Harris Administration Provides Photographic Proof That Tiananmen Tim Was In Tiananmen Square In June 1989

Saving Bambi's Ass

I've seen this photo/story/meme out there for many years and it's a logical, cute story and there are few people that actually know the real story which, in my opinion, is better than the meme, but it isn't shared like the meme is:

The picture actually dates from 1958, during the Algerian War (i.e., a war for independence waged against French forces in Colonial Algeria). And it depicts a starving donkey that was rescued by a member of the French Foreign Legion who carried it back to his base, where the animal was nursed back to health, given the name “Bambi,” and adopted as a unit mascot, as described by author Douglas Porch in his 1991 history of the Legion:
Nineteen fifty-eight proved a very successful year for the Legion in another respect, it was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a similar recognition from the RSPCA in London, after a legionnaire of the 13e DBLE [13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion] rescued a starving donkey and returned it to his base where, renamed Bambi, it served the unit as a mascot. Interest was pricked among the “Anglo-Saxons” after London’s Daily Mail carried a photo of the donkey being carried on the back of a legionnaire. Attempts to award the Certificate of Merit to the generous legionnaire foundered upon [his maintaining anonymity]. However, the Chief Secretary of the RSPCA was informed by the Legion that numerous mascots follow each unit in its movements. In certain [units], the number of animals is greater than the strength in manpower.” Especially gratifying was the knowledge that Bambi “at the present time is enjoying an enviable destiny and that he is sharing the life of our legionnaires and even … their beer.”

A PBR sailor using a flamethrower to torch a hut that concealed a Viet Cong bunker underneath it. The rest of the crew are at the ready on their weapons. The PBR was based at Can Tho and was part of an effort to subdue a hostile canal near the Bassac River. February 1969.

Is it ironic/hilarious to anybody besides me that the ICONIC “Fight, Fight, Fight” photo of Trump is causing the Democrats and liberals so much terror when it wouldn’t even have happened if they hadn’t instigated and pushed for violence against Trump? THAT PHOTO IS THEIR FAULT. They didn’t expect him to survive and become an ‘almost’ martyr for the American cause. 

And now they don't want that photo to be seen ... ROFLMOAO.

Watch:
https://x.com/catturd2/status/1813637456430080124

A 1932 American Bantam that was used for ferry service over the Pudding River in Oregon. The operator removed the tires and placed rubber bands on the rims for traction. Three cables were strung, two for the wheels and the third attached through the top of the car for stability.

I think I've posted the photo (and several people on different sites on the internet claimed it was photoshopped.) before but I just accidentally located the short video clip below:

C.W. West of Barlow, Oregon gives campers and swimmers a one-of-a-kind ride with an American Bantam that runs on a cable bridge over the Pudding River. People pay a dime to enjoy the great view and leap out for a swim too. 1932.

https://www.efootage.com/videos/55485/unusual-car-ride-over-river-1932?fbclid=IwAR1tz2GL5HVVxypiN_4d7A-BGOfF4AYqS1o7tPtrhHOgNQB6oKE9mpA_NyU

Soldiers float a Jeep across the Mogaung River, pulling it along using a cable strung across the river. The Jeep has been wrapped in waterproofed canvas tarp which allows it to float. The soldiers, from an unidentified signal unit, are making their way to Kamaing, Burma. June 1944. (US Army photo)

 

In 1880-1888, a ferry service took people from St. Augustine, FL across what was then known as Matanzas Bay to Anastasia Island? Once there, they boarded this mule-drawn trolley with wooden rails which took them to the beach at Lighthouse Park. In 1895 a wooden bridge was constructed which connected Anastasia Island to St. Augustine. The mule-drawn trolley continued to run until 1899. The Bridge of Lions opened in the late 1920s.

 

Kissel Military Highway Scout Kar - Multnomah Falls, Oregon - 1918

This camouflaged “Military Highway Scout Kar” was built by Kissel Motor Car Company of Wisconsin. The camouflage was painted to honor the company’s work supplying vehicles to several countries in WWI. The car in this form was a promotional vehicle and toured the west coast promoting the company and their cars.

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2024/05/a-kissel-military-highway-scout-kar.html

Coast Guard Maritime Patrol And Rescue Aircraft - T To B - General Aviation PJ-1, Douglas RD-1, General Aviation PJ-1, USCG Patrol Boat WPC-113 - Stationed USCG Air Station Miami, FL - 12.1934

 

On This Date In History

On November 30, 1874, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.
Churchill came from a prestigious family with a long history of military service and joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving in a number of important posts before being appointed Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war he foresaw.
In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns, and he was excluded from the war coalition government. He resigned and volunteered to command an infantry battalion in France. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of German and Japanese aggression.
After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill was called back to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced the ineffectual Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would “never surrender.” He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis.
In July 1945, 10 weeks after Germany’s defeat, his Conservative government suffered an electoral loss against Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, and Churchill resigned as prime minister. He became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. Two years later, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his six-volume historical study of World War II and for his political speeches. In 1955, he retired as prime minister but remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.

 

 The Shay #19 logging train running down a river somewhere out on the Lilly Fork, West Virginia. The photo was taken on November 24, 1961.

http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/OPERATIONS/ERCLOps/ERCLOps.html

Motorcycle Training At The First Florida Highway Patrol Training School - Bradenton, FL - 1939

 

 On This Date In History

On October 17, 1835, Texans approve a resolution to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen designed to “range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.”
In the midst of their revolt against Mexico, Texan leaders felt they needed a semi-official force of armed men who would defend the isolated frontier settlers of the Lone Star Republic against both Santa Ana’s soldiers and hostile Indians; the Texas Rangers filled this role. But after winning their revolutionary war with Mexico the following year, Texans decided to keep the Rangers, both to defend against Indian and Mexican raiders and to serve as the principal law enforcement authority along the sparsely populated Texan frontier.
Although created and sanctioned by the Texas government, the Rangers was an irregular body made up of civilians who furnished their own horses and weapons. Given the vast expanse of territory they patrolled and the difficulty of communicating with the central government, the government gave the men of the Rangers considerable independence to act as they saw fit. Sometimes the Rangers served as a military force, taking on the role of fighting the Indians that in the U.S. was largely the responsibility of the Army. At other times the Rangers mainly served as the principal law enforcement power in many frontier regions of Texas, earning lasting fame for their ability to track down and eliminate outlaws, cattle thieves, train robbers, and murderers, including such notorious bandits as John Wesley Hardin and King Fisher.
Even as late as the first two decades of the 20th century, the state of Texas continued to rely on the Rangers to enforce order in the wilder regions of the state, like the oil boomtowns along the Rio Grande. Increasingly, though, some Texans began to criticize the Rangers, arguing that they used excessive violence and often failed to observe the finer points of the law when apprehending suspects. As a result, in the 1930s, the state won control over the Rangers, transforming it into a modern and professional law enforcement organization.

 

On October 17, 1777, British general and playwright John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 British and Hessian troops to American General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777.
In the summer of 1777, General Burgoyne led an army of 8,000 men south through New York in an effort to join forces with British General Sir William Howe’s troops along the Hudson River. After capturing several forts, Burgoyne’s force camped near Saratoga while a larger Patriot army under General Gates gathered just four miles away. On September 19, a British advance column marched out and engaged the Patriot force at the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, or the First Battle of Saratoga. Failing to break through the American lines, Burgoyne’s force retreated. On October 7, another British reconnaissance force was repulsed by an American force under General Benedict Arnold in the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Saratoga.
Gates retreated north to the village of Saratoga with his 5,000 surviving troops. By October 13, some 20,000 Americans had surrounded the British, and four days later Burgoyne was forced to agree to the first large-scale surrender of British forces in the Revolutionary War.
Burgoyne successfully negotiated that his surviving men would be returned to Britain by pledging that they would never again serve in North America. The nearly 6,000-man army was kept in captivity at great expense to the Continental Congress until the end of the war.
Soon after word of the Patriot victory at Saratoga reached France, King Louis XVI agreed to recognize the independence of the United States and French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count de Vergennes, made arrangements with U.S. Ambassador Benjamin Franklin to begin providing formal French aid to the Patriot cause. This assistance was crucial to the eventual American victory in the Revolutionary War.

 

 American General Horatio Gates

 

 British General John Burgoyne

 

 

 

 Random Memes/Cartoons Dump

 

I actually like candy corn, I guess I'm a dying breed.

Is this the ghost of the beans being released … is the coffee screaming because its ass is scalding hot … or did I just release some sort of caffeine demon …?

Great Horned Owlets on the nest in a Saguaro Cactus.

This is ridiculous. You used to be able to get ground python for $1.50 a lb. Inflation under POTUS Biden is outrageous.

Route 66 Between Barstow And Oro Grande, Ca. 1917 And 2023

Tibetan White Yak

Welcome Swallows - Life experience tells me that the one on the right is the female. 

Battleship USS Iowa (BB 61) - Transiting The Panama Canal - Gaillard Cut - 8 June 1984

 On This Date In History

On September 26, 1928, work begins at Chicago’s new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: “motor” evoked cars and motion, while “ola” derived from “Victrola” and was supposed to make people think of music.)
In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin and his friend Edward Stewart started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin; it went out of business two years later. In 1926, Galvin and Stewart re-started their battery-manufacturing company, this time in Chicago. That one went out of business too, but not before the partners figured out a way for home radios to draw power from an electrical wall outlet; they called it the dry-battery eliminator. Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his bankrupt company at auction for $750 and went right back into business, building and repairing eliminators and AC radio sets for customers like Sears, Roebuck.
Soon, however, Galvin’s attention turned to the car-radio business. The first car radios, portable “travel radios” powered by batteries, followed by custom-installed built-in radios that cost $250 apiece (about $2,800 in today’s dollars), had appeared in 1926, but they were way too expensive for the average driver. If he could find a way to mass-produce affordable car radios, Galvin thought, he’d be rich. In June 1930, he enlisted inventors Elmer Wavering and William Lear to retrofit his old Studebaker with a radio and drove 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers Association’s annual meeting in Atlantic City. He parked outside the convention, turned up the music (for this purpose, Wavering had installed a special speaker under the Studebaker’s hood), and waited for the RMAers’ orders to come rolling in.
A few did, and Galvin sold enough of his $110 5T71 car radios to come close to breaking even for the year. He changed his company’s name to Motorola and changed the way we drive, and ride in, cars forever.
For his part, William Lear went on to invent the eight-track cartridge-tape system, which came standard in every Ford car starting in 1966. Meanwhile, carmakers developed their own radio-manufacturing divisions, gradually squeezing Motorola out of the market it had built. The company stopped making car radios in 1984. Today, it’s best known for making cellular phones.

On September 26, 1580, English seaman Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to sail the earth.
On December 13, 1577, Drake set out from England with five ships on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World. After crossing the Atlantic, Drake abandoned two of his ships in South America and then sailed into the Straits of Magellan with the remaining three. A series of devastating storms besieged his expedition in the treacherous straits, wrecking one ship and forcing another to return to England. Only the Golden Hind reached the Pacific Ocean, but Drake continued undaunted up the western coast of South America, raiding Spanish settlements and capturing a rich Spanish treasure ship.
Drake then continued up the western coast of North America, searching for a possible northeast passage back to the Atlantic. Reaching as far north as present-day Washington before turning back, Drake paused near San Francisco Bay in June 1579 to repair his ship and prepare for a journey across the Pacific. Calling the land “Nova Albion,” Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I.
In July, the expedition set off across the Pacific, visiting several islands before rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and returning to the Atlantic Ocean. On September 26, 1580, the Golden Hind returned to Plymouth, England, bearing its rich captured treasure and valuable information about the world’s great oceans. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Drake during a visit to his ship. The most renowned of the Elizabethan seamen, he later played a crucial role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The explorer died 1596 at the age of 56.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 On This Date In Music

1931 - The first “LP” (long-playing) record, a 33 1/3 rpm recording, was demonstrated at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York by RCA-Victor. The venture was doomed to fail however due to the high price of the record players, which started around $95 (about $1140 in today's dollars) and lead to the new format to lying dormant for years until Columbia revives it in 1948.

1967 - The Doors were banned from The Ed Sullivan Show after Jim Morrison broke his agreement with the show’s producers. Morrison said before the performance that he wouldn’t sing the words, ‘Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,’ from 'Light My Fire' but did anyway. The Doors also performed their new single 'People Are Strange.’

 

1982 - Pink Floyd's seminal double album The Wall makes it to the big screen as a feature-length musical. Few expected the sprawling concept album to be turned into a feature film, but the band's celluloid collaboration with director Alan Parker and animator Gerald Scarfe becomes a surprise box office hit and a cult classic.

 

 On This Date In History

On September 13, 1993, after decades of bloody animosity, representatives of Israel and Palestine meet on the South Lawn of the White House and sign a framework for peace. The “Declaration of Principles” was the first agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians towards ending their conflict and sharing the holy land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea that the Israelis are forced to share as their homeland.

 

 

Fighting between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1920s when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, returning Israeli’s and their descendants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Arabs (they did not yet call themselves Palestinians) sought to stem Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state.
On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was formally proclaimed, and five Arab nations attacked in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israelis fought off the Arab armies and seized substantial territory that was originally Israeli territory but was allocated to the Arabs in the 1947 United Nations partition of Palestine. After two successive U.N.-brokered cease-fires, the State of Israel reached formal armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria in February 1949. These agreements left Israel in permanent control of the territory it had conquered/regained during the conflict.
The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war left the country with a substantial Jewish majority. Israel restricted the rights of the Arabs who remained. Most Palestinian Arabs who left Israeli territory retreated to the West Bank, then controlled by Transjordan (present-day Jordan), and others to the Gaza Strip, controlled by Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of exiled Palestinians moved permanently into refugee camps.
By the early 1960s, the Palestinian Arab diaspora had formed a cohesive national identity. In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed as a political umbrella organization for several Palestinian groups and meant to represent all the Palestinian people. The PLO called for the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel seized control of the territory that was originally theirs, West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Israel permanently annexed East Jerusalem and set up military administrations in the occupied territories. Although Israel offered to return some of the territory seized in return for "the security requirements of Israel," the Arab League opted against formal negotiations in the Khartoum Resolution on September 1, 1967.
The Sinai was later returned to Egypt in 1979 as part of an Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, but the rest of the occupied territories remained under Israeli control. A faction of Israelis called for permanent annexation of these regions, and in the late 1970s nationalist Jewish settlers moved into the territories as a means of accomplishing this aim.
After the 1967 war, the PLO was recognized as the symbol of the Palestinian national movement, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat organized guerrilla attacks on Israel from the PLO’s bases in Jordan and, after 1971, from Lebanon. The PLO also coordinated terrorist attacks against Israelis at home and abroad. The Palestinian guerrilla and terrorist activity provoked heavy reprisals from Israel’s armed forces and intelligence services. By the late 1970s, Arafat had won international acceptance of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
Violence mounted in the 1980s, with Palestinians clashing with Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to dislodge the PLO. In 1987, Palestinian residents of Gaza and the West Bank launched a series of violent demonstrations against Israeli authorities known as the intifada, or the “shaking off.” Shortly after, Jordan’s King Hussein renounced all administrative responsibility for the West Bank, thereby strengthening the PLO’s influence there. As the intifada raged on, Yasser Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on November 15, 1988. One month later, he denounced terrorism, recognized the State of Israel’s right to exist, and authorized the beginning of “land-for-peace” negotiations with Israel under conditions which would not have allowed Israel to defend its territory.
Israel refused to open direct talks with the PLO, but in 1991 Israeli diplomats met with a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at the Madrid peace conference. In 1992, Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin became Israeli prime minister, and he vowed to move quickly on the peace process. He froze new Israeli settlements in the occupied territory and authorized secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO that began in January 1993 in Oslo, Norway. These talks resulted in several key agreements and led to the historic peace accord of September 13, 1993.
On the South Lawn of the White House that day, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO foreign policy official Mahmoud Abbas signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. The accord called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho and the establishment of a Palestinian government that would eventually be granted authority over much of the West Bank. President Bill Clinton presided over the ceremony, and more than 3,000 onlookers, including former presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter, watched in amazement as Arafat and Rabin sealed the agreement with a handshake. The old bitter enemies had met for the first time at a White House reception that morning.
In his remarks, Rabin, a former top-ranking Israeli army general, told the crowd: “We the soldiers who have returned from the battle stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians; we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough!” And Arafat, the guerrilla leader who for decades was targeted for assassination by Israeli agents, declared that “The battle for peace is the most difficult battle of our lives. It deserves our utmost efforts because the land of peace yearns for a just and comprehensive peace.”
Despite attempts by extremists on both sides to sabotage the peace process with violence, the Israelis completed their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho in May 1994. In July, Arafat entered Jericho amid much Palestinian jubilation and set up his government–the Palestinian Authority. In October 1994, Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts at reconciliation.
In September 1995, Rabin, Arafat, and Peres signed a peace agreement providing for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and for democratic elections to determine the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Just over a month later, on November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Peres became prime minister and pledged to continue the peace process. However, terrorist attacks by Palestinian extremists in early 1996 swayed Israeli public opinion, and in May Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party was elected prime minister. Netanyahu insisted that Palestinian Authority Chairman Arafat meet his obligation to end terrorism by Palestinian extremists, but sporadic attacks continued and the peace process stalled.
In May 1999, Ehud Barak of the Labor Party defeated Netanyahu in national elections and pledged to take “bold steps” to forge a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. However, extended negotiations with the PLO ended in failure in July 2000, when Barak and Arafat failed to reach an agreement at a summit at Camp David, Maryland. In September 2000, the worst violence since the intifada broke out between Israelis and Palestinians after Likud leader Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, the holiest Islamic site in Jerusalem. Seeking a strong leader to suppress the bloodshed, Israelis elected Sharon prime minister in February 2001. Though Arafat pledged to join in America’s “war on terror” after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he was not able to garner favor with U.S. President George W. Bush, who was strongly pro-Israel. In December 2001, after a series of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel, Bush did nothing to stop Israel as it re-conquered areas of the West Bank and occupied parts of Ramallah, effectively imprisoning Arafat in the Palestinian Authority's headquarters..
After Israel dismissed an alternative peace plan put forth by the Arab League in March 2002, Palestinian attacks increased, causing Israel to again turn to military intervention in the West Bank. A cycle of terrorist attacks, IDF reprisals, and failed diplomacy continued for the next two years.
In late October of 2004, reports surfaced that Arafat was seriously ill. He was flown to Paris for treatment, and in early November fell into a coma. He was pronounced dead on November 11.
Mahmoud Abbas became the new chairman of the PLO and was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005. The next year, Hamas, seen by many observers as a terrorist organization, won control of the Palestinian legislative body, complicating any potential negotiations. Despite an Israeli withdrawal from the disputed Gaza territory, and the fact that both sides ostensibly are committed to a two-state solution, peace in the region remains elusive.

Submarines USS Cutlass (SS-478), USS Trutaa (SS-421), USS Odax (SS-484), USS Tirante (SS-420), Tender USS Marlin (SST-2), And USS Mackerel (SST-1) - Inspection - Key West, FL - Year Circa 1952-'55