Posted by
Georgetwin on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 2:36:31 PM
ACORN Hopey McChange’s OWNERSHIP of the Economy, the Wars and the Bailout has gotten BROADER and DEEPER. All 3 have taken a turn for the WORSE as a result. The Market SEEMS to have steadied, but INFLATION due to devalued currency WILL happen sooner or later. The INSANITY of these bailouts and takeovers WILL take its toll at some point VERY SOON! Our suspicions that the Sail Eared Simpleton was just a Jive Talking Doper without a clue are MUCH worse than we EVER dreamed!
I FINALLY replaced all of my Lamour titles and Walmart doesn’t seem to be getting anymore of them in :(. I recently have read 3 books, the first one was “Guilty” by Ann Coulter. It is a typical Ann Coulter book. LONG on facts and figures that DENIGRATE Liberals with a healthy dose of Ann’s acidic, satirical, sarcastic, absurdity thrown in. If you have NEVER read an Ann Coulter book, I HIGHLY recommend you try it. If you have, you KNOW what to expect. I also read “A Slobbering Love Affair” by Bernie Goldberg. It is about the Media Coverage of Barack Obama’s run for the presidency. It is not a very long book, but even as biased as the coverage was to us laymen, the insight that Bernie Goldberg brings to it and what he exposes WILL make you sit up and take notice. Lastly I read “Do the Right Thing” by Mike Huckabee. It is the story of Huckabee’s run for the 2008 GOP Presidential Nomination, interspersed with Huckabee’s take on Orthodox GOP positions. 2 things struck me about the book. The first thing I noticed is Huckabee has a BIG hard-on for Mitt Romney. The second thing is that Huckabee’s ministerial training WILL keep him from ever making it to the White House. He seems to be conflicted on some policies that are RIFE with Common Sense, but are not right down the line with Christianity (.i.e. immigration).
I still HIGHLY recommend 2 new series on The History Channel that you might find interesting, Battles BC and Warriors. Battles BC(http://www.history.com/minisites/battles-bc) is computer generated reproductions of famous battles of the Ancient World, the Battle of Kadesh and the Battle of Teutoburg Forest to name 2 that have been profiled. Warriors(http://www.history.com/minisites/warriors) is hosted by a Special Forces Soldier named Terry Schappert (http://www.history.com/content/warriors/meet-the-host). He travels ALL OVER the world doing these documentaries on Warrior Cultures, 2 that he has done are the Vikings and the Spartans. What got my attention were some of the weapons from different Warrior Cultures. The Samurai for instance had a 15-20 foot length of chain with an iron weight on 1 end and a sickle on the other. They would swing the sickle end around thus creating a 3 foot perimeter. With the other hand, they would throw the weighted endat their opponent’s limbs. If properly thrown, it would wrap around their limbs and thus take away a point of balance. As you Vets know, once you lose a point of balance in hand-to-hand combat, DEATH is knocking at your door. Once they had 2 or more points of balance wrapped up, the sickle came into play and GAME OVER!
In a BITTERLY fought campaign, A small but DETERMINED group of Patriots had been outsmarted, outfought and all but EXTERMINATED! Their enemy was gearing up for one last campaign with which they hoped to land a KNOCKOUT blow to these Determined Patriots. The situation was BLEAK! These patriots had NO OFFENSIVE FIREPOWER, a Disgruntled Base and were outmanned 2 to 1. All they could do was dig in, play defense and pray for a MIRACLE. This sounds a lot like what we Conservatives have been going through since Inauguration Day doesn’t it? WRONG AGAIN! Fort McHenry is the site of a battle which led to the writing of The Star Spangled Banner. It is in South Baltimore and I have toured it MANY times. I looked at that battle through the CSC Looking Glass and discovered/learned SEVERAL things that are GERMANE to the predicament that Conservatives find themselves in.
Just 30 years after America had won her Independence, a number of disputes with Great Britain forced us to declare war on them AGAIN! Britain had tried to impede our trade with France because they were at war with the French. They had FORCED American Citizens to serve in the Royal Navy and when confronted about it had said they STILL considered them Royal Subjects, a SLAP IN THE FACE of American Sovereignty. It was also suspected that the British ENCOURAGED the American Indians to keep gnawing at the edges of the Frontier of the American Colonies. With this state of affairs, the die was cast and war was declared.
To make a long story short and get to the point, for a little over 2 years The British Empire and the USA slugged it out at sea and on land. Both sides inflicted SEVERE damage on each other, but overall it was a STALEMATE until the late summer of 1814. In 1812 and 1813, the British Empire had placed a HIGHER PRIORITY on their War with France and thus fought more of a DEFENSIVE War. Once the British had defeated France and dispatched Napoleon, they were able to send Veteran Troops to America. Upwards of a dozen British Navy Vessels sailed into Chesapeake Bay. On August 24, 1814, the British Army overran confused American Defenders at the Battle of Bladensburg and marched into the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., which had been abandoned by the military. After burning and looting the White House, Capitol, Treasury, War Department and other public buildings and forcing the destruction of the Washington Navy Yard, the British carted public and private possessions back to their ships. President James Madison and the entire government fled the city. Madison wandered around Virginia and Maryland for several days. The British also sent a fleet up the Potomac River to threaten the prosperous ports of Alexandria and Georgetown, which lie just west of Washington and cut off Washington's water access. The mere appearance of the fleet cowed American Defenders into fleeing from Fort Warburton without firing a shot, and undefended Alexandria surrendered. The British spent several days looting hundreds of tons of merchandise from city merchants, then turned their attention north to Baltimore, where they hoped to strike a KNOCKOUT BLOW against the demoralized Americans. Baltimore was a busy port and was thought by the British to harbor many of the Privateers who were raiding British shipping. The British planned a combined operation, with Major General Robert Ross launching a land attack at North Point, and Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane laying siege to Fort McHenry, which was the point defensive installation in Baltimore Harbor.
At Fort McHenry, some 1,000 soldiers under the command of Major George Armistead awaited the British Navy’s bombardment. Their defense was augmented by the sinking of a line of American merchant ships at the adjacent entrance to Baltimore Harbor in order to further thwart the passage of British ships. The attack began on September 13, 1814 as the British Fleet of some nineteen ships began pounding the fort with Congreve Rockets and Mortar Shells. After an initial exchange of fire, the British Fleet withdrew to just beyond the range of Fort McHenry’s cannons and continued to bombard the American redoubts for the next 25 hours!
STOP and THINK about what you just read. The British Fleet discovered that the range of Fort McHenry’s guns was 1 ½ miles. The range of the British guns was 2 miles. So the British Navy pulled out of range of Fort McHenry’s guns, turned broadside and for 1 DAY + 1 HOUR they OPENED UP on Fort McHenry. Fort McHenry(http://www.nps.gov/archive/fomc/home.htm) was “State of the Art” in 1814. It is basically a set of connected triangles where few of the walls are parallel to the water. It was built this way so that cannon balls would not “BITE” so hard when they hit the walls. So although 1,500 to 1,800 cannonballs were launched at the fort, damage was light.
However, sitting right in the middle of Fort McHenry was the POWDER MAGAZINE containing ALL OF THE ORDINANCE for the fort. REMEMBER that Fort McHenry at this point was TOTALLY DEFENSIVE! There is NOTHING they can do as long as the British Navy stays out of range of their guns. SEVERAL British Warships are firing at a relatively small area from several different angles. ONE lucky shot, ONE lucky bounce or ONE lucky ricochet and Fort McHenry becomes Fort McCrater. By the numbers, 1800 cannonballs / 25 hours = 72 cannonballs an hour were fired. 3600 seconds / 72 cannonballs means that ONCE EVERY 50 SECONDS, your heart jumped into your throat. THINK of the Psychological Effect this would have. EVERY TIME one of those British Guns BOOMED, it could be the last thing you hear! But Liberals think waterboarding is torture.
Simultaneously the British had landed a force of 5,000 troops who marched toward Baltimore and first met heavy resistance at The Battle
of North Point
which was fought about 5 miles from the city. The city’s defense was under the overall command of Major General Samuel Smith, an officer of the Maryland Militia. He dispatched a column under the command of General John Stricker which killed the British General Robert Ross and blunted the British attack. As a result, the British Army halted their advance and awaited the results of the sea campaign. After nightfall, Cochrane ordered a landing to be made by small boats on the shore just west of the fort, away from the harbor opening on which the fort’s defense was concentrated. He hoped that the landing party might slip past Fort McHenry and draw Smith’s army away from the main British land assault on the city’s eastern border. Operating in darkness and in foul weather, Armistead's guns opened fire on the landing party and the diversionary attack failed. On the morning of September 14, 1814, the 30 ft × 42 ft oversized American flag, which had been made a few months before by local flagmaker Mary Pickersgill and her 13-year-old daughter, still flew over Fort McHenry. The British Infantry had been instructed not to attack the American positions around Baltimore unless he was certain they could be taken. Seeing that Cochrane had failed to subdue Fort McHenry, they withdrew from their positions, and returned to the fleet. Admiral Cochrane’s Fleet sailed off to regroup before his next assault on America at New Orleans, Louisiana where the British ran into a DETERMINED Band of Patriots under the direction of a gentleman by the name of Andrew Jackson, the rest is history.
OK then, now let’s see what can be learned from this battle and tie it all together with a Big Red CSC Bow:
1. When Major Armistead realized that his guns COULD NOT reach the British ships, he SHUT THEM DOWN! This was a VERY smart move! WHY waste powder and ammo if it would have NO EFFECT on the outcome of the battle? HE KNEW that at some point that if they wanted Fort McHenry, they HAD to COME WITHIN RANGE of his guns. You see what happened when they tried a landing in the previous paragraph. If he had used up all his ordinance, they would’ve been slaughtered like chickens cornered by a weasel. The Lesson to take from this is WHY should Conservatives spend money to put up more than a token resistance in a state where they have NO CHANCE OF WINNING! Take Vermont for example, we have ZERO chance of winning a Senate or Congressional Election and LITTLE chance of winning a Presidential Election in Vermont. SEVERAL Western states on the other hand have THE SAME NUMBER of Electoral Votes as Vermontand WAY more often than not, we have a VERY GOOD chance of SWEEPING all 3 contests in those states. The old dictum of “Keep your powder dry.” is only applicable if you HAVE powder!
2. When Major Armistead ceased fire and hunkered down in Fort McHenry, he KNEW he had a STATE OF THE ART defensive structure protecting him. It was SPECIFICALLY designed to withstand the projectiles that were being fired at him. True it did have a FATAL flaw with the powder magazine right in the middle of it, but it was his best hope of surviving and therefore he had no choice but to use it to his best advantage. The Lesson here is that you pit YOUR STRENGTH against YOUR OPPONENT’S WEAKNESS! Conservatives are STRONGEST in the Agrarian South and the Stock Raising West. HUGE MAJORITIES of the folks in these areas aspire to live their lives according to the Traditional American Values that Conservatives ascribe to. I keep hearing that this makes us a REGIONAL Party. BFD! The Liberals are also a REGIONAL PARTY, but their region has a LOT more Electoral Votes at this time. It is true that once in a while a powder magazine will go up in the middle of our defenses. Tom Daschle and Kathleen Sebelius are 2 examples that come to mind. But the fact remains that these 2 areas are our strength and it would be FOOLISHLY IDIOTIC to abandon them at this point.
3. The GRAND SCHEME of the British was to catch the Americans in a PINCERS MOVEMENT between the British Infantry marching into Baltimore from the East and the British Navy sailing in from the South. Once the British Navy figured out that Fort McHenry’s guns COULD NOT reach them, it PROBABLY seemed like a FOOLPROOF PLAN! WHY then didn’t it work? It failed because the Commander of the Land Attack, British General Robert Ross, was killed and his troops stopped, made camp and waited to see the results of the British Navy’s attack. This was not a MAJOR setback, the British Infantry had been ORDERED not to attack American Infantry Positions unless they were CERTAIN that they could be taken. But it looks to me like the British Infantry was SKITTISH about continuing their campaign after their leader was killed. If you recall, after dark the British Navy tried a surprise attack on Fort McHenry with a landing party. They were discouraged by a steady, accurate, fusillade of cannon fire. WHY did they fail? The Americans were still OUTNUMBERED and OUTGUNNED by the British. WHY did the British stop? Because on land their leader was killed and in the water he had failed MISERABLY as the Americans were still able to repel a British Landing Party. The Lesson to learn here is that when an Enemy Leader puts himself in a VULNERABLE position, TAKE HIM OUT! Either KILL them politically or play defense well enough that aspersions are cast on his Leadership. For example, some states with BIG Electoral Vote counts have been UNTOUCHABLE for Conservatives for a while now. BUT a number of them have leaders who were KIA (Idiot Spritzer in NY) or who have done such a POOR JOB of LEADING (Ahnuld in CA) that they have lost the confidence of WE THE PEOPLE and/or the Legislature, Thus creating a GOLDEN opportunity for Conservatives. If we put forward STRONG CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES we have a chance to pry some Governor’s Mansions and EVENTUALLY some US Senate and Congressional seats away from the Liberals.
Right now, we Conservatives are up against it. But as I have shown with JUST A FEW SMART MOVES, DISASTER can be turned into VICTORY! We were hunkered down for a while in defensive position. Now the Enemy’s Leaders are EXPOSING themselves (Pelosi) or doing an EXCEEDINGLY poor job of leading (Obama) and as was previously mentioned, we are in the process of killing them POLITICALLY or playing good enough defense that aspersions are being cast on their Leadership. If we follow this strategy, at some point their leaders WILL become casualties and their WILL be disarray in their ranks. All that is left to do is to find our Andrew Jackson. Don’t get me wrong, this WILL NOT happen FAST or EASY. In the example I used, it took 30 years to settle the question of our Independence ONCE AND FOR ALL! But I think we all agree I was WELL WORTH THE WAIT!
God Bless You and Thank You for Your Time,
J. Allen Frye