Fourteen State Attorneys General are taking a case to court to sue the same government that that court is a part of. Let me guess what the outcome of that suit will be.

In a column by Michael Barone this morning (4/12/10) he poses the following questions:

 
       Barack Obama giveth and the people recieveth. The Messiah opened up some of the areas offshore of the united States to drilling.(see note below) Key word: some. He did not allow for drilling in the interior of the states, however, or development of the nearly one trillion barrels of oil locked up in oil shale in Colorado and Utah. He did not allow for the development of the oil sands in the Dakotas and Eastern Montana which might yield another several billion barrels of oil. He threw Americans a little crumb as an incentive to get Republicans to go along with his Cap and Trade that is due to come up again probably before the 2010 elections throws out his majority in congress.

For those of you hoping to find in this article, something about Debra Medina's campaign, sorry to dissapoint you, but this is about the bloodiest battle in Texas history.
Darrel


The following was taken from THSA on Line, A Digital Gateway to Texas History:

MEDINA, BATTLE OF. The battle of Medina was fought on August 18, 1813, between the republican forces of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition under Gen. José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois and a Spanish royalist army under Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo. This bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil took place twenty miles south of San Antonio in a sandy oak forest region then called el encinal de Medina. Occurring during a very confused and turbulent period of world history, the battle of Medina affected the destinies of Spain, Mexico, the United States, England, and France. Mexico and Latin America were in revolt against Spain, whose king was Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who was on a rampage in Europe, and the United States was at war with England, later to be called the War of 1812. In this cauldron of world events, José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Augustus William Magee,^qqv abetted by the United States, organized an expedition to wrest Texas from Spain. Adopting a "Green Flag" for a banner, their Republican Army of the North crossed from the Neutral Ground in Louisiana into Texas on August 7, 1812, and soon captured Nacogdoches, Trinidad de Salcedo, La Bahía, where Magee died, and San Antonio, where a declaration of independence was proclaimed on April 6, 1813. This first republic of Texas, however, was short-lived, for Joaquín de Arredondo, commandant-general of the Provincias Internas, organized an army of 1,830 men and marched them early in August from Laredo toward San Antonio to quell the rebellion. In the meantime, Toledo deposed Gutiérrez and became the new commander of the republicans on August 4.

With a force of about 1,400 men composed of Anglos, Tejanos, Indians, and former royalists, Toledo, urged by Tejanos who wanted to spare San Antonio from the ravages of battle, chose to meet the enemy south of the city. The night of August 17 he encamped his forces about six miles from Arredondo's camp between the Atascosa and Medina rivers and planned to ambush the royalists as they traveled through a defile along the Laredo road. The next morning, however, royalist scouts flushed the republicans and lured them into an ambush in a dense oak forest. Acting against Toledo's orders, the republicans, led by Miguel Menchaca, trudged through deep sand for several hours in pursuit of a cavalry unit, which they mistook for an army. In the meantime, Arredondo prepared breastworks on favorable ground and ordered his men not to fire on the rebels until they were within forty paces. By the time the republicans came within range, they were very hot, thirsty, and tired. After a furious four-hour battle involving infantry, cavalry, and artillery, the republicans broke ranks and ran. Most of those not killed on the battlefield were caught and executed during the retreat. The republicans were decimated. Less than 100 were able to escape alive. Of these, no more than twenty have thus far been identified. Arredondo lost only fifty-five men, who were given honorable burial the next day on the way to San Antonio, where he established martial law and severely punished the rebels and their families. One of Arredondo's more notable subalterns was Lt. Antonio López de Santa Anna, who learned the lessons of war well and returned to Texas with another army twenty-three years later.

   The foot is in the doorway, the nose of the camel is under the tent flap, the first shoe has dropped, or any other metaphor you want to use. Congress has passed Obamacare. Now what are we to do?

“Oh”, you say, “It will be overturned by the next president, and Obama has no chance of getting re-elected.” Wrong on both counts. How many of us thought that Bill Clinton or even George W. Bush would get re-elected? And…..even if Obama is rejected by the people in 2012, why would any sane minded person think that the next president will overturn or in any other way, throw out Obamacare?

While it was still in its infancy we didn’t see a new president toss out Social Security or Medicare. Even one of our finest presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, did not do anything to stop Social Security from growing into what it has become today. It has become bankrupt and is bankrupting America, as will Obamacare. It will live on as Social Security has lived on; as Medicare has lived on; and as the Department of Education has lived on in spite of repeated promises by Republicans to dismantle it.

   I hope many of you were allowed to be delegates to your county or senate district conventions that were held this past weekend. I attended the one in Senate District 17 in Brazoria County. Unlike some counties, where a convention is held for the entire county, two senate districts represent Brazoria, so each senate district held its own convention.

I proposed a resolution in my precinct convention that would allow the people of Texas to offer an initiative for consideration on the ballot, and I am happy to say that it survived the Senate District convention as well and will now be sent to Dallas for consideration in the state convention. That does not mean that it will be offered to the delegates in Dallas for a vote at that convention, only that it will be in the group of resolutions that will be whittled down and offered as planks in the Republican Party of Texas platform. I have been informed that in some of the other county conventions, that this resolution was either not offered to the delegations or was voted down by them.

I think, from the standpoint of a Texas Nationalist member, that such a measure is of utmost importance, in that it will not require that we convince the Texas legislature to allow for a vote of the people on the subject of Texas independence. Once we gather sufficient signatures to get the motion on the ballot, Texas will be able to give independence, or secession if you would prefer, an up or down vote, if this resolution does become law.

I recently answered a letter to the editor in our local paper. The author of the letter was complaining of the rise in the cost of various grocery items over the past few months to a year. He understood that there was some increase due because of the rising cost of fuel needed to deliver the items to the store, and he was right. He also understood that the increased costs were more than just fuel costs, and he laid the blame for those increases at the feet of the retailers, which is not right.

While rising fuel costs are seen in some areas, they are overlooked in others. Noting that the increase in the cost of fuel is a reasonable cause for higher retail costs, the writer overlooked the fact that everybody, from the farmer who grows the corn and wheat to the wholesaler who eventually sells the food to the retailer, all are subject to increased fuel costs, and each passes his increase on to the next in line. By the time the box of cereal reaches the shelf of his supermarket, it has gone through several price increases before the retailer even has his say in the matter. In order to maintain his profit structure, the retailer has to add in all of the previously mentioned costs to his final price that we pay at the checkstand.

Ah, but that is not the true inflation that we are witnessing when we buy our groceries, but just a symptom of the real cause. Most Americans have a pretty steady income, based on the hours worked by the individual. Many Americans set a little aside when they can to ward against some eventual misfortune, such as the temporary loss of one’s job, or unexpected medical bills. Let’s assume that a family has managed to salt away fifty thousand dollars in some sort of saving plan or IRA. In today’s world, fifty thousand dollars is enough to keep a family from starvation and losing their home in the event of a loss of income, but not the great amount it once was. Fifty years ago there were not nearly as many dollars chasing goods as there are today, and fifty thousand dollars was quite a stash of cash. Over the years, however, with our government incurring more and more debt, the only way to pay down that debt, because government has no other source of income, was to increase the tax on the people. Now all taxes are not direct taxes, and in fact, the greater majority are not. By direct taxes, it is meant taxes imposed directly on the individual, such as income tax and Social Security/Medicare taxes. Other direct taxes may be considered the sales tax paid on the purchase of goods in just about every state I know of except Oregon, which has no such tax. Less noticeable is the indirect taxes we all pay. These are hidden taxes included in the cost of the goods we buy and the services we use. Hidden taxes are those taxes that were placed on the manufacturer, farmer, wholesaler, and retailers, each one adding to the next until we finally see the increase and are obliged to pay for it if we want the good or service. Each one, in order to cover their cost due to the tax, passes his increase on to the next in line, and each increase is increased that much more to the next in line.

Computers are wonderful, and I don’t know how most of us could get through the day without one. We send email, read email, log on for news of the day, read our favorite columnists, shop, find directions, look for recipes, and any one of a number of other things. I even checked out the results of the recent Republican primary election with my computer. Come to think of it, I even voted with a computer.

Do I trust my computer to give me the right answer every time? No I don’t. For example, I have looked at the results of a search that leads me to the well-known sight Wikipedia, only to find out that the results were not quite accurate in some instances. I later discovered that anyone with the skill to do so could put their information into Wiki and have it published. Not necessarily proven truths, but often misleading opinion has been published on that site, later to be proved false and removed or altered. The same applies to sites such as Snopes, where many go to either confirm or debunk something that they received in an email form or found in some website or blog. It seems that Snopes is no better at confirming or debunking such things than Wikipedia is at reporting accurate information.

Change will only come with action

This coming Tuesday March 2, Texas will hold the primary elections in the Republican and Democrat parties. This may be the most important election in the lives of most of the Texas voters. Not only are we choosing a governor, some of us are choosing both state and federal representatives, although several races are un-opposed. However, in the fine print, so to speak, can be found the precinct conventions that will form the basis of how we will conduct our political business in the future.

Joseph Andrew Stack. Most of us now know his name and have witnessed what he has done. For those who have been away to some small planet not in our orbit, Stack, mad at the U.S. Government, flew his small plane into an Austin building that housed the Internal Revenue Service.

We have become accustomed to hearing about such things from terrorists, almost always from some Islamic country, but seldom have we seen homegrown frustration resulting in such actions. Most of us can understand where Stack’s frustration was coming from, but most of us would not fly a plane into a building to vent that frustration.