Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog WILL post an item about the 2022 elections but, since America’s cesspool of corruption which masquerades as a political system has once again made our process a farce, we don’t know the final results yet. Continue reading
AMERICA’S MIDTERMS: STILL WAITING ON FINAL RESULTS
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
FOOL KILLER PART 65: JUNE 1913
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE
PART 65 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the June of 1913 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the figure:
*** Professor George A. Hill of the Naval Observatory, for saying that the North Pole was constantly moving around.
*** The West Virginia mine owners who had been waging war on striking workers since April of 1912. In February 1913 the owners had used an armored railroad car to open machine-gun and rifle fire on the tents of sleeping miners and their family members. The war would end in July of 1913 from direct action by Governor Henry Hatfield. Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History, opinion
BALLADEER’S BLOG’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL RANKINGS: NOVEMBER 9th
NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) 1. MORNINGSIDE COLLEGE MUSTANGS ### 2. NORTHWESTERN (IA) COLLEGE RED RAIDERS ### 3. GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY VIKINGS ### 4. BETHEL (TN) UNIVERSITY WILDCATS ### 5. SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE MOUNDBUILDERS ### Continue reading
Filed under college football
I GO POGO (1980) ELECTION DAY FLUFF
I GO POGO (1980) – A possum for president? This stop-motion animation rendition of Walt Kelly’s iconic comic strip Pogo is, sad to say, even more aimless and unentertaining than the 1969 conventional animation show The Pogo Special Birthday Special. That IS the actual title, by the way. The approach to that half-hour cartoon special was, as the title indicates, so cloyingly cutesy that even Walt Kelly himself disliked it.
Walt Kelly passed away in 1973 so at least he didn’t have to see this second travesty of his brilliant series. Pogo (1948-1975) featured cartoon animals who lived in the Okefenokee Swamp and were as cute and memorable as anything that Disney or Hanna-Barbera ever produced. Like the much later children’s franchise The Muppets, Pogo appealed to adults as well as children, and even sprinkled in a fair amount of political and social commentary.
Kelly was a master of making his political allegories blend so seamlessly into the tales of his cartoon animals that the deeper meaning would go over children’s heads as they enjoyed the antics of the Okefenokee Swamp’s denizens. For a comparison, think of how Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was a very biting satire but the story outline is so perfect it survived as a children’s tale long after the political and social topics that Swift was writing about faded into history.
And though each side of the American political aisle tries to claim Walt Kelly as their own he was actually my kind of guy and took shots at BOTH SIDES. The political left could point to the way that Kelly’s 1950s cat character Simple J. Malarkey was an unflattering caricature of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, but the right could point to Walt’s cowbird characters who embodied pretentious, parasitic communist activists.
Blame the 1969 television special and this 1980 bomb for helping to consign these brilliant cartoon figures to oblivion, even though they once rivaled the Disney Empire in merchandising. Peanuts and Winnie the Pooh had nothing on Pogo and company. Continue reading
Filed under humor
WORLD WAR ONE: VETERANS DAY APPROACHES
With Veterans Day coming up here are links to Balladeer’s Blog’s many World War One posts over the years.
ELEVEN MEDAL OF HONOR WINNERS FROM WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
AMERICAN FLYING ACE J.M. SWAAB – CLICK HERE
NEGLECTED U.S. NAVAL BATTLES OF WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
VINTAGE SCI-FI ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
SEVEN AMERICAN FLYING ACES OF WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
SGT YORK OF WORLD WAR ONE – HERE Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
BALLADEER’S BLOG’S SUNDAY COLLEGE FOOTBALL UPDATE: NOVEMBER 6th
First, Happy Birthday to college football! It was on November 6th, 1869 that Princeton and Rutgers played each other in the very first intercollegiate football game “on the banks of the Raritan” as the old fight song goes.
HEADLINES
LINCOLN TOPPLES NCAA DIVISION TWO – The unaffiliated LINCOLN (CA) UNIVERSITY OAKLANDERS took it on the road against NCAA Division 2’s BLUEFIELD STATE BIG BLUES. In a blow to the pride of the upper divisions, the Oaklanders emerged with a 20-17 Upset win in this Instant Classic.
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER SEVEN – In NCAA D2 the 24th ranked UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA WOLVES traveled to face the number 7 team in the country – the DELTA STATE STATESMEN. The Statesmen led 14-7, 28-17 and 35-24 in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Quarters respectively. In the 4th, the Wolves exploded for 28 points and a 52-42 comeback victory.
NUMBER TWO TAKES A FALL – Down in the NJCAA the number 8 COFFEYVILLE COLLEGE RED RAVENS welcomed the 2nd ranked IOWA WESTERN COLLEGE REIVERS yesterday. Believe it or not the Red Ravens held the Reivers to just 7 points and those came in the opening Quarter. Coffeyville led 16-7 at Halftime before winning the game 23-7. Continue reading
Filed under college football
ANNUAL NOVEMBER FIFTH POST
Yes, it’s once again Guy Fawkes Day, the day Balladeer’s Blog celebrates figures who became symbols of the exact opposite things they represented in their actual lives!
Guy Fawkes was a religious fanatic whose face became a symbol of resistance against a fictional theocratic dictatorship thanks to a comic book. Che Guevara was a murderous, homophobic, racist would-be dictator depicted as a symbol of youthful rebellion thanks to the spiteful cluelessness of Left-Wing Archie Bunkers.
Thank the forever-childish 1960s generation leftists for elevating such a repulsive and barely human creature to such heights. Even at HUFFINGTON POST the truth about blood-soaked animal Che has been written. Click HERE
Here are some actual quotes from hatemonger Che:
“Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning — but execute them NOW!”
“We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.”
“Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood.”
“We don’t need proof to execute a man. We only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him. A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.” (Note from Balladeer: Gee, I thought the poseurs and buffoons of the American Left said they’re AGAINST “hate.”)
“What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”
Read more of this animal’s own words and you will see what a callous, unfeeling political fanatic this hate-filled scumbag was. He never wanted to overthrow dictatorships to help “the people”, he just wanted to overthrow them to install dictatorships more to his liking.
In other words, dictatorships that would let that bloodthirsty maniac kill as many people as he wanted. Che Guevara was a waste of biomass and was the exact opposite of what delusional and uninformed fools consider him to have been.
Oh, and by the way, Guevara spent WAY too much time contemplating and writing about his own body odor.
Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post comes a little earlier than usual. This one examines various stories in the Thing’s team-up series titled Marvel Two-in-One after two adventures in Marvel Feature.
MARVEL FEATURE Vol 1 #11 (September 1973)
Title: Cry: Monster
Villains: The Leader and Kurrgo
Synopsis: The Thing and the Hulk get pitted against each other as part of a conflict between the Hulk’s archenemy the Leader (lower right) and the Fantastic Four’s old foe Kurrgo, the former dictator of Planet X. The Leader chose his greatest foe the Hulk as his champion in this fight, while Kurrgo chose the Thing, a member of his team of enemies the Fantastic Four.
The villain whose champion wins the battle will win the prize – abducting BOTH monsters to serve them in their plans. In the Leader’s case, to take over the Earth, and in Kurrgo’s case, to conquer and once again subjugate his people.
While the battle goes on in a ghost town in the American west, Kurrgo cheats by secretly amping up the Thing’s strength via periodic cosmic energy transmissions. This causes the Leader to declare Kurrgo the loser by default. Meanwhile, the Hulk and the Thing battle Kurrgo’s high-tech robot. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
BANANA REPUBLIC CULTURE
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog, as always, welcomes all of you, no matter how you vote. The Biden Regime’s banana republic nature gets more and more blatant all the time. Career criminal Joe Biden stated the 2022 elections may be “illegitimate” and then blasted so-called “election deniers!” Repulsive hypocrisy.
The Capitol police, who are supposed to be staffing security cameras at the Pelosi residence (because the privileged white one percenter Pelosis make taxpayers foot the expenses for such things) now admit that they can’t (or won’t) provide film footage of the “break-in” at the Pelosi home.
America’s federal authorities, which lose more and more credibility by the day it seems, also claim that Capitol police WERE NOT EVEN MANNING THE CAMERAS AT THIS PARTICULAR MANSION OF THE OBSCENELY WEALTHY PELOSIS UNTIL AFTER OTHER POLICE ARRIVED ON THE SCENE.
Oops! This helps the compulsively dishonest Biden Regime obscure whatever they want to about this very questionable incident that Democrats have decided to blame on their political targets with no evidence. Well, no evidence other than a troubled man who was supposedly looking for Nancy Pelosi asking “Where’s Nancy?” (Highly inflammatory!)
BIDEN HATEMONGERS AGAIN, SAYING THAT QUESTIONING ELECTION RESULTS IS ONLY OKAY WHEN DEMOCRATS DO IT AND IT’S “DANGEROUS” WHEN OTHERS DO IT. As an Independent Voter I don’t hesitate to point out that Republican George W. Bush was “selected, not elected” and Democrats are fine with that. But when I point out that Democrat Joe Biden was “selected, not elected” Democrats fall to pieces.
Privileged white one percenter Democrat and career criminal Hillary Clinton still claims she won the 2016 election and spreads tall tales that Republicans are trying to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections, then insists it’s a threat to democracy when the opposition party states such things.
The blithering Joe Biden, head of the Biden Crime Family, ranted about questioning election results last night, then pointed out that he and his political party intend to question election results that don’t go their way. Insanity!
Biden also stated that it may take several days to see if Democrats can manufacture and/or “find” enough votes for their candidates to win certain key election races around the country. Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: HUGO GERNSBACK’S SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES (1915-1917)
THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES OF BARON MUENCHHAUSEN (1915-1917) – Written by the iconic Hugo Gernsback in the years before he launched his own publication, these sci-fi tales presented the 1700s Baron being alive and having wild adventures. (The cover spelling does not match the one Gernsback used.)
Like most people I know, I just roll my eyes at the Baron Muenchhausen tall tales, so that’s why I used Hugo’s name in the blog post title. Hugo as the writer of this series of short stories is the REAL draw. The following items first appeared in the magazine Electrical Experimenter.
I MAKE A WIRELESS ACQUAINTANCE (May 1915) – Gernsback’s fictional counterpart I.M. Alier is a radio enthusiast and one day picks up transmissions from THE Baron Muenchhausen. The Baron tells him that in the 1700s he was injected with special embalming fluid which actually put him in suspended animation.
He emerged from that state a few years back and, forced to flee Germany over past offenses, has been having amazing scientific adventures. Alier is skeptical, but the Baron proves his claim by using some of the advanced science he has discovered to change the color of part of the moon. This convinces the narrator.
HOW MUENCHHAUSEN AND THE ALLIES TOOK BERLIN (June 1915) – Alier learns that the Baron has been helping the French in the World War. Among his inventions was a tunneling device for launching sneak attacks but the Central Powers were able to reverse-engineer the technology, resulting in another deadlock.
The Baron and his friend Professor Flitternix have devised anti-gravity screens for a spaceship. They plan to fly the vessel – called the Interstellar – to the moon. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
