Posts Tagged ‘civil war’

“General Bragg, We can get all the supplies our Army needs in Chattanooga”

Posted: December 9, 2020 by datechguy in elections, politics
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One of the battle cries I have heard over and over again from people I respect such as Kurt Schlichter and the president himself has been the need to turn out and vote in the GA Senate runoffs since failure to win at least one of them would give the Democrats a majority in the upper chamber and free reign to wreak havoc on America.

This despite the fact that said election would be using the same machines that are in question and be run by the same people in the cities who stole the last one on the presumption that GOP poll watchers will be less willing to leave the room when they’re told this time and that the same party with the audacity to openly steal a national election won’t be daring enough to steal two senate races in Georgia.

While there is some merit to this argument as holding the senate is a worthy goal there is something I want to remind everyone.

One of the victims of the steal of the election of 2020 (I use this term not conceding that it has yet been successful) was the GOP candidate for the US Senate in Michigan.

And while John James has conceded if the steal in Michigan is reversed is it very possible, nay even probable that the Senate result in Michigan would also be reversed, after all the Senate Race in NH is the reason why alone among swing states in 2016 Democrats confident of victory in the national election took the time to steal it (Ed Naile has done yeoman work on the subject over the years here). This would provide the 51st vote regardless of the results in Georgia.

The majority of GOP state officials and legislature members who are either running away from exposing this fraud in an Election where their party made incredible gains in both the house and in state legislatures is reminiscent of Braxton Bragg insisting that after his victory at Chattanooga “any immediate pursuit by out infantry and artillery would have been fruitless.”

When Nathan Bedford Forrest who had been harassing the Union Army in full panicked retreat came back to protest the waste of their huge victory cost at a large price of blood Bragg told him he couldn’t move far from the railroad due to a lack of supplies. When he made the point that is the title of this post and was rejected he stormed away doubtless thinking of the thousands of causalities that their victory cost them said: “What does he fight battles for?”

I would ask the same basic question: What is the point of voting for members of the GOP to protect our interests if in the case where our national interests and indeed the republic are at stake they choose to get along to go along?

Is there any reason to believe that the Democrats backed by the social media and tech giants reinforced by a Obama Justice Department an Obama FBI and a Obama CIA in an Obama Administration (let’s stop pretending that this will be a Biden Administration rather than an Obama one) will not be able to protect and foil all efforts to stop a steal in 2024 nor that the Democrats having four years rather than four hours to create the ballots margins and programs needed will be ready to act on a scale that will boggle the mind? Particularly when they will have the full help and corporation of their good friends in China?

We have the power to stop this steal, we have the power to expose this corruption and crush it, now while it’s still weak and tentative (if it wasn’t weak and they weren’t afraid of exposure you wouldn’t see such efforts to hide the facts from the general public nor would grand statements not withstanding Democrat courts dismiss cases on technical grounds rather than based on the facts of the cases.

Those on the right who suggest we don’t push forward and simply wait things out till 2024 are analogous to Bragg’s decision to let Rosecrans get to Chattanooga unmolested. And while I don’t doubt that if the President’s attempts to stop this crime fails that he will be as energetic as ever to counter the left I fear that we of the right are likely to come to the same end that Bragg did, even if the left doesn’t come up with a Grant to lead them.

The Clock is running Out for The Left/Media’s Albert Sydney Johnston’s strategy

Posted: October 7, 2020 by datechguy in elections, politics
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As the Civil War began the most prominent general on the Confederate side was Albert Sydney Johnston formally of the 2nd US Calvary. Johnston was put in command of Confederate forces in the western theater which meant from the Mississippi river to the Appalachian mountains. His primary job was to stem any Union advance into Tennessee while keeping the Mississippi open to allow men & supplies from the far west (the Transmississippi) to continue to flow to the east.

Johnston was an able general with a well earned reputation as an excellent fighting officer, but realized rather quickly that he neither had the men or the supplies necessary to hold this line against the Union forces that were being arrayed against him. His concluded his best chance on stopping any Union advance was via bluff, namely making said union forces believe that HE was planning a major advance with an army much larger than he actually had.

So all over the press stories were planted doubling and tripling the size of his forces while reporting that he was preparing to advance on a half dozen different cities along a nearly 1000 mile front. At the same time as this was being reported Johnson was sending private requests to Jefferson Davis for reinforcement and resupply.

For a time this was wildly successful. defenses were prepared to stop the expected rebel advances. Governors balked at sending troops to the Army of the Potomac when they would be needed to fend off Johnson’s supposed hoards. In fact it was so successful that it fooled some confederate leaders. When PGT Beauregard was transferred west to serve under Johnson he was shocked to discover the actual strength of the force he was joining.

Eventually the Union forces did advance. US Grant took forts Henry and Donaldson and Union forces poured into Tennessee and Johnston would retreat into Mississippi. Johnston would eventually attack at Shiloh hoping to destroy the divided Union forces and be killed during the 1st day of the battle on April 6th 1862.

I tell this story because as I see stories like this.

Come On, Man: CNN Poll Puts Biden Up — By Sixteen Points?

and tweets like this.

It occurs to me that these modern Democrats who previously were using the same language as slavery supporting confederates from 1860 are using the same election battle plan as their Civil War Counterparts as well.

Having failed to remove the president via the Mueller investigation and Impeachment and having the Corona and Riot Brier Patches bite primarily on Democrat cities and office holders the primary tool of the Democrat left seems to be going all in on a media propaganda effort that the polling (done by absolutely TOP people from absolutely TOP organizations with absolutely TOP standards) indicates that the Trump campaign is on the road for a defeat of biblical proportions.

The purpose of this is to keep the faithful in the bubble fighting and to keep the morale up of an industry that has shrunk it’s customer base to the point where those who remain can’t abide any statement contrary to the narrative that they have been advancing.

Unfortunately for the media they have one disadvantage that General Johnston did not. There is an actual drop dead date for this tactic, namely election day, although in fairness the attempt to push the idea that mail in ballots will be enough to change a Trump election night victory to a defeat will likely continue until it’s clear that there simply aren’t enough votes to steal in enough states to reverse the result.

Perhaps we will see the “faithless electors” card played again and perhaps the left will run to the courts but in the end the clock will run out on the tactic of bluff and bluster and the media and their allies will have to deal with the reality of a defeat.

I suspect that there are more than a few who have already guessed what’s coming but for those who have not it will be quite a shock that I suspect will be featured in youtube videos for years to come.

The Democrat Slavery/Jim Crow Not Our Business Argument is Back For Portland

Posted: July 23, 2020 by datechguy in culture, News/opinion, politics, Uncategorized
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Before my wife finally got her negative COVID test back allowing me to return to work (for some reason they didn’t record she was a healthcare worker and her case wasn’t expedited so poof went days of pay for us both) I had an interesting exchange with a fellow concerning what’s going on in Portland Ore where the family of DaWife’s father is from and where I almost moved after honeymooning there (Apparently the best non-move I ever made in my life).

Along with the standard mostly un-poisoned soup arguments about how peaceful most of the protesters who have been rioting for two months are I heard one argument against the Department of Homeland Security Troops being there that did have some resonance (no it wasn’t the “secret police” nonsense that my sons friends are falling for and some democrats are pushing).

This argument is that this is a local matter and in one sense he had a point. The citizens of Portland districts elected their Democrat city counsel that has supported this nonsense, the citizens of Portland as a whole elected their Democrat Mayor who has allowed these riots to take place and handcuffed their Police, the citizens of the Oregon district that includes Portland elected the Democrat congressmen defending this stuff and opposing the feds protecting federal property and the citizens of Oregon as a whole elected the Democrat governor and Democrat senators who have turned a blind eye to the violence, except to attack Federal Agents in general and President Donald Trump in particular for trying to stop it, at least when they go after Federal locations. So they’re getting what they voted for.

In fact Erick Erickson argues Let Portland Burn:

Let the market decision by letting the actions of a free people control their fate.

The President should withdraw from Portland immediately and let the city burn, if it will, or thrive if it will, but it is the choice of the people there.

A President sending in a police force to a city is a dangerous precedent that will be expanded upon even though the United States Constitution lacks a general police power. A city allowed to chose its own fate is a positive precedent from which we can all draw lessons.

Let Portland burn or not, but let it decide without intervention from Washington.

And Jazz Shaw notes:

the people of these cities continue to elect the same group of Democratic hand-wringers year after year no matter how badly conditions on the ground deteriorate. So does this mean that the rest of the nation and the federal government are out of options besides just waiting for the cities to implode?

There’s clearly an argument to be made in favor of such a conclusion, though it’s an ugly thought to contemplate. As Erickson suggests, there must surely come a point where the remaining sane people in Portland and these other cities will look around at the shootings, the rapes, the arson and the looting and come to the conclusion that something isn’t working. This relies on the old adage which holds that a liberal is just a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet.

Now I must confess that there is some appeal in this. Why waste federal resources to protect people from their own bad decisions? I’ve heard variants of this concerning folks who build in areas that are regularly threatened by Hurricanes or Wildfires. Why should my federal tax dollars be spent to protect these fools from themselves?

But what really funny about this argument I’ve been reading these exact same points, argued by southern supporters of slavery during the 1850 up to the start of the civil war.

As I’ve mentioned before I’ve been reading Hart’s brilliant American History told by Contemporaries during my lunch break, I’m on volume four and have for the last month (not including during quarantine) been reading argument after argument by congressmen, senators, governors writers newspaper and thinkers and ordinary people both defending and opposing slavery and one of the arguments that is constantly being made by the Democrats concerning slavery is that it’s none of the North’s damn business what the south chooses to do about slavery. It’s not a federal issue but an issue for the individual states whose citizens support the institution. Here is one example:

Never, in a single instance, has the South, in any shape or form, interfered with the North in her municipal regulations ; but, on the contrary, has tamely submitted to paying tribute to the support of her manufactures, and the establishment of her commercial greatness; yet, lie the “serpent warmed in the husbandman’s bosom,” she turns upon us and stings us to the heart. If Great Briton or any foreign power, had heaped upon us the long catalog of insult and abuses that the North has, there is not a man in the whole South who would not have long since shouldered his musket, and, if necessary split his heart’s blood to have avenged them. But because we are members of the same political family it is contended we must not quarrel, but suffer all the impositions at their hands that in their fanatical spleen they may choose to heap on us.

That’s the Charleston Mercury circa 1860 which sounds an awful like the Democrats today. But you know who sounds more like them. Democrat President James Buchanan who sat back while the slave states seceded and seized federal property and arsenals:

How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever, and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way.

Doesn’t that sound like the whole Pelosi/Media meme of the violence will all go away and the people of Portland will be fine if Trump just ignores what’s going on.

But we don’t have to go back to the 1800’s for these words. We can go back to living memory, 1957, to the floor of the US Senate to hear the arguments of Senator Richard Russell (D-GA) made against the 1957 Civil rights act on the floor of the Senate during the Debates chronicled in Robert Caro’s extraordinary biography of Lyndon Johnson The Years of Lyndon Johnson specifically in volume three Master of the Senate (another set of books I highly recommend four volumes are out vol 5 is yet to come) this exchange from page 965 come immediately to mind:

McNamara said Michigan needed no defense, that his state could handle its affairs without outside interference. “Then why does not the Senator let us do the same?” Russell asked. There was applause from the southern senators seated around him, but he had asked a question, and he was to receive an answer to it. “McNamara,” Doris Fleeson wrote, “roared in the bull voice trained in a thousand union meeting halls: ‘Because you’ve had ninety years and haven’t done it’ “

Now I’ll readily concede that given our current education system and the lack of interest in reading anything but Howard Zinn communist approved history some of these debates and arguments might not be familiar to the current Democrat Leadership like Nancy Pelosi or Democrat Mayors like Ted Wheeler or “Journalists” like Brian Stelter let alone the rank and file leftists/ Democrats posting on facebook or twitter.

But as someone who HAS read this stuff I find it incredibility interesting that the arguments of today’s Democrat left/media are the arguments of the slaveholder and the defenders of Jim Crow and are being made under the banner of Black Lives Matter.

But it makes sense after all the slaveholder and the proponents of Jim Crow also insisted that the way of life they defended was for Black American’s own good. And just as in those days, we see blacks trapped in cities controlled by democrats, beset by crime and drugs with Democrat leaders keeping those who would free them from these plagues out supposedly for their own good.

Ah the Democrats back to their segregationist roots in public once again.

The war on statues may never end

Posted: June 14, 2020 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, politics
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Lincoln and Douglas at Freeport, Illinois

By John Ruberry

While we’re not–yet–at the French Revolution level of destroying then recreating society, the Angry Left is focused on defacing and toppling statues of men deemed racist. Or by having sympathetic politicians remove them, such as what happened last week with Jefferson Davis’ statue at the Kentucky state capitol. So far women in bronze and marble, to my knowledge, have been spared, but one of Illinois’ representatives at National Statuary Hall at the US Capitol just might be inflicted with induced restless legs syndrome. I’ll get to her later.

Monuments of Confederate generals and of course Jefferson Davis have been the hit the hardest by the vandals. But the rage is now world wide. Winston Churchill’s statue at Parliament Square in London had “was a racist” spray painted on its pedestal. There’s an Abraham Lincoln statue there too, Black Lives Matter activists defaced that one. Up in Scotland, a statue of medieval monarch Robert the Bruce, whose views on black people are unknown, had “BLM” and “was a racist king” spray painted on it.

Because I’m from Illinois, I’d like to zoom in on my state. Let’s return to Lincoln. While Honest Abe was always anti-slavery, his views on black people prior to the Civil War would be classified as racist today. Lincoln’s stance on slavery in the 1860 election was to confine it to states where it already existed. By 1863 he was an abolitionist, at least in areas held by Confederate forces. Two years later the Great Emancipator enthusiastically backed the 13th Amendment that finally ended slavery in America. Oh, Lincoln saved the union too. That’s why he is considered the United States’ greatest president by most historians.

Lincoln gained national prominence in 1858 during his campaign for the US Senate against Stephen A. Douglas. Other than his connection to Lincoln, Douglas, “the Little Giant,” is largely forgotten now. His Kansas-Nebraska Act, which eliminated the Missouri Compromise in determining which states would be slave or free, ignited Bleeding Kansas, a brutal warmup to the Civil War. But Douglas was a political dynamo in the 1850s and he was the nominee for president for the northern Democrats in 1860.

Douglas and Lincoln agreed to a series of seven debates throughout Illinois during the 1858 campaign, the famous, or make that formerly famous, Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Late in the 20th century bronze statues of both men were placed at each of those sites.

Hmmm.

Douglas’ views on slavery were purposely murky, he believed in “popular sovereignty,” that is the voters, who comprised only of white males in the 19th century, should decide where slavery should exist. The Little Giant owned a plantation in Mississippi with slaves. Well, not exactly, but it was in his wife’s name.

How long will it be before those Douglas statues in Illinois will be vandalized? When will the call for their removal begin? And those seven plazas with Lincoln and Douglas will look unbalanced with just one man. Will Lincoln, who at one time of course was a racist, albeit most whites were bigots in the 1800s, get yanked too from those spots too?

Nancy Pelosi is calling for the removal of eleven statues honoring Confederates at Statuary Hall. Each state gets two statues, some of these honorees are well-known, Andrew Jackson represents Tennessee, George Washington is one of Virginia’s statues. Both men of course owned slaves. Some of the honorees are virtually unknown. Frances Willard, the longtime president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a group that assisted in establishing Prohibition in America, represents Illinois in the hall. Like Douglas, she was a big deal in her day. But Willard held racist views and she feuded with African American civil rights leader Ida B. Wells.

When you remove the Confederates, the slave holders, and the racists, how many statues will be left in Statuary Hall?

How many statues in front of libraries, village squares, or county courthouses will be removed?

Where does is it all end?

And if all of the statues are gone, then what?

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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