Some Memes You May Enjoy

Many a truth is said in jest.

- This is actually true!

- Canada in a nutshell.

- Socialism in a nutshell.

- Funny because it's true!

Treaty of Paris

 
The Treaty of Paris signed on this day in 1783 that officially ended the American Revolutionary War and recognized the United States as an independent nation. This is like when the divorce from England became official.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Glenn Reynolds: Goodbye Dolly. There's the famous buoy marking the furthest point south in the US and the statue of Dolly may come to represent the furthest point on Earth closest to Heaven.

- Jonathan Turley: Clyburn calls for packing the court with "bakers dozen" to flip cases.

- Icelandic voters reject proposal to restart talks to join EU. Although think it should be pointed out there's roughly 48 US cities with greater populations than Iceland - just saying.

- How the strategic petroleum reserve works. With the news out of Venezuela thought this was a good refresher. 

The Election of 1824

"When the 261 electoral votes were counted, none of the candidates received a majority. [John Quincy] Adams carried New York and New England with 84, [Andrew] Jackson stood first with 99, [William] Crawford had 41, and [Henry] Clay had 37. That meant for the second time in twenty-five years, the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives...

John Quincy Adams was elected, thirteen states to eleven. Adams had picked up all six states that had not been initially committed and became the first minority president in the nation's history.

...When Adams did appoint Clay to the state department, Jackson's supporters were predictably furious. John Randolph called it a corrupt bargain: 'the combination of the puritan with the blackleg.' Clay challenged Randolph to a duel. Both fired at each other, and fortunately both missed. Such was the presidential transition of 1825." - John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

 And we think politics is divisive today!

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Judge's order prohibits SEC from blocking athlete's return.

- Guns and ammo pricing - 1986 vs 2026.

- The cost of decoupling with China.

- Shamed to admit I did not know the story of the 400. I fully agree - this should be a major movie.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- VDH: Hating Israel Fatigue. 

- The Whiskey Rebellion. Some somewhat forgotten US history.

- Will New Coyote v Acme film blow up? I wasn't aware of this film.

- I'm Opting Out of Modern Life. I already do many of the things on the list but honestly going to pass on some of the others.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The artful diplomat - John Quincy Adams.

- From the archives: Farnam Street on Habits vs Goals.

- Sources: Josh Kushner, Bob Iger to buy Lakers for $12.5 billion.

- How to survive the next stock market crash.

More Linky Links

 More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- How protectionism turns friends into rivals. For the record I support reciprocal tariffs. If a country has a zero tariff on our goods we should have reciprocal zero tariffs on theirs. Canada does not have reciprocal tariffs with us even though we are their largest trading partner.

- The complete insanity of the Democratic Socialist agenda.

- Quiet skies aren't free.

- Some mostly forgotten history - George Thomas the Rock of Chickamauga.

John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

"The Supreme Court had already convened for its February term; Marshall had presented his commission as chief justice and had taken his oath of office. He was forty-five years old. For the next thirty-five years he would preside as the Chief Justice of the United States. 'He hit the Constitution much as the Lord hit the chaos at a time when everything needed creating,' wrote one observer. President James A. Garfield said, 'Marshall found the Constitution paper and made it power. He found a skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood.' The prickly John Randolph of Roanoke noted that Marshall's 'real worth was never known until he was appointed Chief Justice.'

To Marshall, more than any other person, belongs the credit for establishing the foundation of the constitutional interpretation." - Jean Edward Smith

The Americans: The Colonial Experience

"But the traditionalism of Virginia in the Golden Age was lived out with a quiet and pervasive intensity. Their very strength as transplanters came their willingness to transform as they transplanted, to flavor the distant past with the local present.

Their localism has been given far too little attention and too little credit. In these days, when States' rights are out of fashion, we are too often told that a man's preoccupation with the habits of the place where he lives can only drag on the national progress. We are fortunate that 18th-century Virginia thought differently...

The Federal Constitution was a national road on which there was no return. The leadership of Virginians in Federal life continued only so long as the national government was an aristocratic comradery like that of Virginia. When the United States ceased to be a greater Virginia, Virginians ceased to govern the United States. The virtues of 18th-century Virginia, when writ large, would seem to be vices. Localism would become sectionalism; the special interest of where a man lived would come to seem petty and disruptive."

Of course the biggest vice was slavery which would in time lead to the Civil War.

July 20, 1969

Salt: A World History

"The city of Cincinnati was built into a major commercial center with salt from Kanawha and pigs from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. By the late 1830's, Cincinnati was packing almost one third of all western American hogs...

...Kanawha salt makers could still undersell their competitors, not only because the density of their brine but because their workers were slaves. 

Kanawha was in the state of Virginia, which had a huge slave-based tobacco industry that was slowly declining. The large tobacco plantations had more slaves than they could use, and the owners saw an economic opportunity in renting these people to Kanawha salt producers. According to the 1810 census, Kanawha county had 352 slaves, but by 1850, 3,140 slaves lived in the county, mostly assigned to saltworks...

Plantation slaves did not want to be leased to saltworks, and they would sometimes escape while beig taken west. The slaves knew that, like the salt, they were only a short journey to Ohio, which was a free state...

...By the 1840's, Syracuse, not Kanawha, became the leading supplier of salt in the Midwest."

The Americans: The Colonial Experience - Daniel Boorstin

"Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn." - William Penn

No More Lings - Schoolhouse Rock

The Declaration of Independence

What happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Battle of Gettysburg

Today was the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

• Gettysburg day one. The bloodiest battle ever fought on US soil.
• General John Buford is an unsung hero of Gettysburg.
• Above photo via

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- This year's Mark Twain prize goes to Bill Maher. 

- The Warriors pursuing LeBron James and Anthony Davis? Silly season in the NBA has arrived.

- What Lincoln's second inaugural says to America at 250.

- The Declaration of Dependance. Some history I did not know.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- America, you saved my life. A look at the US from it's founding today. How can you not think that our brightest days are still to come?

- Dave Portnoy: How I built Barstool Sports. Article should be free for all to read.

- Jonathan Turley: Democrats learn the mob has a mind of its own.

- Another pillar of climate advocacy collapses.

The Best and the Brightest

"That McNamara's role was major, the he was by default usurping the role of the Secretary of State, did not faze him. He was intelligent, forceful, courageous, decent, everything in fact but wise...

If it just been a matter of getting the right goods to the right villages, we would have won; unfortunately, what we were selling was not what they were buying. This man, whose only real experience had been in dealing with the second largest automotive empire in the world, producing huge Western vehicles, was the last man to understand and measure the problems of a people looking for their political freedom."

In the words of President Lyndon Johnson, "I forgot he had only been president of Ford for one week."

Linky Links

 Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Two top senators urge Trump DOJ to prosecute Fauci despite Biden autopen pardon. Agree - Fauci should be in jail.

- Nathanael Greene was an underappreciated hero of the American Revolution.

- Jonathan Turley: Arkansas shows continued testing improvements from reforms.

- VDH on Barack Obama's consistent hectoring lecturing.