Charlottesville

[kscarbel2]

For heaven's sakes, don't any of these people have a life........something better to do?

Three lives senselessly and prematurely snuffed out.

Why not head down to the Outer Banks with your family for some fishing, take them down to Virginia Beach, head over to West Virginia and canoe the Greenbrier river, or get on with restoring your prized classic car or truck?

All lives matter........white, black, purple, pink and other.

If/when our sun dies, a nuclear mushroom appears on the horizon, or an overdue meteor hits the earth with such force that.................., all this is going to immediately fade into insignificance.

Cultural decay and declining standards of behavior in our beloved United States.

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[41chevy]

 Since Trump got elected this has been growing. Well today, both sides kept pushing for war with each other.  Both groups of morons finally got their wish, no pity for those who escalated it, hope they all get Virginia's death penalty,because of  both sides actions and stupidity, it  caused the death of a civilian and two Virginia State Troopers. Toss in David Duke for inciting his sides and REVOLT / Antifa for their part.  AND  because of the medias taking sides, this will only be the start, it will get far, far bloodier.

I've survived fighting in 2 wars and this is much more fearful to me than  Vietnam in 71'  or Egypt in 73'

Edited August 14, 2017 by 41chevy

[kscarbel2]

AP Explains: How Robert E. Lee went from hero to racist icon

Russell Contreras, Associated Press  /  August 13, 2017

Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee was vilified during the Civil War only to become a heroic symbol of the South's "Lost Cause" - and eventually a racist icon.

His transformation, at the center of the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, reflects the changing moods in the United States around race, mythology and national reconciliation, historians say.

Lee monuments, memorials and schools in his name erected at the turn of the 20th Century are now facing scrutiny amid a demographically changing nation.

But who was Robert E. Lee beyond the myth? Why are there memorials in his honor in the first place?

THE SOLDIER

A son of American Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, Robert E. Lee graduated second in his class at West Point and distinguished himself in various battles during the U.S.-Mexico War. As tensions heated around southern secession, Lee's former mentor, Gen. Winfield Scott, offered him a post to lead the Union's forces against the South. Lee declined, citing his reservations about fighting against his home state of Virginia.

Lee accepted a leadership role in the Confederate forces although he had little experience leading troops. He struggled but eventually became a general in the Confederate Army, winning battles largely because of incompetent Union Gen. George McClellan. He would win other important battles against other Union's generals, but he was often stalled. He was famously defeated at Gettysburg by Union Maj. Gen. George Meade. Historians say Lee's massed infantry assault across a wide plain was a gross miscalculation in the era of artillery and rifle fire.

A few weeks after becoming the general in chief of the armies of the Confederate states, Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865.

THE SLAVE OWNER

A career army officer, Lee didn't have much wealth, but he inherited a few slaves from his mother. Still, Lee married into one of the wealthiest slave-holding families in Virginia - the Custis family of Arlington and descendants of Martha Washington. When Lee's father-in-law died, he took leave from the U.S. Army to run the struggling estate and met resistance from slaves expecting to be freed.

Documents show Lee was a cruel figure with his slaves and encouraged his overseers to severely beat slaves captured after trying to escape. One slave said Lee was one of the meanest men she had ever met.

In a 1856 letter, Lee wrote that slavery is "a moral & political evil." But Lee also wrote in the same letter that God would be the one responsible for emancipation and blacks were better off in the U.S. than Africa.

THE LOST CAUSE ICON

After the Civil War, Lee resisted efforts to build Confederate monuments in his honor and instead wanted the nation to move on from the Civil War.

After his death, Southerners adopted "The Lost Cause" revisionist narrative about the Civil War and placed Lee as its central figure. The Lost Cause argued the South knew it was fighting a losing war and decided to fight it anyway on principle. It also tried to argue that the war was not about slavery but high constitutional ideals.

As The Lost Cause narrative grew in popularity, proponents pushed to memorialize Lee, ignoring his deficiencies as a general and his role as a slave owner. Lee monuments went up in the 1920s just as the Ku Klux Klan was experiencing a resurgence and new Jim Crow segregation laws were adopted.

The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, went up in 1924. A year later, the U.S. Congress voted to use federal funds to restore the Lee mansion in the Arlington National Cemetery.

The U.S. Mint issued a coin in his honor, and Lee has been on five postage stamps. No other Union figure besides President Abraham Lincoln has similar honors.

A NEW MEMORY

A generation after the civil rights movement, black and Latino residents began pressuring elected officials to dismantle Lee and other Confederate memorials in places like New Orleans, Houston and South Carolina. The removals partly were based on violent acts committed white supremacists using Confederate imagery and historians questioning the legitimacy of The Lost Cause.

A Gen. Robert E. Lee statue was removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans as the last of four monuments to Confederate-era figures to be removed under a 2015 City Council vote.

The Houston Independent School District also voted in 2016 to rename Robert E. Lee High School, a school with a large Latino population, as Margaret Long Wisdom High School.

Earlier this year, the Charlottesville, Virginia, City Council voted to remove its Lee statue from a city park, sparking a lawsuit from opponents of the move. The debate also drew opposition from white supremacists and neo-Nazis who revered Lee and the Confederacy. The opposition resulted in rallies to defend Lee statues this weekend that resulted in at least three deaths.

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The Statue at the Center of Charlottesville’s Storm

The New York Times  /  August 13, 2017

Since white nationalists marched Friday in Charlottesville, Va., the quiet college town has seen a nighttime brawl lit up by torches and smartphones, and worse violence that left one person dead and dozens injured.

At the center of the chaos is a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee. It depicts the Confederacy’s top general, larger than life, astride a horse, both green with oxidation.

The white nationalists were in Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to remove that statue, and counterdemonstrators were there to oppose them. The statue — begun by Henry Merwin Shrady, a New York sculptor, and finished after his death by an Italian, Leo Lentelli — had stood in the city since 1924. But over the past couple of years some residents and city officials, along with organizations like the N.A.A.C.P., had called for it to come down.

One local official made a similar suggestion as early as 2012 and quickly discovered that emotions surrounding the issue run deep.

‘Ugly stuff bubbled up’

It was during the Virginia Festival of the Book, a series of readings and events held every year in AlbemarleCounty, which includes Charlottesville.

At a talk given by the author and historian Edward Ayers, a Charlottesville city councilor, Kristin Szakos, asked about the city’s Confederate monuments. She wondered whether the city should discuss removing them.

People around her gasped. “You would have thought I had asked if it was O.K. to torture puppies,” she recalled during a 2013 conversation on BackStory, a podcast supported by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

The response to her comment was heated, and swift. Ms. Szakos said she received threats via phone and email. “I felt like I had put a stick in the ground, and kind of ugly stuff bubbled up from it,” she said.

It was a local turning point, helped along by national events. Ms. Szakos’s comment came about a month after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17, in Florida. The trial and eventual acquittal of the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, helped fan the flames of the Black Lives Matter protests, which erupted into full force in 2014 following the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

By 2015, debates about Confederate flags and monuments were heating up in Southern states including South Carolina, Texas and Louisiana. Those who favored removal saw the symbols as monuments to white supremacy, but their opponents accused them of trying to erase history.

In Charlottesville that year, someone spray-painted “Black Lives Matter” on the foundation of the Lee statue. City workers cleaned it quickly, leaving only a faint outline.

Buildup to a vote

By 2016, Wes Bellamy, another Charlottesville city councilor and the city’s vice mayor, had become a champion of efforts to remove Confederate monuments. At a news conference in front of the Lee statue in March of that year, he said the City Council would appoint a commission to discuss the issue.

“When I see the multitude of people here who are so passionate about correcting something that they feel should have been done a long time ago, I am encouraged,” he said to the crowd of residents in front of him. Some clapped. Others shouted, accusing Mr. Bellamy of sowing division.

That same month, Zyahna Bryant, a high school student, petitioned the City Council asking for the Lee statue to be removed. “My peers and I feel strongly about the removal of the statue because it makes us feel uncomfortable and it is very offensive,” she wrote in the petition, which collected hundreds of signatures.

The City Council established its special commission in May 2016. Later that year, it issued a report suggesting that the city could either relocate the Lee statue or transform it with the “inclusion of new accurate historical information.”

The addition of historical context might have been welcomed by some defenders of the statues. One group, Friends of C’Ville Monuments, said on its website that statues could be improved “by adding more informative, better detailed explanations of the history of the statues and what they can teach us.”

But in February, the City Council voted to remove the statue from the park. Opponents of the move sued in March, arguing that the city did not have the authority to do so under state law.

That court case is continuing, and the statue has remained in place. It was the focal point for a gathering held in May by the white nationalist Richard Spencer, who was among the demonstrators in Charlottesville this weekend. In June, the City Council gave Lee Park a new name — EmancipationPark.

‘Unite the Right’

The rally that descended into violence Saturday was organized by Jason Kessler, a relative newcomer to the white nationalist scene who is well known in Charlottesville, where he has fought against the city’s status as a sanctuary city for immigrants.

A self-described “journalist, activist and author,” Mr. Kessler also waged a monthslong online media campaign against Mr. Bellamy, whom he depicted as anti-white.

More recently, Mr. Kessler became involved in the fight against renaming Lee Park — one reason for the “Unite the Right” rally this weekend. The rally was by far Mr. Kessler’s largest undertaking yet. Last week, he won an injunction in federal court against the city, which had voted to revoke a permit for the rally.

“This is my First Amendment right,” Mr. Kessler said of the rally during a news conference on Thursday. “This is the right of every American to be able to peaceably assemble and speak their mind free of intimidation. That’s why I decided to do it.”

With the lawsuit over the Lee statue still unresolved, it remains unclear what will become of it. The violence this weekend was one of the bloodiest fights over the campaigns across the South to remove Confederate monuments, and the statue remains a lightning rod in Charlottesville. Mr. Spencer, for his part, has promised to return.

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[kscarbel2]

Paul, it sounds like the state police helicopter was shot down. Don't you think?

It was intentionally hovering over a neighborhood, typically a surveillance action, and suddenly it spun out and crashed. 

The public was blocked from the scene............they don't want a rash of copy-cat incidences around the country. 

[41chevy]

I think it's doubtful. From the  pre crash video it appears the tail rotor or rotor drive cable drive failed. Fireball reported could be cable parts ingested into the turbine power pack. I would put it on fatigue or maintenance before any  other theorizes..  Paul

Edited August 14, 2017 by 41chevy

[kscarbel2]

 

I think it's doubtful. From the  pre crash video it appears the tail rotor or rotor drive cable drive failed. Fireball reported could be cable parts ingested into the turbine power pack. I would put it on fatigue or maintenance before any  other theorizes..  Paul

But what are the odds that a failure occurs on the day it's surveilling this event. It was reported to be hovering low, one assumes for a purpose, prior to the failure.

[41chevy]

Closer to the ground, the more stress on the rotor and blade and related systems from the ground buffeting and pilot control actions, add to the the pilots adrenalin level, nervousness and add low altitude into the equation and things go bad to fast to correct properly. You normally have four routes of action , you have the time, calmness and experience to safe the unit,  you over correct, you under correct or react to slow due to indecision or inexperience. At low altitude the last three are most always fatal.

The crash site would be closed off because of  weapons on board, preserving the wreckage as intact as possible for analysis and safety.   Paul

Edited August 14, 2017 by 41chevy

[DailyDiesel]

Nazi's killing people on American soil in the year 2017. Absolutely disgusting. I guess I am too young or maybe delusional but I thought this type of crap was in the past. It was a rude awaking this past weekend to realize the hate is still alive and well. I can't believe my grandfather and his five brothers fought these losers all across Europe only to have them pop up again here.

[HeavyGunner]

It's sad that our nation is so divided and very sad that some dirt bags killed some people but I must ask where is the media when it's time to simply report the news and not spin it? From what I've heard and read the Unite the Right rally was peaceful until the Antifa and black lives Matter people showed up from out of town and started acting violent. Why isn't the media reporting about them throwing feces and urine on their opposition? Because it's a way sexier story to continue demonizing all whites especially if they don't share the same beliefs as the left. The left seems to enjoy preaching tolerance....as long as you agree 100% with them. If not they do everything they preach against until everyone is intimidated into agreeing (or at least publicly saying they do) with the.  Now some dirt bag loon decides to kill people all white conservatives are Nazis and the media all but says that repeatedly. I truly hope our country can unite enough to call a spade a spade and stop this racial division bs that the left keeps perpetuating. Telling someone they have been wronged enough times and they believe it. Telling them that the world has always been against you and everyone who's not the same color as you gets special privileges enough times and they believe. The democrats have been preaching in my opinion this hate speech that does nothing (except get them elected because they can fix it right?) except breed contempt amongst the races instead of exceptionalism. I truly hope both sides of these violent, race baiting groups start getting the maximum sentences under the law and that the news will start just reporting the news and stop spinning everything simply for ratings. Ok rant over for awhile  

 

[TeamsterGrrrl]

It was a white supremacist Trump supporter who participated in the rally and fatally attacked the counter protesters with a 4000 pound lethal weapon.

[41chevy]

 

It was a white supremacist Trump supporter who participated in the rally and fatally attacked the counter protesters with a 4000 pound lethal weapon.

From what I see on CNN, MSNBC and the NY Times all the violence was Trump and David Duke  supporters.  MSNBC stated they have a video of the MAGA people shooting down the chopper.

[HeavyGunner]

 

It was a white supremacist Trump supporter who participated in the rally and fatally attacked the counter protesters with a 4000 pound lethal weapon.

Yep and a Bernie supporter just shot up the republicans at softball practice if you want to dummy it down like that.  So all Hillary/Bernie supporters are cold blooded killers then right? 

Edited August 14, 2017 by HeavyGunner

[HeavyGunner]

 

From what I see on CNN, MSNBC and the NY Times all the violence was Trump and David Duke  supporters.  MSNBC stated they have a video of the MAGA people shooting down the chopper.

That's what my above post was about. This spinning crap. Right now that's what the majority of the leftist media is doing. The sad thing is they're doing it for biased, political reasons rather than unbiasedly reporting the news. 

[Truck Shop]

This doesn't have anything to do with D's or R's. What it has to do with is a group who hates, and when they run out of their favorite people to hate they will just find someone else.

It's been in progress since 1865, and here it is 2017 and it seems some Americans haven't learned much.

Truck Shop

[Underdog]

I don't categorize any of this behavior as hate. I see it as ignorance. 

[TeamsterGrrrl]

This is beyond ignorance... It is about creating a false narrative about whole groups of people (minorities, women, gays, etc.) complete with a faked "history", then encouraging the believers to take violent action against those groups. That's how a young man from Ohio ends up thinking it's OK to ram his car into counter protesters.

[Mack Technician]

Low complexity issue.

America = Know God, Know Peace / No God, No Peace.

 

 

 

 

[TeamsterGrrrl]

You're free to practice your choice of religion, but America has no state religion.

[Mack Technician]

See, I don't even want to run you over with my car.

I   liberals... for bearing the image of God (but not a whole lot more).

[HeavyGunner]

 

See, I don't even want to run you over with my car.

I   liberals... for bearing the image of God (but not a whole lot more).

Since there still isn't a button "like"

[Outbehindthebarn]

 

Nazi's killing people on American soil in the year 2017. Absolutely disgusting. I guess I am too young or maybe delusional but I thought this type of crap was in the past. It was a rude awaking this past weekend to realize the hate is still alive and well. I can't believe my grandfather and his five brothers fought these losers all across Europe only to have them pop up again here.

I'm sorry but come on... Do you get as upset when you see the Alt-Left waving the Hammer and Sickle? We were in a cold war with them that lasted 50 years.. and a few hot ones too.  (My father, a Tet Offensive veteran saw the Left in full bloom in '68) The Neo-Marxist are driving their agenda far more effectively from the college campuses and the MSM than the trifling number of actual Neo-Nazis or so-called white supremacists ... I went to a Christian University and to see the hammer and sickle on a dorm wall was seen as edgy and cool... but by-God... a Swastika?? you'd be expelled... Yet Stalin alone was responsible for murdering over 60 million people in his own country. THINK THINK THINK check your bias, because it clearly exists. READ READ READ "Gulag Archipelago" 

[kscarbel2]

Is the U.S. in a state of anarchy?

How are so many people now above the rule of law?

Why are the Durham police not present arresting these blatant vandals ???

I try to respect all views, but people have no right to destroy public statues.

There was a war, and from it we have statues of respected individuals from both sides. It's history........get over it.

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[DailyDiesel]

 

I'm sorry but come on... Do you get as upset when you see the Alt-Left waving the Hammer and Sickle? We were in a cold war with them that lasted 50 years.. and a few hot ones too.  (My father, a Tet Offensive veteran saw the Left in full bloom in '68) The Neo-Marxist are driving their agenda far more effectively from the college campuses and the MSM than the trifling number of actual Neo-Nazis or so-called white supremacists ... I went to a Christian University and to see the hammer and sickle on a dorm wall was seen as edgy and cool... but by-God... a Swastika?? you'd be expelled... Yet Stalin alone was responsible for murdering over 60 million people in his own country. THINK THINK THINK check your bias, because it clearly exists. READ READ READ "Gulag Archipelago" 

Moral equivalency is poor defense or argument to explain current events. The Nazi and Soviet regimes were both equally abhorrent in their beliefs and actions and I do not have to denounce both of them on equal terms to be upset with one group more than the next.

But you're right, I do have a bias against Nazis, Neo Nazis and all their feeble minded brethren.

[BillyT]

The union troops resting along the roadway to Appomattox courthouse when Gen Lee rode in to surrender came to attention and saluted him as he went by! A good man fighting for a bad cause!

[TeamsterGrrrl]

Good men do not fight for bad causes.