Category Archives: Battlefield

The Weekend in Review

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Most of the internet news today revolves around two subjects—the continuing catastrophe of Obamacare, more and more people lose their coverage, and the latest book about Chris Christie when he was being vetted for Veep by Romney in 2012.

Both of these stories are significant. However I like to explore outside the headline news if I can. While performing that search this morning, what did I find?  The U. S. Navy has a new ship today—the USS North Dakota, a Virginia Class nuclear attack sub.

Navy christens attack submarine North Dakota

Posted: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT Updated: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT

GROTON, Conn. (AP) – The U.S. Navy has christened its newest attack submarine, a $2.6 billion vessel that can launch cruise missiles, deliver special forces commandos and carry out surveillance over areas at land and sea.

It is the first Navy vessel to carry the name North Dakota in nearly a century. Saturday’s christening coincides with the 124th anniversary of North Dakota becoming the 39th state of the Union.

With the smash of a champagne bottle against its hull, the 377-foot-long nuclear submarine was officially named North Dakota at the Groton shipyard of sub builder Electric Boat. It will become USS North Dakota and officially join the fleet when it is commissioned in May.

The submarine is the 11th in the Virginia class of ships, which have capabilities that allow them to perform better in shallow water than other subs.

It is significant that we have this new submarine. China is expanding their deep-water navy at a furious pace and adding more nuclear subs with missile capability at a time Obama continues to emasculate our military.

On the political sidelines today are two stories about Rove and McConnell attacking fellow ‘Pubs while supporting democrats. In one article from the American Spectator, Mark Levin accuses Karl Rove of supporting democrat McAulliife against Virginia Atty General Ken Cuccinnelli.

Levin: RINO’s, Rove, Push For McAuliffe Win

By on 11.4.13 @ 10:09AM

Leave it to Mark Levin to say exactly what many conservatives have believed but not said.

The RINO wing of the GOP — and Karl Rove specifically — do not want a Ken Cuccinnelli victory in Virginia.

In this corner we have believed this for some time. In its own way this reminds of the 1980 presidential race. The RINO in question than was one of Ronald Reagan’s GOP primary opponents — Illinois Congressman John Anderson. Anderson lost resoundingly to Reagan in the primaries, but as usual picked up a core of fans in the liberal media.

With Reagan now the nominee — and with Establishment Republicans like ex-President Gerald Ford having gone on record to insist Reagan was too “extreme” to ever win a national election — Anderson refused to support Reagan. Instead, he set out to make the claim that Reagan couldn’t win a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anderson decided to run for president in the fall election as a third party candidate, a deliberate attempt to sabotage Reagan. The bid failed, Reagan won in a 44-state landslide, humiliating both incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and Anderson.

But the message was delivered. Establishment Republicans demand party unity — unless they lose to a conservative. Ken Cuccinelli — the man who led the fight against Obamacare — is now gaining rapidly on Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race, in no small part because Virginia voters are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare.

I could go on here – and on and on. But Mark Levin has done such a superb job of making this case that I thought this Monday before the Virginia election he should speak for himself here.

So below, Levin on the RINOs, Rove and what is really going on in Virginia:

The RINOs want a Terry McAuliffe victory in Virginia.

Many in the GOP establishment, from major fundraisers and consultants, to GOP officeholders such as the GOP Lt. Gov and mayor of Virginia Beach, have either trashed Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli or endorsed McAuliffe outright. The GOP national machine has done next to nothing for Cuccinnelli. And GOP bag man, Karl Rove, is all over Fox without a word of support for Cuccinnelli, while he schemes and whispers behind the scenes against conservatives nationwide.

Having tried to sabotage Cuccinnelli’s candidacy from the start, these GOP actors are hoping for a Cuccinnelli loss and a big Chris Christie win (built on a Huey Long style of politics) to make the case that only big government Republicans can win and limited government, constitutional conservatives, such as Tea Party activists, are too extreme to prevail. They’ve already written the script.

In fact, the GOP establishment’s attacks on the Tea Party, which is an obvious assault on conservatives and conservatism generally, are increasingly difficult to distinguish from Obama and the Left’s attacks on the same folks. The ruling class in Washington is clearly united in one respect: to wipe out conservative resistance to their corruption, cronyism, and nation-killing policies.

Keep an eye on RINO columnists like Washington Compost mouthpiece Jennifer Rubin, as well as Rove and other commentators on cable TV, who have and will continue to reveal it all through their myopic ruling class lenses in the days ahead. As I said, their propaganda is written and ready to spread. And they’ll be given soap box after soap box to spin away. 

Meanwhile, despite it all, including tens of millions of dollars in relentless leftwing smear ads funded by truly extreme groups hoping to beat Cuccinnelli and turn Virginia into Hillary Clinton territory in 2016, much of the big GOP money stays on the sidelines. Better to try to clear the field of conservatives who threaten the ruling class and its preferred nominees. Better to protect the RINO investment in big government than beat Hillary. The conservative grassroots is to be crushed and dispirited.

So, that’s the game. Still, recent polls show Cuccinnelli closing fast. This makes the Left and RINOs very nervous. The rest of us are cheering, and hopefully helping, the underdog. We identify with him, not the sleazy McAuliffe, his radical donors, and the ruling class. We won’t retreat. We won’t give up. We will fight for the last vote. What a sweet victory it would be! But make no mistake, this is one of many, many battles to come, win, lose, or recount.

What these people will never understand is that for most of us this isn’t about politics per se but preserving what’s left of our society, Constitution, and individual free will. It is about our families and our way of life. It is about who we are as Americans. We are not surrendering to this because we will not sit quietly while the ruling class continues to destroy our nation. We fight against growing oppression as many did before us. And we will fight like hell through the constitutional process. We will continue to learn, we will take names, and we will battle these people and groups at every turn, and in every election. We are not going anywhere.

And as the ruling class catastrophe continues to unfold, as with Obamacare, the monstrous debt, and suffocating regulations, and with the cycle of unsustainable spending and confiscatory taxing, the coerciveness of the ruling class and its federal agencies will only intensify. There will be a commensurate backlash.

The sleeping giant that is the American people is only beginning to awaken. It is only a matter of time until more people are roused to join this all important constitutional fight. We fight to hold Virginia today and we fight on thereafter.

There is another article, via this link, that reports the same events—Rove and establishment ‘Pubs supporting democrat McAuliffe.

The other story is how McConnell, and others, are attacking the Senate Conservative Fund, created by Jim DeMint, using the same tactics democrats used, and failed, against Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell Embraces the Anti-Rush Limbaugh Playbook

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 4th, 2013 at 03:30 AM

For the last year, the left has engaged in an organized campaign to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air. Knowing they cannot go after Rush Limbaugh directly, the left has launched repeated boycotts against any advertisers who dare advertise while Rush Limbaugh is on. Consequently, some advertisers decided to stop advertising at all on political talk radio, depriving the genre as a whole of resources.

And it still hasn’t hurt Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell has decided to embrace the same strategy in his war against the Senate Conservatives Fund. He can’t attack the Jim DeMint created Senate Conservatives Fund outright, so instead he will launch an all out war against anyone who does business with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

This story, from the New York Times, is intriguing. McConnell has demanded, via the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that anyone who wants GOP support stop hiring Jamestown Associates. The organization is used by a number of Republican elected leaders and candidates. In fact, Senator Ted Cruz uses Jamestown Associates. So does Governor Chris Christie. For that matter, Senators Marco Rubio, Roy Blunt, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats, and Pat Toomey have all benefited from Jamestown Associates. Outside groups hired Jamestown Associates to make independent expenditures on behalf of those Senators. [edit: JA did not directly work for those Senators, but handled independent expenditures on their behalf]

But McConnell is perfectly happy destroying a private company his Senate Republican colleagues use because Jamestown Associates also helps the Senate Conservatives Fund. And the Senate Conservatives Fund just endorsed Matt Bevin against Mitch McConnell.

McConnell would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. He’d rather be minority leader, than have a Republican Senate majority without him. Updated: From the comments by Darin H: “Apparently McConnell would rather serve in Hell than even bother with Heaven.”

It’s all the sadder still in that McConnell worked against Ted Cruz’s effort to defund Obamacare. 280,000 Kentuckians are losing their insurance. But McConnell would rather drive a private enterprise out of business than fight for those Kentuckians losing their health insurance. If only McConnell had put as much energy into stopping Obamacare as he has stopping a business that does work with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Outside observers have listed the Kentucky Senate race as a toss up. It does not lean McConnell’s way. This is very important to note. This is very important to understand. The polling in the race is terrible for McConnell. Charitably it breaks even against an empty suit of a Democrat. McConnell has already spent over $6 million. He is the weakest Republican incumbent up for re-election in 2014. Were it another Senator, McConnell would be pressuring him to retire.

…

Mitch McConnell is the thug in the bar who controls through intimidation. He badgers, bullies, threatens, and cajoles others into giving him his way. Because of his position, most yield to his intimidation. And when others do not yield, he goes after their associates.

But there is a new paradigm of empowered grassroots activists at work. They are not intimidated. They will not be silenced. They do not fear McConnell. They hate him and want him out of office. McConnell has always relied on an alliance of staffers who’ve moved to K Street to get rich. He gives them access, they make lots of money, then they return money to his campaign coffers. It is a loyalty that extends to a lobbyist class now attacking the Senate Conservatives Fund because their gravy train may be ending. But it is a loyalty that does not exist at the grassroots level within the conservative movement or even Kentucky.

The only tactic McConnell can respond with is driving private businesses into the ground if they dare help those opposed to him — no matter who else they help. Senate Republicans and challengers in the races to be decided next year need to understand the bottom line here — Mitch McConnell is making it the NRSC’s job preservation of Mitch McConnell, damn the rest of the candidates. Don’t believe me? Where are the other groups the NRSC is blackballing? Right now, the only ones being blackballed are the ones who are on the opposite side of Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

There’s more at the Red State website. Go here to read the entire article. McConnell, like fellow RINO senator, Roy Blunt, must go.

In closing today, here’s a tidbit on what capitalism can do if left alone by government and regulation.

Audacious wildcatters trigger fracking revolution

By MICHAEL BARONE | NOVEMBER 1, 2013 AT 6:00 PM

Capitalism, said economist Joseph Schumpeter seven decades ago, is a process of creative destruction. New inventions, new processes, new methods of organization lead to the creation of new profitable and efficient businesses and to the destruction of old ones unable to compete.

There are few accounts of the creative side of Schumpeter’s phrase more vivid than Fracking: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, a new book by Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman.

For years politicians, policy experts and corporate executives have tried to reshape American energy policy and development. They have operated on a series of assumptions seemingly based on experience and logic.

One is that oil and gas production in the United States was inevitably in decline. Another is that we can move toward energy independence by increasing use of renewables like wind and solar energy.

Those assumptions seem to have been refuted in the course of this young century by a group of audacious outsiders who have made great fortunes — and in some cases lost them.

The Frackers tells their story. It tells the story of George Mitchell, son of a Greek immigrant, who was convinced that hydraulic fracturing — fracking — could bring in vast amounts of natural gas from the Barnett Shale in north Texas.

It tells the story of Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, whose Chesapeake firm bought mineral leases atop vast shale deposits, becoming America’s No. 2 gas producer but overexpanding disastrously.

It tells the story of Harold Hamm, a sharecropper’s son who rose from picking cotton to a $12 billion fortune by prying oil out of the Bakken shale of North Dakota.

And it tells the story of Charif Souki, Lebanese immigrant and proprietor of the Los Angeles restaurant where Nicole Simpson ate and Ronald Goldman served their last meals, who charmed others into financing a liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana.

…

Go, follow the link above and see what some entrepreneurs and capitalist are doing—in spite of government and the EPA.

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Snuck outa town for the weekend, Part I

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Mrs. Crucis and I did something that we don’t believe, in 43 years of marriage, we’ve ever done before…taken off for a long weekend.  She’s been busy since my retirement. She says she’s more busy now than when I was still working for Sprint.  This Thanksgiving, we realized we had an opportunity.  The kids and g’kids were going to be busy, the Master’s Closet would be closed due to the holiday weekend and there was nothing keeping us in town. So we took off with only vague plans of where to go and what go do.

It was great!

We did learn, or perhaps relearn, some things.  
  • Sleeping in strange beds is difficult at best.
  • Google maps can’t be trusted to show everything.  
  • Going south does not mean the weather is warmer.
Our first destination was the Pea Ridge Military Park, site of the Battle of Pea Ridge in March of 1862.  I’m a bit of a Civil War buff and amateur historian or at least I like to think so.  The Battle of Pea Ridge was important for two things.  First, it defeated the remaining pro-Confederate Missouri forces and insured Missouri remaining in the Union.  A small pro-Confederate force lead by former Missouri Governor Sterling Price has declared that Missouri had seceded from the Union but Price at that time only controlled a small southwest segment of the state.  He was driven out of Missouri into Arkansas and his forces merged with those of Confederate General Earl Van Doren near Fayetteville, AR.

The second factor of the Battle of Pea Ridge was the destruction of the last major Confederate force in Arkansas.  The remnants after the battle retreated into Louisiana and Texas  and continued to fight in the war. But after the battle, the Union controlled Arkansas.
We used Google Maps to reach the park.  It showed one route into the park, an in ‘n out.  We followed that route and saw a few canon in a field and some split-rail fences outlining a battle site.  That’s all. No signs, no turn-out areas to take photos, no visitor’s center.  I was using cached Google maps that I’d loaded before we left home.  We were in marginal cell range and couldn’t access the National Park Service website.

We were disappointed and continued on to Ft. Scott.  At Ft. Scott Nat’l Historical Site, also operated by the National Park Service, we were told we had used the wrong route.  If we’d gone to the south side of the Pea Ridge park, we would have found the visitor’s center and access to a loop that encircled the battle fields.

I’ll write about Ft. Scott tomorrow.  Today it’s Pea Ridge’s turn.

The Battle of Pea Ridge (also known as Elkhorn Tavern) was a land battle of the American Civil War, fought on March 6–8, 1862, at Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas, near Garfield. In the battle, Union forces led by Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. The outcome of the battle essentially cemented Union control of Missouri. The battle was one of the few during the war in which a Confederate army outnumbered its Union opponent. — Wikepedia 

The first day. Union forces meet Confederate Calvary. McCullough and McIntosh killed leaving their troops leaderless and they sit out the rest of the battle waiting for orders.

The site of this battle is an open field near the site of the village of Leestown.  Leestown no longer exists.

This first day of the battle resulted in the deaths of Generals McCollough and McIntosh.  Between these two, they commanded Van Doren’s cavalry and a large portion of Infantry.  The Leestown battle left those forces leaderless and they sat out the rest of the day awaiting orders from leaders who were dead.

The next two days were battles fought around the Elkhorn Tavern located at the junction of Telegraph Road and the Huntsville Road.  The Union troops originally held the site the first day.  Van Doren attacked the second day of the battle as seized the Tavern and the surround terrain.  Van Doren thought he’d won the battle and stopped to regroup his forces.

Troop movements and battles around the Elkhorn Tavern on the 2nd day.
Elkhorn Tavern
The Elknorn Tavern was burned about a year after the battle by Confederate guerrillas. This building is a replica built when the Military Park was created.
While Van Doren was collecting his scattered troops, Union General Samuel R. Curtis was busy organizing a counter-attack that he launched the following day catching General Van Doren by surprise and routing the Confederates who retreated to the southeast and eventually fell back to Fayetteville, AR.  Van Doren was relieved of command and never lead any significant forces for the rest of the war.

Confederate General Earl Van Doren made two classic mistakes.  First he split his forces ordering McCollough and MacIntosh to circle to the south to attack Curtis from that direction while Van Doren and Stirling Prices around the rear of the Union troops and attack from the rear.  McCollough and MacIntosh were killed early in the battle on the first day and their troops were scattered and remained out of communication until the following day.  The two-pronged attack planned by Van Doren never happened.
Van Doren’s second mistake was to leave his supply wagons behind in Fayetteville when he started his march to meet Curtis.  Those wagons also contained Van Doren’s reserve supplies of ammunition.  Individual soldiers only had 40 rounds of ammunition and by the third day most of that ammunition was exhausted.
After an artillery duel between Curtis’s second-in-command, Franz Sigel‘s 21 canon against 12 Confederate canon.  Sigel made the Confederate guns ineffective and then turned his guns against the Confederate infantry sheltering in the trees.
With the opposing guns rendered nearly harmless, Sigel directed his gunners to fire into the woods at the Confederate infantry. Near the base of Big Mountain the projectiles created a deadly combination of rock shrapnel and wood splinters, driving the 2nd Missouri Brigade from its positions. “It was one of the few times in the Civil War when a preparatory artillery barrage effectively softened up an enemy position and paved the way for an infantry assault.”[14] During the bombardment, Sigel’s infantry edged forward so that by 9:30 a.m. his divisions had executed a right wheel and faced to the northeast.
By this time Van Dorn found that his reserve artillery ammunition was with the wagon train, a six hour march away. The Southern commander bitterly realized that he had no hope of victory and decided to retreat via the Huntsville Road. This route led east from the tavern, then turned south. With Price disabled by his wound, Van Dorn’s army began to move toward the Huntsville Road in some confusion. — Wiki
General Curtis counter-attacked on the third day of the battle in what was called, “The Beautiful Charge.”
Plaque at the site of “The Beautiful Charge.”
The field where the Union troops (left) charged the Confederate lines (right) that won the battle for the Union.
The third day of the Battle of Pea Ridge
There aren’t too many places west of the Mississippi where there were Civil War battles on this scale.  In the Kansas City area, the site of the Battle of Westport is long gone.  A smaller battlesite, the Battle of Lone Jack in eastern Jackson County was sold to developers about a decade ago and is now a subdivision.  Little remains of it.

I’d like to tour other Civil War battlefields but none are close by.  Maybe some time in the future, we’ll travel east or south-east and see some more, like Siloh and Vicksburg.  We would like that.

I’ve uploaded a large number of photos to my Facebook account if you’d like to view them.

Tomorrow will be Ft. Scott and Judge Parker, “The Hanging Judge.”