting as the entangled morass that is Washington, along with State governments, gets dismantled to the screaming dismay of those on the take at WTP and America’s expense.
Thanks Paul. Great list. I’d seen lists from the first 4 rounds (yrs) of Trump in the ring taking blows for WTP. Circa 2020 shared one of them with a never Trumper who… was a good friend.
Now it’s not APDJT alone. It’s super team America, and going strong on offense! The aspect of successful, already financially satisfied statesman and public servants depends on morals they have and want for the country. Like L.L. teaching history to 8th graders, I’m really admiring those that are stepping up. The Almighty knows the bad apples that might emerge. If the V.M. merch line takes off, there’s Horatius quote for a possible challenge coin. ” How can a man die better? ” has invoked me to learn more new word definitions and investigate further on various subjects posted here. ( I’m trying to pass 7th grade still, lol)
Relating to the new D.C. admin the poem speaks of being out numbered 3 to a thousand in battle. Do Musk and Kennedy, ect… have the same passion for posterity those Titans had? What lies ahead for the USA? A further quote of Horatius says, ” Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
How many WTP would have been willing to ” be facing fearful odds” and think of “no better way to die” IF last falls election would have been stolen again?
X2…watching to see how things unfold. Chatting with a neighbor friend..in the Shop where all conversations begin on a chilly day…agreed this was all about economics and that the world elites will d9 anything to maintain power and control they believe they deserve. Also said, as Christians, we know how the story ends but we are to maintain a watchful eye. Former (meaning not active) Marine…he gets it.
War of Northern Aggression-I’d love to see the syllabus of that 3 day lecture. Even more interesting would be the student’s reaction.
Larry will be asked to discuss this on my show.
Soon.
Cool…will definitely tune in.
Looking forward to more history with insights Ed! Following “Your American Heritage” on Spotify
I used to teach an after-hours high school class (PowerPoint) on the War Between the States, (for those of you who are irked by the War of Northern Aggression). My daughters who are currently teachers recall those and want me to recreate them.
**
EdB wants a replay of Mosby’s Rangers vs Custer’s Michigan Cavalry on Your American Heritage.
Have fun with that!
.
About once a year, a very wily and wonderful school teacher invites Peter to come give a talk to middle schoolers on What Your Textbooks Don’t Tell You about Africa and Slavery, from a Real African.
.
The best part isn’t the way their eyes get wide and their ears get pinned back during the talk… it’s over the next couple days when they go complain to somebody’s parent who is from Africa, and go online to try to prove him wrong, only to find out there’s A Whole Lot More that he didn’t tell them, and asking first-generation immigrants to tell them about how he was wrong and Wakanda was real does NOT get you the desired results that tumblr, tiktok, and the textbook promised was true…
.
Said teacher rates the resulting ripples of stunned reaction, outcry, and residue of suspicion cast over the textbook and previously trusted sources as second only to the part of the year where they cover the Holocaust in English class, and then the Holomodor in world history…
For the record, Peter is one of my favorite Africans.
The War of Northern Aggression:
-War Crimes against Southern Civilians is an fascinating book that details Union officials taking spoils rather than protecting black slaves. It is an easy read and I recommend it for those who are interested in that war as it shows a different facet of the conflict.
-I maintain that the first act of aggression was when Union forces took Fort Sumpter forcing Southern caretakers from that facility. Their previous location was directly under Southern guns. The firing upon Fort Sumpter was because Southern diplomats warned Lincoln that if he attempted to resupply Fort Sumpter it would be a direct act of war. Lincoln proceeded to resupply with the news failing to report the reasons behind the Southern forces firing on the resupply effort.
-Slavery was a facet of the war, but not the main reason. Many point to state declarations noting slavery as the bedrock that it was the reason for conflict; however, they ignore the many other documents pointing out states rights and most importantly ignore the fact that the vast majority of the Federal budget was raised through tariffs on Southern goods going to Northern states. At times, the Southern portion of the budget was in the 90 percentile. Money was right at the top of the reasons for the North to attack.
-Northern generals complained in their reports to Washington that the Southern artillery units could not be effectively defeated as the Southern batteries moved into position, fired effectively and then moved with great speed to another location.
–Writings from the early time of America supported states being able to succeed without conflict; but these were also ignored at the time.
-Gettysburg Lee’s plan was for the Army of Virginia (General Longstreet) to move past Little Round Top in the early morning near midnight. Longstreet failed to do that allowing Little Round Top to be reinforced putting the remainder of Southern Troops in peril.
-During the Cold War, the Soviets and Chinese studied Lee as America’s best general. I don’t know if that is still the case.
My books are all stored right now, so I lack the ability to send references.
I agree with most of this except that it was money that caused the states to secede. If you consider the tariffs as a major factor.
X2 – The beginning of Northern Aggression. The Constitution allowed slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in states that were in rebellion, etc.
https://thereconstructionera.com/war-of-northern-aggression-civil-war-war-between-the-states-the-eternal-argument/
One correction: there were never any tariffs levied on trade between states. Tariffs are levies on imported foreign goods. Excise taxes are levied on goods internal to the US, such as alcohol. There were never any excise taxes levied on cotton, though it seems to have been batted about a bit before the Great Southern Rebellion, just to throw an old Northern term into play. :-) Southerners correctly saw tariffs protecting northern industries from the more established British as costing them money as they had to pay more for manufactured goods than they otherwise would. I’m of mixed mind about that. Without protective tariffs, would American industry have taken off in the face of long-established British industry? However, too protective of a tariff encourages stagnation and rent-seeking rather than being a temporary opportunity for building competitiveness. There was certainly more than a bit of rent-seeking going on. Memories of the British prohibition on many kinds of manufacturing in the colonies before the War for Independence had set many Northerners’ attitudes long before the Civil War. Had the Southern leadership class sought to industrialize, as well as grow cash crops, I wonder how that would’ve changed the politics of the first half of the 19th Century? A more industrialized South certainly would’ve had more of a chance during the war. The relative lack of industries and the Union blockade meant the Confederacy’s only real chance was in European recognition and intervention to break the Union blockade.
Tariffs never produce the results they are sold as doing. For starters, the taxes collected don’t go to investments in the industries they are protecting, do they? Tariffs are just another tax which goes to just more central planning, which ends up funding just more pork.
Give them a good dose of Real History, LL !
– Kle.
Britain, as a country, is a dead man walking. They don’t have enough military to do ANYTHING anywhere…
They look great on parade in front of Buckingham Palace where the swells take photos of them.
Ides of March
Bad month, personally. Seems to be the month relatives die (parents, son, aunts and uncles, cousins, brother in law).
Civil War/War of Northern Aggression. The base reason, like all wars, was greed. The South wanted cheap labor and unfettered exports. The North wanted markets and protection from superior British manufacturers. The common people wanted to be left alone. My ancestors were on both sides, but mainly Union – a fact of geography that ideology.
Trump seems to have laser focused plans. While people are getting their undies bunched up over, “The Gulf of America”, the distraction occupies their attention while his plans go onward. He, and the crew he has assembled, just may save this country.
The Lambert Lecture belongs on youtube or an alternative venue. Please.
Keep in mind that the unspoken first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy. This is true for grand bureaucratic systems like the USG and the military down to petit bureaucratic systems like grade schools. When threatened, bureaucratic systems will fight for survival and it can get ugly.
X2…Exactly why it needs to be defanged then dismantled…so it can’t rise up against WTP ever again. The Founders brilliantly drafted an ironclad document to govern by, the subversives have been working for 150 years to undermine it.
I had two rather excellent history teachers in college.
–
One was in World History. First thing he said was, “To you blacks here, I’m really going to piss you off. That’s okay, because I’m going to piss off everyone else just as bad.” And he did. Spoke truth, dropped bombs on everyone. He used to be a UF professor but was forced out because of commies at UF (yes, real godless commies in control of edumacation back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, whodathunk.) And, boy, it was fun already knowing some of the real truths before he got to toss them on us and watching the fallout. Great teacher.
–
The other was in American History. His unraveling of the bullscat behind the Boston Massacre was fantastic and eye opening even for me, let alone the rest of the class. Lots of serious truths and destruction of many ‘holy’ myths of America. His destruction of ‘The Noble Savage’ was especially savage, right up there with the
scene from “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” when Colonel Miles sits down with Sitting Bull. Absolutely savage. (and here’s the aforementioned segment from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN90wZRnyM0&t=3s ) Interestingly, he was another professor who escaped UF’s tyranny.
–
Side note: My wife took Calculus Honors at the local comm college and her professor was a serious multi-degree math major who went to Moscow University – the one in Moscow, USSR. He also bailed on UF because he didn’t like how the university tried to control him. My wife freaked him out because she could visualize math in her head, full 3D graphs, and could extrapolate the formula of said graph. My wife is a witch. A good witch, but, well…
Can your wife drop houses on people if I give geocords? Asking for a friend.
She lost a lot of her witch powers after her brain-bleed in 2009. But she can tell me when not to leave the house because bad reasons.
–
As to houses, no, never able to drop a real house. Now, pissing her off around the game table and she’ll throw a die so hard right between the recipient’s eyes that you could read the pips or numbers.