FREIGHT TRAINS AND TORNADOES

These are videos posted at the YOU TUBE web site of two different railroad trains encountering tornadoes.

The first two instances were posted by "HARLEYGUY 150", and occurred in Chicago Heights, Illinois and Griffith, Indiana on Saturday 07 June 2008.

The third video shows a tornado striking a railroad train on Monday 07 January 2008, derailing numerous freight cars, including a hazardous materials car, which caused the town of Lawrence, Illinois to be evacuated.

"COWBOY POETS OF IDAHO"

Words and Music by:
JOHN ROBERT "SAIGON" MALLERNEE
Sunday 20 April 1997

VERSE # 1:
From the peaks of snowy mountains
To the sun-baked desert floor
A spirit wind is whistling
An ancient tune once more.
So, step down from your pony,
And settle down a while.
We'll swap some lies
And sing a song
And everyone will smile.
A railroad locomotive
And some coyotes harmonize
Our heroes and our history
Beneath our Western skies.
The campfire's warmly blazing
And the stars above us glow.
It's time once more to gather
Cowboy Poets of Idaho!

VERSE # 2:
There's two sisters from Wyoming
And a rancher from Rigby.
Some youngsters playing fiddles
Will set our troubles free.
There's the Mountain Man from Kooskia
And some Utah cattle men,
An old sheep herder tells some jokes
That makes the cowboys grin.
They gather at the "Roxy"
Every year in early spring
To tell the stories of the West
And some will play and sing,
There's lots of local talent
When it's time to do a show,
We're only just beginning:
Cowboy Poets of Idaho!

VERSE # 3:
From Montana and Wyoming,
Old Utah and Oregon:
The legends of the cowboys
Will still live on and on.
Oh, yes, the Indian nations
Are part of our Old West!
There's triumph and there's tragedy
In every human test.
I'm so glad that I am living
In a place so wild and free
Where folks are independent
And they are what they will be.
I think I hear some yodelling,
So, it's time for us to go.
Our show is just beginning:
Cowboy Poets of Idaho!

CODA:
The Audience is cheering!
We can feel their happy glow!
Our show is just beginning:
Cowboy Poets of Idaho!

"FOR YOUR PRECIOUS LOVE"

"HIGH ON THE MOUNTAINTOP"

"STAND BY ME"

A VERY SAD ANNIVERSARY

This was one of the saddest days of my entire life, for this was MY war, where I served in the United States Army from 12 December 1969 until 21 February 1972:

I remember sitting in the living room and watching the news on television.

At the time, I was living with my new bride, Bonnie, in Walker Village, a military housing area on Fort Hood, Texas, where I was a sergeant and a squad leader in the Scout Section for the Second Battalion of the Twelfth Cavalry Regiment in the First Cavalry Division.

STANDING FOR THE CONSTITUTION

These are videos of Bob Wright, from the New Mexico Militia, speaking at the RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION rally on Monday19 April 2010 at Fort Hunt National Park in Virginia.

THE "OLD GUARD"

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Greetings and Salutations to All my Kith and Kin and All the Ships in Outer Space:

For a larger view, please click on the picture.

In this official United States Army photograph taken by Sergeant Erica Vinyard, and published in the May 2010 issue of SOLDIERS magazine, (left to right) Sergeant Benton Thames, Sergeant Jeff Binek and Specialist William Johnson, assigned to the Third Infantry Regiment "Old Guard", change the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, Commonwealth of Virginia.

Thank you.

John Robert Mallernee 

Armed Forces Retirement Home 

1800 Beach Drive, Unit 311 

Gulfport, Mississippi  39507

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UNITED STATES ARMY PHOTOGRAPHS

For a larger view, please click on the pictures.

Doctor Richard R. Boone of Wimberley, Texas, a psychologist and Department of Defense civilian deployed to Afghanistan as a member of a Human Terrain System, interviews local residents of the Baraki Barak District in Afghanistan's Logar province, to find out about their attitudes and daily lives on Saturday 17 April 2010.

A United States Army UH-60 "Blackhawk" helicopter flies over some scenic landscape on Friday 23 April 2010, while traveling to the location of a leaflet drop informing local people of an upcoming radio broadcast in Joghatoe District, Logar province, Afghanistan.

In this photograph taken by Sergeant Russell Gilchrest, American soldiers from the Fourth Battalion, Third Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, in the Third Infantry Division "Rock of the Marne" and Afghan soldiers walk with Afghan civilians to a helicopter pick-up landing site in the village of Kopak in the Mohammud-Agha district, Logar province, Afghanistan, on Thursday 22 April 2010.

In this official United States Air Force photograph taken by Staff Sergeant Quinton Russ, a group of American soldiers and airmen at Joint Base Balad, Iraq are briefed prior to going out on a patrol to look for weapons on Wednesday 14 April 2010.
 

A member of the Falcon Team, the aviation detachment at the United States Army Joint Multinational Readiness Center at Hohenfels, Germany, performs a visual inspection of the Joint Multinational Readiness Center's newest aircraft, a UH-72A "Lakota" helicopter, which will be used at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center Combat Training Center, on Ramstein Air Force Base on Monday 19 April 2010.

SPEECH BY MIKE VANDERBOEGH

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This is the speech given by Mike Vanderboegh, a leader in the THREE PERCENT movement, at the RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION rally on Monday 19 April 2010 at Fort Hunt National Park in the Commonwealth of Virginia:

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To paraphrase George Patton, I thought I'd stand up here and give y'all a chance to see if I'm as big and bad a "mad dog militia terrorist" as Rachel Madcow, Chris Matthews, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Medved, and Billy Jeff Clinton say that I am.

You know I'm grateful to them for all the free publicity, especially from ole Billy Jeff. You know, when you're denounced by a serial perjuror that has special meaning, and you know that you have arrived. But there's one thing I want to straighten out right here and now. Billy Jeff says that we are, we Three Percenters, are "unhinged and disgruntled." But that's not true. You see this? (Holds up a small gate hinge) Here's my hinge. All right? So I am not "unhinged." I have my hinge. You notice? There's three holes in each side.

Now as far as being "disgruntled," I am reliably informed that in the Commonwealth of Virginia it is illegal to show your "gruntle" in public. That being the case, and if it's true in Virginia it must be true in Alabama, and I intend to go back to Alabama and live my life in peace for as long as God gives me, you ain't gonna see my "gruntle." That's between me and Rosey, my beautiful wife, so I don't care what Bill Clinton says.

Now as they said, my name is Mike Vanderboegh and I'm a Three Percenter. George Washington was a Three Percenter. Three percent of the population of the American colonies took the field against the King in the American Revolution. They were actively supported by another ten percent of the population with another twenty percent for the Revolution but willing to do no more than just say "Rah! Rah!" Another third of the population supported the King. In fact, by the end of the war there were more American colonists in the forces of the King than there were in the forces of the Revolution. And the other third of the population blew with the wind and took what came. Kind of like today.

As I say, my name is Mike Vanderboegh but lately I could be mistaken for Emmanuel Goldstein of the "Two Minute Hate" in George Orwell's 1984. Everybody I think wants to hate me. I think it's because across the political spectrum I scare them. I don't know why. I mean, I'm just a fat old scribbler who's got congestive heart failure and diabetic feet. Maybe it's the cane.

But, no, seriously I understand why. I understand why I scare them. I understand why YOU scare 'em. And understand that - - - YOU. SCARE. THEM. The people who put up the "We Are Everywhere" stickers. The people who threw some Three Percent bricks through some local political party windows. They scare them. They scare the bejeezus out of 'em. And I'll tell you why.

My call to break the windows of local Democrat Party headquarters, even though it was answered by just a few people across the country from New York to Alaska, caused the talking heads to begin denouncing me in prime time, and I started receiving death threats by phone and email, and some fellow from Virginia claiming to be Dick Cheney sent me a powdery substance in an Easter card. You know there must be a special place in Hell for people who profane Easter cards.

But the fact that I called on folks to start pushing back - - - pushing back against the last seventy-five years where it is WE who have been pushed back from the natural exercise of our liberties - - - of our God-given, inalienable, natural liberties. It scared these political mandarins. It scared these elitists. They believe that they know what's best for us.

But it is in fact our own fault that we are in this situation. Each time these revolutionists of gradualism cut another piece off of the Founders' Republic, off of the Constitution, each time we backed up, grumbling, but we didn't shove back. We have not shoved back. So, why should we expect that they're going to quit shoving?

By calling for this limited campaign against the windows of local political offices, I hoped to make them understand that this situation was coming to a fundamental break where people - - - the guilty and innocent alike - - - were going to begin dying for their own stupid failure to comprehend the real situation that we are all in.

For wars are always started by people who think they won't start, that they can't start. They are started, usually by clueless, arrogant, grasping people, people with a hunger for power, no matter how they cloak it in good intentions - - - people who believe they have a right to tell other folks how to live, what to buy, where to go, how to act and insist that they pay for the privilege, that WE pay for the privilege, and that WE like it or lump it. They start the wars, these wannabe tyrants, because they think they can get away with it, they think that they will not be opposed, or that the opposition will be minimal. They start them because they think that in starting them there will be no PERSONAL consequences for them for starting it.

This is what i was trying to accomplish with my call to break a few windows. I was trying to get the attention of people - - - who are pushing this country toward civil war - - - that they should stop before somebody gets hurt.

This is also the theme of my novel, ABSOLVED. It is titled after this quote from John Locke that the Founders embraced:

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”

Writing about the fictional run-up to a civil war, I am trying to avoid a real one. I hope people will read Absolved and class it as a "useful dire warning" as David Brin calls the genre. By warning folks of the unintended consequences of their actions, I hope to avoid them myself.

And, oh, by the way, for those of you who have been flogging me about when ABSOLVED will be done - - - here it is. (Holds up a thumb drive.) My part is done, and it will be sent off to the editor and publisher next week.

But whatever I have written over the past few years - - - including my call to adopt the tactics of the Sons of Liberty of old and break windows - - - this is my motive: I want to avoid a civil war - - - the worst of all wars - - - because I know from history what one looks like and they are the sum of all evils.

For this is what the other side does not understand. This is what the forces of the King of England did not understand on the Nineteenth of April in 1775.

WE ARE DONE BACKING UP.

Done!

Not one more inch!

You know, years ago I was a Civil War re-enactor and one Sunday coming back from an event, two friends and I stopped at a gas station in a little Mississippi town.

When we pulled up, there was a big guy there, missing a few teeth, who was whipping a dog with a busted fan belt. (And it wasn't even his dog.) All the poor dog could do was cringe and yelp. I was driving and I pulled up to the pump. We didn't know it but someone inside the station - - - not wanting to get personally involved - - - had called the cops, but it was Sunday and the nearest Sheriff's car was miles away. In fact, they didn't get there while were there. They told us. They thanked us. But they didn't want to get involved.

We hadn't been stopped for more than a few seconds when my buddy Chris, who was about half the size of the dog-whipper, took it all in with a glance and said, to no one in particular, "Oh, HELL NO!"

Any of you from the South, you probably know what that means. "Oh, HELL NO!"

Just three words: "Oh, HELL NO!" It was an observation. It was an announcement. It was a battle cry. And without further ado Chris launched himself across that parking lot - - - and he's only about half the size of this toothless fellow - - - and he stripped that broken fan belt out of his hand and he commenced to whaling on the guy. Of course, the two of us were looking pretty rough from a weekend and it's Sunday - - - all grizzled and dirty and dressed in funny clothes - - - and we go to back him up. When this fellow starts to recover - - - and he decides, "Hey, I'm bigger than this guy, I'm gonna beat him" - - - and then he sees the two of us coming up, he decides that he's had enough and he jumped in his car and drove off.

Now this is a quintessentially Southern thing, this "Oh, HELL NO!" All right? You gotta say it just like that. Let's practice it. "Oh, HELL NO!" The accent's on the "HELL!"

All right?

It is indeed a uniquely AMERICAN thing. When you hear it - - - where I come from - - - you know that somebody's gonna get beat, stabbed or shot. And the guy who takes the beating, the knife blade or the bullet undoubtedly deserves it.

"Oh, HELL NO!"

For you can push Americans only so far.

There is a great truth in the movie MICHAEL COLLINS, where the Irish freedom fighter, played by Liam Neeson, is speaking to an election crowd in 1918. He tells them, in part:

"They can jail us. They can shoot us. . . BUT . . . we have a weapon more powerful than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon is our refusal! Our refusal to bow to any order but our own! Any institution but our own!"

This is a great truth, this is an enduring truth. For no one can be enslaved without giving his permission. Whether out of fear, out of cowardice, out of a desire to not be "confrontational" - - - the slave gives his assent to his master.

But we are AMERICANS.

We are the folks who say, "Oh, HELL NO!"

This is something that the enemies of the Founders' Republic do not understand. They extrapolate from their own cowardice and, knowing that they themselves have no principles for which they are willing to die - - - life being the most important thing to them - - - they cannot fathom that there are other people who are certainly willing to die for a principle. And I think I see some of them here today.

And so, because they cannot understand folks who have an entirely different worldview from them, folks who do not believe that the government should have the supreme power over the people - - - folks who believe like the Founders that government should be small, safe and limited - - - because they cannot understand us, they call us names, they try to marginalize us, and they think that we are merely posturing, that we will never seriously push back against their infringements of our liberty.

Which brings us to today. What is it about law-abiding American citizens, exercising their God-given and inalienable right to arms, announcing their adherence to the ancient concept of righteous self defense - - - folks who believe that a right unexercised is a right that has been lost - - - what is it that so excites our opponents to condemn us, to vilify us, to try to marginalize us, indeed, to seek to disarm us?

It is this - - - ,

It is only CITIZENS who have arms.

Serfs, indentured servants and slaves do not. Bearing arms is the mark of a citizen, and the elitists who run the various parties, as one corrupt administration follows another, find citizens extremely inconvenient to their plans. You must CONVINCE citizens - - - by force of argument, by appeals to reason or fact or even emotion - - - but you must CONVINCE them. You cannot order them about as serfs.

For CITIZENS have arms, and citizens can say, and after a long train of abuses and usurpations, "Oh, HELL NO!"

AND WATCH OUT WHEN THEY DO.

Gentlemen and ladies and Nancy Pelosi too.

WATCH OUT WHEN WE DO.

The ability to say "No!" is the difference between a free man or free woman and a slave. Slaves cannot say "No!" and remain slaves. Indeed, over the long span of history, this is how slaves ennobled themselves and freed themselves - - - by saying "No!" and meaning it - - - regardless of all dangers, regardless even if it meant their deaths. They said "No!" and became free, even if for an instant. Finally, throwing off their yokes, they died as Spartacus and his followers, as free men and free women.

It's a funny thing about this word "no." The collectivists have taken to calling the GOP, "the party of no." Probably because they never heard a Southener say, "Oh, HELL NO!"

I don't know where they've been these past fifteen years, but in my experience the GOP is the party of "well, you know, you'd better not do that, but if you insist, then well, okay, we'll just catch up in the next election cycle."

Pat Buchanan had at least this much right: the two dominant political parties have acted as two wings of the same bird of prey.

And so it has fallen to the people, to the Tea Parties, to the Open Carry movement, and all the other manifestations of righteous resistance to cumulative tyranny to say, "Oh, HELL NO!"

You can say that, right? "Oh, HELL NO?"

"Oh, HELL NO!"

That's getting better.

You'll have to work on it, though.

This is as the Founders intended it. It is why they left us the Second Amendment. Not that we derive our natural, God-given rights from a piece of paper, however much revered. That piece of paper merely codifies that which cannot be taken away without our consent. They may change what it says on the piece of paper, but that does not change the eternal truth of liberty.

And it sure doesn't prevent men and women - - - free men and free women - - - from saying, "Oh, HELL NO!"

And that exclamation point is important. If you say "no" softly, tentatively, apologetically, some people - - - obtuse, arrogant, greedy, evil people people - - - take it as a "maybe." Some of them take it as a "yes."

You know the anti-rape activists have popularized the saying of "No means no" - - - as if chanting it like a mantra somehow provides potential rape victims with magical powers. But I tell you, when someone says "No means no" and says it while packing a firearm to back up the sentiment, the argument is OVER.

So we who intend to remain free must say it - - - as I think we are all saying it here today - - - Loudly. Proudly. Emphatically.

"NO! "

We must say it as the Spartans did at Thermopylae,

"NO!"

We must say it as did the Jews at Masada,

"NO!"

We must shout it as the Texans did in defiance at the Alamo and in triumph at San Jacinto,

"NO!"

We must scream it as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did sixty-seven years ago today,

"NO!"

We must say it calmly but forcefully like the veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice said it to the Klan when they guarded the advocates of non-violence - - - with the muzzles of their MILITARY rifles and their MILITARY pistols that they brought home from their service in America's wars - - - and said to the Klan,

"NO! You will not kill today!"

We must shout it as the veterans of McMinn County, Tennessee said it in 1946, as they prevented a corrupt political machine and its bully-boy sheriff from stealing another election in the "Battle of Athens",

"NO!"

We must say it as the Founders did at Lexington and Concord and on the long, bloody road strewn with dead King's men back into Boston,

"NO!"

We must be stubborn if we wish to remain free.

We must emulate the Founders.

We must be resolute.

We must be defiant.

We must be AMERICANS.

We must say, gentlemen and ladies, "NO!"

And not just "NO!", but "HELL NO!"

And I thank you for your time.

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"SCREAMING EAGLES" ON PATROL

To view a larger version of these official United States Army photographs, which were taken by Sergeant Jeffrey Alexander, please click on the pictures.

As seen through a night vision device, soldiers from Company "D", Third Battalion, One Hundred and Eighty-Seventh Infantry Regiment, in the Third Brigade Combat Team "Rakkasans" of the One Hundred and First Airborne Division "Screaming Eagles" move through grasses to an overwatch position in Sabari, Khowst province, Afghanistan, on the night of Tuesday 06 April 2010.

First Lieutenant Nicholas Gregory, kneeling, and Sergeant First Class Robert White, from Company "D", Third Battalion, One Hundred and Eighty-Seventh Infantry Regiment, in the Third Brigade Combat Team "Rakkasans"of the One Hundred and First Airborne Division "Screaming Eagles" discuss where to move next in Bak, Khowst province, Afghanistan, on Monday 05 April 2010, on a mission to clear safe houses and search suspected cache sites.

WILLIAM WALLACE SAFE CONDUCT PASS

For a larger view, please click on the picture.

TRANSLATION:

Philip, by the grace of God, king of the French, to his beloved and loyal agents appointed at the Roman Court, greetings and favour. We command you that you ask the Supreme Pontiff to consider with favour our beloved William le Wallace of Scotland, knight, with regard to those things which concern him that he has to expedite.

Dated at Pierrefonds on the Monday after the feast of All Saints. (07 November 1300)

All Scots, those of Scottish blood, those with Scottish heritage, and/or anyone else who may be sympathetic and supportive of Scotland, are requested by the Parlamaid na h-Alba (i.e., the Scottish Parliament) to sign this official PETITION, either on the Internet, or by texting via cellular telephone, requesting the English to return the WILLIAM WALLACE SAFE CONDUCT PASS, currently on display in the national archives of England, to Scotland and the Scottish people.

SECOND BATTALION, TWELFTH CAVALRY REGIMENT

Here are current photographs of my old unit, the Second Battalion of the Twelfth Cavalry Regiment "THUNDERHORSE" in the First Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas.

For a larger view, please click on the pictures.

Preparing to engage

Learning to use a Browning M2 machine gun

Checking communications

The troopers are training in preparation for their scheduled deployment to Iraq several months from now.

It was while I was in this unit, that I successfully completed my training as a cavalry scout, earning both my spurs and the infantry branch cord.

Ah, but EVERYTHING in the United States Army has changed since then!!!

The only thing in these pictures that is familiar to me is that Browning M2 .50 calibre machine gun, which my United States Army has been using since the Second World War.

These photographs were taken on Thursday 08 April 2010 by Private First Class Angel Washington, of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs Office.

"THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD"

Today, the Nineteenth of April, is PATRIOTS' DAY, the two hundred and thirty-fifth anniversary of "the shot heard round the world" which began the American War for Indepenence in Seventeen Seventy-Five at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

For a larger view, please click on the pictures.

"THE MINUTE MAN" statue

in Lexington, Massachusetts

These famous words, penned in Eighteen Thirty-Six, are inscribed on the base of "THE MINUTE MAN" statue in Concord, Massachusetts: 

"CONCORD HYMN"
(Sung to the tune of, "OLD HUNDREDTH")

By: RALPH WALDO EMERSON

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

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This is the official deposition of Captain John Parker, describing the events of 19 April 1775 at the Battle of Lexington and Concord:

"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

Captain John Parker

 

Statue of Captain John Parker

in Concord, Massachusetts

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Also, in observance of this sacred date, I'm reposting this video:



"PARCHMENT, QUILL, AND THE PEOPLE'S WILL"

Words and Music by:
JOHN ROBERT MALLERNEE

Tuesday 21 October 1986
Ogden, Utah

VERSE # 1:
Parchment, quill,
And the people's will
In a sacred land;
With sword and pen,
The rebel men
Made a noble stand.

CHORUS:
The light goes forth
Throughout the World
To shine for all to see.
"We, the People" forevermore
Born of God to stay free!
"We, the People" forevermore
Born of God to stay free!

VERSE # 2:
Freedom's light
Was born of fight
Against a tyrant king.
Nothing's free
Or comes easily.
You work for everything.

VERSE # 3:
Federal power
Can grow by hour,
The Founders warned us all.
Search and fight
For what is right,
Or you'll see Liberty fall!