Captive Audience Reacts To John Carney’s TelaTownhall

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Delaware Liberal has running commentary here…… 

9/11 In Memory Of Our Most Tragic Defeat

The cannon fire could be heard from Brandywine Hundred. It was louder in Concord. It was deafening in Chadd’s Ford. The Battle of the Brandywine was in full swing, and the result was a defeat of the American Forces leaving Philadelphia wide open to the British invasion.

Sadly for us this marks the end of Delaware’s direct involvement in the Revolutionary War. After this battle, the war in the North became a sitting game, and Cornwallis felt compelled to shift to the South to try and gain some momentum. He misread the South’s resilience, and the war of course ended when he got boxed at Yorktown.

As for Delaware, the British had previously marched up from Glasgow through Newark then up Kirkwood Highway and camped at Marshalltown. One can still see the embankments they threw up. The Americans realized that they had only a narrow route north before did the British. Had the British chosen to fight through the night, the war would have been over with Washington’s defeat. He was trapped by water on three sides. General Howe was a person adverse to exertion, and chose to investigate the following morning. When the British awoke, they saw the Americans had disappeared in the night, leaving their camp fires burning to fool the British watchmen.

The British marched north to Kennett Square, probably along what is now Route 82… On the morning of 9/11 the British marched towards Philadelphia. Washington assumed the lazy Howe would march the easiest route and set up defenses in Chadd’s Ford covering the road to Baltimore, which is Route 1 today. What Washington miscalculated is that the British had better intelligence than he. Here is how.

Washington was employing those in Philadelphia to give him advice. Howe was approaching on the outside, and chose those locals to tell him the layout. The difference in intelligence was a simple as one looking out, and one looking in. Perhaps you may remember the meme last decade of showing a city as the makeup of their entire World? For instance one of Rehoboth, would show Rehoboth and Dewey and Ocean City in Great detail, and Washington and Baltimore as tiny patches on the last edge of the map? Well that myopia actually affects our judgment. As one approaches the unknown, one is apt to know only his one way. But to use that same analogy backwards, as one approaches the known, from the area of the unknown, one is far more perceptive of all other options leading towards that goal or destination.

So it was with Howe, who found out there were two ford to the north, both overlooked by Washington, and the access to the battle field was relative easily. Howe committed 5000 of his 18,000 troups to attacking Washington’s front lines, and sent 13,000 north to cross both the west and east branches of the Brandywine, then head south. imagine the surprise of the American army who had been confident that they were holding their own, to find they’d been fighting a measly 5000 men in the fog, and now had 13,000 marching behind them on their right side….

We retreated. Some said it was a disciplined retreat, and Lafayette is given a lot of credit for that. He was wounded this day in history by the way, yet he established a rallying point, communicated it to all the troops, and an orderly retreat was managed. But the surprise to our right cost us dearly. We lost 11 of our 14 artillery guns. The British listed 587 as killed, missing or wounded, but no records of the Americans lost is known.. General Nathaniel Greene is later quoted as guessing 1200 to 1400 Continentals were lost… Commander Howe wrote to the British Foreign Secretary that 300 dead, 600 wounded, 400 prisoners were the total of America’s casualties.

One cannot imagine how dark things seemed for the prospects of an American nation after this day.

• Americans had been tricked and easily routed.
• They’d lost 79% of their artillary, having only 3 cannons left.
• The Continental Congress fled in the night to Lancaster for one day, then to York.
• Military supplies were moved to Reading.
• Philadelphia, the cradle of democracy, was wide open to the British Army.
• It was 52 years before the founding of Yeungling’s brewery, so none was available to drown one’s sorrows.

They suffered fully sober.  If we can remember the tragedy of our 9/11, try to imagine something ten times worse. There was no hope, period.

A makeshift hospital was scrambled together in Wilmington Delaware, and 350 causalities were sent.

Wikileaks: Update

You won’t find this on any domestic news services.

Wiki leaks was booted out from Amazon servers at pressure from the US.

Twitters touting Amazon said:

“It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it.”

“Wikileaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free — fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe,”

“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”

Wikileaks was briefly hosted by a California-based internet hosting provider called Everydns, and became briefly accessible through a DNS address. But Everydns dumped it saying it could not afford its other 500,000 customers being affected by the intense cyber attacks targeted at Wikileaks.

WikiLeaks later re-emerged on Friday with a Swiss domain, WikiLeaks.ch.

Anyone and everyone is building mirrors. No one is concerned with the content. Everyone is concerned with the freedom of the internet.

Like Robin Hood, the more Uncle Sam chases its founder Julian Assange, the more legendary he becomes…..

Face it: the damage is done. Whatever was in those documents is already out there. A smart leader would acknowledge the carelessness of his subordinates, and work to turn this negative event, somehow into a positive one.

It sure shows Dick Cheney for what he was. That is something positive ….

Where’s kavips?

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Should We Even Bother To Hold Ourselves to A Higher Standard?

Some of you were raised upon the same myth as was I. From our elders, or their elders, many of which fought in the Second World War, we grew up in the comfort that American ingenuity could and would be able to solve the world’s problems. We grew up safe, we grew up right, knowing that whatever form evil might take, as “one nation indivisible”, we were more than a match for it……After all, we were spawned from the world’s greatest generation.

Ominous parallels lie deep in the files of history. Parallels to the “Fall of Rome”, are often premature. However,….I ask your indulgence instead, in comparing ourselves to another scenario, which seems to closely compare with our current plight.

Without question the last century, closed down with much fanfare seven years ago, was indeed the American Century. Today, bets currently upon this century’s title, the one we have recently entered, are leaning towards it becoming known as the Chinese Century. But,… if one backs up to the 1800’s, from the defeat of Napoleon early on, to the glory of an Empire on which “the sun never set”, that century overwhelmingly dominated by the British.

Currently any stature and world voice that the Brits have now, is directly due to their close alliance to the US. So how did the world’s greatest empire, which once ruled the seas, become just “another member of the EU”, in less than 100 years? Can studying their demise, teach us anything which we can utilize to keep our own nation from following suit?

The answer is: yes, …perhaps it can.

It was through the two world wars that the United States became elevated to its prominence. It was also those wars that brought the rest of the world to their knees. With the US home-front safe from attack, our massive economic might simply outproduced the economies every other nation, whose home front infrastructures had become heavily damaged by the wastes of war. It was this lucky break that shot us into prominence……and changed our destiny.

Today we live in fear of a surprise attack, another Pearl Harbor along the lines of WWII. But it appears that we have greater chance, and should perhaps have greater fear, that we inch into our next war, as did those countries guilty of instigating the First World War. There, little steps piled up on both sides; “I’ll see you one and raise you one.” Finally at some point, with guns drawn, a trigger was pulled, and against all reason the battle engaged, …lines became drawn, and stalemate ensued……..in the end, the amount of lives squandered for nothing but a general’s vanity and inches of ground, severely affected European psyche for a long time……

Now, in a similar situation as today’s most powerful nation, we are likewise poised to engage in a military adventure, which we will argue is against terrorism, but history no doubt, will drown us out and interpret it as a religious war against all Muslims, and today the brinkmanship is currently being played vis a vis Iran. Meanwhile while we rattle our sabers and bang on our shields, on the sidelines lies China, peacefully continuing to grow and prosper. As was Britain in the early 20th Century, so will we become in the 21st, forever placed at a disadvantage because we could not leave “war” alone.

If our current trend continues, we soon will become today’s Great Britain (economically) and China will assume the number one position of the United States.

So what is the pivot point on which all this change hinges?

In a book about the Lackawanna Six, The Jihad Next Door, the author, Dina Temple-Raston, investigated Guantanamo. Some of you may have seen the clip showing one of the detainees being beaten to a pulp. It makes Rodney King look like he was beaten by Dora the Explorer. The author said the clip really disturbed the FBI, and became instrumental in forcing the detentions to move forward into courts of law.

These victims were American citizens. As I grew incensed after seeing this atrocity directly sanctioned by the White House, I finally understood how a loose cannon, could strap on a suicide vest and walk into Christiana Mall convinced he was firmly on the side of “right”. Forget the big dramatic attacks. It is these little nuisances, one person explosions, against which we have no defense, that kill people. And those little nuisances, all of which are home grown, get their impetuses from our values as a nation.

Europe has much more problems with imported populations. The threat of bombings is a higher there. The only reason we have yet to succumb to this type of carnage, is because our reputation. Currently, among home grown Muslims, Americans, still considered as generous people, are still too nice to kill.

But that tone has changed under this administration.

It is important not to think of this solely in terms of a stand-alone threat. Instead, it too must be calculated into the equation of what happens when this nation attacks Iran. We have attacked one country unprovoked. History shows that once a second one is subsequently attacked, it brings all the hornets out of the woodwork. Quite possibly, had Hitler stopped at Poland, a world still weary of war, may have agreed still to a stalemate, and the course of history may have run quite differently. Today Poland might still be split down the middle……..But Hitler couldn’t, and didn’t stop. And today it looks, more and more, like Cheney won’t either……

We have heard the Pentagon has targeted 2000 sites within Iran. Contributing to this apprehension was the fact that nine out of ten republican candidates in the New Hampshire debate sponsored by Fox, overwhelmingly supported the use of nuclear weapons in Iran!…….These callous statements seem detached from the logic and realization that over 62 years have transpired, since mankind has last decided to use these weapons on people. These callous statements, all made by wanna be politicians, not only seem to be washed over, but even cheered on by the media, who too fail to recognize without any comment that it will take over 24,100 years until we even reach half life of the ensuing contamination. Instead, like rowdy football fans they cheer our nation’s toughness, “you bet we will drop the bomb”, without pausing to remember the hideous effect that our last actions had on those citizens and children of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki……….

This is a serious disconnect; it needs pointed out to all. As recently as 1964, Goldwater was politically ruined by a girl picking petals off a daisy. Now, ….one needs to support nuking Iran, in order to be considered a “serious candidate”? If one pauses, steps back and thinks for but a brief second, it is obvious that there is something seriously wrong, not only with the candidates themselves, but with both the silent media and with the American people, who though they listen, do not seem to hear, or think.

Today as a society are doing exactly what the British did leading up to WWI! After consistently succeeding for so long, the British public had become bored with success. Numbed to perfection, they wanted action; “for the sport of it, chap”. War provided it………..at first……..until the reality of a million dead boys, set it back in. All it takes is a little event, one over which we have no control, and the mammoths collide.

So where upon this trend, do we stand today. In the name of security, we have been asked to give up our rights to privacy within our homes,…. and Congress complied. We have been asked to allow torture,… and Congress complied. We have been asked to attack another country, solely because it had something Cheney wanted, …oil, …..and Congress complied. We have been asked to pay for this extravaganza out of our children’s future incomes, and despite the vociferous opposition from a plurality of the American people,….to which Congress complied. We have been asked to squander our most precious resource, “the highest standards ever held by a nation put forth upon this planet”…….and Congress complied!

Whenever brutality is rendered by the power in charge, it is never something to be revered. Historically and unfortunately, America has always had a violent contingent within its psyche (we have all heard stories), but as a nation of values and law, it was never sanctioned as our official policy. Evidenced by the fact that as law caught up to the frontier, frequency of brutality faded or ceased altogether. After all,…. as we were taught from an early age, Americans fought brutality…not supported it, for as “one nation under God”, we stood firmly on higher principles. …

Now, …with this cabal embedded within the White House…. I am not so sure this still stands……I would argue that for the first time ever in our great nation’s history, our frail human tendencies, instead of being controlled by our rule of law, are directly exploited and sanctioned by our system of law instead.

Will this, once great nation respected around the world, continue to navigate without its moral compass and steer itself down that insane course, previously plotted again by the former “Great” Britain over a century ago?

To be brutally honest, ….right now ….it certainly looks likely.

Mitt Bumbles Again

Hillary announced her health care proposal today. She calls for universal health care that is privately run, not government run.

Edwards and Richardson say their health care plans are better, and that they offered theirs sooner….

But the most fun will be had with Mitts remark. Today, Republican Mitt Romney, in New York City for a fundraising stop, criticized Clinton’s proposal, saying, “‘Hillary care’ continues to be bad medicine … in her plan, we have Washington-managed health care. Fundamentally, she takes her inspiration from European bureaucracies.”

However…………you know he slipped up, ……..he is Mitt after all.

The centerpiece of Clinton’s latest effort is the so-called “individual mandate,” requiring everyone to have health insurance just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. The plan that Romney helped institute while governor of Massachusetts requires the same individual insurance mandate as Clinton’s and uses state subsidies to help reduce the cost of private coverage.

Since then, Romney has said he would leave it up to the states to decide whether they supported such a mandate.

So if one uses pure logic, assuming that Hillary’s plan is bad medicine, and Romney implemented the same type of plan in Massachusetts, then it must also follow that Romney’s plan is bad medicine……..

So Mitt Romney, tell us if her plan is so bad, why did you do it when you were governor? Or are you implying that only ideas that come from you are good, from all others suspect?

If that is so, then no thanks Mitt……We have already suffered from 7 years of someone who makes his decisions “because I/m right” and it doesn’t work…………

He may survive because his slip was over shadowed by Giuliani’s comment. While campaigning in Florida, Republican Rudy Giuliani said Clinton’s plans was a “pretty clear march to socialized medicine.”

Which means (as was previously pointed out with Giuliani’s Iraq policy), that he has no idea of what he is talking about, because of course,…..his time is spent being far too engaged with the ladies.

Mike Castle Breaks with Bush

I thought it was a fluke. But two times in one day. It is like watching a losing team make two unanswered baskets in a row…….perhaps there is hope……

I first heard in on Allen Loudell’s interview during the evening commute. In what must be the second most original question ever asked of Mike, it went something like this…..

“If you woke up and we had bombed Iran…..and were at war…..would you still support the Bush administration?” And the answer he got, with all the double speak and twist and turns, was “no.” That would be the last straw.

Not to put words in Mike’s mouth, but the implication I got, correct me if I am wrong, is that if irrationality were to strike the White House so hard as to bomb Iran, we could count on Mike’s vote to impeach…….

The second sign of Mike’s split, was culled from what no doubt will be forever called the “splooooge” article by Jason at Delaware Liberal. In that amazing piece of work, Mike had this gem to say.

“I have long disagreed with the way this administration has misjudged the crucial diplomatic aspect of this conflict,” he said.”

I have to back Jason up when he says “then show us the votes, Mikey.” Saying one thing to a Rotary Club is one thing; going on record as bucking this administration by tubing the legislation they wanted, by voting against it, is what we are paying him to do. He hasn’t done it.

But as I said, he is down 30 points at the half…..It’s time he goes into a full court press against the Bush administration , if he wants any hope of pulling a win out of 08.

Let’s hope these two baskets are the start of a streak……….

Perverted View of History

Republicans have a really odd vision of history. This just in from a Far Right Evangelical website which I will not name out of respect for those here who wish not be linked to the more extreme elements of their sect……(But with a little research, I am sure anyone can locate the source….)..

Disclaimers aside, this sect, out in the Midwest was praising Bush/Cheney and the nuclear weapons on their way to Iran… Here is their amazing logic…….

In the 30’s the dust bowls ripped all the topsoil away. Extreme drought and extreme temperatures preceded the dust storms. This summer extreme temperatures and extreme drought dominate the Midwest. It was only World War II that pulled us out of the Great Depression some 10 years later.

Their claim was that if Bush held strongly to his beliefs, and did not waiver and back down from nuking Iran, WWIII would begin and the rains would come.

Of course…..anything is allowable on the internet………

Chinese Doctrine or “That’s All I Know About Shrimp”

China has a shrimp problem. Too many people; too few shrimp. With over a billion people to feed daily, shrimp is the only protein source they consider dependable. Their coastline lacks adequate length to feed their population. Since they cannot support themselves, they must rely on foreign food, to sustain themselves.

This puts them at risk. Obviously should food become unavailable to them because of diplomacy, they will need the military means to back up their demands.

This has begun already. China has declared all shrimp areas to fall within its national interest. That includes the Gulf of Mexico right here at home. They also include Ecuador, Mexico, Indonesia, and other high concentrations of shrimp production. Some of this has been recently aggravated by Chinese mismanagement of their own fish farms. Various viral infections, and the excessive use of antibiotics, have contaminated Chinese food supplies. Therefore only other outside fisheries can now support its growing population.

Chinese officials have warned the US that it will take whatever steps are needed to maintain control of its future food supply. At one point the US and China may do battle over shrimp; whenever it becomes scarce. One may think of China of old and dismiss their military threats.

Dismissing China is not a wise thing to do…….

China has exploded in its amount of submarines. In two more years they are estimated that they will have around 85 submarines capable of active patrols. In contrast, Russia, which once had 90 submarines in the Pacific, has mothballed all but 20. Japan has 16 submarines and no plans to buy more. The U.S. Pacific Fleet has 35 submarines, with many considered to be the most modern in the world.

In response, the U.S. Navy is reversing an old Soviet-era formula, where the United States had 60 percent of its submarines in the Atlantic and 40 percent in the Pacific. In addition to shifting toward keeping 60 percent in the Pacific, the United States recently set up an antisubmarine warfare center in San Diego.

Reports of a recent build up of Chinese missiles has many analysts worried. China has bought or borrowed technology creating both short and long term missiles. As China woos many Central and South American countries, many of them hostile to the United States, some if not many of these missiles could already be in place.

China’s biggest weapon is the 1.2 Trillion investment it has in the economy of the United States. Should China create a financial crises, the fact they owe 3 years of this nations budget, would wreak havoc with international markets. With the future US in economic shambles, they could force us to choose between accepting their trade agreements on shrimp, or risk all out war.

We are their match today. But as they are booming; we are shrinking. Eventually, as all the nations we consider as allies start kow-towing to China, we will find ourselves becoming isolated internationally, and surrounded by Chinese bases.

This will not be a dumb enemy, we will fight. We are told that they hacked into Secretary Gates computer as recently as last June. Already we fear that they can disrupt our defenses with cyber-technology whenever they want.

Estimates show that China can field an active army of 2.2 million. We are having trouble keeping a level of 160,000 in Iraq. Should they decide to attack the US, there is little we can do.

Imagine a standing army of 2.2 million staged in bases located in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada? Imagine if they demanded total control over our shrimp processes. Imagine if they politely allowed us thirty percent after they had paid for all their expenses……

Imagine if we refused and they invaded. I am sure we would welcome them at first, having rid us of Bush and Cheney, but soon we would come to realize that they were not here to help us economically. They came to steal our shrimp!

It wouldn’t take long for groups of Red Dawn vigilantes to start guerrilla tactics designed to wear down the enemy and induce them to leave……our Katrina survivors would scuttle their boats, rather than let the Chinese take them. The only way for China to harvest their shrimp would be to bring over shrimp boats themselves……Our militias would make sure that they only way they could gather shrimp, was to be well protected.

The Chinese would install Americans sympathetic to them in positions of power. The People’s Parliament they would call it. However these true Americans, drafted and installed by the Chinese, would realize that cooperating with the invaders would yield to the capitulation of everything America had stood for. Instead of cooperating, they would stall, argue, complain, drag their feet, and do nothing about passing the legislation desperately wanted by China, giving the Chinese no incentive to stay……..

Ultimately the logistics and cost of controlling the US, as in Red Dawn, would eventually cause the Chinese to pack up and go home. It would be a function of the strength of the Chinese will over time, to determine how long their stay would continue.

We would, no doubt, as we gained strength militarily, have to put up with surges in the number of Chinese nationals brought in to pacify our feisty country……..but in the end, Chinese public pressure pushing back against China’s government, would eventually cause the communist government’s collapse and the future withdrawal of all Chinese troops from American soil………

Our shrimp would be ours again.

Wow! In writing this exercise I think, for the first time,………I now understand how those citizens of Iraq feel……….

WTF

photo by SUCHAT PEDERSON, News Journal