Robert E Lee was married to George Washington’s granddaughter. He worked with Grant during the Mexican-American war and became a decorated war hero defending this country. He believed slavery was a great evil and his wife broke the law by teaching slaves to read and write. After the civil war, he worked with Andrew Johnson’s program of reconstruction. He became very popular with the northern states and the Barracks at West Point were named in his honor in 1962. He was a great man who served this country his entire life in some form or other.
His memorial is now being called a blight. No American military veteran should be treated as such. People keep yelling, “You can’t change history.”
Sadly you can. This is no better than book burnings. ISIS tried rewriting history by destroying historical artifacts. Is that really who we want to emulate? As they tear down this “blight,” keep these few historical facts in your mind. No military veteran and highly decorated war hero should ever be treated as such. This is not Iraq and that is not a statue of Sadam.
IN ADDITION: Lee was also very torn about the prospect of the South leaving the Union. His wife’s grandfather, George Washington, was a huge influence on him. He believed that ultimately, states’ rights trumped the federal government and chose to lead the Southern army. His estate, Arlington, near Washington DC, was his home and while away fighting the war, the federal government demanded that Lee himself pay his taxes in person. He sent his wife but the money was not accepted from a woman. When he could not pay the taxes, the government began burying dead Union soldiers on his land. The government is still burying people there today. It is now called Arlington National Cemetery . DO THEY WANT TO TEAR THAT UP ALSO??
The odd part about it is this stuff isn’t being taught in schools.
Former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller on Wednesday called on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to resign over phone calls with his Chinese counterpart that Miller said were unauthorized and “disgraceful.”
According to excerpts released this week from the forthcoming book, “Peril” by journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley held secret phone calls with a Chinese counterpart on Oct. 30, 2020, and Jan. 8, 2021. In one of the phone calls, Milley allegedly said, “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Let’s go with Dan Bongino for a little backfill on this:
https://youtu.be/0DVW6Pxi-xQ
Now, the obvious question, more correctly the obvious answer to Dan’s question, is yes we did see treason.
But the thing is it’s not like something new has occurred here. What we are seeing here is precisely the desired outcome of the Obama Biden administration. You will recall the purge that they were doing in the Pentagon in the first few weeks of that administration. You will recall I commented on the subject a couple of weeks ago:
But let’s consider that the military you’re talking about firing were the ones who were left after Biden and Obama fired all the military types who believe in a strong America, and who thought that at the very least Obama’s policies were buffoonish.
Remember also that what was left in the Pentagon also the ones responsible for the worst military disaster in American history.
We’ll also remember that I received a healthy helping of horse droppings over my comments about Colonel Scheller who I still hold did the right thing.
Complain all you like how about how what he did was in direct violation of the UCMJ.
I’m only partially sympathetic to that argument. It’s like strict gun laws. Criminals don’t follow them. Criminals don’t follow the UCMJ either and the ones actually defending this country are hobbled by our consistently one-sided enforcement of it. Violations of the UCMJ are routinely ignored if they benefit Democrats. That’s always been the pattern here.
Mark Milley deserves a life jail term at least, if not a firing squad. But first I want to know who else knew about this and said nothing, because they should be in jail as well in the next cell over.
Costa and Woodward should be considered for jail terms as well. It takes a good 4 months to produce a book. The obvious question is why they were sitting on this story for as long as they were.
Look, I think we can assume that Costa and Woodward didn’t get their information from The general. Other people must have known and must have been their source. It’s also implausible to me that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were unaware of the conversation between the generals and what was said.
Tom Hamilton says this morning:
Not surprised that the recall didn’t go Elder’s way. California is essentially a one party state and the Democrats aren’t going to give up power. Given all the fraud that happened in the Presidential election with no consequences to the cheaters, anyone thinking the GOP going to win the mid terms??? I would like to think so but I also know the amount of cheating is going to be hard to overcome.
Tom has this one exactly right.
Given the Democrat parties abilities and proclivities in vote fraud, nobody should be surprised at this outcome in California. The Democrat party is deeply entrenched in California and the machine is immovable, now.
That’s precisely why the place has been circling the drain for the last few decades. Their being entrenched also facilitates their ability to cheat their way into continued power.
Oh, sure, the Democrats are breaking out the much hackneyed phrase ‘conspiracy theory” when they subjects come up… But let’s remember that every time they’ve broken out that phrase lately, what they labeled conspiracy theory turned out to be the truth.
It’s going to be interesting to watch the numbers of people moving out of california. I will guarantee you we’re going to see a spike of such Exodus. Businesses, too. In fact, more businesses have already left California this year than in all of 2020.
The problem with that of course is as those California so goes the rest of the country. We’ve let them get away with it for far too long, and now there’s no escaping it.
I wish I had better news, but I don’t.
Personally I’m waiting for the 4-time jabbed people to be blaming the three jabbed people for spreading the virus.
Really. And you know what’s going to happen. The neighborhood two-bit tyrants are going to get together and figure out that they actually have something that they can load over the rest of us with.
And look, before you start tuning up, read the whole thing.
Make no mistake about this.
Do I believe there’s a problem here?
Yes.
Do I believe the virus is real?
Yes.
Do I believe the problem was caused by government?
Yes.
Indeed…
I believe there is blood on the hands of the people who created this virus. Government people. The people who used tax money, American tax dollars to develop this disease in communist China ostensibly so that they could sidestep the laws as regards gain of function research. Regardless of what Fauci has to say about it, Rand Paul got this one right
Do I believe that China offered its cooperation in the matter so as to have a weapon to cripple a strong America?
Yes.
Do I believe that the virus being developed in China is suspect?
Yes.
Do I believe it’s more than a coincidence that everything that Joe Biden has done since he got into the white house, absolutely everything, benefits China?
Yes. That is suspect as well. I believe the two issues are tied together and the evidence is quickly developing to bear that out.
Do I believe the government is now scrambling to cover its own backside? Yes.
Was all of this planned?
Yes.
Do I believe that the numbers of infected are being manipulated to spread the fear?
I certainly do. After all, a fearful populace is easier to control.
Remember the specter of Anthony Fauci telling everyone two days after the election of Donald Trump that Trump was going to face a pandemic. Now, how would he know that?
Do I think that the release of this virus is suspiciously timed?
You betcha. They had to take down Trump at any cost to keep the Chinese happy. And you know that it was years in development.
Finally, mark this one well;
Remember that when you allow a government to break the rules in a so-called emergency, they will always create an emergency so as to allow themselves to break the rules with impunity.
Oh by the way, you want to read Glen Reynolds today in the New York Post
From The Intercept:
Newly released documents provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than nine hundred pages of documents detailing the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to the EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.
Yeah.
So, after all this, after over a year of being told that we were all conspiracy theorists, it turns out we were spot on.
And they’re still denying it. Alternately, they’re still saying it came from nature which is a demonstrable lie.
Always remember, Anthony Fauci telling us two days after the election of Donald Trump that Trump was going to face a pandemic. Now how would he know that?
Every time I see one of those go- karts with delusions of car hood, I imagine the owner running out of electricity halfway through his trip for the last time, and walking to the nearest gas station buying a gas can full of gas, and pouring it into the interior of his vehicle and dropping a match.
Of course, given the way those things tend to torch themselves, such as this Tesla, maybe actually using gasoline to put them out of our misery isn’t necessary.
The questions that the enviro whack job left still is unwilling to answer is how many nuclear power plants they are willing to suborn to support a switch to battery powered go karts. How much in the way of infrastructure will they support? In other words transmission lines.
California, you see, is a model for how this is all supposed to work in the mindlessness of the left, and is in fact probably the way they want the entire country to go.
In short, they would much rather have us dependent on somebody else for our energy needs. Romania for example the Saudis. Iran. I don’t know about you but I’m old enough to remember Biden halting Federal oil and gas sales. Here’s a refresher on that point
The Democrats will tell you that it’s two level the playing field to allow electric transportation to flourish but like everything else that the Democrats do look to the money. They gain personally either through graft or simple opportunism every time they get their way on matters of energy. Every single time.
And the fact is, we simply don’t have the capacity to deal with electric go karts. Take California as an example.
California has very little in the way of generating capacity. Way under what’s required to support themselves. They also have just barely enough in the way of electric infrastructure to get by with under normal conditions at the moment.
This leads to shortages of electricity. It’s why the California state government recently was telling everybody not to charge their electric vehicles.
Go back and read that paragraph again. That’s right my friends, the warning signs are there, we’re just supposed to ignore them because we have to save the polar bears, or something
California ships all of their electricity in from out of state, and so are totally dependent on transmission lines. If I remember correctly the last generating station to be built in California was in 1974. So with all that in mind, you have a fairly decent idea of why the term brownout has become common parlance.
My friends , it’s a sure bet that the existing infrastructure in California will simply not put up with the additional strain of however many electric go karts they’re trying to charge. There just isn’t enough unicorn farts to go around.
You do know, don’t you, that a lack of support for modern infrastructure is precisely why the Camp, California fire occurred, don’t you? PG&E had been trying for years to get the government to allow them to upgrade the system. But the Democrat run State wouldn’t have a thing to do with it, and poof! An entire town is gone. Of course, not eliminating the brush in those areas which fueled the fire, had something to do with it too but it both comes down to a leftist run government being stupid.
Then we come to the power storage device used in these monstrosities, the lithium battery. Let’s leave aside for the moment that nobody’s ever been able to figure out how to recycle these bloody things. Let’s ignore the expense involved of replacing them which causes scenes like this graphic taken in France of large numbers of electric vehicles that nobody wants to spend the money to replace the worn out lithium ion batteries that nobody can recycle. The life expectancy of an electric vehicle ends up being something in the neighborhood of 2 years. Maybe.
Then, let’s consider where the lithium comes from.
It really doesn’t take much to understand the why of the push toward electric vehicles. It’s all about the money and Chinese dominating the economic world. Follow the money. Afghanistan, you see, is considered to be the Saudi Arabia of lithium. Which in turn also explains the push of the Chinese to get the us out of Afghanistan.
Control the lithium, as the Chinese will very shortly, and you know who’s going to be making money because of the Democrats narrow-mindedness about energy and it’s use.
Addendum:
(Gee, do you suppose with the demonstrated links between the Chinese Communist party and the Democrat party here in the states there’s a link here someplace??)
So do you suppose we have a chance of getting the federal government to stop spending money on promoting these monstrosities?
Alas, that most Americans can’t even begin to comprehend the level of incompetence here:
Roger Pardo-Maurer, the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs (2001-2006), joined Jorge Ramos on Univision Noticias on Monday to discuss the unfolding disastrous withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan.
During their conversation, Pardo-Maurer told Ramos the Department of Defense had foreknowledge of the Kabul Airport suicide bomber but denied permission to fire a Predator Drone missile once they had a lock on him.
Now, hopefully, you’re beginning to understand why I took the position I did with regards to Colonel Scheller.
And look, it’s not like the pattern isn’t there. Consider the words of Colonel West, just 7 years ago now:
Am I the only one who finds it perplexing that President Obama and family can attend the wedding of his personal chef and some MSNBC personality — but they couldn’t attend the funeral of Major General Harold J Greene, the most senior member of our military to be killed in war since Vietnam? Or how about sending Eric Holder and three White House officials to Ferguson, Missouri but not a one sent to attend to the plight of Marine SGT Andrew Tahmooressi being held in a Mexican jail since March? Oh well, maybe this is the new normal under progressive socialist rule — but it certainly demonstrates how much regard Obama has for our military.
Biden was part of that administration too. The only way Democrats are worried about our military is when they can make money off of them.
But notice where the the first place is that you see votes going missing every single election… That’s right, the military.
Do you begin to understand, yet?
From Endpoints:
Two of the FDA’s most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it’s sidelined the FDA.
Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research & Review and 32-year veteran of the agency, will leave at the end of October, and OVRR deputy director Phil Krause, who’s been at FDA for more than a decade, will leave in November. The news, first reported by BioCentury, is a massive blow to confidence in the agency’s ability to regulate vaccines.
The bombshell announcement comes at a particularly crucial moment, as boosters and children’s shots are being weighed by the regulator. The departures also come as the administration has recently jumped ahead of the FDA’s reviews of booster shots, announcing that they might be available by the week of Sept. 20.
So, where is the mainstream media on this story?
I ask, for the obvious reason that 8 months ago, the media would have gone walled a wall with this, we’d have heard nothing but this story for weeks on end.
Tell me again, about how the media hasn’t been shielding the Democrats from the blowback from the American people over Democrat malfeasance.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
From Jim Lowitzer:
I see a lot of posts and press releases declaring that “the war is over.” Pardon my skepticism, but the war isn’t over. We are in retreat, but it isn’t over. I believe that it began with the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
That, of course, was repeated with vastly greater destruction on Sept. 11, 2001. Along the way, there was the June 1996 bombing of the Kobar Towers, the embassy bombings (two) in August 1978, the 2015 San Bernadino attacks, and others as well.
We may have pulled our military presence out of Afghanistan, but our enemies have not left the field. They will be back and, once again, they will get to pick the field of battle. This war is a long way from being over.
Jim is absolutely correct here.
Myself and a host of others up to and including George W Bush told you…that this was going to be a multi-generational conflict, that one could not expect to build a Western style democracy in 20 years out of a bunch of dirt scratchers who insist on living in the 14th century. Cultures, you see, take a long time to change.
Long time readers of this website will recall that I worried immediately following the election of Barack Hussein Obama that we were going to abandon that plan. I expressed similar fears with the supposed election of Uncle Creepy, and for the same reason.
Frankly I don’t recall ever being quite so annoyed about being correct.
The case of Biden in these matters is even more problematic than that of Obama’s, because this time they left the Taliban with sophisticated weaponry to fight with, this guaranteeing a continuation of the war and an expansion of it.
Further leaving weaponry in Afghanistan means the Chinese will have their hands on it shortly to tear down and analyze and copy.
No, thanks to our brain dead leadership, this war has just begun.
First of all…
The standard argument, apparently, is that this is against the law, the UCMJ etc. I’ve heard all these arguments and dismiss them utterly.
Scheller recognizes that the law is not the final arbiter of right and wrong. That the morality of following immoral leaders is a larger question than the law can address. And I give him serious credit for it.
At this stage of the game, we have a pentagon full of people handpicked by Obama, Biden, and company.. people who are far more worried about advancing their military careers than they are about upholding the Constitution, and representing the United States of America.
The colonel here is having nothing of it and apparently recognizes that in his oath he swore to protect the Constitution and the United States against enemies both foreign and domestic. Whereas the Obama appointees seem to have no ability whatsoever to identify domestic enemies, the colonel doesn’t seem afflicted by that illness.
You see, to my mind the morality of the thing is the larger issue. Is following this arguably treasonous leadership, a moral act? The colonel came to his conclusion and I respect him for it.
The response I get from some is that he could have simply resigned. But if he had done that, the revelation of the misdeeds would have been buried by a press and a government that has proven itself untrustworthy.
The colonel is no dummy. He understood what the consequences were and took the position anyway. That’s called courage.
The kind of courage that Obama, Biden, and company weeded out of the Pentagon. People like these.
Retired Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle organized one public expression of this discontent. He told the Washington Examiner in a phone interview he wanted“accountability” because it is “one of the bedrock foundations of our military.” That’s why he believes Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should resign.
“It’s to express our dissatisfaction with the way this has been handled and the catastrophic results that are coming from it,” he added, before noting the United States’s top priority should be making sure the Americans who were left behind can evacuate the country safely.
Arbuckle helped organize 88 retired generals and admirals to sign an open letter published by Flag Officers 4 America on Monday, coinciding with the U.S. final withdrawal from Afghanistan after the U.S. spent 20 years, billions of dollars, and thousands of lives.
Funny thing, Arbuckle here is saying precisely what I’ve been saying all along.
With our current situation there’s a hard question before those in uniform:
Is your loyalty to the country and to the people or to the leadership which brought this all about?
Respect for the uniform you see, is a two-way street. If you want those in uniform to respect it and keep a non-political position, maybe we ought to have politicians that respect the uniform.
Demonstrably, that’s something we lack at the moment, and I tell you that we will reap the rewards of it for decades to come.
And it isn’t like we weren’t warned about it.
As a parting shot, I wonder about the possibility of a court-martial. I doubt it. The leadership doesn’t want that kind of negative exposure. Facts would come out that they just as soon not have in the public eye. Which was always the point of this action in the first place.
(A tip of Bit’s ball cap to Glenn, from which I got the graphics). He has his own commentary, which is worth a read.)
The Babbitt homicide[*] has bothered me. I offer the opinions of a noted law professor and California police officer.
Professor Johnathan Turley:
At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.
The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”
I note the Department of Justice has adopted James Comey’s old Hillary Clinton standard, if you first cite the applicable law you then free to ignore it.
So the Byrd case flunks the academic tower view. Howabout the cop of the street. err patrol car view:
We now know what has long been an open secret, that it was Lt. Michael Byrd of the U.S. Capitol Police who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6. In his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Byrd was inconsistent in his grasp of the facts, self-contradictory, and ill-informed on the law governing police use of force. If this is how he performed under Holt’s gentle questioning, it’s easy to speculate on how he would hold up under cross-examination by a competent and even mildly aggressive attorney, and I am more confident than ever that the government will settle with Babbitt’s family rather than risk a trial featuring Byrd as the key witness.
Reminds me of an old news story the the DC police of had problem with officers with impaired literacy. Does seem to fit the case of Lt. Michael Byrd. How many others?
* Homicide: the intentional killing of a human being by another. Self-evident
*
Yet some trash don’t care about how their dogs behave. As is the case of some trash imported into Washington, Judicial Watch
Now the Demented Dimwit from Delaware seems to not care how his dogs behavior. On the other paw, the Secret Service treats Major like a predator. His staff buried Major’s reign of terror.
Now think about is, if Joey Biden will go to such extremes to hide the behavior of his dogs, just how far will Slow Joe go to hide the behavior of his son Hunter?
I will say it again…
The biggest mistake we ever made as a country, a culture, a people, was to turn the education of our young over to the government.
Brian Kennedy at The American Mind this morning:
It would be easy to attribute the disaster of leaving Afghanistan, both human and strategic, to the incompetence of President Biden and his administration. After all, human incompetence normally explains a lot. But the affairs of a great nation like ours and its military are not the work of one man. There are generals, well-credentialed foreign policy experts, and senior intelligence officials who have devised how best to leave Afghanistan in order to achieve certain strategic and political objectives. The notion that there was a single incompetent decision made to abandon Afghanistan defies both logic and common sense. It was a matter of high government policy that the United States depart Afghanistan, abandon military equipment, and leave both Americans and our allies to the tender mercies of the radical Islamic Taliban.
The exit from Afghanistan, then, appears designed to accomplish two things: first, to demoralize the American military and the American people. Over 22,000 American service personnel have been killed or injured in Afghanistan. Every American knows someone who served there. Knowing full well that the Afghan military would not defend the country, there could be little doubt that the United States was turning the country over to the Taliban. Moreover, the US did so with the appearance of being run out of the country in shame and defeat. One can only assume this was meant to demonstrate to American servicemen that their sacrifice had been in vain, and to the American people that our cause of defending America from the scourge of radical Islam was not just.
How else are sensible people to view the footage of killings, chaos, desperation, harassment, and contempt for the US and our citizens in Kabul? Taken together these images are far more effective tools of propaganda than nearly anything Al-Qaeda and ISIS has employed over the past two decades. Their message is clear: America is weak and resistance to Islam is futile. That is the lesson the Biden Administration has made possible. It is one for which radicals such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have signaled their approval throughout their tenure in Congress.
The second purpose of the Afghan debacle was to signal to the world that the United States has no interest in defending a liberal world order and that from here on out we will not defend either human freedom or our own self-interest, however bizarre that may sound. Even the most serious isolationist would not have left Afghanistan the way we have. A minimum requirement would be to preserve the prestige and credibility of the United States with our allies and to ensure that our enemies would not be emboldened by our fecklessness.
First of all, and mark me on this, Taiwan is next.
You see, the question to be asking about the passage I quoted from Brian is, whose purpose was served by the way Afghanistan was handled?
I will remind you of the image of protesters in Taiwan against the Chinese takeover there carrying American flags.
That’s a scene that’s been repeated all over the world in my lifetime and it seems to be happening more frequently of late. America has been viewed the world over as the last best hope for freedom.
But with the events in Afghanistan, (which by the way Shares a border with China)… .events perpetrated by Democrat party policy, that flame on the end of Liberty’s torch is diminished rather significantly.
As Brian suggests, the mood has been adjusted nationally, the die has been cast, and there will be no further defending of Taiwan, or anyone else desiring freedom for that matter, at least while Democrats hold sway in Washington… Democrats, whom it is clear have completely forgotten about the call from the last Democrat who actually loved America, John f Kennedy, who said:
“…we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
And they killed him for that.
Long time readers of this blog will remember I suggested almost 20 years ago…
The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life.
My friends, I cannot think of any other Democrat in my lifetime who has expressed that purpose more clearly than Kennedy did that day in 1961. Alas, we have forgotten who we are and where we’re supposed to be going.
As to the future, even assuming at some point in the future, we have the stones to follow JFKs call, who is going to take American foreign policy seriously any longer? What’s going on in Afghanistan right now is going to remain on the world’s mind in perpetuity. The message is clear;Whatever good we do can be, and will be, overridden at the next election.
And all it took was Democrats in positions of governmental power… Which, when you design the voting machines and own a goodly chunk of the media, is fairly easy to arrange regardless of the will of the people.
You see, I’d like to say that there will be serious blowback at the next election…. that all of this will be the extinction level event for the Democrat party and America will get back on track.
My fear, however is that with the demonstrated fraudulency in this most recent election, and no indication of it being eliminated, the will of the people in these matters will never be heard from again.
Which is directly according to plan.
