Candice Millard, Hero of the Empire

Now this is something to which I can relate.

At Amazon, Candice Millard, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill.

Patrick Phillips, Blood at the Root

I'm just coming across this book.

It's intriguing, to say the least.

At Amazon, Patrick Phillips, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. Many black residents were poor sharecroppers, but others owned their own farms and the land on which they’d founded the county’s thriving black churches.

But then in September of 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. One man was dragged from a jail cell and lynched on the town square, two teenagers were hung after a one-day trial, and soon bands of white “night riders” launched a coordinated campaign of arson and terror, driving all 1,098 black citizens out of the county. In the wake of the expulsions, whites harvested the crops and took over the livestock of their former neighbors, and quietly laid claim to “abandoned” land. The charred ruins of homes and churches disappeared into the weeds, until the people and places of black Forsyth were forgotten.

National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth’s tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia. Recalling his own childhood in the 1970s and ’80s, Phillips sheds light on the communal crimes of his hometown and the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth “all white” well into the 1990s.

Blood at the Root is a sweeping American tale that spans the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, the hope and promise of Reconstruction, and the crushing injustice of Forsyth’s racial cleansing. With bold storytelling and lyrical prose, Phillips breaks a century-long silence and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century.

ICYMI: Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping

I can't get to this one yet, but it looks great!

At Amazon, Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West.

Henry Olsen, The Working Class Republican

*BUMPED.*

Excellent, excellent timing.

Available June 27th.

At Amazon, Henry Olsen, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

Hot New Releases

At Amazon, Our Best-Selling New and Future Releases. Updated Hourly.

Also, GoPro HERO5 Black.

And, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) - White.

More, from Adele, "25."

Glad Tall Kitchen Drawstring Trash Bags, 13 Gallon, 90 Count, (Packaging May Vary).

Here, 2 Pounds Unroasted Coffee Beans, Premium Select from RhoadsRoast Coffees (Brazil Cerrado Arabica - Natural 17/18 Screen Coffee Beans, 2 Pounds Unroasted Green Beans).

JanSport Big Student Classics Series Backpack - Forge Grey.

Still more, Cafe Break-Resistant Plastic 20oz Restaurant-Quality Beverage Tumblers | Set of 16 in 4 Assorted Colors.

BONUS: Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Retreat From Class: A New True Socialism, and Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism.

Nigel Farage: 2016 Was the Beginning of a Great Global Revolution #CPAC2017 (VIDEO)

At Breitbart, via Memeorandum, "Farage at CPAC: 2016 Was the Beginning of a Great Global Revolution."

L.A. Kauffman, Direct Action

Not to neglect my radical reading, heh...

Here's L.A. Kauffman, at Amazon, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism.

And check out the excerpt, "In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down."

In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down, from DIRECT ACTION by @LAKauffman https://t.co/SBP8F5Np9O pic.twitter.com/AOCHJkMvZA

— Verso Books (@VersoBooks) February 26, 2017

President Trump Won't Attend White House Correspondents' Dinner (VIDEO)

Hey, sounds like a plan.

In fact, the whole thing's going to be a dud this year. A number of sponsors have cancelled after-parties, and what not -- like Bloomberg.

I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017

Added: At NPR, "Trump Will Be First President In 36 Years to Skip White House Correspondents Dinner."

George Rable, Damn Yankees!

Well, it's been a while since I've sparred with Stogie at Saber Point. Frankly, the dude's lost to the conspiracies of the Confederacy.

Heh, that whole Dylann Roof episode certainly was edifying. You see who's on the right side of history and all that.

In any case, I haven't come across this tome before, but it looks interesting. At Amazon, George Rable, Damn Yankees! Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South.

And ICYMI, see Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South.

Natalie Portman's Post-Pregnancy Über Toplines

At Popoholic, "The Blond and Crazy Busty Natalie Portman is Back… Hoochie Mama!"

Shop Deals

*BUMPED."

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

Thanks for your support.

Here, KIND Breakfast Bars, Peanut Butter, Gluten Free, 1.8 Ounce, 32 Count.

Also, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) - White.

Plus, Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right.

And, Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents.

Alan Taylor, Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction.

More, Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.

Gordon C. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.

Still more, Robert M. Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865.

BONUS: Winston Groom, Kearny's March: The Epic Creation of the American West, 1846-1847.

Gregory D. Smithers, Native Diasporas

*BUMPED.*

Okay, keeping the balance between the mainstream frontier historians and the radical leftists, here's Gregory D. Smithers, Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas.

PREVIOUSLY: Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States.

Gotta Keep Pluggin' on The Frontiersmen

This book's great!

Allan Eckert, The Frontiersmen: A Narrative.

See also, The Conquerors; Wilderness Empire: A Narrative; The Wilderness War; Gateway to Empire; and Twilight of Empire.

Gonna read for a while.

More blogging later!

Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families

This one's right in the era of interest I've been posting.

At Amazon, Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860.

Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America

*BUMPED.*

I love this guy.

At Amazon, Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.

Violence Breaks Out in Anaheim as Off-Duty Cop Scuffles with 13-Year-Old Boy (VIDEO)

Everything's going to be videotaped nowadays.

And a single off-duty cop would be having a hard time anyway, surrounded by a gang of young teenage hoodlums.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How an off-duty cop telling teens to stay out of his yard escalated to gunfire, protests and outrage":

⚡️ “Hundreds protest in #Anaheim after officer-teen confrontation” #TheOC https://t.co/ymp5kX8upm

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 23, 2017

The altercation on the tidy, suburban street in Anaheim apparently began with a complaint common in many neighborhoods: a group of teenagers walking through a neighbor’s yard on their way home from school.

But this seemingly mundane dispute spun out of control on West Palais Road on Tuesday when authorities say an off-duty Los Angeles police officer confronted the group. Other teenagers pulled out their cameras, filming the officer as he held a 13-year-old boy by the collar of his sweatshirt, trying to detain him.

The situation quickly escalated from there. At one point, another teen rushed the officer, sending him tumbling over a line of bushes. The officer then reached into his jeans and drew a gun, firing a single shot.

No one was hurt by the gunfire, which Anaheim police said was aimed at the ground. But footage of the encounter stirred uproar across the country, prompting criticism of the off-duty cop’s actions and questions over why investigators arrested two teenagers — but not the officer — at the scene.

As the video went viral Wednesday, more than 300 protesters took to the streets to protest the shooting. Police broke up the demonstration and arrested 23 people, but not before some vandalized the officer’s home.

The tension in Orange County’s largest city comes after several incidents in recent years in which Latino activists have protested police shootings that they felt unfairly targeted the city’s large Latino community. Many of the teens involved in Tuesday’s incident appeared to be Latino, and the officer appears to be white.

On Thursday, officials from both Anaheim and Los Angeles scrambled to calm the public’s concern.

“Like many, I am deeply disturbed and frankly angered by what it shows,” Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said about the footage of the incident. “The video shows an adult wrestling with a 13-year-old kid and ultimately firing a gun. … It should never have happened.”

Anaheim police are investigating the altercation itself while the Los Angeles Police Department and Inspector General are conducting internal investigations into the officer’s actions.

The Los Angeles Police Commission will ultimately decide whether the officer violated any LAPD rules during the encounter.

“I am very interested in knowing the facts of the incident based on the investigation by the department and the Office of Inspector General that is underway,” said commissioner Cynthia McClain-Hill. “Some of the actions — brief as that exchange caught on video may be — do not properly represent what I believe should be expected and reflected by a member of the Los Angeles Police Department when engaging members of the public, be it on-duty or off-duty.”

The officer, whose name has not been released by authorities, was removed from the field, which is standard protocol after shootings by LAPD officers.

An attorney representing the officer, Larry Hanna, declined to discuss the encounter in detail, citing the ongoing investigations. He also declined to name his client or describe his work with the LAPD, saying he was concerned for his safety.

“All of this will come out,” he said. “I just think that people should let the investigators do their job.”

The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers came out strongly against those who criticized the officer’s action...

More.

Making America Great Again

*BUMPED.*

From some cool Trump girl, on Inauguration Day:

1/20/2017 "We the People" pic.twitter.com/CDOrl8Cs2P

— 🌸TrumpGirl® (@Girl4Trump_) January 20, 2017

Godswill Forche

The vote for the new Democrat Party chair is due any moment, and my money's on Keith Ellison. What a joy it will be when he's selected. Talk about sealing the party's fate, heh.

This dude Godswill Forche, who's on Twitter, nails it:

#DNCFuture looks disastrous!. See what this African American man has to say about what has become of the Democratic Party. #CPAC2017 💯 👏🏾 pic.twitter.com/A5y8ccUfy9

— Deplorable Melissa (@sweetatertot2) February 24, 2017

President Trump Gets Warm Embrace at #CPAC2017 (VIDEO)

He skipped the conservative conclave last year, suggesting he'd be too radical for the right-wing mobs.

But he was welcomed like the king he is this year. What a blast.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump's popularity at CPAC gathering, which he shunned a year ago, shows how he's conquered conservatives":

Conservatives love Trump now b/c 'he has all the right enemies.' But how long this honeymoon? https://t.co/CQ5DoTAYbI @Noahbierman

— Marc Duvoisin (@MarcDuvoisin) February 24, 2017

A year ago, Donald Trump skipped the nation’s preeminent conference of conservatives, underscoring the friction between the populist candidate and many of the warring factions in his party during a heated presidential primary season.

Friday, Trump returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference with the blunt force of a conqueror, planting his brand of nationalist, anti-globalist populism like a flag.

His speech, with rhetoric that even Trump said would have been too controversial at the event even a year ago, marked his takeover of the conservative movement, one of several signs of his dominance throughout the conference, which also featured a rare and well-received speech from his chief intellectual influence and advisor, Stephen K. Bannon.

"There is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag," Trump said to great applause from thousands of conservatives. "I'm not representing the globe. I'm representing your country."

He echoed ideas he has espoused in the past — denouncing trade deals as the antithesis of "economic freedom," warning that Paris and other great cities of Europe have been ruined by mass immigration, criticizing Democratic and Republican presidents for their interventions in the Middle East.

Although many of the words were familiar, the venue and the passion made Friday's speech remarkable.

Trump spoke directly of his ambition to turn the GOP into "the party of the American worker."

"I'm here today to tell you what this movement means for the future of the Republican Party and for the future of America," Trump said. "The core conviction of our movement is that we are a nation that [must] put and will put its own citizens first."

While Trump tried to unite conservatives, the speech made little effort to bridge the country's larger political divide. For example, Trump dismissed people who have shown up at town halls around the country to protest reversal of Obamacare.

"They're not you. They're largely — many of them are the side that lost," he said.

The visuals around the waterfront conference outside Washington were just as striking: the red “Make America Great Again” caps, the throngs of college Republicans surrounding Trump’s aides and allies, the giant Trump-decorated pickup truck at the convention center entrance.

As he has repeatedly done in the last couple of weeks, Trump attacked the media for what he sees as unfair coverage. He also showed how much he remembers the details of how his campaign was described in the press, at one point praising The Times for its election tracking poll that consistently showed him leading.

“I must say Los Angeles Times did a great job — shocking,” he said. “A couple polls got it right.”

In reality, the USC Dornsife/L.A. Times “Daybreak” tracking poll overstated Trump’s support, although it did correctly pick up the backing he was getting from disaffected white voters, many of whom had sat out the 2012 election.

Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, an outlet that has presented itself as a voice of the white nationalist alt-right movement, joked a day earlier as he sat down for a marquee event about how far he had come.

He used to hold a competing event called “Uninvited” for conservatives whose philosophies were considered too radical for the conference, Bannon said at a panel featuring him and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Bannon reveled in his newfound influence as the conference organizer interviewed him in front of thousands of people.

He praised Priebus, the former GOP chairman, another indication of how the mainstream of the party has come into Trump’s fold. But both men made clear that Bannon was the dominant force in shaping Trump’s vision.

Bannon spoke about defending his notion of American culture and lashed out against the “corporatist, globalist media” standing in the way of Trump’s “economic nationalist agenda.”

“If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight," he said. "You are sadly mistaken.”

“We're at the top of the first inning of this,” Bannon said near the end of his remarks. “We want you to have our back.”

Conference organizers seemed to have gotten the message.

Breitbart News owns the first booth by the entrance of the convention hall, hawking “Border Wall Construction Company” T-shirts...

Keep reading.

The New Nationalism in America

From Matthew Continetti, at Free Beacon:

The New Nationalism in America: How conservatism is changing in the Trump era https://t.co/ytTqhBYbTx via @continetti pic.twitter.com/GtJZRFZkCi

— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) February 24, 2017

FLASHBACK: "The Political Establishment's Terrified by Donald Trump's 'Tangible American Nationalism'."