I wish I could say I have something every FORTE NIGHT . shit... even if I cleaned or washed windows or made a steak. OR FISH out of the ordinary.

Fortnights are something to take a gasp on and appreciate everyone.

We all need a forte night or two

I honestly don't know what you're referring to with regards to 'derision,' but i don't really care. Probably best for us to drop it since it now appears that you're turning to some rather irrelevant issues. The original point about the "border states" was not how to label or refer to them, but to show that Lincoln did not 'emancipate' or invade them, thereby showing his motivations had nothing to do with freeing the slaves.

I don't know who specifically 'shot first' but this is what happened:

"Ft. Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, SC where the U.S. forts garrison had withdrawn to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Unlike Buchanan who allowed commanders to relinquish possession to avoid bloodshed, Lincoln required Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply which the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered P. G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive."

The Confederacy ordered an attack on a fort in what it saw as its territory and therefore under Union occupation. The Union saw it as their fort.
Again, a survey of the opinion of people you know about who 'started it' does not the same thing as that "most reasonable people" would see it like you do.

More irrelevant splitting of hairs: in the United Sates of 2014 practically no one openly advocates institutionalized slavery or openly argue their "right" to own slaves. So for practical purposes, (almost) everyone is openly against slavery.
That, in any case, is totally irrelevant to the Jon Stewart video and so your comments are far from relevant.

"I'm not going to comment on Jon Stewarts motives or morality, they are not germane to the subject I'm discussing."
It's all well and good that you're not going to comment on Stewart's motives or morality, but most of what you constitute your "arguments" are not germane to what I'm discussing here, or to any of my original points prior to your digressions and tangential discussions about which I frankly have little interest. No offense.

You are confusing me with others you are 'debating'.
I have always thought that the Union went to war to preserve the union...they did not go on a crusade to eradicate slavery. I'm not sure anyone here has ever made that claim.
And yes, the north sent in the army because the south attacked federal forts and took federal property.
Not sure what you're saying here, you now seem to admit that Lincoln tried compensated emancipation before joining the war, only to be rebuffed by the states...I'm not sure where you get the idea it was only tried in Delaware.
And yes, that's how government works, the federal reps and the 'local' reps hash out the laws...in this case the locals said 'not now, and on our terms if and when' to compensated emancipation, and the federal reps had little backing besides Lincoln.
As I see it, Americans did all of those tactics employed by the British etc. Perhaps the federal government didn't try them all, but Americans did.
Contradictory sentiment, false implication, and simple ridiculousness in the 'charitable' paragraph. "Get one over on the south"? Hmmmm.
When a violent insurrection starts, the present government will nearly always engage in kind.
Peaceful secession may have worked...too bad the south had to get violent first.
Again, to you, are you saying it was all about slavery, or about preserving the union? You seem to flip flop there.
Again you intentionally miss-state the obvious, not when faced with a problem, but when faced with an ATTACK. He didn't go to war with Mary Todd Lincoln, and she was certainly a problem!

Delaware is considered a northern state. Maybe not by you but by others.
And when I lived in Maryland, everyone there seemed to consider it a northern state too. But ok, you don't consider it a northern state. Cool.
(Ask anyone in Boston if he is a "Yankee" and see how that goes!)

But what's your point now? You agree that the Civil War was a "War to preserve the Union, not a Lincoln crusade to end slavery". That's why he did not invade or interfere with the border states. They did not secede. So how is this relevant to the original point about Jon Stewart thinking otherwise and going off on Andrew Napolitano about it? And are you now trying to claim that the north was acting in "self-defense" because of southern attacks on federal forts?


"In 1862, the General Assembly replied to Lincoln's compensated emancipation offer with a resolution stating that, "when the people of Delaware desire to abolish slavery within her borders, they will do so in their own way, having due regard to strict equity." And they furthermore notified the administration that they regarded "any interference from without" as "improper," and a thing to be "harshly repelled.""

The proposal was never put to a vote. It was not tried in other states. And it was not addressed directly to the slave owners but to politicians in the Assembly. No effort was put into it.

Among the tactics employed by the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danes, and others were slave rebellions, abolitionist campaigns to gain public support for emancipation, election of anti-slavery politicians, encouragement and assistance of runaway slaves, raising private funds to purchase the freedom of slaves, and the use of tax dollars to buy the freedom of slaves.

The most charitable thing I could say is that Lincoln tried but failed to come up with and implement any other way to end slavery but to engage in 'bloodshed and violence' (putting aside that he claimed to not care to end slavery except as a way to get one over on the South).

Still, that only says something about his competency, his "political genius" as some say (or lack of it), but not about whether there were other options available that could have worked without the 620,000 dead and 800,000+ more maimed-or-disfigured-for-life.

Of course, there is no empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that any more than there is any empirical way to 'prove' or 'disprove' that, without two nukes, Japan would have lost the war, or that without the Korean war, the Communists would have taken over the world, or that without the Iraq invasion, Saddam would not have built "weapons of mass destruction" to unleash on the world.

What if 'peaceful secession' would have neutered the federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (which Lincoln strongly supported), creating a flood of runaway slaves that could not have been stopped and would have broken the back of the slave system'?

The Soviet Union collapsed on its own without the US and its allies going into a bloody war against it. Maybe if the US had started a third world war with the USSR, it would have collapsed sooner. But it certainly would not have been worth the 'blood and violence'. And it is far from certain that the 5 years of Civil War accelerated the end of slavery, while it has certainly served to bolster and continue the decades of segregation, discrimination, and abuse that followed.

The first Republican president seems to have set a precedent for later Republican neocons. When faced with a problem ---> go to war.

You seem to forget that the south attacked Federal forts and 'captured' federal property first...and declared secession. The South STARTED the war...no matter who you blame for the reason they did it.
(and I am a 'southerner' by birth).

And wow, do you really not understand the difference between the United States and Soviet Union? let me explain, the Soviet Union was not a union the satellites had a choice about. They were mostly forced into it, and forced to stay in it. The United States 'union' was entered into voluntarily by all states.

Get it?

Ah, I can see you have a FORT in mind. There is no FORT, really. The whole area is the Fort, the land itself. The "blocking fort" ARE the bunkers -- on top of the bluffs and at water level. There are two other forts in a triangular shape -- one on Whidbey Island and one on Marrowstone Island. The idea was if any boat came into the waters of Admiralty Inlet, one of the forts bunkers' big guns could take them out.

The bunkers are all still there. They were going to jackhammer them away, but they were made from imported Belgian concrete and they just would NOT break up.

So you can go crawling around in all sorts of bunkers. Some of the rooms have had their doors welded shut, for safety reasons. But there are plenty to explore.

These three forts aren't on an estuary, however. It is ocean water, but not the ocean. The Pacific Ocean stops about where the Northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula is kind of south of Vancouver Island, in Canada. Things get narrow there, and the ocean waves can't reach. Or something. So there are bodies of water that ships and boats follow going east, then they turn south to Seattle, which is on the coast of Puget Sound.

It's all very confusing. I can never figure out which way is north. Port Townsend has water on three sides, fer pitys sake!

Oh, and they did remove the big guns, even as they left the bunkers. You can see where they were and get a good sense of how big those guns were.

None of the three forts ever shot in anger. Just practice.

Exactly! "Shop fronts" only.

So when are you coming to America? It is beautiful in my part of the country, albeit very young by European or even East Coast standards. We are very proud of our oldest building. I think it was built in 1875 or something. Maybe even later. Ha.

And why was it a military base? Because all those "founding fathers" who poured a butt load of money into PT were in danger of losing it all when Seattle got port status instead of us. Those "founding fathers" still had lots of pull in Washington DC, so they got the Fort put here to prop up the local economy. And now it is a State Park -- one of the few that actually doesn't need any tax funds to stay open -- it actually makes a profit.

Plus there are wonderful bunkers to play in. And walks to take through the woods.

Have you ever seen An Officer and a Gentleman, with Richard Gere and Debra Winger? That was filmed here. All the base scenes were filmed at Fort Worden. A couple of years before I got here. You could tell which buildings were used in scenes -- or rather, which SIDES of buildings were used in scenes. They repainted the buildings a pristine white -- if they were in camera view. So the backsides were all peeling and nasty.

That was before the Fort started making money, of course. All the sides of the buildings look nice now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Ehz_cAMGc

You can see the Fort at :57, 1:05,1:52 and the iconic 2:06. All a brisk 15 minute walk from my house. Look out my kitchen window, and you can see the tree covered hill that is the Fort. (The jogging scene at :38 is on the other side of the hill - sheer bluffs to the water.)

It is indeed a very neat place. You watch that movie, come over here, and I'll give you a tour, okay?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Fort Lee, New Jersey, politics' to 'Fort Lee, New Jersey, politics, Chris Christie, George Washington Bridge, bridgegate' - edited by xxovercastxx

"Fort George "Orwell" Meade" nice.

Except the parking lot in the video borders both the Fort Worth and Haltom City areas and the reporter asked both police departments (@ 1:06-1:17) and they didn't know what the reporters were talking about so they couldn't be doing ride-alongs unless it was state troopers and I highly doubt that.

"Frothiness is our Forte"

Stand outside this address hurling feces at the windows-
9800 Savage Rd Fort Meade, MD 20755
(301) 688-6524

or, tie-up that switchboard asking Kenneth for the frequency....Prank call coordinated pizza delivery from every pizza haus within range...

Start building Faraday cages over all the houses on your block-

Flash-Mail thousands of envelopes to them stuffed with confectioner's sugar, baking soda, etc.

mail parcels filled with marzipan wrapped in aluminum foil with candy wires sticking-out...whole things edible-Big fun when they send the black SUV's to your front door and cordon off the block with swat-

Plant drugs in all the brass' cars them call the cops and the press at the same time...


*in Mr Roger's voice} "There's a lot you can do to make sure people are happy. What are some things you can think of to make those men in that concrete building happy?"

And another one. So now that we have it in print, can we drop the pretence and call it what it is: the world's most sophisticated system of industrial espionage.

I'd complain about being spied upon by supposed friends and allies, but as recently declassified documents showed, the Allied Control Council reserved the right to spy on any and all communications in Germany, even beyond the reunification in 1990. So it's not like we had any privacy to begin with, only the illusion of privacy, lasting a whopping 61 years. And it's all legal. Unconstitutional, but legal.

Snowden's material included surveillance statistics, showing that the NSA is intercepting, on average, 20 million phone calls a day in this beautiful country of mine. Most of it will be plain old industrial espionage, just like the bugs they planted at the EU offices.
So I'm rather surprised at the lack of outrage coming from my government. I know they don't give a rat's ass about the privacy of us plebs, but industrial espionage on a massive scale? I'd assumed they wouldn't like that one bit. Not a peep though, only silent obedience.

Anyway, everything's presented as shocking news in the media, so I thought I'd just link a certain document, aptly named AN APPRAISAL OF THE TECHNOLOGIES OF POLITICAL CONTROL. As you can see, it is a report that was presented to the European Parliament in 1998.

Skip to 7.4.1:

The Interim report said that within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK.

The simplest explanation? It's an Egyptian version of those Jesus or Einstein statues that follow you with your eyes-Maybe there was a shop in ancient Cairo where you could get one of these for your sand-fort.

For those wondering about the wood buffalo reference the city of Fort McMurray is in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

And for the record we say "Eh" a lot but I've never heard anyone say aboot.