The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo-Boo (Video)

https://t.co/k9oNpBj1aB

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 31, 2016

How Many Lies Can Hillary Clinton Pack into One Sentence?

Two lies in one sentence. Impressive even by her standard. Give me a break what total bs. https://t.co/ttfDdA5Q6o

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 31, 2016

Hillary Clinton: People tell me, "I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman." https://t.co/I6s2a4yqgF by @stableford

— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 31, 2016

Are the Ayatollah Khomeini and Sean Connery the Same Man? Officially, Khomeini died in 1989, but Closely Examine These Photographs; Could the Moslem Monster be Hiring in Plain Sight in Hollywood?

 

Without his head-wrap 

Diversity and Memorial Day Don’t Go Together Well: Blacks and Hispanics Celebrate Holiday by Desecrating Veterans’ Graveyards and Monuments; then Again, Diversity Doesn't Go Well Together with Anything Worthwhile

 

Suspected war criminal Anthony Burrus, 27, in the Henderson, KY, incident
 

[On the same topic:

“Henderson, Kentucky: The Usual Suspect is Under Arrest for Celebrating the Holiday by Knocking Down 160 Crosses in the Town’s Memorial Day Cross Display for Fallen Veterans; the Crosses were in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.”]
 

 

 

 

I thank my friend and reader-researcher, David in TN, for this article.

The photographs above are all of the Henderson, Kentucky, Memorial Day display, which was wrecked by a black man.

The looted, desecrated Petersburg National Battlefield, in Virginia. I haven't yet figured out who might have committed these crimes
 

The ones below are of the desecration carried out in Venice, Ca, by Hispanic gangbangers.

I did not attempt to post comments at the Daily Mail, because I know that I have been permablocked there for some time, and I know, as some commenters made clear they do, too, that the Mail's editors lie, when they say the comments are unmoderated.
 

"A national disgrace: Fury as vandals and looters desecrate veterans graveyards and historic battlefields across three states on Memorial Day weekend

"Veterans sites in California, Kentucky, Virginia damaged

"A number of veterans memorials across the country have been deliberately targeted by vandals.

"Sites in Los Angeles, Kentucky and Virginia have been daubed with graffiti."

Read the full story in the Daily Mail.

 

 

Memorial Day, 2016: Lest We Forget

 

Thanks to Stuart Devers!

Henderson, Kentucky: The Usual Suspect is Under Arrest for Celebrating the Holiday by Knocking Down 160 Crosses in the Town’s Memorial Day Cross Display for Fallen Veterans; the Crosses were in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

 

Suspected war criminal Anthony Burrus, 27 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

I thank reader-researcher “W” for the following story.

Note that the suspect is no teenager, but rather 27 years old. White racial socialists typically act as if most crimes by blacks were the product of youth, which the racial socialists currently rationalize via the pseudo-scientific talking point, asserting that the human brain is underdeveloped prior to one turning 25, causing one to have inadequate powers of judgment. If said talking point were true, we’d see whites under 25 running wild, as well, but we don’t see that happening. Blacks commit seven to ten times as many crimes as whites. Besides, judgment has nothing to do with the sadistic nature of so many crimes committed by blacks, especially the racially motivated black-on-white crimes. And increasingly, I see all manner of “youthful indiscretions,” or as the current talk has it, “mistakes” (you know, rapes and murders) being committed by blacks of all ages.
 

Arrest made in Memorial Day cross display vandalism
May 29, 2016 12:30 P.M. EST
Updated: May 29, 2016 1:59 P.M. EST
By WBIR/WRCBTV

A Henderson, Ky. man has been arrested after he allegedly damaged more than 150 crosses in the city's Memorial Day cross display with his vehicle early Saturday, according to officials.

According to Henderson Police Public Information Officer Jennifer Richmond, Anthony Burrus, 27, was arrested in connection with the incident that took place in Central Park at around 6 a.m. Roughly 160 crosses were knocked down and about 20 were destroyed.

The vehicle Burrus was driving, a 1979 Ford Thunderbird, was found with pieces of a cross and ground stake embedded in the tires after he left it at the McDonald's restaurant on South Green Street. Richmond said Burrus denied causing the damage in the park, but confirmed he was driving the vehicle earlier this morning and left it after it stopped working. [I wonder why it stopped working?]

Henderson police officers and deputies from the Henderson County Sheriff's Office investigated the incident.

Burrus was found and arrested at his sister's apartment complex on Zion Road, and is being held at the Henderson County Detention Center. He is charged with first degree criminal mischief and leaving the scene of an accident.

Richmond said a large number of tips, Facebook posts, and vehicle searches helped officers make the connection and arrest Burrus.

Richmond said earlier on Saturday that the damage appeared to be deliberate because the driver had to jump the curb to get to the display. She said the incident took place shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday.

Members of the Henderson Fire Department, the WARM Center, and local residents joined members of the American Legion to repair the display.

"For somebody to do this to a veteran who gave his life, I don't understand. I don't have any words. I'm speechless," Jim Hanley, a member of the Legion, said Saturday morning.

The display in Central Park contains more than 5,000 crosses, each bearing the name of a Henderson resident who served in the military.

Family members arrived to see if any of the crosses that bear the names of their relatives were damaged. Some arrived and were relieved to find certain crosses unharmed, while others were brought to tears by the damage.

Bob Dutton Sr.'s son, Robert K. Dutton, had a cross in his honor displayed in the park, and it was destroyed by the vandalism. [No; the cross was destroyed by a vandal. The operative who wrote this wrote “vandalism,” to depersonalize the crime committed by a black man, in order to make it sound more like a natural act, as if the crosses had been hit by lightning.]

"I lost my son seven years ago, and this is so sad to know somebody would do this without thinking about the consequences," Dutton said.

[Oh, but Burrus certainly did think about the consequences. He wanted to break white folks’ hearts, and he did just that. His victims need to learn to feel hatred, rather than sadness, or this country is finished.]

Kathy Tigue has lost three brothers who have served in the Armed Forces, one of which most recently died in March of this year. While the crosses in their honor were not damaged, she felt the sting that other families were feeling Saturday morning.

"This is heartbreaking," Tigue said. "How could someone be so cruel, so heartless is beyond me. God help whoever did it. It hurts these people, who have worked so hard."

Richmond said as of Saturday morning, Henderson Police only have a vague description of the vehicle, but the department is working with local businesses to see if the incident was captured on surveillance video.

"With so many people going out of town for the holiday weekend, that makes it tough, but we hope we get an answer as fast as we can," Richmond said.

Each cross costs around $90 each, Richmond said. The display is cared for in conjunction with the American Legion Worsham Post No. 40 and the Henderson War Memorial Foundation.

As members of the community continued to file into Central Park, Hanley said he was reminded of the significance of the display. He said the Legion and other organizations will work to make sure all of the damaged crosses are either replaced or repaired by Memorial Day.

"This town loves their veterans, and this is proof," he said, gesturing to the crowd. "We take care of each other around here, and this situation is no different."

WBIR contributed to this story.

[Actually, a WBIR staffer wrote the entire story, and the update. As far as I can see, it is WRCBTV which made no contribution whatsoever to this story.]

Racist, Wife-Beating, ESPN Affirmative Action Parasite Howard Bryant is Also a Traitor: He Rants that Cops and Troops Singing the National Anthem Before Sporting Events is “Systemic American Racism,” and that Black Athletes Should Speak Out Against It (Video)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

You know, I hope that black supremacist athletes heed Bryant's advice. It would force the issue with millions of white Uncle Tom sports fans.
 

[Previously, at WEJB/NSU:

“Black ESPN Writer Howard Bryant was "Racially Profiled," for Publicly Smacking Around His Estranged Wife; White Wife Veronique is Standing by Her Man.”]
 

ESPN’s Howard Bryant slams cops & our troops for singing the Nat'l Anthem before games, calling it racist! Thoughts?https://t.co/VCzZbKuXg2

— Fox&Friends Weekend (@ffweekend) May 29, 2016

Black ESPN Writer Howard Bryant was "Racially Profiled," for Publicly Smacking Around His Estranged Wife; White Wife Veronique is Standing by Her Man

 

The happy couple in court 


[Of related interest:

“Racist, Wife-Beating, ESPN Affirmative Action Parasite Howard Bryant is Also a Traitor: He Rants that Cops and Troops Singing the National Anthem Before Sporting Events is “Systemic American Racism,” and that Black Athletes Should Speak Out Against It (Video).”]
 

By Nicholas Stix
March 1, 2011

Well, it was Bryant’s attorney, Buz Eisenberg, not me, who made the whole thing racial. So, let’s grant him his wish.

Bryant’s attorney, Buz Eisenberg, blamed the arrest on race. Bryant is black and his wife is Caucasian. “If Howard Bryant was Caucasian and was on the streets having exactly the same conversation with his wife — nobody would have even noticed,” he said.

[“Wife denies ESPN scribe assaulted her,” by Jessica Heslam, Boston Herald, March 1, 2011, updated circa 7:41 a.m.]

Stupid is as stupid does, Buz. I’m referring to both you and your client. According to the witnesses, Howard and Veronique Bryant weren’t having “a conversation”; he had grabbed her by the throat, and shoved her up against their SUV, in which their six-year-old son was sitting in the back.

And, forgive me for asking, Buz, but what were two devoted parents doing walking around on the street, while leaving their kid in a vehicle? And outside a pizzeria, the holy of holies, for crying out loud!

So, racial demagogue Buz Eisenberg is trying to turn his alleged wife-beater client into a victim of racism? Maybe you can get over with that sort of thing at cocktail parties with rich swells, or among black racists, Buz, but the general white public isn’t stupid enough to buy that particular bill of goods. In case you haven’t already, you need to tell your client that the next time he feels the need to smack around his wife, he should wait until they’re behind closed doors.

In all of our years of wedded bliss, I can’t recall The Boss ever taking a swing at me, trying to run me through with a carving knife, or seeking to bend my brain with a tire iron … in public. That’s what family time is for.

The wife of ESPN sports scribe Howard Bryant is standing by her man, saying she’s “never been a victim of abuse” — even after state police busted him for what witnesses described as a violent attack on her outside a small town pizza shop.

“I’m not a victim of abuse — never been. Not now. Not ever,” Veronique Bryant told the Herald during a phone interview yesterday — her husband of nine years at her side.

Bryant, 42, a former Herald sports columnist living in Ashfield, pleaded not guilty to domestic assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest in Greenfield District Court. He was released on personal recognizance.

Bryant told the Herald he didn’t harm his wife. “I did put my hands on her. I did not physically assault her,” Bryant said. “We had a spat like married couples do.”

Witnesses told authorities a different tale, according to state police spokesman David Procopio.

They told police a man — later identified as Bryant — grabbed his wife’s neck, pushed her into a parked vehicle and pinned her against it around noon Saturday outside a pizza shop in the western Massachusetts town of Buckland.

The couple then retreated to their sport-utility vehicle — where their 6-year-old son sat in the backseat. State police said Bryant resisted arrest, elbowing and struggling with a trooper who was trying to cuff him, according to Procopio. Three other officers were forced to intervene and slammed Bryant chest-first onto a vehicle hood, state police said.

Veronique Bryant, also 42, said the cops overreacted. “They immediately started to use force on Howard,” she told the Herald. “They didn’t even ask what was going on. We were sitting in the car together and there was not a fight going on at that moment.”

“The witnesses overreacted,” she added.

Nice try, Mrs. Bryant. The witnesses didn’t overreact, they reacted. I guess some of them didn’t want to live with what might happen down the road, had they not “overreacted.”

This is the second time in the past year-and-a-half, in which police in the Boston-area made a lawful, proper arrest of a black man, and the black man went out of control, and tried to make himself out to be a victim of racism. The other case, of course, was that of race-hoaxer Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. And in both cases, the arrestee tried to intimidate whites out of calling the police on blacks engaged in criminal or apparently criminal behavior, in the future.

To out-of-control black men and your lawyers: I know I’m talking to a wall, but I’m going to say it, anyway. Every time you mooks scream “racial profiling!” at the top of your lungs, honest people hear: “Guilty!”

(Thanks to the reader who sent me this story.)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...
are you a racist? you do know that racial profiling, racial injustice, etc. does exist right? you dont know who those "witnesses" are anyway. witness testimony is one of the most unreliable things anyway.

what if those witnesses were active kkk members? does that change your prospective? people fight harder to defend their prejudices than they fight to end this country's racial problems.

my main point is that we dont know what happened. charge him or dont, but he said he didnt do anything and she said he didnt do anything... thats it. if the police have better evidence than charge him and convict him. extra police brutality or unfairness does happen, especially when it concerns a suspected black abuser and a white female victim.

i wonder if the cops would have acted the same way had they known bryant worked for espn and the story would get this much pub.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 2:25:00 PM EST

Nicholas Stix said...
"are you a racist?"

That's a joke, right? You can't really be that stupid, can you? You're just doing a parody.

"you do know that racial profiling, racial injustice, etc. does exist right?"

Yes, I know that white folks are racially profiled, and suffer racial injustice every day.

"you dont know who those 'witnesses' are anyway."

Neither do you.

"witness testimony is one of the most unreliable things anyway."

Except when it's racist blacks lying to protect a black assailant, right?

"what if those witnesses were active kkk members?"

More levity. What might the odds be of them being "active kkk members"? Do you know how many active KKK chapters there are in or near Ashfield, Mass. Try, none.

"she said he didnt do anything... thats it."

You're lying, and you know it.

"extra police brutality or unfairness does happen, especially when it concerns a suspected black abuser and a white female victim."

Bull. If that were so, Nicole Brown Simpson would still be alive.

I couldn't blame someone for assuming that I made up this mook. How, after all, could a sentient being be this stupid? Then again, there are sentient beings this stupid with distinguished professorships at Harvard.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 3:13:00 PM EST

jeigheff said...
I really doubt the witnesses were KKK members. But could they have been New Black Panthers or members of La Raza?

I'm no psychologist, but the workings of physical abuse make people do very strange things, especially if they're in the public eye. I imagine that it's somehow less shameful for Bryant's wife to go along with her husband in saying that the police and witnesses are racists, etc. than to admit that her husband's public assault on her was a manifestation of a bigger problem. She doesn't want to or thinks she can't leave an abusive relationship.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 8:25:00 AM EST

Anonymous said...
jesus! this is why women cant advance further in this country! you are automatically assuming she is a battered woman "who can't leave" instead of taking her at her word until she is found to be lying.

there are actual women in our society who are capable of taking care of themselves and standing up for right and wrong, this is not the 60s. its not less shameful to cover up physical abuse... thats absurd!! if she said that shes been abused for years and now has the strength to leave, people would eat that alive and applaud her.

neither you or i know what happened so why pretend to. with just one news report you have broken down this woman's entire mental state, lol. false allegations of abuse can make people do strange things too.

whats funny is how people dont condemn women who hit their husbands for mundane things or slap them when caught cheating, etc. tiger woods' wife is seen as harmless, yet if he chased her with a golf club he's an animal. we are backwards in this country something, and these thoughts are from a woman who's seen false allegations and who's also lived long enough to know everything you read isn't true.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 7:43:00 PM EST

jeigheff said...
Please don't take the Lord's name in vain. When you meet eventually meet Him, you will regret having done so, especially after having been cautioned about the matter in this life.

I know both women and men who have been involved in abusive relationships, including myself for a relatively short time (I was involved with a woman who I never should have met.) For my own experience and my limited first-hand observations of others, I know that people stick around with a bad mate longer than they should for a variety of reasons: fear, pride, foolishness, etc. It doesn't matter if this is the 60s or not. Human nature isn't any different, and there are plenty of weak people out there, God bless 'em.

For instance, a former friend of mine once almost killed his wife during an argument. He told me that as he had a gun aimed at his wife's head, he was thinking about how he'd have to get rid of her body. Somehow things cooled down that day and my friend ended not killing his wife after all.

A month or two after that, my friend's wife wanted to renew their wedding vows. Amazing, huh?

When I see people do irrational things (like smack their wives around in public and then accuse the police and witnesses of racism), I can't help but imagine why they do them. In fact, if you look closely at my post, you will see the words, "I imagine."

If the police caught me banging my wife against our car and hauled me off to jail, I would be incredibly ashamed. I wouldn't be able to look anyone I know in the eye, including my wife. The last thing I'd want to do is make a public spectacle of myself and keep the incident in other people's minds. But that's just me.
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:26:00 PM EST

Kevin Batton said...
"Bryant’s attorney, Buz Eisenberg, blamed the arrest on race. Bryant is black and his wife is Caucasian. “If Howard Bryant was Caucasian and was on the streets having exactly the same conversation with his wife — nobody would have even noticed,” he said."

No one would have noticed because white men don't generally go around beating the hell out of their wives. The crime most likely would never have happened for anyone to notice had she been married a white man. Guess we are supposed to chalk it up to one more "Black thing we just don't understand", more "funky facts of life".
Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 10:21:00 AM EST

James Kabala said...
Worth knowing:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=6599191&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines
Friday, May 27, 2011 at 11:46:00 PM EDT

Anonymous said...
I have been married for 46 years and not once has my husband EVER put his hands on me Mr. Bryant. Nor I on him or our children. You might think this is normal behavior but it isn't, nor should it be considered okay. You tried to choke her and some nice citizens tried to save her. Your wife is a fool. She even looks pitiful..and old. By the way, you shouldn't be leaving your son in the car alone.
Sunday, May 29, 2011 at 8:43:00 AM EDT

Celebrate Memorial Day Weekend 2016, by Viewing the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made: The Best Years of Our Lives! (Photoessay with Sound Clip and Music Videos)

 

At Butch's Saloon, the bar that is practically a character in BYOL. From left to right: Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Freddie March and standing, bow-tied but cut off, behind Loy and March, Hoagy Carmichael.
 

The Greatest Picture Ever Made: The Best Years of Our Lives
By Nicholas Stix
May 22, 2011 (Revised for this presentation)

One of the greatest lead performances by an actor ever (Fredric March)? Check.

What was then greatest performance by a supporting actor ever (Dana Andrews)? Check.

Great supporting work by a brilliant ensemble cast (Myrna Loy, Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, et al.)? Check.

Cinematography by the greatest cameraman of his generation, who gave the world deep-focus photography, which played a pivotal role (Gregg Toland)? Check.

A screen adaptation of a powerful, 268-page poem, Glory for Me, by one of the America’s greatest writers (MacKinlay Kantor), adapted by another of America’s greatest writers, (Robert E. Sherwood)? Check.

One of the greatest original scores ever composed for a picture (Hugo Friedhofer)? Check.

Great dialogue, including one of the greatest speeches ever written for a movie? Check.

If I sound like a DVD salesman, I am, but I’m working with no commission. If America hadn’t been infected by the toxin of racial socialism, there’d be no need for me to promote BYOL, because every school child in American would already have seen it in elementary school.

But you don’t even have to order BYOL, though I recommend that you buy both the DVD of the picture, and the CD of its score, both of which we purchased a few years ago for the Stix Family library. Turner Classic Movies is presenting the picture tonight, at 10:15 p.m., as part of its Memorial Day Marathon—34 pictures, spanning 72 hours.

Some movies seem like masterpieces the first time you see them—Woody Allen’s Zelig hit me that way—but their impact fades with repeated viewings. Others, however, become more powerful with time. That’s the way it is with masterpieces. True Grit has had that effect on me over the years, since seeing it during its first run.

I knew that BYOL was a masterpiece the first time I saw it, in an Upper West Side Manhattan revival house (which I’m sure is long gone). The last surviving cast member, Teresa Wright, spoke to the audience. (I can’t, for the life of me, recall the year; must’ve been the mid-to-late 1980s.)

Since then, I’ve seen it three or four more times, to where I can say the lines ahead of the players. And I’m not the only one in this house that can do that.

And so, BYOL has climbed the charts of my top movies. First, Kane ruled the roost alone. Then, it was Kane, the Godfather, and The Godfather, Part II. And now, it’s the Big Four. However, I give BYOL a slight edge, due to its emotional power. I suppose, from a rigorous arithmetical standpoint, BYOL stood reign alone at number one, with the other three pictures tied for number two, but I’m ready to do that. Thus, here is my current Top Ten:

1. (Tied) The Best Years of Our Lives
1. Citizen Kane
1. The Godfather
1. The Godfather, Part II
5. It’s a Wonderful Life
6. Shane
7. It Happened One Night
8. On the Waterfront
9. (Tied) The Bridge on the River Kwai
9. (Tied) Lawrence of Arabia

 

At Butch's Saloon, the bar that is practically a character in BYOL. From left to right: Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Freddie March and standing, bow-tied but cut off, behind Loy and March, Hoagy Carmichael.
 

Main Title to BYOL’s Score, by Hugo Friedhofer


 

The Greatest Picture Ever Made: The Best Years of Our Lives
By Nicholas Stix
May 22, 2011 (Revised)

If a more powerful picture than The Best Years of Our Lives has ever been made that doesn’t have The Godfather or Kane in its name, I haven’t seen it.

The idea for the picture came from producer Samuel Goldwyn’s wife, Frances, who had read an article in 1944 about the problems some veterans were having, returning to civilian life in the Midwest. Goldwyn commissioned Iowan Mac Kinlay Kantor (here and here), who had served in the Army Air Force to write a script, and Kantor duly headed to a cabin in the country with a few cases of scotch, only to return a few weeks later with a … poem!? It was published in 1945 with the subtitle “A Novel” on the cover, but it’s a 268-page, narrative poem entitled Glory for Me that opens,

Fred Derry, twenty-one, and killer of a hundred men….

And a powerful poem it is, but Sam Goldwyn was not amused. He had to hire a second screenwriter, the legendary Robert E. Sherwood, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, to translate and shape Kantor’s poem into screen prose. Sherwood worked his magic, but Kantor must share the credit, if not the Oscar. The picture won eight Oscars in all, and deserved every one of them.

Because Goldwyn had engaged Freddie March to star, the focus of the story was shifted away from Fred to Al, while Homer’s affliction was changed from spasticity to having had his hands burned off in a battle. (And a good thing, too. Homer’s spasticity in the poem is just too heartbreaking to take.) And yet, running at two hours and 50 minutes, each character has enough screen time to merit Best Actor consideration.
 

“The Homecoming”


 
 

The After-Dinner Speech: Fredric March as Al Stephenson 

March imbues banker Al Stephenson with his signature mix of tragedy and comedy. Nobody played a comical drunk better than March, and Al Stephenson is a drunk. A functioning, jovial drunk, but a drunk, nonetheless. He loves his family, but hates his boss at the bank, Mr. Milton (Ray Collins), “the old hypocrite.”
 

Ray Collins as Mr. Milton, “the old hypocrite” 

I don’t know of any harder scripting task than writing a good speech. Can’t be too short or too long. Can’t be too melodramatic. Sherwood gives March’s drunken Al Stephenson an oft-times hilarious speech as the guest of honor at a dinner held by his boss, to celebrate his return and promotion, in which Al goes from the heights of his career to almost talking himself out of a job. It’s a real tightrope act, but March pulls it off, with subtle assistance from Loy.
 

MP3 Clip of the Speech
 

Fredric March as Al Stephenson, l, Ray Collins as Mr. Milton, and Myrna Loy as Millie Stephenson
 

March uses some stage business as subtle punctuation to the misery Al feels in his work life. Anytime he deals with Mr. Milton or some other intolerable situation, he must have a drink or a cigarette in his hands. His creeping problem is that he also needs a drink in his hand even when he’s in a happy situation.
 

“Elevator / Boone City / Peggy”


 

Although Al is upper-middle-class, he served as a sergeant in the infantry, which permits March to embody the other characteristic that his best roles always exemplified: The aristocrat with the common touch, as he shows off particularly in his speech, and in a confrontation with Fred.

Speaking of Fred, Dana Andrews’ role as the poor kid who made it to bombardier captain in the Army Air Force, a tortured hero who saw his buddies die in front of his eyes on a burning bomber, permitted him to display his unique blend of easy masculinity and doubt-ridden vulnerability that he’d established in 1944’s Laura.

Andrews had a role big enough to qualify for a Best Actor nomination, along with March, and gave one of a handful of the greatest supporting actor performances ever, up there with Karl Malden in On the Waterfront, and Walter Brennan reading from the telephone book.

This was Andrews’ Oscar, but it was not to be.
 

“Fred & Peggy”


 

The Academy wanted to do something for veterans that year. Harold Russell was not only a veteran, but one who’d had both of his hands burned off in an accident. It would have all been fine, if the Academy had simply given Russell the honorary Oscar that it ultimately bestowed on him. But they couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the powers that be not only gave Harold Russell an honorary Oscar, but nominated him for the official Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well. And who was going to stand in his way? Not that year.

The citation for Russell’s honorary Oscar reads, “For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”

Don’t get me wrong; Russell gave an excellent performance by professional standards; never mind that he was a “civilian.” He was particularly good in his scenes with Dana Andrews. But Andrews gave a performance for the ages.

And that was it for him.
 

“The Nightmare”


 

As Al’s daughter, Peggy, Teresa Wright’s insistent performance can be annoying at times, and yet, even it works, because she is paired with Myrna Loy, whose light touch is the perfect counterpoint as her mother, Millie.
 

“Neighbors / Wilma / Homer's Anger”


 

This was one of the last pictures that Gregg Toland photographed. His legendary “deep focus” technique of filming a scene on a sharp angle, in order to clearly show the action both in the foreground and background, was put to its best use in the saloon scene, where Al, Homer, and Uncle Butch are in the foreground, but the real action is in the background, as Fred makes a fateful call from the telephone booth at the other end of the bar, a call whose content only Al knows.
 

Gregg Toland's deep focus shot at Butch's Saloon 

Director William Wyler wanted Aaron Copland* to score the picture, but Copland was busy with other projects for the foreseeable future, and so Wyler instead engaged Hugo Friedhofer.
 

“Fred Asleep”


 

Friedhofer wrote a bold, ambitious score, but also gave the picture a distinctly Coplandian flavor. (It is impossible to overstate Copland’s influence on American movie music. Even Spike Lee has used his work.) He took an uptempo theme on the speeded-up nature of town life from Copland’s score to the 1937 ballet, Billy the Kid, slowed it down, and made it lush with strings, as the leitmotif of Homer’s longsuffering girlfriend from next-door, Wilma, in expressing her romantic and domestic yearnings.

An earlier musical passage, “The Homecoming,” depicts the emotions felt by the three protagonists, Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) as they ride home in a supply plane. First, during the night while the other men asleep, Homer is filled with foreboding (this passage could be “Homer’s Theme”). In the morning, the tempo and the men’s (even Homer’s) spirits pick up, as they see the old landscape of Boone City, and once landed and sharing a taxi, they hit their old hometown, after four years off fighting the war. First comes the thrill of watching city life—their city, with pretty American girls walking down the street all dolled up—and yet, it’s like they’re seeing it for the first time. Then comes the foreboding each man feels as he nears his family home, after having been away for so long. Has the world back home passed them by?
 

“Homer Goes Upstairs” (Duet Between Homer’s Theme and Wilma’s Theme, Accompanying the Characters’ Debate)


 


Dana Andrews in the aircraft graveyard scene 


Finally, comes the scene at the airplane graveyard, thanks to Friedhofer, Toland, and Andrews, the most powerful scene in the entire picture. That scene comes early in Glory for Me, but Sherwood wisely moved it towards the end, and juxtaposes it with Fred’s father finding the medals and citations for bravery, including the Distinguished Flying Cross—just short of the Medal of Honor—that the humble Fred had not so much as mentioned to him and his stepmother.
 

Myrna Loy: The Perfect Partner; A TCM Tribute by Julianne Moore (Short Documentary Video, with a Splendid Analysis of Loy’s Work in The Best Years of Our Lives

 


 

I’ve seen this twice. My favorite part is Moore’s spot-on analysis of the scene in The Best Years of Our Lives, in which Loy’s Milly Stephenson nervously serves breakfast to her husband, Al (Fredric March, in one of his greatest roles), for the first time since he returned from three-and-a-half years of combat in the Pacific Theater.

If you haven’t seen the picture, you might want to skip this, and savor it for yourself, before hearing Moore’s analysis. You can always come back here, and see this.

But if you do check out Moore, you might want to watch her analysis of the BYOL scene more than once. It’s well worth it.

A big thank you to asw88.

Is This the Greatest Speech in the History of Motion Pictures? Fredric March’s After-Dinner Speech in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

 

Fredric March as Al Stephenson, in The Best Years of Our Lives 

[Of related interest:

“Celebrate Memorial Day Weekend 2016, by Viewing the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made: The Best Years of Our Lives! (Photoessay with Sound Clip and Music Videos)”.]
 

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

A week or two ago, I perused the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 “Greatest Lines” spoken in a movie. In my book, only 54 even merited consideration. The rest? “Make my day.” “May the force be with you.” And so on.

“Make my day” was spoken by Clint Eastwood, in Dirty Harry (1971). Maybe a gifted actor, say John Wayne, could have wrung some power out of that line, the way he did with “That’ll be the day” in The Searchers, and with so many other lines in so many other pictures. I thought Eastwood was awful in Dirty Harry. Obviously, millions of other people disagreed. They were all wrong. (I liked Eastwood in Rawhide and Coogan's Bluff (1968), but it took him a long time to figure out movie acting, and he's been a much better movie director than actor.)

“May the force be with you” is from Star Wars (1977). It’s a nothing line, in any form, spoken or written, and I don’t think Laurence Olivier could have made anything of it. I have no idea what motivated AFI’s committee, probably sheer stupidity and tastelessness.

There was only one speech on the list, Marlon Brando’s monologue to his brother Charley, in the back of a taxicab, in On the Waterfront.

If there can be one speech, there can be more than one. Besides, for my money, Brando’s speech wasn’t even the best in Waterfront. Karl Malden, as Father Barry, who was based on a real Catholic waterfront priest, was better. I call it, “Christ in the Shape-Up.”

It’s a eulogy, really. Father Barry delivers it in the hold of a cargo ship, over the dead body of longshoreman Kayo Dugan, who has just been murdered for agreeing to testify against the mob running the waterfront. While being pelted by cat-calling, laughing mobsters with rotten produce, Father Barry tells the longshoremen that every morning in the shape-up, when they try to get picked for that day’s work, each man is not on his own—Christ stands there with him.

The speech from The Best Years of Our Lives is at least as good as Brando’s speech. (I was about to say that it was better than almost everything else on AFI’s list, but that would be faint praise. The vernacular English used in excellent movies of yore was such that you could watch one of those pictures, say True Grit, and hear one line or speech after another that was better than almost anything from AFI’s list.)

The idea for The Best Years of Our Lives came from Frances Howard McLaughlin Goldwyn, the onetime starlet who was the wife of independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. Late in The War, she’d read a magazine story about the problems faced by returning combat veterans readjusting to civilian life. Goldwyn liked her idea, and commissioned journalist/novelist Mackinlay Kantor, who had either covered the war, or served in it (different reports… differ) to write a screenplay. Legend has it that Kantor retreated to a cabin in the woods with a typewriter, paper, and a case of scotch, and a few weeks later, emerged with the manuscript for Glory for Me, a 268-page … poem?

Goldwyn was not amused. Glory for Me is a stunning work, but it was no screenplay. The producer commissioned Robert E. Sherwood, one of America’s greatest fiction writers (e.g., Abe Lincoln in Illinois), to turn Kantor’s poem into a script.

The smart set loved to make fun of Sam Goldwyn. The Jewish immigrant from Poland notoriously mangled the English language, such that some wag coined the phrase “Goldwynisms.” Cultured folk thought of Goldwyn as crude, but like his fellow Jewish immigrant movie moguls of the Golden Age, Sam Goldwyn had more taste in his little finger than all the aristocrats had in their entire bodies.

His awards page at the Internet Movie Database is worthless, because it lists not one picture of Goldwyn’s that was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, citing only three honorary Oscars the Academy gave him. In fact, he was nominated eight times for Best Picture, and won the Best Picture Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives, which won a total of seven competitive Oscars and one honorary Oscar.

One of the problems with Kantor’s poem, aside from its form, was its depiction of class warfare.
 

Ray Collins as Mr. Milton, "the old hypocrite" 

Mr. Milton, the president of the Cornbelt Trust & Loan, has never served in war, and has contempt for the working-class men who did. Thus, he wants to turn down working-class veterans for loans, even though the men had sacrificed the best years of their lives fighting tyranny, and the federal government is guaranteeing the loans.

Although Al Stephenson was raised upper-middle-class, and is the grandson of a pioneer banker, he went into the Army as an enlisted man, killed men in combat, and watched his own men die, and separated from the service as a sergeant. Al is very sympathetic to the enlisted men who come to him to apply for loans. He hates Mr. Milton, “the old hypocrite,” with every fiber of his being. But Mr. Milton’s his boss.

Kantor depicts the class hatred in jarring scenes that Goldwyn surely recognized could not be put on the screen—Fred Derry, the protagonist of the poem, decides to rob the bank, and is about to do just that, when Al spots him (not knowng what Fred has planned), and talks him into leaving the place with him for a drink or two. Shortly thereafter, Al quits his job at the bank, to become a gardener with a G.I. whose loan application he’d okayed, over Mr. Milton’s objections. (The relationships between the men are amazingly portrayed, both in the poem and the picture, though in the picture relations between the men with each other, and the men and the women, are the most powerfully written and performed I’ve ever seen. We see how good people help each other stay on the straight and narrow, whether they are friends or spouses.)

Sam Goldwyn must have realized that Mac Kantor’s scenes of class struggle could not be portrayed on the screen, but Bob Sherwood still sought to write class conflict into the script, in sublimated form, which I believe he succeeded at brilliantly. The most successful such scene was Al Stephenson’s speech at the dinner honoring him, celebrating his return and promotion, and at which he comes a hair’s breadth from talking his way out of that promotion and that job.
 

After-Dinner Speech in The Best Years of Our Lives

Al Stephenson's After-Dinner Speech on Collateral and the Cornbelt Trust & Loan

MP3 Clip of the Speech
 

Mr. Milton, the bank president: Our country must stand today where it has always stood: the citadel of individual initiative, the land of unlimited opportunity for all.

It is peculiarly appropriate that we meet here tonight to honor one who has valiantly fought for that freedom. Ladies and gentlemen, we greet our friend, our co-worker, our hero, Al Stephenson. (C'mon, on your feet, Al, on your feet.)
 

Stephenson: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to be here. In fact, I'm very happy to be anywhere. In fact, I'm, I'm very happy. (To Waiter: Perhaps it would be a good idea if you just put that bottle right down here in front of me – save yourself quite a number of trips.)

[Millie is carefully counting Al’s drinks by scratching lines into the linen tablecloth with the tine of her fork. At this point, if memory serves, she’s up to eleven.]

Milton: [laughing] Good, ole Al.

[In the next line, Al’s mocking them—none of them served.]

Stephenson: I'm glad to see you've all pulled through so well. As Mr. Milton so perfectly expressed it, our country stands today where it stands today, wherever that is. And I'm sure you'll all agree with me if I said that now is the time for all of us to stop all this nonsense, face facts, get down to brass tacks, forget about the war and go fishing. But I'm not gonna say it. I'm just going to sum the whole thing up in one word. [Probably "hypocrisy"; Millie clears her throat.] My wife doesn't think I'd better sum it up in that one word.
 

Fredric March as Al Stephenson, l, Ray Collins as Mr. Milton, and Myrna Loy as Millie Stephenson
 

I want to tell you all that the reason for my success as a Sergeant is due primarily to my previous training in the Cornbelt Loan and Trust Company. The knowledge I acquired in the good ol' bank I applied to my problems in the infantry. For instance, one day in Okinawa, a Major comes up to me and he says, "Stephenson, you see that hill?" "Yes sir, I see it." "All right," he said. "You and your platoon will attack said hill and take it." So I said to the Major, "but that operation involves considerable risk. We haven't sufficient collateral." "I am aware of that," said the Major, "but the fact remains that there's the hill and you are the guys who are going to take it." So I said to him, "I'm sorry Major. No collateral; no hill." So we didn't take the hill, and we lost the war. I think that little story has considerable significance, but I've forgotten what it is.

And now in conclusion, I'd like to tell you a humorous anecdote. I know several humorous anecdotes, but I can't think of any way to clean them up, so I'll only say this much. I love the Cornbelt Loan and Trust Company. There are some who say that the old bank is suffering from hardening of the arteries and of the heart. I refuse to listen to such radical talk. I say that our bank is alive, it's, it's generous, it's, it's human, and we're going to have such a line of customers seeking and getting small loans that people will think we're gambling with the depositors' money. And we will be. We'll be gambling on the future of this country. I thank you.

Glory for Me: The 268-Page Poem That Became the Movie The Best Years of Our Lives

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Originally posted on May 5, 2014, as “Glory for Me: The Poem That Became the Movie, The Best Years of Our Lives.”

I’ve read the following review several times over the years, and its eloquence and restraint never fail to move me.

I’ve read Glory for Me once, and seen The Best Years of Our Lives four or five times. While there is much to the poem that I could not understand, due to changes in dialect over the intervening years, it’s still a masterpiece. I had my son read it when he was ten, before we saw the picture together.

Donald M. Bishop’s take on the poem is as exquisitely written a review (of anything) as I’ve ever read.
 

The book that made the movie that moved millions and won the Oscar
By Donald M. Bishop
October 12, 2007
Amazon

Glory for Me

Glory for Me is the book-length narrative poem by MacKinlay Kantor which eventually became the movie The Best Years of Our Lives. The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, for 1946. It starred Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell.

In 1970, I was a lieutenant working at the Air Force Historical Research Center. The older historians told a word-of-mouth story how the book came to be. No doubt the story had been embroidered over many years of retelling, but here's the way I heard it.

In 1944, movie titan Samuel Goldwyn knew that whether the allied victory in World War II would come sooner, or later, millions of American veterans would return home. Many—especially those with physical and psychological wounds—would have trouble finding jobs and "readjusting."

Goldwyn knew that journalist and playwright MacKinlay Kantor, who had flown missions with the 305th Bomb Group from England earlier in the war, had gotten to know American servicemen in combat at first hand. Goldwyn asked Kantor to write a screenplay for a planned movie on the veterans returning home.

According to the story, Kantor had driven up to a Tennessee mountain retreat to work on the screenplay. He took his typewriter and a case of bourbon. He emerged some months later with empty bottles and Glory for Me, written in the form of a narrative poem, not a screenplay. Goldwyn was not pleased, and he eventually gave Kantor's poem to Robert Sherwood to reshape for the screen. When the film finally appeared, Kantor was given a minimum of credit. Sherwood—deservedly—won the Oscar for Best Writing.

Those, like myself, who come to Glory for Me via The Best Years of Our Lives will be richly rewarded by reading the poem.

Kantor's and Sherwood's treatments of the same characters and the same American town ("Boone City") shows two gifted men working the same basic story in different literary forms, poem and screenplay. Reading the book allows one to discover how, here and there, they made some different creative choices.

In Kantor's poem, Homer's disability is spasticity, which makes for some painful reading. Sherwood gave Homer a physical disability—loss of hands and the use of prosthetic hooks. Sherwood's choice was a wise one for the moviegoing public, and few are the hearts not moved by Harold Russell's portrayal of Homer in the film. But Kantor's portrayal of Homer and his girl Wilma are equally moving, perhaps because the poem gave more room for character development.

When Frederic March played Al Stephenson—the older sergeant returning to his prewar life as a banker at the Cornbelt Trust Company—he masterfully compressed much of Kantor's material in eloquent but short scenes. In Kantor's fuller telling of the story, Al was the son of a pioneer banker who had made loans to farmers a generation earlier. The poem has more social and historical texture.

In Kantor's poem, Homer's uncle Butch (Hoagy Carmichael's character in the movie) provides a vehicle to explore class feelings in pre- and post-war America. This was one of Kantor's themes that Sherwood could not fit into the film. Similarly, Kantor told his readers more about Novak (the veteran asking for a loan to open a nursery) and his experiences as a Seabee in the Pacific. Kantor's use of lilacs as a metaphor for peace and normality could not be picked up in the film.

On the other hand, Sherwood changed the story line to say more about wartime marriages. Marie (Virginia Mayo in the film) proves shallow and unfaithful when Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) returns home. The movie's title, not found in Kantor's poem, came from a scene when the two argued.

The book was published in January, 1945, months before the war ended. Kantor well anticipated the major contours of veteran adjustment, but there was more to his foresight. On the final page of the poem he showed real prescience when he alluded to the unresolved social tensions that all Americans, not just the veterans, would confront in the coming years.

Reading habits have changed in the six decades since the book was published, and readers may now find that it takes some pages to adjust to the poetic form. Kantor's poetic shortcomings earned some dismissive reviews. Poems similar in form by Kantor's contemporaries like Stephen Vincent Benet are now dismissed as middlebrow when they are read at all. I am confident, though, that with each page the reader will find new lines and new scenes to savor and treasure.

The Best Years of Our Lives is a truly great American movie. Glory for Me deserves equal recognition. Kantor recognized the coming drama of the returning veterans. He dignified their individual struggles in a literary form that recalled the great epics and placed the American veterans among mankind's heroes. He gave an immortal film—a film that affected tens of millions—its basic structure, plot, characters, tone, and feeling.

Not a bad result for a few months of solitude with a case of bourbon.

-30-  

Mexican Rioters Assault Police in San Diego at Racist, Anti-Trump Rally

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
 


 

At VDARE.

Real Hate and Hate Hoaxes at DePaul Antiversity: After Black Supremacists Committed Acts of Real Hate, by Illegally Shutting Down a Talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, and Assaulting Yiannopoulos and His Host, with the Support of Campus Security, They Engineered at Least Two Hate Hoaxes (Video)

By Nicholas Stix

I tweeted Yiannopoulos that there are three things he must do in response to DePaul’s aiding and abetting the criminals on camera:

1. Sue;
2. Sue; and
3. Sue.

And I’m not talking about thousands of dollars, but millions.

Every student who attended the talk, but was prevented from hearing it by the black supremacists and their accomplices, campus security, should also sue for millions. And if the lawsuits should put DePaul out of business, so what? It stopped functioning as a university a long time ago.
 

Real Hate at DePaul: Milo Yiannopoulos Assaulted and Threatened by BLM “Protesters” at DePaul University
 



Published on May 24, 2016
repost from Breitbart for people who aren't subs.

BLM disrupts yet another event paid for by Depaul Republicans and security does nothing.
 

Hoax #1:

https://twitter.com/BSU_DPU/status/736220144335224832

 

It’s a hoax because it’s a transparent pack of lies, put forth by a racially segregated organization that purports to be against segregation. Milo Yiannopoulos is a flaming fag, who was visiting DePaul on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. And yet, we’re supposed to believe that a bunch of Republicans screamed blah, blah, blah, at a bunch of foul-mouthed, black supremacist thugs?

Hoax #2:



KianaProtected Tweets
@KTED_Kiki
please be quiet I'm very interesting
iii.i.mmxiii
Joined June 2011

“Kiana” claims to be a student at DePaul. Mike Cernovich debunked her hoax.
 

Hate Crime Hoax at DePaul by Student Who Made Sex Tape to “Get Famous”
By Mike Cernovich
May 27, 2016
14 Comments
Danger and Play

Proving yet again the media has no integrity, “journalists” are reporting that a noose was discovered on DePaul’s Chicago campus.
The hate crime hoax was started by a Twitter user who posted, the day after Milo Yiannopoulos’s talk, this entry:

Noose found on DePaul’s campus today. Are we still being too sensitive? @DePaulU you let this happen. (Archive.)

[Read the whole thing at Danger and Play.]

Just in Case You Forgot What This Weekend is All About (Poster)

Let's never forget it's not about Hotdogs and Hamburgers but.those who gave all pic.twitter.com/4pEZQ44GOA

— Bill (@GoalieBill328) May 27, 2016

Ben Garrison: Puncturing the Lies About Donald Trump (Political Cartoon)

@jeffpearlman @SoCal4Trump ...you just called him a name. He's adamant about Warren's nickname because she's a fraud pic.twitter.com/ag0XUe45ph

— David Johnson (@DJ34398) May 27, 2016

Pat Buchanan: In an Era of Institutionalized Racism Against Whites, Trump is “The Great White Hope”

 

 

Excerpted By Nicholas Stix
 

In Our Anti-White Age, Trump is “The Great White Hope”
By Patrick J. Buchanan
May 26, 2016, 10:44 p.m.
VDARE

….

A lost generation is growing up all around us.

In the popular culture of the ’40s and ’50s, white men were role models. They were the detectives and cops who ran down gangsters and the heroes who won World War II on the battlefields of Europe and in the islands of the Pacific....

What has changed in our culture? Everything.

The world has been turned upside-down for white children. In our schools the history books have been rewritten and old heroes blotted out, as their statues are taken down and their flags are put away.

Children are being taught that America was “discovered” by genocidal white racists, who murdered the native peoples of color, enslaved Africans to do the labor they refused to do, then went out and brutalized and colonized indigenous peoples all over the world.

In Hollywood films and TV shows, working-class white males are regularly portrayed as what was once disparaged as “white trash.”

Republicans are instructed that demography is destiny, that white America is dying, and that they must court Hispanics, Asians and blacks, or go the way of the Whigs.

Since affirmative action for black Americans began in the 1960s, it has been broadened to encompass women, Hispanics, Native Americans the handicapped, indeed, almost 70 percent of the nation.

White males, now down to 31 percent of the population, have become the only Americans against whom it is not only permissible, but commendable, to discriminate….

[Read the whole thing at VDARE.]

Kate Steinle’s Family Files Federal Lawsuit Against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, San Francisco County’s Former Sheriff, Ross Mirkarimi, the Federal Bureau of Land Management and Francisco Sanchez, the Man Who Allegedly Fired the Deadly Shot, in Bay Area Slaying Allegedly Committed by Immigrant Deported 5 Times

By Reader-Researcher RC

At KTLA.

The Trump Mystique: Donald Trump Has Succeeded, Because He Acted on the Primordial Fact in American Public Life Today, from Which Most of the Others Hide Their Eyes, Namely: Most Americans Distrust, Fear, are Sick and Tired of, the Elected, Appointed, and Bureaucratic Officials Who Rule Over Us, as Well as Their Cronies in the Corporate, Media, and Academic World (Angelo Codevilla)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

I thank the old friend who sent me this article.
 

Steven Hayward

Does Trump Trump? Angelo Codevilla on Our Present Moment

July 27, 2015
Power Line Blog

Angelo Codevilla is a former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, and the author of more than a dozen fine books on politics, arms control, and intelligence (if I had to pick a favorite it might be The Character of Nations), including a fine translation of Machiavelli’s Prince published by Yale University Press. Most recently his essay-turned-book The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh and many others. It argues that our fundamental political problem is not “big government,” but the creation of a ruling class, inhabiting both parties, that is steadily increasing its authoritarian control over the nation. In a conversation a few months ago Angelo remarked, “The 2016 election is simple; the person who runs on the platform ‘Who do they think they are?’ will win.”

It occurred to me that Trump is coming closest to this disposition, flaws and all, which explains why he has taken off. I asked Angelo for his thoughts, and he sends along the following, which ratifies the view that several of Trump’s supposed “mistakes” are anything but, though you’ll see at the end Angelo’s final judgment:
Does Trump trump?
By Angelo M. Codevilla

“In the land of the blind,” so goes the saying, “the one-eyed man is king.” Donald Trump leapt atop other contenders for the Republican presidential nomination when he acted on the primordial fact in American public life today, from which most of the others hide their eyes, namely: most Americans distrust, fear, are sick and tired of, the elected, appointed, and bureaucratic officials who rule over us, as well as their cronies in the corporate, media, and academic world. Trump’s attraction lies less in his words’ grace or even precision than in the extent to which Americans are searching for someone, anyone, to lead against this ruling class, that is making America less prosperous, less free, and more dangerous.

Trump’s rise reminds this class’s members that they sit atop a rumbling volcano of rejection. Republicans and Democrats hope to exorcise its explosion by telling the public that Trump’s remarks on immigration and on the character of fellow member John McCain (without bothering to try showing that he errs on substance), place him outside the boundaries of their polite society. Thus do they throw Br’er Rabbit into the proverbial briar patch. Now what? The continued rise in Trump’s poll numbers reminds all that Ross Perot – in an era that was far more tolerant of the Establishment than is ours – outdistanced both Bush 41 and Bill Clinton before self-destructing, just by speaking ill of both parties before he self destructed.

Republicans brahmins have the greater reason to fear. Whereas some three fifths of Democratic voters approve the conduct of their officials, only about one fifth of Republican voters approve what theirs do. If Americans in general are primed for revolt, Republican (and independent) voters fairly thirst for it.

Trump’s barest hints about what he opposes (never mind proposes) regarding just a few items on the public agenda have had such effect because they accord with what the public has already concluded about them. For example,Trump remarked, off the cuff, that “Mexico does not send us its best.” The public had long since decided that our ruling class’s handling of immigration (not just from Mexico) has done us harm. The ruling class – officials, corporations, etc.- booed with generalities but did not try to argue that they had improved America by their handling of immigration. The more they would argue that, the more they would lose. At least if someone more able than Trump were leading against them.

Our ruling class was sure that Trump had discredited himself  by saying that John McCain, whom they treat as an icon, is not an optimal personification of heroism regardless of what suffering he endured in captivity. But they were mistaken. Because Americans are sick of celebrating victims of defeats, and naturally eager to enjoy the kind of peace that only victories can bring, Trump’s expressed preference for heroes who “don’t get captured” resonated. Trump may or may not know any of the unsavory details about McCain’s actions as a POW and, as a public official, in regard to POWs and MIAs. But it does not take much research to find out why nobody will defend him other than by trying to prevent discussion those details. Surely Republican “architect” Karl Rove, who organized South Carolina’s military vote against McCain in the 2000 primary, knows them. The families of Vietnam POWs-MIAs pour onto anyone who will listen to their bitterness at McCain’s role in denying the existence of abandoned POWs and sealing information about them. The general public can get a glimpse such things by Googling the armed forces’ newspaper Stars and Stripes, Friday June 6, 1969, or the work of Pulitzer Prize NYT reporter Sydney Schanberg.

Moreover, Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical about their celebrities’ integrity. With good reason.

McCain is just a minor example of a phenomenon that characterizes our ruling class: reputations built on lies and cover-ups, lives of myth protected by mutual forbearance, by complicitous journalists, or by records deep-sixed, including in in government archives. Ever wonder, for example, why the establishment of Martin Luther King as a national icon superior to George Washington, as the only American with his own national holiday, was accompanied by sealing government records about him for seventy five years? Because those records reflect well on him and his partisans? Sure. Countless other figures – need one mention Barack Obama? – live by images sustained by denigrating questions about their factual bases while restricting access to those bases. As they lord it over us, they live lives that cannot stand scrutiny.

The point here is simple: our ruling class has succeeded in ruling not by reason or persuasion, never mind integrity, but by occupying society’s commanding heights, by imposing itself and its ever-changing appetites on the rest of us. It has coopted or intimidated potential opponents by denying the legitimacy of opposition. Donald Trump, haplessness and clownishness notwithstanding, has shown how easily this regime may be threatened just by refusing to be intimidated.

Having failed to destroy Trump, Republicans and Democrats are left to hope that he will self-destruct as Perot did. Indeed, Trump has hardly scratched the surface and may not be able to do more than that. Yet our rulers know the list of things divide them from the American people is long. They want to avoid like the plague any and all arguments on the substance of those things. They fear the rise of an un-intimidated leader more graceful and precise than Trump, someone whose vision is fuller but who is even more passionate in championing the many resentments the voicing of just a few channeled so much support to Trump.

Here are some examples: Justice Kennedy’s majority opinions in Windsor and Obergefell preemptively accused anyone who opposed redefining marriage to include homosexuals of being “offensive,” “hateful.” Refusal to honor homosexual unions, he wrote, is not “explicable by anything except animus.” What if a statesman, speaking for the American people, were to ask what, precisely, is so honorable about anal intercourse that those who refuse to honor it should be so stigmatized? Before 1961, all 50 states criminalized anal intercourse, heterosexual as well as homosexual. Why precisely were they wrong in doing so? By what right does anyone place such questions “out of bounds”?

After a video showing officials of federally-funded Planned Parenthood taking orders for body parts of babies to be custom-slaughtered for that purpose, House Speaker John Boehner deflected demands for legislation to stop this by saying he needed more information. An unintimidated statesman might ask: Do you not know that each of these little ones’ DNA shows him or her to be an individual son or daughter of an individual mother and father? Like Lincoln, he would argue that no one has the right to exclude any other human from the human race and demand that Boehner answer why he continues to sanction so to dispose of millions of little sons and daughters?

Republicans and Democrats profit personally and through their corporate cronies by a welter of legislation and regulation by which they command what we must eat, how to shower, what medical care is proper and what is not: mandating that a third of the U.S. corn crop be turned into ethanol, restricting the use of coal, how we may use our land, etc.  They justify these predatory intrusions into our lives by claiming that peculiar knowledge of science unavailable to others. They refuse to justify their scientific conclusions with the likes of us. An un-intimidated statesman, reiterating that science is reason, public reason, not pretense, would throw the notion that “science R us” back into their faces.

At increasing speed, our ruling class has created “protected classes” of Americans defined by race, sex, age, disability, origin, religion, and now homosexuality, whose members have privileges that outsider do not. By so doing, they have shattered the principle of equality – the bedrock of the rule of law. Ruling class insiders use these officious classifications to harass their socio-political opponents. An unintimidated statesman would ask: Why should not all “classes” be equally protected? Does the rule of law even admit of “classes”? Does not the 14th amendment promise “the equal protection of the laws” to all alike? He would note that when the government sets aside written law in favor of what the powerful want, it thereby absolves citizens any obligation to obey government.

Habitually, our ruling class tries to intimidate its opponents by calling them “haters” (“racists,” etc. is part of the all too familiar litany.) A statesman worthy of the title would respond that calling people such names is the very opposite of civility, never mind love. Such a leader would trump our rulers.

Donald Trump is not such a person.

The New York Daily News Delivers Half a Loaf to Officer Edward Nero, Regarding His Acquittal in the Freddie Grifter Gray Case

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

ICYMI pic.twitter.com/OXOU0vLR0f

— C.C. Woodby (@ChristinaWoodby) May 25, 2016

Making Up the Grade, Visa-Diploma Mill Edition: Northwestern Polytechnic University's Owners Made Millions Off Fraud; You Can, too!

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

“A college on the edge of Silicon Valley has turned itself into an upmarket visa mill, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found, deploying a system of fake grades and enabling thousands of foreign students to enter the United States each year — while generating millions of dollars in tuition revenue for the school and the family who controls it.

“Spending millions on foreign recruiters, Northwestern Polytechnic University enrolls 99% of its students — more than 6,000 overall last year — from overseas, with little regard for their qualifications. It has no full-time, permanent faculty, despite having a student body larger than the undergraduate population of Princeton. The school issues grades that are inflated, or simply made up, so that academically unqualified students can keep their visas, along with the overseas bank loans that allow the students to pay their tuition. For two years, top college administrators forbade professors from failing any students at all, and the university’s president once personally raised hundreds of student grades — by hand.

“Those false credentials are all the students need to stay in the country. Many seek jobs in the tech industry, and their degrees allow them to remain working in the U.S. for years, avoiding the scrutiny of immigration officials that would have come if they had applied for a standard work visa.”

[Read the whole thing at VDARE.]