u/Youarethebigbang

Very little is known of Willie Johnson's life. He was blinded at the age of 7 by his stepmother when she threw lye water on him. His music career consisted of thirty songs between 1927-1930 and he performed live in various cities and towns throughout the Great Depression and 40s. In 1945, his house was destroyed in a fire, however, due to his poverty, he lived in the ruins of his house. He gradually developed various illnesses, but due to discrimination he couldn't be admitted to any hospitals in the local area.

He died on September 18th, 1945. He was broke, sick, homeless and blind, however, in 1977, Carl Sagan had Willie Johnson's song "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" sent on the Voyager probe launched by NASA, thus his music has traveled the solar system and beyond. His music will outlive humanity and represents humanity

If someone believes fuel will head back down by sometime next year, would it be a good investment to buy one now with the idea to basically sit on it to sell within a year? Are diesel vehicle prices down that much?

Whoa Trigger! :)

The collapse at Kip's Bay on September 15, 1776 was not a close battle that went the wrong way. It was a rout.

British warships moved to within close range of the Manhattan shoreline and opened fire on American defensive works that had never been built to absorb sustained naval bombardment. The troops holding those positions were largely inexperienced Connecticut men who were already exhausted. When the barrage lifted and they could see thousands of British and Hessian soldiers crossing in flatboats, with more formations waiting behind them, they broke. Not all of them, not immediately, but enough that panic spread faster than any officer could contain it. Troops sent forward to reinforce the position found frightened men streaming toward them and joined the retreat. Formations dissolved. Equipment was abandoned.

Washington rode south from Harlem Heights when he heard the cannonade and arrived to find soldiers running in every direction. He rode among them trying to force units back into line. When a relatively small body of British troops appeared, men who had briefly stopped began running again. Later accounts describe Washington striking fleeing soldiers with the flat of his sword. His own words leave no room for misinterpretation. He called what he saw "disgracefull and dastardly." At some point his fury became so complete that aides had to physically move him away from the advancing British. He had stopped caring whether he was shot.

Joseph Reed, Washington's adjutant general and one of the men closest to him, watched all of it. He saw the collapse. He saw Washington's rage. He also saw something that troubled him more than the panic of the enlisted men: the command structure itself was struggling. This wasn't the first disaster of the New York campaign. Long Island had been a major defeat. Brooklyn had required a desperate nighttime evacuation. Now this.

Reed would later write privately, after further disasters, that he believed Washington lacked "Decision." That criticism would eventually destroy their friendship when Washington discovered it. But on September 15, Reed was still processing what he had witnessed.

Meanwhile, a twenty-year-old aide named Aaron Burr was doing something useful. Thousands of American troops were still in Lower Manhattan. Howe's landing threatened to cut them off by driving west across the island to the Hudson River. Burr helped direct endangered men toward roads on the western side of Manhattan that weren't yet blocked, moving them north before the British could complete the trap. Later accounts inflated this into a story where Burr single-handedly saved thousands of men, which goes beyond the evidence. Other officers including General Putnam were working the same problem. But Burr's contribution was real: he understood the geography, recognized the danger, and acted without waiting for clear orders in a situation where waiting meant capture.

Howe let them go. His landing had succeeded. New York was falling. But a rapid drive west might have cut off a large portion of the Americans retreating from Lower Manhattan, and Howe paused instead to consolidate. From his perspective it wasn't irrational. His forces were still coming ashore, units needed to reorganize, and the Americans appeared broken. The difficulty was that every pause gave Washington's army another chance to survive. By evening, the British had New York City. Washington still had an army.

The next morning, September 16, a reconnaissance force under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton ran into British troops advancing north and a sharp fight developed. Unlike the day before, the American withdrawal was controlled. Men gave ground but kept fighting. Reed rode forward and saw the difference immediately. As British light infantry pushed the Americans back, some of them sounded hunting horns, the same sound used in a fox hunt when the prey is running. Coming one day after Kip's Bay, Reed took it as a deliberate taunt.

He went back to Washington. This time Washington saw an opportunity. He approved a flanking maneuver: one force to hold the British front while Knowlton's Rangers moved around their flank. The plan wasn't executed perfectly but the larger result was unmistakable. The Americans attacked. They pushed British regulars backward across ground where the day before they had been unable to stand at all.

Then Knowlton was shot and mortally wounded while leading his men forward. Washington called him "the gallant and brave Col. Knowlton" and wrote that he would have been "an Honor to any Country." His death was the price of the only thing that had gone right in two weeks.

Washington eventually had to call the advance back before it carried too far toward Howe's main army. The men who had fled in panic the morning before were now advancing far enough that their commander had to restrain them.

Same army. Thirty-six hours apart.

You can talk directly to Reed and Burr on virtualwayback and hear both days from the perspectives of men who were inside it. The full story is on the blog and the YouTube channel. Link in bio.

The thing that stays with me is Howe stopping again. Long Island, Kip's Bay, and now this: three moments in the New York campaign where a more aggressive pursuit might have ended the Revolution. Clinton thought so at the time. Washington survived all three. Was Howe's caution a series of individual mistakes or was he operating on a logic that made sense from where he was standing?

Alexander Ravy Vanny, a former eight-year veteran deputy with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, was sentenced in February 2026 to six years in state prison following a highly publicized trial. Vanny, who was based out of the Hemet Sheriff's Station, weaponized his law enforcement authority to conduct a relentless stalking and harassment campaign primarily targeting his former fiancée, Madeline, after their separation in mid-2024. His actions culminated in two separate arrests, initially following a sexual assault investigation involving a department volunteer, and later for escalating stalker behavior while out on a $1 million bail.

Central to the prosecution's case was Vanny's illegal exploitation of the department's Flock ALPR network. Vanny routinely ran unauthorized searches through the protected police database to track his ex-fiancée's daily travel and pinpoint the identities of men who visited her home. Beyond the Flock system, Vanny integrated an array of high-tech surveillance tactics into his stalking campaign, including affixing physical GPS tracking devices to her vehicle, installing hidden wireless cameras in her apartment to spy on her roommate, and utilizing an illegal infrared device in his car to manipulate city traffic lights while pursuing her.

The critical escalation point of the case occurred at Chappies Bar in Hemet, where Vanny used electronic surveillance to track his ex-fiancée on a night out. Prosecutors asserted that Vanny confronted her at the bar, aggressively demanded she return home with him, and forcibly threw her into his truck against her will when she refused. While his defense attorney argued the incident was simply a misunderstood attempt to act as her designated driver, the event led to a kidnapping charge. An Indio jury ultimately deadlocked 10-2 in favor of guilt on the kidnapping count, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial for that specific charge. Rather than pursuing a retrial, prosecutors allowed the case to proceed directly to sentencing

Though the jury hung on kidnapping, Vanny was convicted on 10 other criminal counts encompassing both felony and misdemeanor offenses. His convictions included stalking, unauthorized use of protected electronic data (for the Flock database breaches), possession of child pornography, witness intimidation, illicit eavesdropping, and violating a protective order by possessing a firearm. Combined with a sentence-enhancing allegation for committing felonies while out on bail, Superior Court Judge James Hawkins ordered Vanny to serve six years behind bars at the Smith Correctional Facility.

https://mynewsla.com/crime/2025/12/06/ex-deputy-convicted-of-multiple-charges-for-stalking-harassing-former-lover-2/

LA is even worse, and history shows what happens there eventually happens here. Stay safe and use common sense precautions.