Archives for the 'history' Category
Non-Partisan Poll
Published on 17 Feb 2009 at 6:45 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under history.
Loves Lincoln, shoves Bush down to 36. Apparently non-partisan historians don’t think much of thwarting terrorism attacks and freeing 50 million people from tyranny. CNN:
Presidents Day
Published on 16 Feb 2009 at 11:26 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under America, history.
Waking up on Presidents Day, 2009, quick check out the window, still looks like America out there. Obama gets a free throw today. No mockery, despite his chief of staff’s revelation last week that mockery is the new statesmanship … at least until you hit the water’s edge, at which point suckupery … sorry, I [...]
When In Rome
Published on 15 Feb 2009 at 10:02 am.
6 Comments.
Filed under Iraq, history.
Tom Ricks sits in the Forum, mulls the ruins of ancient “Mission Accomplished” arches, and looks at the prospects for renewed war in Iraq.
Mau-Mau’d
Published on 15 Feb 2009 at 8:46 am.
10 Comments.
Filed under Britain, history.
Winston’s out of the Oval Office, out of the White House entirely, packed off to the British Embassy. UK Telegraph thinks ”We will fight them on the beaches” got Mau-mau’d.
From The Mouths of Babes
Published on 29 Jan 2009 at 8:06 am.
24 Comments.
Filed under Hollywood, Nazis, history, moronocy.
She’s hot … and stupid! Just the way guys like ‘em. Jessica Alba gets props for going all history on O’Reilly. From those other ignoramuses, MSNBC (UPDATED with important revelation plus more hotness below):
Read ‘From The Mouths of Babes’
A P-51 Named February
Published on 24 Jan 2009 at 9:51 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
Via Maggie’s Farm, soaring vid and some soaring fighter pilot poetry from doomed American RCAF Spitfire pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr. Brings to mind another flier’s verse, another end of that equation, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” WWII fighter pilots were hunters, and if love isn’t necessarily the word for how they felt about what they did, [...]
Three Of These Things Are Not Like The Others
Published on 15 Jan 2009 at 11:19 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under deep thot, history, military.
McMaster goes deep to examine the complexities overlooked by simple Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan analogies at World Affairs Journal:
Read ‘Three Of These Things Are Not Like The Others’
Historian Re History
Published on 15 Jan 2009 at 6:36 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under Bush, history.
Posits it will shows George W. Bush was right. Andrew Roberts at UK Telegraph:
The Gamble
Published on 12 Jan 2009 at 8:52 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Iraq, history, military.
Tom Ricks, now blogging at Foreign Policy,* has a new one coming out. The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008:
The War Over England
Published on 10 Jan 2009 at 11:05 am.
3 Comments.
Filed under Britain, history, military.
WSJ reviews Michael Korda’s ”With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.” Praise for Korda’s “bold and refreshing” new history includes these gems:
Fallen American
Published on 9 Jan 2009 at 10:29 am.
5 Comments.
Filed under America, history, military.
Found in the hallowed ground at bloody Antietam 146 years later, by a hiker who spotted human remains by a groundhog hole. Archaeologists uncovered a young New York soldier, apparently a forgotten battlefield burial. News, history, maps and eyewitness accounts kick off with ABC2:
Agincourt
Published on 30 Dec 2008 at 12:20 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, literary.
Bernard Cornwell of Sharpe’s Rifles fame* tackles it. Jay Fitzgerald of Hubblog fame got the Herald’s review copy of Cornwell’s latest, Agincourt. Awaiting review. Meanwhile, here’s Henry V, via Shakespeare:
George Bush, Liberator
Published on 27 Dec 2008 at 11:16 am.
14 Comments.
Filed under America, Britain, Bush, history.
Considering that it’s published in the UK, the Telegraph is a great American newspaper. Today, hosting Nile Gardiner on the vision and action of the much-reviled George Bush, champion of western values:
Shout Out To Lithuania
Published on 19 Dec 2008 at 9:54 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
Yon praises Lithuanians, and gets flak for it, from Lithuanians. What was intended as an off-the-cuff, friendly “Borat” remark didn’t go over well.
Newsreel
Published on 17 Dec 2008 at 1:37 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, military.
Castle Argghhh!!! has your Bulge vid, “The Enemy Strikes” (scroll past his fun with helicopters). Army Signal Corps footage and captured German footage from 1945, including moving versions of some of the same German scenes, characters in the stills in yesterday’s Bulge photo essay.
The Bulge
Published on 16 Dec 2008 at 12:05 am.
29 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
Goering, Hitler and Guderian survey plans for Wacht Am Rhein, a.k.a. The Battle of the Bulge, October 1944.
It began at dawn on Dec. 16, 1944, 64 years ago today, with rapid assaults through the Ardennes forest, as the Germans blitzed one last time, hoping to split the Allied armies and take Antwerp. As Guderian reportedly liked [...]
As Long As We’re On The Subject
Published on 13 Dec 2008 at 9:35 am.
No Comments.
Filed under America, culture, free speech, history, pervs, pols, sex.
Here’s a tribute to some refreshing honesty after Aniston’s look/don’t look ratings bid. Pervs, shed a tear, for the pinup queen who scandalized America … and got targeted by that other variety of exhibitionist, the prudish politician crusader … all over her pioneering sense of being liberated for profit. Bettie Page, 85, won’t be down for breakfast. Death gets [...]
Read ‘As Long As We’re On The Subject’
The Great Debate
Published on 12 Dec 2008 at 9:23 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, military.
Heard from my old pal Max Kennedy yesterday, about that trashing I gave the al-Qaeda angle and a couple of other points in his book “Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her,” after a preliminary scan. Yeah, it’s exhaustively researched, well-written World War II history with an al-Qaeda angle.
Me: “So, [...]
Retribution
Published on 10 Dec 2008 at 10:42 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
In the interest of balance and fairness after last night’s post on Max Kennedy’s kamikaze-friendly Danger’s Hour, here’s Max Hastings’ Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. I haven’t read it, but the tsk-tsk review by Kai Bird of the Washington Post has me hooked:
Danger’s Hour
Published on 9 Dec 2008 at 11:59 pm.
9 Comments.
Filed under GWOT, history, military.
What looks to be an interesting book by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, arrived in the mail today. For “Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her“ Max interviewed survivors on both sides and heavily researched the attack on the aircraft carrier on May 11, 1945. But there’s another [...]
Infamy
Published on 7 Dec 2008 at 11:40 am.
6 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
67 years ago today. More art:
Old Marine Graveyard
Published on 26 Nov 2008 at 12:18 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under history, military.
On Bloody Tarawa, where they went to die, 65 years ago this past week. Researchers using ground-penetrating radar have found what they believe is a lost USMC graveyard on Tarawa, thanks to a Florida man’s quest to bring them home. News and poignant memories via MSNBC, with a nod to my friend Paul, Vietnam Psyops vet. The 139 [...]
Guy Fawkes Day
Published on 5 Nov 2008 at 9:06 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Britain, history, religion.
That’s the Guy enroute to his annual torching in Lewes, Sussex, traditional hotbed of anti-Catholicism that’s big on the Nov. 5 observance due to a matter of 17 local Prots having been burned there by Queen Mary. Brits have burned the Guy every year for most the last 400 to celebrate the thwarting of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, when Fawkes and other English [...]
Keep The Feith
Published on 23 Oct 2008 at 8:05 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under Boston, Iraq, history.
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith is on stage at the Ford Hall Forum* tonight. I get to moderate. Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, 6:30 p.m. Expect critics. His book, “War and Decision” is an excellent, highly readable narrative of the development of war policy post-9/11, with a lot of the history leading [...]
Good Money After Bad
Published on 8 Oct 2008 at 11:40 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under crime, history, punishment.
Another $37.5 billion for AIG. You know, the relaxed, if troubled insurance giant. via Fox.
Sporadic Fellow-Traveling
Published on 4 Oct 2008 at 12:46 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Obama, crime, history, traitors.
NYT examines the Ayers-Obama link. It’s about sporadic path-crossing, bygones, rehabilitation and a sort of non-contagious fellow-traveling. Includes radical assurances that Obam is no radical. Director Blue casts a more jaundiced eye at the bygones, the ex-Weathermen Obama fan club, the fellow-traveling. It’s about dead cops, dead marines, and their killers.
Read ‘Sporadic Fellow-Traveling’
Nelson at 250
Published on 1 Oct 2008 at 11:40 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Britain, history.
A nod to Nelson on his 250th, via Blair. Melbourne University’s Daniel Mandel on why Nelson’s great victory, Trafalagar, is relevant today:
Fact Check
Published on 27 Sep 2008 at 2:15 pm.
11 Comments.
Filed under Nazis, commies, history, media, pols.
Washington Post’s live fact check finds Obama out-and-out wrong on several counts but has to parse and pick apart assiduously to find McCain at fault. Whatever. A telling exercise. Where it gets bizarre is in the grand finale, where the fact checkers tack on this astonishing McCain bash:
John McCain kicked the evening off with a wild exaggeration by describing the [...]
Waterloo
Published on 18 Jun 2008 at 3:45 am.
7 Comments.
Filed under Britain, Europe, France, history, military.
The following was produced at the request of Norm Geras and originally ran at his site in November 2006 as a book review, though it was as much an ode to war and an exploration of the experience as anything. Today, on the 193rd anniversary, here’s ”The Battle,” with some art and links added:
Theo-Palooza
Published on 2 Jun 2008 at 10:46 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Britain, blogs, boobs, history, pols.
Theo shows his deep understanding of the American political situation:
And other important stuff:
It Is Fun to Learn
Published on 27 May 2008 at 10:49 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under guns, history, military.
Reader Heinrichs, retired Canadian horse officer, kindly forwarded this delightful link re the history of the assault rifle after I expressed my general ignorance the other day.
Missing
Published on 25 May 2008 at 9:21 am.
1 Comment.
Filed under history, military.
GQ with a haunting tale of searching, finding and the pain that lasts decades in the story of Jimmy Doyle and his B-24 crewmen, missing for more than 60 years. Also, about the strange things the pain makes people do.
Jimmy Doyle left a son, who was told his father had abandoned him and only as an old [...]
“One-Man Army”
Published on 25 May 2008 at 7:29 am.
No Comments.
Filed under courage, history, military.
Finally gets his send-off. Boston Herald on the late John P. Correggio’s belated military funeral, with some ink-stained wretch’s vintage account of how he got his Silver Star in the Solomons:
“One American division was toasting a new ‘one man army.’ The army was Johnny Correggio of Everett, Mass.,” gushed one news account. “Correggio, acting as a [...]
About That History
Published on 21 May 2008 at 9:05 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under history, pols.
Lieberman spanks the Dems for their abandonment of core values, and confusion about who is the enemy and who is us, going back decades. WSJ:
History Lesson
Published on 18 May 2008 at 8:40 am.
6 Comments.
Filed under history, pols.
New Republic’s Scoblic beats conservatives with conservatives to defend Obama’s talk about talk with dictators. Talking worked with the Soviets, Scoblic opines, variously using a magnifying glass and a funhouse mirror to examine history’s miniscule details undistracted by any large inconvenient objects. LA Times:
Last War, This War, Next War
Published on 15 May 2008 at 11:19 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Iraq, history, vietnam.
All being debated over at Small Wars. Some light reading there and elsewhere on that which only the dead have seen the end of:
Read ‘Last War, This War, Next War’
Great American Slaughterers Through the Ages
Published on 3 May 2008 at 2:45 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under America, history, moronocy.
An Iraqi TV channel, apparently unhappy that the United States ended the three-decade reign of one of the modern era’s marquee mass murderers, takes a ramble through U.S. history to highlight great American “slaughterers” who have occupied the White House. A little fact-challenged, and considering all the death and destruction we get pinned with, not [...]
Read ‘Great American Slaughterers Through the Ages’
April Morning
Published on 19 Apr 2008 at 12:08 am.
24 Comments.
Filed under America, courage, history.
Patriots Day may be the least known American holiday, and the day most deserving of our recognition. Observed in Massachusetts and Maine only. Don’t know it? It marks the day, April 19, 1775, on which Americans took up arms against their king, and bled, at the crack of terrible dawn.
Making History
Published on 14 Apr 2008 at 11:28 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under Bush, history.
Making it up. Making a mockery of it. Ninety-eight percent of historians polled consider Bush a failure. US News and World Report:
Absolut Apologies
Published on 6 Apr 2008 at 7:55 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under America, Mexico, Nazis, Spain, booze, history, shameless self-promotion.
World-bettering boozemaker is sorry. I’ll say. And that’s nice. But first, here are some more Absolut worldviews from clever readers. This one neglects to put Absolut Sweden in the Nazi camp, which is more or less where the Nazi-enabling neutrals spent the war. via Gateway:
A Thought
Published on 30 Mar 2008 at 7:59 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Iraq, genocide, history.
On Dith Pran’s death. Help prevent the next genocide. No abandonment of Iraq.
Choice Just Got Harder
Published on 25 Mar 2008 at 11:01 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under history, pols.
OK, Obama’s all about hope, and Hillary’s all about experience. I’ve got that. But Obama’s got a crazy pastor. And Hillary just lied about her war record. Now, it turns out, Obama’s related to Brad Pitt, and Hillary’s related to Angelina Jolie.
Geraldine Through the Ages
Published on 12 Mar 2008 at 7:43 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under history, pols.
Ferraro, 2008: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position.”
Ferraro, 1988: “If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”
Ferraro, 1984: “If I wasn’t a woman, I would not be in this position … hey, [...]
Read ‘Geraldine Through the Ages’
“I Loved That Jet”
Published on 9 Mar 2008 at 9:34 am.
2 Comments.
Filed under aircraft, history.
Take a jet ride at Maggie’s Farm. Read a book while you’re there.
Waltzing Mathilda vs. Gaia
Published on 9 Mar 2008 at 7:41 am.
No Comments.
Filed under Australia, history, song, warmalism.
A V-8 sings it. That and more musical news via Tim Blair.
In other important Australian news, archaeologists in Melbourne have found a hole in the ground and they think Ned Kelly’s in it, along with a bunch of other crims.
Read ‘Waltzing Mathilda vs. Gaia’
Fine American Tradition
Published on 27 Feb 2008 at 9:42 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under America, hair, history.
The Mohawk. Now a suspendible offense.
Read ‘Fine American Tradition’
Gunga Din
Published on 26 Feb 2008 at 8:55 am.
11 Comments.
Filed under history, literary, pols, racism.
I was steering clear of that comparison with the benighted wretch of imperialist doggerel fame, played in blackface in the movie. But the Dems aren’t so shy. This one, anyway. Boston Herald:
Kristol re Orwell on Kipling
Published on 18 Feb 2008 at 9:45 am.
5 Comments.
Filed under Man Who Would Be King, history, literary, pols.
And what they have to do with you. Great historical prism. Orwell was a lefty with a brain, who recognized the evil of communist as well as fascist oppression, and the dangers of acquiescence to either. He knew our flawed system was worth defending, setting aside squabbles for later. Kipling is ill-treated by Orwell in the cited essay as [...]
Read ‘Kristol re Orwell on Kipling’
Nobel Wackjob
Published on 10 Feb 2008 at 3:15 pm.
7 Comments.
Filed under history, pols.
Slams America. Too racist for a black president. Doris Lessing re President Obama, better he’s not elected, “They would murder him.”
Money Talks
Published on 18 Jan 2008 at 8:52 am.
No Comments.
Filed under blogs, history, money.
… as the magnificent Oxford Medievalist takes up coin blogging.
