General Thomas Was the Real Winner for the Army of the Cumberland (after Grant)

General Thomas was the deciding edge for the Army of the Cumberland. Thomas was a brilliant and modern field tactician who invented the mobile field command car (wagon). He had people survey the terrain of battle in detail, and out-prepped the opponents. Thomas held the line at Chicamagua when the rebel Army broke through a gap in Sherman's line. The union forces were thrown into panic and retreat, yet Thomas’ command held the line against vastly superior forces long enough to enable Sherman to retreat without a slaughter.

Battle of Chickamauga

Grant had ordered Sherman to replace General Thomas because he was impatient with Thomas’ strategy of letting the confederates come to him for the battle of Chattanooga. Thomas had good intel and knew the terrain very well and designed a kill zone. Grant arrived and ordered Thomas to hit the rebels in the center. That resulted in a Union victory. Sherman was busy fighting at Tunnel hill where the rebels stopped him. The confederate army engaged in battle wasn’t slaughtered and retreated toward Atlanta.

Battle of Chattanooga

Thomas knew that the Rebel army could be cut off at a critical spot on the way Sheridan dithered and let General Hood’s forces escape to Atlanta. Sherman surrounded Atlanta and had Thomas guard a sector of the northern front, and waited. The confederates choose to break out while Sherman was on the wrong side of Atlanta- the S.W. He had no notion when the battle started.

The rebels broke through in the N.E. where just General Thomas’s forces held yet could not contain. Rebel fugitives did manage to escape toward Savannah, and though out of touch during the initial fighting, General Sherman arrived to chase after the survivors. His cavalry rode all the way from Atlanta to Savannah where they encountered stiff resistance from 200 revel soldiers. I rode a bicycle along a country highway where Sheridan’s forces had gone, and found a small vestigial swamp with cypress trees- very scenic, the remainder was farmland.

There are experts on the war crimes of the civil war. Sheridan didn’t perp anything like Union soldiers experienced at Andersonville. Sheridan was probably in a hurry to get back for medals and ceremony in D.C. as the war was quickly over.


I am skeptical that General Sherman could have engaged in much looting and pillaging on his ride in hot pursuit of escaping, concluding Rebels soldiers on the road to Savannah. Again, between Chattanooga and Atlanta there wasn’t so much time that passed to seriously exploit the civilians.

General Thomas, a son of North Carolina, died of a heart attack a few years after the war in San Francisco. If had chosen to fight for the South, the Union might have had a worse time of it.

America's Biggest Historical Monopolies

Without too much research I would say, Standard Oil (there was a book named The Seven Sisters published maybe thirty years ago that described the oligopoly of seven major oil companies), Bell Telephone, Labor Unions, maybe U.S. Steel and what?

Some say Intel is monopolistic because it leads in creativity and production of computer chips. It does have rivals like AMD, Ryzan and Nvidia etc. The cost of getting started is so high that there are few small business competitors producing chips at home in the U.S.A. It is possible that another way of storing data besides miniaturized transistors will be invented such that it works (why aren’t cpu’s made on solar panels so they can act like home super-computers nailed to the walls of homes) better than tiny transistors? There must be some way to get faster internet speed and an edge on all those foreigners that beat one at blitz chess because of faster internet service providers. 

Some regard the New England Patriots as semi-monopolistic… equal to the 20th century Yankees in baseball. I wouldn’t agree with that. In my opinion the Saints should win after having the NFC Championship stolen from them by prejudiced referees from Los Angeles.


Oh yes, there is Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more to consider (Amazon). It isn’t a monopoly. It simply has a hyper-efficient, state-of-the-biz ness model below the surface. It and e-bay just push the mom and pop malls out of business. The retail apocalypse has claimed 6,000 US stores in 2019 so far, more than the number that shut down in all of 2018

El Salvador; Needs U.S. Troops to Secure and Develop Society?

Does El Salvador need U.S. military to establish martial law, eliminate MS-13 and build a just and verdant society? El Salvador's criminal enterprises and drug distribution infrastructure have established sufficient civil terror to drive civilians north to the United States creating more problems here. The U.S. provided military aid to El Salvador in the battle against communist guerrillas; it should help fill the civil vacuum of power and development that followed the civil war and return of gang members from Los Angeles.

A Marshall Plan for Europe helped rebuild that devastated sub-continent. Political leaders were wise enough to know that politics abhors a vacuum. Americans should not feel they can just ignore Central American problems and pursue their own prosperity without any consequences. Communist evil an authoritarian killers may envelop the Western Hemisphere trying to defeat the U.S.A. in detail.

Sending money to El Salvador that would filter out to the gangs eventually isn't a good idea. Some in California might wish to send money to beef up right-wing death squads whom could attack MS-13 as a rival organization to power. That doesn't seem like a good idea.

If the United States allows disorder and poverty to continue in El Salvador with a non-interventionist policy it is likely that droves of illegal aliens will continue to migrate to the U.S. along with gang members and illegal drug traffickers. China is investing in Venezuela and Panama seeking opportunities to build of communist and socialist infrastructure. Chinese agents may support or encourage criminal gangs in Central America eventually as a way to establish more power for-themselves as they seek to make South America the Chinese back yard.

After the end of the Cold War a policy of ignoring Central American politics to let chaos and crime flourish is backsliding, as were the importunate policies that helped develop enmity with Russia. While the Democrats are a party that seems anti-American and pro-socialist/communist irrationally these days, the Bonobo morality clan political drift will not encourage peaceful civil development in Central America. Non-intervention except for cash payments is irresponsible. Of course the President of El Salvador and the rest of the government should need to request U.S. troop presence; perhaps 20,000, with Army engineers and top economic advisers to attempt to build a sustainably green economic infrastructure for El Salvador.

On Innate Moral Psychology

Prof Bloom's lecture on finding about babies was amusing enough. Searching for some sort of innate morality in babies that could be taken as a cognitive characteristic such that people are hard-wired to certain behaviors that he can regard as moral seems sketchy.

Morality is an ability to differentiate between abstract values rather than natural behavior for-itself. The difference between defecating in public or in a toilet stall is a moral and legal question perhaps, yet a dog or a baby defecating on the floor isn't taken to be a moral question they have flunked.

Moral philosophy isn't about unavoidable deterministic behavior. Animals pursue with personal egoism perhaps, things that are good for them, or that they believe to be good. An example would be youthful alcoholism. maybe a child discovers that drinking gin and orange juice or whatever is good, or tastes good, so they continue even though it is bad for their health. If creme puffs were actually poisonous and bad, people would eat them anyway of they didn't know better. The pursuit of what is thought to be the immediate good is not a moral question.

Socrates wanted to show that human children may have innate knowledge in one part of The Meno in a famous passage of 1900 words where he interviews a slave boy. Cicero wrote a discourse On Natural Law. The babies interpreting fair distribution or unequal distribution were not perhaps showing a moral sense. They have have transferred their own worldview into the two characters and preferred a balanced rather than an unfair or unequal distribution for-themselves. The babies may have liked or disliked a triangle shape more than a square, or alternatively have required more time to understand a complex image in regard to a triangle and sphere vs a square and sphere in motion. A triangle has slope and a square has only angles.

While morality may be what people actual do. It is a culturally based social dialect and an evolutionary praxis of change. Its realm may be stretched and broken as a society expands or is broken, so chaos and moral breakdown occurs.

One should not overuse moral reductionism to posit that like a Universe expanding from a singularity, the moral state of mankind is a kernel within babies that grows into adulthood. While some adults are simplistic regarding moral behavior and world view, and some societies are simplistic in behavior and world view in some historical periods, in the modern world, given the possible ranges of freedom of motion and action of human beings as a physical being, moral values are chosen, accepted as true dogma, and so forth, intentionally rather than automatically.

Anyone can understand that putting a hand on a stove burns. Babies vicariously understand that about others. Adults often lack that capacity and willfully persecute others at a distance with modern tools of they can on the basis of rumor. The gang morality of organizations and collectives for pursuing people to victimize is an exaggeration of the profit motive or pursuit of the good narrowly that is expanded into mass organizational moral values.

Organizational morality can have good or bad values, and designate those values like algebraic literals wherein one drops in the meaning such that it supports organizational goals.

On Catholic (and other) Priestly Child Abuse Crimes- What Can Be Done?

Homosexual pedophiles may infiltrate churches intentionally. I believe that school instructors of kids have a percent that perpetrate pedophilia too with countless examples of statutory rape crimes globally. It is a human problem that Christians too should work to eliminate. 

Homosexuals have taken over some denominational doctrine. There are academics that teach morality these days with very loose ideas about sexuality. Some want to model morality on values that Bonobo-chimps have of less violence in comparison to chimpanzees. Broad is the road to destruction and many there are that take it while narrow is the gate to salvation. 

Christians are individuals and saved individually. The world is corrupt and there are corrupt people within any organization including ordained ministries. That is plain. Many are lost and confused by the advanced evolutionary doctrine that is pervasive in public schools. I learned evolution science and Christianity at the same time and so look at the Bible differently than either fundamentalists or scientific atheists. Entertainment media is basically anti-Christian and provides unChristian values.

I have felt that getting the gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ to the people has had various forms that harmonized with the technology and social reality of the era. While one might wish for Christian leadership to have better than normal behavioral characteristics, sometimes they don’t regarding moral behavior. In prior eras the sacerdotal priesthood (celibacy) was easier than today with pervasive temptation as common secular fact.

Human society has not always been developed along rational, orderly, egalitarian lines. Christian values tend to be counter-cyclical to worldly values, so Christians want their leaders to be good moral examples. Yet the teachings of Christ aren’t simple to follow.

Today there are many corrupt versions of Christianity. Homosexual clergy are permitted in some denominations. One may become an ordained minister from a Washington State order on-line shop free to perform marriage. American Marriage Ministries Marriage License Completion

Genuine Christianity, in short, is increasingly difficult to differentiate from that which is not.

I think it would help if a priesthood of believers order were formed where all Christians literally are priests and participate as confessing Christians in personal church services Sunday. Good theological and doctrinal dogma could still be produced by scholastic Christians that follow the Bible so ordinary Christians could share an orthodoxy in performing church offices Sunday liturgy. If Christianity is voluntary and non-profit, and if people participate freely as confessing members, then there should be little reason to lie in public every Sunday, and one should develop better Christian spiritual awareness during the week.

I believe that present church structures with upper class pro Christians and lower class ‘laity’ is out of step with the times of Universal literacy. Christians no longer require special clergy to read from the Bible in Latin as they sit in pews.

When churches seem oriented toward assuring support for career Christians and the ‘laity’ walk or drive away in cars to resume their secular lives. When they don’t share small groups speaking roles and know they are primary Christians, a lot of stuff can go on within and without a church. I have written about that elsewhere.

Christianity certainly is experiencing several contemporary crisis. I can’t fix it, nor can I fix several other secular problems. That leaves one dissatisfied. One hopes some time things can get better.

Reconstructing Notre Dame; Design Options Aplenty

The bright spot in the darkness of the Notre Dame cathedral fire is the opportunity to redesign the Paris skyline. Yes much of the remaining old stone structure should remain as a depositional layer of history. The remainder should be new, soaring into the sky like an Antonio Gaudi-Salvador Dali steel and glass sort of practical construct that captures solar and wind power.

 Should the New Notre Dame have green lasers in the spire, or make the spire a very modern radio or solar telescope? What about the camera obscura within a dome showing the sky outside? Should fiber optics bring natural light within? Instead of bell chimes maybe a vast Aeolian wind harp that can be dampened and played to not disturb Parisians too much would work. It is good when opportunity presents. 

Perhaps the Bible could run live through exterior l.e.d. and solar building panels in some areas of the new construction for people to see.

AOC Acknowledges That White House Bid Is No Country for OIld Joe

Maybe former V.P. Joe Biden is a tired old guy in a No Country for Old Men scenario regarding his desire to be President. There is something to be said for young, clueless leadership that F's it all up yet makes voters feel good about it.

Medicare for everyone including Warren Buffet and Bill gates could through a lot of cash for future generations to deal with. It would expand the base and amount of money going into the program to provide rich quality treatment for the aged. Turbo-Obamacare instead of rational direct provision of medical services directly to the poor and uninsurable through an expanded V.A. and homeless clinics network. There is no cheaper way, and if the public is paying for it, the best and most efficient coverage is what should be selected. Bernie and Biden have not got the public's best interests in mind- they want to through more business to Wall Street and the 1% with Obamacare continuing. Taxing the poor and middle class for Medicare forced on everyone-even those that are young, healthy and sometimes clueless when they are in political office might be necessary to pay for it. Lots of room for fraudulent Medicare charge scams.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-biden-2020-election

One would like a well-educated politicians from the Democrat side to at least provide intellectual competition. That won't happen though. The young and the restless democrats are mostly an identity party of women, homos and non-whites these days. Charisma matters more than good ideas. maybe Joe and Bernie don't have it. I could at least emulate Bernie cover-the-baldness hairstyle if he was elected. Comb it forward and have lots of Hollywood stars over to admire that.