This is my favorite thing on the internet (and it’s not the same as the one Anne Laurie posted below):
Okay, this is like my favorite thread ever!!, so I wanted to see what it would look like merged with a Ken Burns-ish voice reading. pic.twitter.com/E2frNNahFH
— Reetae (@Reetae27) August 19, 2017
Amazing.
MikeBoyScout
Master Race
Omnes Omnibus
In the real army (the one that kicked the CSA’s ass), he would be on a special diet and exercise program.
Just saying.
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Knew a guy got sent to ‘fat camp’ for basic training. Extra PT and 600 calories a day. Damn near killed him
Karmus
The field may be lost, but the Internet is won.
WaterGirl
Steeplejack just posted that downstairs. Truly awesome!
Major Major Major Major
To be fair I don’t think anybody wants their mom looking through their browser history.
WaterGirl
My second favorite part of that video is the sign-off: random neo-nazi.
WaterGirl
@Karmus: Well done!
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: You made me laugh.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
These fucking nazis are the saddest people I’ve ever heard. I fear what might happen if they really lost it and began something, but their manifest weakness and gutlessness gives me hope. All the same, when enough of them get together, they can do some real harm. That’s what worries me, that, sooner or later, enough of them will find themselves in the same place at the same time that they become bold enough to fuck things up.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: Yay!
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): How many do you think that is?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s another variant.
momus
@Schlemazel: His BMI is about average based on the photos of “militia” from Charlottesville. It boys playing army.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know. How many were there last week in Virginia? More than that, I’d guess. There was “only” one death last week. Get twice as many, or three times as many, and I don’t know what they might do.
MobiusKlein
About the Boston Free Speech Rally on of my college Libertarian FB associates says it was not a white supremacist / nazi / confederate rally, but a legit rally, organized by at least one Green Party member.
Is this hot bullshit or ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Brian Beutler called this kid one of the “mashed potato people” and got somebody in his replies fat-shame-shaming him by a “I’m a liberal and even I think…” type who said “we can’t know what his motivation for being at that rally is…”
Numbnuts: He’s holding a FUCKING CONFEDERATE FLAG AT A WHITE SUPREMACY RALLY!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: A soldier of the British Guards Division would have has the discipline to stay at attention and look straight forward.
hellslittlestangel
RIP Dick Gregory. I always liked him, even when he turned into a complete crackpot (see: breatharianism)
hellslittlestangel
@Cheryl Rofer: Just noticed how much he looks like Oliver Hardy.
oatler.
@Schlemazel: ‘We’re not leaving until this CHRISTMAS HAM gives me one chin-up!”
Another Scott
Everyone should realize that photo was taken in Charlottesville on Tuesday, after the carnage on the previous Saturday. And he had 2 guns (a semi-auto handgun and a rifle) at the time.
As I said downstairs, Lara Rogers is a brave woman, and Allen Armentrout is a stupid, stupid man.
Cheers,
Scott.
aimai
@MobiusKlein: Nonsense. It was a libertarian “free speech” rally that was going to be attended solely by pro-trump, MRA, PUA Gamergater, Nazi and Klan types because they were protesting the existence of non-male, non-white, speech on campuses. At the last minute none of the heavy hitters–i.e. real Klan or Nazis, turned up because they couldn’t get permission to do their armed cosplay and they were panicked about being seen by the light of day so the little pawade had to go on with just the Moron Labe dude from Fitchburg state and his closest buddies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Are you expecting them to go rock and roll with their weapons? To collectively drive into crowds? What is your worry?
James Powell
Apparently the kid swallows his aggression . . . along with a lot of pizza.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s actually worse than that. It was three days after the white supremacist rally. And of course, he was just “protecting his heritage” and all the other nonsense. But of course, he deplores racism.
DailyProgress is the original source.
Cheers,
Scott.
p.a.
Davebo
@Omnes Omnibus:
Back in the day the trick was to have a really fat neck. Skewed the body fat numbers, until they immersed you in water.
aimai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All threads making fun of this kid seem to devolve into accusations that criticizing him is mere fat shaming (worse even than slavery, apparently) and that he “isn’t doing anything wrong.” Its actually like the Free Speech Rally in Boston today–the idea seems to be that nazi/klan/racist acts are harmless if they are done under the banner of “free speech” and that we can’t attribute any actual motives or goals to these people, any policy prescriptions, any politics at all. We have to treat them as though they are simply defending the abstract right to dress up and cosplay, or dress up and free speech, regardless of the content or symbolic load of what they are doing.
Frankly I’ms surprised they haven’t gone back to burning crosses on people’s lawns and lectured us on how they are doing it for all of us to preserve first amendment rights. Just as they claim to open carry for all our benefit, rather than as a direct threat to us.
chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And carrying a gun. For protection, of course. That woman is very brave and lucky.
As a good neighbour Canada would be delighted to lend you a cup of gun laws.
ETA: He had two guns apparently.
Davebo
Really hyped about seeing Lyle Lovett and his large band next week. I love his stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvDPezXTzlI
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: Lyrics to what?
@James Powell:
FTW.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: I saw clip of a statue-humper, looked like an aging HS linebacker who hadn’t hit the gym since Coach couldn’t make him, screaming that his great-whatever-grandfather “fought to defend his farm!”, and it made me wonder if that fake history was born of fake news from the 1860s. Rich planter to small farmer: “You know, Jedediah, that Lincoln fella wants to come down here and take your farm. And your Bible.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Davebo: How do you make your neck thick?
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t really care what’s in their hearts. I care what they do. This idiot attended a white supremacist rally and held a confederate flag. That’s what he did. We can judge who he is by his deeds.
NotMax
Holy Ron Popeil, Batman!
efgoldman
@MobiusKlein:
Regardless, they only got ~100 people to show up, vs ~20k or so antis.
Manyakitty
@Davebo: You’re in for a treat. Lyle puts on a fabulous show.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Plaster of paris works
Chet Murthy
I’m no military history buff, but ISTR reading that, man-for-man and unit-for-unit, the Wehrmacht wildly outclassed any of the Allies’ armies. That it was only numerical preponderance that carried the day? Is that right?
B/c gosh, in the last two days I’ve read a lot about how the Southern warrior was superior to the Northern, and it was only that the North had such numerical superiority, that carried the day.
It sure seems like there’s some sort of dissonance there …..
ETA: oh, uh, unless it’s b/c these lost-causers think the Nazis shoulda won back in ’45.
RandomMonster
Holy crap, they got the whole slow zoom out perfectly
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I guess my worry is that if enough of these losers get together in one place at one time, they’ll feel brave enough to begin shooting people. Things can get out of hand in a hurry when enough people get together. There’s safety and security when you’re only one of a faceless mob of people who think the same way you do and hate the same people you do.
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy:
By 1945, the Germans were literally out of troops, weapons (both small arms and artillery/armor) and manufacturing capacity. By then it was just a war of attrition, and the US, Russia and allies overwhelmed them with sheer number.
Basically the same thing happened to the Traitor Army in the War of Southern Treason. The US and Grant had the overwhelming edge in troops and everything needed to support them .
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Omnes Omnibus: In the real CSA their soldiers were just getting by mainly on corn between the Union blockade and Southern farming practices. Well feed Confederate soldier is a bit of contradiction. So ya; quite a contrast between those little dears and the real thing.
Davebo
@Omnes Omnibus: Being fat seems to help.
Another Scott
@Chet Murthy: I’m no expert either, but you know that hundreds of books have been written about this stuff, right?
As a kid, I and a lot of my peers were fascinated by the German war machine, what with their rockets, and tanks, and amazing jet airplanes, and all the rest. Too many of them (and even too many adults) took that fascination at technological sophistication as being a sign of “superiority” in other aspects. It’s insidious unless someone is willing to give the other side and reduce the fascination.
Logistics and large populations and all sorts of other things are often more important than who has the “better army”. Luck can play a large role, too.
The Akutan Zero is a good show that talks about these things.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Making fun of the guy for being fat is real low though. I think this on general principle. I will call him a motherfucking Nazi though and an asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chet Murthy:
I would be interested in seeing documentary support for that. The Battle of the Bulge seem to contradict that concept.*
* Another version of this can be phrased by people as: Are you trying to say that Nazis were better soldiers than my grandfather?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chet Murthy:
It certainly makes a great boast for the American, British and Russians Armies their their citizen soldiers that they beat the toughest soldiers in the world. Not the first time NAZI propaganda game back to bite them on the ass during that war.
Chet Murthy
@Another Scott: Right, I didn’t mean the fancy technology. Specifically, I had read that small-unit tactics and the “next level up” in the Wehrmacht simply outclassed anything the Allies had or could teach. That after the war, our Marines basically restructured our doctrines, based on the Wehrmacht. It was a while back, but I remember something about third-generation war, and the “strategic corporal”.
But if this is all true, nobody remembers it that way amongst the Allies. We beat ’em and saved civilization, is the way it’s remembered. Doesn’t matter whether or how effective they were: they were on the wrong moral side, and the losing side to boot.
And yet, that doesn’t seem to hold for Lee & his traitors. They get away with it. From, I’m sure, the same people who still celebrate our beating Hitler’s armies.
Villago Delenda Est
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): This worries me as well. In open carry states, there’s nothing LEOs can do about this. MA is different, of course…the cops could simply confiscate anyone who brandished a weapon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): So show up and make sure they don’t feel that way. This weekend was a win for our side. I am not really interested in looking for ways to be upset and worried.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’d guess that video will be unavailable as soon as the the owner of the music finds it being used without permission. But for now, LOL.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: Arthur C Clarke had a great take on German military “superiority”, at least from the technological aspect.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Major Major Major Major:
I was just doing research, Mom!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Chet Murthy:
Sort of. Man for man, their front line infantry and armor troops were significantly better than any of their opponents’. When it came to artillery and support staff, that wasn’t really as true. They made it an imperative that their best soldiers go into the front line, while that wasn’t true for the Allies. On one level, that sounds like the way to go. On the other, making sure that your front line troops stay supplied is pretty important, too. On top of that, it meant that the Wehrmacht’s casualties were suffered disproportionately by their best men, so its quality declined over the course of the war, while its opponents consistently got better.
NoraLenderbee
@Chet Murthy: The Wehrmacht could not fail; it could only be failed. Like when they really won WWI, but were stabbed in the back by the haters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: No one can fight a war with the just the 82 Airborne and the British Parachute Regiment. Calling the CS and CSS troops lesser than than those of the Germans….? And then we address the guns; ours were much better than theirs.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Another Scott:
This, on the other hand, is bullshit. German planes weren’t that great. They never did have a fighter that was very good at fighting against the strategic bombing campaign. The Bf-109 was chronically undergunned for attacking bombers (the thin wings made it difficult to impossible to mount guns on them) and the FW-190’s performance fell off drastically at altitudes over 15,000 feet. Their bombers were a complete mess if they didn’t have air supremacy.
German tanks were very good. They were also extremely expensive to make, had the same tendency to frequent breakdowns that all tanks had, and were notoriously difficult to repair. Precision German engineering is great for your BMW. It’s not so good bouncing all over the field. Given their shortage of manpower, producing ridiculously armored behemoths was probably the right choice, but it had a lot of downsides. (As an aside, don’t let people run down the M4 Sherman. It was a very good tank; you just have to keep in mind its doctrinal purpose and the design constraints involved in having to put every single one of them on a boat and haul it across the ocean before you could use it.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He set up a GoFundMe page! I clicked on the link and got “page not found” so maybe GFM did shut him down
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not sure what you mean by CS and CSS troops, but it is simply a fact that, if you look at just the quality of the front line infantry and tank troops, the Germans were better. That became less true as the war went on, but it was 1945 before you could make a good case that things had evened up.
As for the guns, yeah, ours were better. That was true of pretty much all of the equipment. I’m less sold on a lot of the British equipment (for the army, at least; the RAF had good stuff), but the marriage of the 17pdr with sabot ammo to the Sherman chassis, producing the Firefly, was a great tank.
Captain C
@Another Scott:
I remember reading that the later Tiger and Panther tanks were exquisitely engineered and built, able to last for years if not shot at enough. The Russians sensibly looked at the numbers, saw that the average tank wouldn’t last more than a few months, and designed and built the T-34 accordingly, and were thus able to build far more tanks more quickly than the overengineering, quality-obsessed Germans.
Another Scott
@Chet Murthy: The US basically had a peacetime Army in 1939. It’s not surprising that the German army was better at warmaking than we were – they’d been doing it longer (e.g. helping Franco in his bloodbath in Spain), and building up for it much longer.
There were 187,893 active-duty [US] Army soldiers as of June 30, 1939. Hitler had 1,500,000 well-trained men available for the invasion of Poland in September 1939.
It’s not simply a reflection of better tactics, or whatever. There was lots and lots tied up in the way the war played out.
As for how that applies to the neo-Nazis today, well, I think my previous comments still apply. The Nazis losing WWII doesn’t make them less appealing to neo-Nazis today. It doesn’t enter into the thought process.
Our brains are designed to make stories to explain the world. Once we decide on a story, it doesn’t matter if it’s nonsense or if it’s impossible – like the sun standing still, or a wooden boat holding examples of all the world’s life, or the Earth existing before the Sun – it’s very difficult for our human brains to change our minds. Some people like to advocate socially unacceptable beliefs for various reasons – including learning stupid stuff from their friends, parents, and relations, and that will always be the case. We will always have to fight the arguments from such people, so we can’t ever let our guards down.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Honus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: actually, that picture wasn’t at the rally. He may or may not have been there on Saturday but he showed up Tuesday morning after the rally to “guard” the Lee statue in his rebel uniform shirt and cap and with his modern assault rifle and handgun. As you can see from the picture, charlottesville residents were in no mood for any more of that confederate shit after the weekend, and he had to be escorted from the park by the police for his own safety.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
I suppose I should make clear that I am not saying that, man for man, the Wehrmacht was better than the Allied armies. I’m saying that for the small slice of the armies that amateur historians pay attention to, the Wehrmacht was better. But you don’t go to war with just a slice of an army, and overall, I don’t think that’s true. It’s especially noticeable in the officer corps, where the Germans diligently pushed all of their best officers into operations and command. This made for some outstanding junior leadership in the field and great division commanders. It also led to sloppy logistics, inept intelligence terrible resource management, and top generals with no concept of strategy whatsoever.
I’ll take the Allied approach thank you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Okay, with all due respect, if you are commenting on military topics and you do not recognize the abbreviations for Combat Support and Combat Service Support, well then…
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Captain C:
This is both right and wrong. The T-34 showed up on the battlefield two years before the Tiger and Panther; it wasn’t a response to anything the Germans did. It was, however, an outstanding tank that the Soviets could mass produce. It needed to be, because the average Red Army soldier was markedly inferior to his German counterpart (not surprisingly, since they were overwhelmingly uneducated peasants) and Soviet losses, even in the late stages of the war, were enormous, and substantially greater than those they inflicted on the Germans.
Given their manpower constraints, the Germans were likely better off building the kind of tanks they did, emphasizing force protection and maximizing the firepower per crew member, but that doesn’t mean that their tanks were better in any abstract sense.
Kent
Man for man the Apache and Comanche were better than US troops who chased them down. I’m not sure what that proves. Warfare hasn’t been man for man since the bronze age. It’s economy vs economy.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Omnes Omnibus: Bite me. Those particular abbreviations are used for lots of things, abd I didn’t pull up the ones you were referring to.
Stepping back, you have become remarkably sour to deal with over the last few months.
Another Scott
@Kent: Well said.
Cheers,
Scott.
Honus
@Chet Murthy: thing of it is, numerical (and logistical) superiority pretty much always carries the day. The civil war and WWII are prime examples of that. Although I will say that I believe the superiority of the southern soldier is pretty much a myth. In Virginia (the western was a diffent story) Lee’s army was probably more experienced and certainly had better officers during the first two years of the war. Still, their advantage was mostly from fighting in Virginia where they had a sympathetic populace and logistical advantages from fighting on their home turf. I don’t believe that the vaunted army of northern Virginia ever won a major battle north of the Potomac. Asked to describe Lee’s army, A.J Liebling said “good club, couldn’t win on the road”
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Have you seen the fucking news?
I served. You didn’t. It is your obligation to figure out the military stuff, not mine to explain it to you.
Shalimar
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Charlottesville was their high water mark. They will never gather in those numbers again. It was their last chance to gather in support of something that some people might buy as non-racist (before the nakedly racist chants fucked that up). And their last chance to stupidly gather without hoods and think they would remain anonymous.
Though I do share your fears. Even a few dozen of them with semi-automatic weapons could cause immeasurable harm.
Tom Levenson
@Honus: not to mention that in that imperfectly mapped age, local knowledge of the terrain was hugely important.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
Nope, read any of Yuri Pashouk’s “Cheating at Statistics” posts at Tank-Archives.
The Nazi’s basically lied in their reports, every chance they got.
After WWII, a lot of the WWII “bothsiderist” “histories”, relied on the Nazi’s fake reports.
Case in point, Ornato.
General rule of thumb is that at a minimum, the attackers must have an advantage of 3:1 against the defenders.
The 2nd Canadain Division took Ornato after a brutal hard slog, despite being 0.9 to 1, against “premier” Nazi forces, despite already being exhausted, ( 1/3rd strength) from the hard slog up to Ornato.
Omnes Omnibus
@Honus: No. They did not have the better officers. They did not ever have the better men.
Chet Murthy
@Honus:
Oh, I”m in full agreement. As I once heard it: “amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics”. Or something like that. My only point was that, geez, if the points I stipulated were true, then it sure takes some serious cognitive dissonance to argue (as I’ve read that Lost Causers do) that Lee was undone by the masses of less-valourous Union soldiers, and hence didn’t “really” lose, while still being all “we beat Hitler, look at us, we saved democracy”.
Chet Murthy
@Jay: Oh, now that’s interesting! I’ll look that up! Thanks!
Another Scott
@Shalimar: They may have hoped to somehow gain more support as a result of their Charlottesville activities, but they seemed to have had a stupid idea of how to do it. Does anyone have a positive association of masses of people with flaming torches even when they’re not yelling racist chants? I think they were hoping to intimidate people – especially local governments – and then push the boundaries even farther. They thought they had carte blanche from Donnie and Sessions and that everyone else would back down.
Even without the violence, the injuries, and Heather’s death, I cannot imagine that sensible people would back down to a mob with torches – they were going to get push-back sooner or later.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Shalimar
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Technically, he is holding a Confederate battle flag while defending a Confederate monument. Yes, we all know that is racist as hell, but still, there are people who claim to believe the whole “celebrating my heritage is not racist” bullshit. If they had kept it at just that and not brought out all the Nazi paraphernalia and anti-semitic chants, only 50% of the country would hate them right now instead of 80%.
Honus
@Shalimar: I agree. They keep about coming back to charlottesville, but a lot of them were caught video surveillance while committing felonies, so I think that if they are coming back, it will be in handcuffs.
Major Major Major Major
@Honus: One example of the Americans’ logistical superiority is mass production and things like interchangeable parts. The German equipment was “better” but it was also craft-produced, so if your gun broke you couldn’t necessarily just take apart somebody else’s to fix it.
Jay
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Nope, the Nazi’s had better tactics in the beginning of WWII.
As an example, they lost 328 tanks to the Poles, who had 48 tankettes and 12 Light tanks,
At Arras, the Brit’s killed over 500 German vehicles, it what was a “clearing” operation, with less than 50 tanks, mostly Matilda MK 1 infantry tanks,
But the operation failed as a counter attack, ( despite panicing Rommel), because the 2 infantry battalions and the armour, did not cooperate.
Honus
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m giving them the conventional wisdom benefit of the doubt on the quality of their officers, but the fact is as Mr Levenson notes above much of the ANOVAs perceived superiority came from fighting on its home turf.
Shalimar
@Another Scott: From what I understand the organizer was hoping to get 10s of thousands of regular Republicans opposed to the statues being torn down. His alt-right Confederate group was supposed to be the core, and be on their best behavior to mainstream defense of the Confederacy. Instead, mainstream Republicans didn’t show up, just like they rarely show up for anything other than Trump’s rallies, and he was left with a massive group of nazis and KKK who organized online in the preceding month and made the trek to Charlottesville.
I don’t think the racist idiot who planned the Saturday event organized the tiki torch terror, nor did the entire event turn into his ascent to mainstream power like he had planned.
In other words, the person who planned it to get mass acceptance was high-jacked by the Nazis and KKK. Which is his own fault, since it is clear he knew all these assholes from online forums.
Honus
@Major Major Major Major: that and the fact that several hundred B-17s at a time were bombing their factories while ours were in places like Detroit and Cleveland.
Shalimar
@Honus: Which is also the answer to the trivia question: When in history has anyone ever wanted to be in Cleveland?
Jay
@Captain C:
Nope, all the Tiger and Panther models were bespoke, a Tiger1 mk1943/1/15 transmission needed a machine shop and skilled machinist to allow it to be fit into a Tiger1 mk1943/3/28 tank.
They wern’t mass produced, each one was bespoke.
And most of the “combat losses” in the later years of the war, were due to mechanical breakdowns and loss of the battlefield, where broken down vehicles could not be recovered.
As Adam Toonze notes in his “Wages of Destruction”, the Soviet Union, with a steel industry and heavy industrial base 1/3 the size of Germany, produced tanks at a 6:1 ratio to Germany.
The absolute peak, of German Aircraft production, was April, 1945,
But didn’t even come close to 2 months of production at Ford’s Willow Plant in 1943.
Shalimar
@MobiusKlein: What Aimai said. Look for a story with a list of all the speakers who chickened out and didn’t attend. That makes it very obvious what kind of rally it was supposed to be. It wouldn’t have gotten 20k counter-protestors if all it was was a libertarian free speech event.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shalimar: When in history has anyone ever wanted to be in Cleveland?
Every time somebody looked around and said, “Holy shit, I’m in Toledo?”
(Full disclosure: I have never been to Toledo. Or Cleveland).
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
Read the Canadian Battle Series, Ornatoa, by Mark Zuehlke,
They are exhaustively researched based on all available documents, ( both sides) and the testimonies of both the combattants, and the civillians.
My favorite cite, is from “On to Victory”,
In which a Dutch boy, remembers the Seaforth’s assembling and heading out to the next battle. Dirty, unshaven, lax, cordial, smoking, none of the polish or parade of the Nazi Occupiers, loosely assembling like a team of confident construction workers, heading off to their next project, tools slung over their shoulders.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
OH GOD, I was involved with that tiresome concern troll that was arguing with him! Fucking troll.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There’s this lovely song, made famous by John Denver, about Toledo.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Honus: See, Interior Lines, use of. Also, the lay of the mountains as you moved into western Virginia was a great advantage to Jackson.
Villago Delenda Est
@Shalimar: The thing about the Confederate Battle Flag (The Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) is that it was deliberately adopted as the symbol of white supremacy and segregation in the 1950’s. After being dormant for nearly a century.
That flag is about hate, not heritage. Anyone who argues otherwise is at best fooling themselves.
Viva BrisVegas
@Major Major Major Major:
No good can come of keeping your browser history.
Turn it off before it’s too late.
Achrachno
Seeing the image of the woman colorfully defying the armed white supremacist, was anyone else reminded of a somewhat parallel incident in Birmingham, UK last spring?
http://metro.co.uk/2017/04/09/defiant-woman-in-viral-edl-photo-speaks-out-6564245/
In the UK event there were no guns. And the feeling on both sides looks somewhat different.
NotMax
@Viva BrisVegas
Cue Van M.
Shalimar
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have never been to Cleveland or Toledo either, but I grew up in Alabama so all my joking is in sympathy.
opiejeanne
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you. Amen.
eclare
@Achrachno: I was reminded of this
Major Major Major Major
@Shalimar: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Always makes me think of two things. One, the 30 Rock episode where everybody’s fantasy is to move to Cleveland; and two, the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin says, where do you think we go when we die? Hobbes says Cleveland. Then there’s a panel where they pause, and then Calvin says, if we’re good or if we’re bad?
Heywood J.
Great stuff. Can’t stop thinking of Private Pyle eating his hidden jelly donut, while the rest of the platoon does pushups. Why is it that every one of these white-power goons looks like they’re in the Fifth Oreo Division? And button up your rented cosplay uni, Pork Chop. These assholes can’t even nazi-larp convincingly. He looks like Paul Blart, Discount Civil War Re-enactor, available for birthday parties (but not bar mitzvahs). He probably misses his Segway.
Sab
@Shalimar: I love Cleveland. I don’t live in Cleveland because the cost of living is high, by Ohio small town standards. World class art museum. World class Symphony. Great lakes beach. Major universities. MAJOR health services. Great weather ( yes it rains but you can live comfortably 9 months a year without air conditioning, and winter is only 3 months long.) Plus the lake. Downside is business community are racist assholes who are inadvertently choking off all growth by making immigrant geniuses feel unwelcome.
Shalimar
@Sab: The lake alone makes it the Ohio city I would be most likely to move to if I had to pick one. I have never researched it, though.
patrick II
@Another Scott:
I think what has changed in today’s stupid story telling world is that there are people who are extremely sophisticated at telling stupid stories and it is become extremely politically and monetarily profitable to do so.
Lavocat
Pandora’s Box is now open. Good luck with the demons popping out of it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
You are absolutely right about the intimidation and their belief Trump and Sessions would look the other way – which they did. You underestimate the belief among both right and left-wing extremists that the majority are waiting to hear The Call to rise up. In this case, 60 million people voted for naked white supremacy against every other consideration. Trump won. It isn’t that hard for them to lie to themselves and think they’ll only face a few weak, easily intimidated brown people. If they didn’t have that world view, they wouldn’t be white supremacists.
Frankensteinbeck
@Lavocat:
Thank you. Our luck has been excellent, much better than most people expected. The white supremacists coming out from hiding has overwhelmingly had the effect of hardening liberal determination, while shattering the confidence Trump’s victory gave them.
Mustang Bobby
Okay, so how do I extract the video for posting?
Steeplejack
@Mustang Bobby:
Get it here.
Kathleen
@hellslittlestangel: He (and Mort Sahl) were also critics of Warren Commission findings. I remember seeing him on TV when I was a kid. My dad was a big fan.
ExpatDanBKK
She needs a K-Bar, actually….so he really understands what is going on. IMHO.
ExpatDanBKK
@Cheryl Rofer: Love it…
ExpatDanBKK
@ExpatDanBKK: Not to use it, mind you. But to pound the point home. These idiots, glorifying war. They never took a life, so it seems Hollywood glamorous.
ExpatDanBKK
@Sab: I am from Detroit. Not the suburbs, but the city. So yes, I agree. Cleveland is pretty cool, actually.
ThresherK
Who else hear just learned what a waifu pillow is, and wishes they could unlearn it?
WaterGirl
@ThresherK: I didn’t know that was a thing, so I decided it was “wife and pillow” and wondered what that was. Will you share the meaning so I don’t have to google?
Vhh
@Chet Murthy: I read book on evolution of german army tactics, which were based on prussian army tactics which were drawn from the phalanx of Alexander the Great. Optimized for fighting against superior numbers like 8 to 1. Look at tank loss ratios in the Battle of Kursk. Soviets won, but lost 5-10 x as many tanks. I am working in big science project in Germany, attention to detail, precision very evident. But present day German military weak, a concern given E. European situation.
feckless
Can’t wait to see Shelby Foote’s commentary on General Bannon’s retreat.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: It’s a body pillow with an anime girl on it.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Wow, who knew? I need to get out more! thanks.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I had to go and look. Couldn’t help myself. Now I need to delete my browser history and scrub my brain with bleach.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: I hope those pillows have a removable, washable cover. All those stains out become embarrassing after while.
Jay
@Vhh:
Nope,
At the end of WWI, the Western Allies finally mastered “The Push”,
Recon, mines, artillary softening up, as far as the German’s 3’rd line, a walking barrage, followed by Shock Troops, like the Canadians, Auzzies, Colonials, backed by tanks, across a broad front.
The German counterpoint, was the Stormtrooper. Heavily armed, ( grenades and submachine guns), who would launch a diversion attack at point A, a main assault at point B, would avoid strongpoints and flow to the rear, cutting off communications, supplies and lines of retreat. Following the Stormtroopers would come the regular Infantry, who would surround and reduce the strongpoints and points of resistance.
After WWI, the German’s adapted their Stormtrooper tactics to armoured warfare.
The Soviets developed the concept of “Deep Battle”, 3 defensive lines with a 50 km depth, to adapt for mobile warfare, but lost it in Stalin’s purges.
In the West, not much changed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hGpdXRaILe0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKKcTCG5Yq
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k_tE44O9wQs