BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
THE only people upset about these statues being removed are neo-nazi traitors, bigots, racist and "christian" nationalist. No real American supports the public display of statues of traitors who tried to destroy our nation. These statues of confederate military and political traitors are as offensive as if a statue of emperor hirohito was erected at Pearl Harbor, a statue of hitler was erected at the American cemetery at the D Day beaches at Normandy, statues of osama bin laden and the 9/11 terrorist were erected at the New York City 9/11 Memorial, the Pentagon and the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA and if a statue of that shitty diaper wearing, neo-nazi, fascist, narcissistic, psychopathic, sociopathic, Vietnam War draft dodging c-i-c NOT MY president drumpf/trump was erected at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. Video from WTRV CBS6 and article from WRIC ABC8.....
Aug 28, 2026 Three Confederate statues are being removed from Capitol Square in Richmond and donated to the Shenandoah Battlefield Foundation as part of a state-approved plan.
Posted: Aug 28, 2026 / 11:23 AM EDT Updated: Aug 28, 2026 / 02:21 PM EDT
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Three Confederate statues were removed from Richmond’s Capitol Square on Friday, according to the state.
The Department of General Services (DGS) has been directed to remove all three Confederate monuments and memorials from Capitol Square on Friday, Aug. 28, including one of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, one of Gov. William “Extra Billy” Smith, a former Confederate general and another of Confederate Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire.
A spokesperson with the DGS said the action is in accordance with a budget item passed by the General Assembly.
The removal of said statues has been mired in controversy due to history, public veneration and modern political priorities.
(Photo: Tyler Englander/8News)
Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who sponsored a bill to remove all three statues from the State Capitol, said it’s embarrassing to have constituents walk by statues honoring those associated with the Confederacy.
State Sen. Mike Jones (D-Richmond) told 8News the removal is necessary to ensure the Capitol grounds reflect the values of the commonwealth.
“I remembered seeing white only, colored only pictures in my mother’s scrapbook, and so to have that as a visual and then for these things to remain to remind this area of what took place, I think it’s wrong,” he said. “Put ’em in a museum, put a greater historical context around them.”
He added, “We have a right to say this is how we wish to be seen as a commonwealth and even as a city, that doesn’t match up with who we are and where we are in this season and where I hope we’re going as a country and a commonwealth.”
Opponents, including Republican leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover), argue that spending time and state funds on statue removal distracts lawmakers from pressing economic issues like inflation and the cost of living.
8News reached out to Republican House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore’s office for this story, but never received a statement.
The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation gifted these statues to the commonwealth, the department said. The foundation confirmed Friday that it is working with the DGS to receive the monuments being removed.
The monuments will be relocated to appropriate battlefield sites within the Shenandoah Valley and the foundation said it will assume stewardship of the monuments as part of its ongoing mission to “preserve and interpret Virginia’s historic landscapes and cultural resources.”
Keven Walker, CEO of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, shared the following statement with 8News, which can be read as follows:
“Preservation is more about the future than the past, and ensuring the preservation of the Capitol Square monuments is a part of that clear vision. At the core of all we do is the belief that our shared history can unite the people of our nation; that there is strength and inspiration for our own times to be found in the struggles of the past.”
Ebbin said the cost of removing the three statues is around $150,000.
JUST like the redistricting plan the right wing extremist passed in the General Assembly in Richmond (that was rejected by the governor) this legislation is not to protect democracy in Virginia, it is to restrict it for the economic and political benefit of the rich and corporate masters of the gop / tea-bagger politicians in Richmond. This legislation will make it difficult, if not impossible, for students, those serving the nation in the military, the poor, the elderly and disabled, to vote. Please click the link and sign the petition to Gov McDonnell telling him to veto these bills that restrict one of our most basic civil liberties, the right to vote.
Partisan extremists in the General Assembly have just rammed through legislation designed to make it harder for Virginians to vote. The proposed legislation does nothing to combat voter fraud and is nothing more than an attempt to suppress voter turnout.
These efforts need to be stopped. Newspapers across the Commonwealth have berated the Republican attack on voting rights as "a throwback to the Jim Crow era," "an impediment to voting that would adversely affect poor, elderly and minority voters," and "a burden on citizens who are homebound, disabled, deployed in the military, away at college or otherwise unable to vote in person."
These proposed laws would limit the forms of acceptable voter identification, adding obstacles for many voters. Governor McDonnell himself has acknowledged that the current system works. We should not make it more difficult for people to vote.
That's why I created a petition on SignOn.org to Governor Bob McDonnell, which says:
Several bills have passed the General Assembly that would make it harder for Virginians to vote. There is no demonstrated need for stricter voter identification laws in Virginia. Veto these bills and any attempt to disenfranchise voters in the Commonwealth.
This petition was created on SignOn.org, the progressive, nonprofit petition site. SignOn.org is sponsored by MoveOn Civic Action, which is not responsible for the contents of this or other petitions posted on the site. Aneesh Chopra didn't pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell the MoveOn.org list.
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 7 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
ON the day celebrating the 47th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech here is an article from Mother Jones celebrating the fact that we are getting closer to realizing the dream.....and I have also included Rev. King's speech (and added it to the Speeches page on this blog) I still get goosebumps when I listen to him give this speech. And be sure to check out the attached stories from MOJO.
Turning Westboro Church's Hate Into Charity (VIDEO)
"What would happen if hate came to your town?"
It's a simple question. Four Richmond, Virginia, moms faced it last March, when they learned that Fred Phelps' roadshow of hate—the anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-America, proto-nihilist Westboro Baptist Church—was headed to their town. The abusive Westies, who are famous for celebrating the funerals of fallen soldiers and intimidating grade schoolers, planned to bring their multi-colored signs and cuss-laden chants to four area sites: the Virginia Holocaust museum, the local Jewish Community Center, a Jewish day camp called the Jerusalem Connection, and the Straight-Gay Student Alliance at Hermitage High School.
How to resist such a movement? Counter-protests? Sure. Just make sure the anger and violence is all their side, not yours.
Singing? OK, it's worked before.
Blocking their access? Lord, no. The church "elders" are all attorneys, who live to sue and counter-sue everyone who challenges them, citing their First Amendment rights.
Anyway, all of these are ephemeral responses. The Westies come, 11-year-old hate-spewing child in tow, they say their piece, they get TV coverage, then they move on and do it again. A counter-protest is for one day. Westboro's hate goes on forever.
So Sarah Allen-Short, Jessica Lucia, Sara Heifetz, and Patience Salgado decided to do more. They harnessed Richmond residents' anti-Westboro frustrations to solicit donations for the targeted Jewish and LGBT organizations. The deal: Give a dollar for every minute WBC protests.
That was how Pennies in Protest started. They figured they'd get $1,000 or so. But by the time WBC blew out of town, 500 individuals had given more than $14,000. Their Facebook page had 3,000 fans. And people across the country were asking how to do it in their own communities.
Oh yeah, and WBC got drowned out by counter-protesters at every stop, too. And GayRVA, the local LGBT publication, made the four women their "Out.Spoken" Richmonders of the year.
"We're always trying to do better things in the world and this was just a no-brainer," Allen-Short told GayRVA. "It seemed like the only thing that's not complicated. It's not political, but I think that’s what was cool about it."
Now, these ladies can't drop their lives to follow WBC's hate-speech caravan all over the globe. So they did the next best thing: They started a website, PenniesinProtest.com, that explains their success story and how it can be duplicated by anyone anywhere. Fourteen easy steps show how to start a charity for kindness against hate.
But the best step of all? Step 13. It probably came naturally to group co-founder Salgado, who uses her blog, Kindness Girl, to chronicle "her adventures in what she calls 'Guerrilla Goodness'—from leaving Starbucks cards all over Carytown to writing inspiring messages in sidewalk chalk to students across the city on their first day of school."
Hence, Step 13:
It was important to us to let the Westboro Baptist Church know that the organizations they hate the most benefitted directly from their visit to our city. If they had never come here and chanted their hateful messages, our local community wouldn’t have donated $14,000 to local Jewish and LGBT organizations. They came here to harm our local Jewish and LGBT people, and their visit resulted in love and support.
So we made them a beautiful thank you note, and we mailed it to them.
This morning, Allen-Short sent me a note, too, on Twitter. But it's not really for me, it's for you: "WBC is headed to CA and NE next, so maybe some MoJo readers there will take up the cause. thx!"
Any takers?
For years, a son of the hateful Westboro Baptist Church's pastor has lived quietly as an atheist cabdriver in Canada. Now, he's breaking his silence about the family's abusiveness.
The Fox News pundit steps in to pay legal fees for a fallen Marine's father who was done wrong by a hate-spouting "church."
I Have a Dream Speech - Address at March on Washington 28AUG63
http://www.mlkonline.net/video-i-have-a-dream-speech.html
Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech
I Have a Dream Speech
Full text (transcribed from audio)
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
martin luther king I have a dream speech
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
martin luther king I have a dream speech
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!³
¹ Amos 5:24 (rendered precisely in The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible)
² Isaiah 40:4-5 (King James Version of the Holy Bible). Quotation marks are excluded from part of this moment in the text because King's rendering of Isaiah 40:4 does not precisely follow the KJV version from which he quotes (e.g., "hill" and "mountain" are reversed in the KJV). King's rendering of Isaiah 40:5, however, is precisely quoted from the KJV.
