From: canonfire	Date: March 2nd, 2006 06:55 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Civil War! *HUNH!* What is it good for?

Ah, the Battle of Antietam. That was A Good Thing™.



The Ten Costliest Battles of the Civil War
Based on total casualties (killed, wounded, missing, and captured)

#1
Battle of Gettysburg
Date: July 1-3, 1863

Location: Pennsylvania
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: George G. Meade
Confederate Forces Engaged: 75,000
Union Forces Engaged: 82,289
Winner: Union
Casualties: 51,112 (23,049 Union and 28,063 Confederate)

#2
Battle of Chickamauga
Date: September 19-20, 1863

Location: Georgia
Confederate Commander: Braxton Bragg
Union Commander: William Rosecrans
Confederate Forces Engaged: 66,326
Union Forces Engaged: 58,222
Winner: Confederacy
Casualties: 34,624 (16,170 Union and 18,454 Confederate)

#3
Battle of Chancellorsville
Date: May 1-4, 1863

Location: Virginia
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: Joseph Hooker
Confederate Forces Engaged: 60,892
Union Forces Engaged: 133,868
Winner: Confederacy
Casualties: 30,099 (17,278 Union and 12,821 Confederate)

#4
Battle of Spotsylvania
Date: May 8-19, 1864

Location: Virginia
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Forces Engaged: 50,000
Union Forces Engaged: 83,000
Winner: Confederacy
Casualties: 27,399 (18,399 Union and 9)000 Confederate)

#5
Battle of Antietam
Date: September 17, 1862

Location: Maryland
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: George B. McClellan
Confederate Forces Engaged: 51,844
Union Forces Engaged: 75,316
Winner: Inconclusive (Strategic Union Victory)
Casualties: 26,134 (12,410 Union and 13,724 Confederate)

#6
Battle of The Wilderness
Date: May 5-7, 1864

Location: Virginia
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Forces Engaged: 61,025
Union Forces Engaged: 101,895
Winner: Inconclusive
Casualties: 25,416 (17,666 Union and 7,750 Confederate)

#7
Battle of Second Manassas
Date: August 29-30, 1862

Location: Virginia
Confederate Commander: Robert E. Lee
Union Commander: John Pope
Confederate Forces Engaged: 48,527
Union Forces Engaged: 75,696
Winner: Confederacy
Casualties: 25,251 (16,054 Union and 9,197 Confederate)

#8
Battle of Stone's River
Date: December 31, 1862

Location: Tennessee
Confederate Commander: Braxton Bragg
Union Commander: William S. Rosecrans
Confederate Forces Engaged: 37,739
Union Forces Engaged: 41,400
Winner: Union
Casualties: 24,645 (12,906 Union and 11,739 Confederate)

#9
Battle of Shiloh
Date: April 6-7, 1862

Location: Tennessee
Confederate Commander: Albert Sidney Johnston/ P. G. T. Beauregard
Union Commander: Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Forces Engaged: 40,335
Union Forces Engaged: 62,682
Winner: Union
Casualties: 23,741 (13,047 Union and 10,694 Confederate)

#10
Battle of Fort Donelson
Date: February 13-16, 1862

Location: Tennessee
Confederate Commander: John B. Floyd/Simon B. Buckner
Union Commander: Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Forces Engaged: 21,000
Union Forces Engaged: 27,000
Winner: Union
Casualties: 19,455 (2,832 Union and 16,623 Confederate)

	From: jmhm	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:28 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Civil War! *HUNH!* What is it good for?

and our country has been taken over by the side that lost that one.

	From: canonfire	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:42 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Civil War! *HUNH!* What is it good for?

Evidently, they want another shot at one.

	From: bellatrys	Date: March 2nd, 2006 10:17 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	The Bushes were from Monticello?

The Nixons were Confederates?

The things you learn on the internets!

	From: jmhm	Date: March 2nd, 2006 10:51 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: The Bushes were from Monticello?

Nixon was not a dixiecrat. Bush, although I'm sure he has a gallon bottle of hand disinfectant under his desk to use after he shakes hands with them (what price Tom DeLay?) is the favorite son of the dixiecrats.

	From: bellatrys	Date: March 3rd, 2006 02:19 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	And?

The right aren't the only ones who have trouble looking at data and doing the numbers and adding it all up.

Or Southerners have almost as much Supersekrit Mental Superpowers as The Jews, being able to use 1/3 of the states, 1/3 of the population, and significantly less than 1/3 of the wealth and resources of the whole country to control the other 2/3 while being treated as untermenschen by the so-virtuous North and West Coast and Canadian Border states.

Almost as much as those Wily Orientals, we Confederate scions - and unlike Dr. Fu-Manchu we can even "pass" as so-civilized Yankee or Californian, some of us! PH3AR OUR L33T ASSIMILATION SKILZ!

The Texas-Oklahoma oil baronies are out of the upper east coast, no less than Pennsylvania's House Scaife. Mayflower Medicis all - I don't even call them 'Maybury Mafiosi,' because the Family has a sense of duty that the great houses of the Hegemony do not.

	From: jmhm	Date: March 3rd, 2006 02:34 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: And?

You know, I think we've been over this enough times for you to know perfectly well that you're assigning me reductionism that I don't actually indulge in.

I really, really don't like being planting on someone else's hobby horse.

The dixiecrats are not, unless you have some information I don't, the same group as southerners

Really, don't go there.

	From: jmhm	Date: March 3rd, 2006 04:20 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: And?

I know this is a sensitive subject for you.

I do not, on the other hand, accept the slant that although the Republican party has had for the last forty years an explicit strategy of courting unreconstructed racists and that this has been a remarkably effective strategy for getting votes in southern states I should ignore that because people in the coasts have a history of not respecting southerners.

I'm not suggesting that all southerners are with the program, or that anyone should dismiss the genuine ill-usage that the south has been prey to over the last thirty years or so.

I am, however, not willing to cop to being an east coast elitist for pointing out the self-evident fact that the people who fled the Democrats in the wake of the Civil Rights Act are the margin of victory for the Republican party.

From: mjmj	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:02 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

that is some pretty astonishing, uh, "spin", i think is the word people are using.

the people that i've talked to appear to believe it. i've talked to engineers (i.e., people with some scientific training) who simply track the current position about global warming, for example. once i understand their commitment to their culture war position, i know how much time to spend/waste on discussing other matters.

i, too, do not contribute any money to support fox news (i.e., have a cable feed of the channel).

shrub is down to 34%. nixon got down to 24%. so we know there is still some way to fall until we get to the hard-core wackos who live an alternate reality that will never change.

	From: serialkarma	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:08 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

You know, I don't know anyone who gets their news from Fox.

Sadly, I do. This Christmas I had several family members actually and most sincerely try to convince me that Fox News really was "fair and balanced."

I wavered between "omg, that is SO OVER," and "omg, how did we live in the same household for an entire decade?"

I concluded it was impossible for us to actually have a conversation about our differing political viewpoints, because each of us thought the other was living in a different reality.

	From: influxion	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:33 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	...each of us thought the other was living in a different reality.

If only Fox news and it's believers were in a different reality from ours!

I can relate. I have a friend who is a lawyer, a Constitutional expert, and a Libertarian/Conservative. This is a very intelligent man, yet when we've talked about this administration and it's ramifications, he seems to me to be totally off the wall. It's frustrating and scary!

	From: jmhm	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:48 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: ...each of us thought the other was living in a different reality.

well, you know, if he's a big-L libertarian lawyer you pretty much knew there was something going on there to begin with, right?

	From: sethg_prime	Date: March 3rd, 2006 01:34 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: ...each of us thought the other was living in a different reality.

There's this strange intersection between libertarianism and fetishization of The Law. I mean, you don't see Trotskyists arguing that their political philosophy is implicit in The Original Intent Of The Constitution, or propounding nutsoberger interpretations of the Uniform Commercial Code.

	From: tikistitch	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:10 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

You know, I don't know anyone who gets their news from Fox. Do their viewers know it's a pack of lies and grab onto it because it provides cover for the administration they support or do they truly believe that objective reality changes according to Roger Ailes' overnight polling?

The latter. I can't speak for all Faux News viewers, but I do know a couple of True Believers who will go to their graves vowing that we could *really* go after Bin Laden if only.... (here follows some vague muttering about being "held back" somehow by those libberuls, who don't happen to run any branch of government but nevertheless have all the power). That is, they don't seem to connect with individual facts, but have their eye on some unnamed overarching conspiracy that make objective reality somehow irrelevant. Does that make sense?

You missed a great one last night by the way--wish I'd been running the tape. Neil Cavuto had Gene Simmons as his guest (yes, THAT Gene Simmons, with the tongue), and the little Faux News headline dealo said something like "Gene Simmons on the Iraq War."

	From: jmhm	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:21 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

You know, Gene Simmons is a jackass, but I really enjoy his resume (only make-up and platform shoe-wearing person of hassidic descent in known history to have dated Cher)

	From: tlachtga	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:33 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

You know, I don't know anyone who gets their news from Fox. Do their viewers know it's a pack of lies and grab onto it because it provides cover for the administration they support or do they truly believe that objective reality changes according to Roger Ailes' overnight polling?

I'm the only person in my family who DOESN'T get their news from Fox. So basically, the story I hear over and over is that YES! It's Fair and Balanced, and when it's not, it's only giving the Other Side of the Story which is Never Ever Heard on those librul stations like ABC, which are run by a bunch of faggot jews.

So it's pretty easy to believe everything Fox says when you're already a bigotted asshole.

Yeah, um, did I mention I hate my family? And that I refuse to even go over there for any holidays anymore?

	From: sethg_prime	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:34 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

If there actually were a civil war in Iraq, it would be a good thing. But there is no civil war in Iraq. The only reason you think there's a civil war in Iraq is because of the lies of the mainstream media. This would be the mainstream media that wants to make Iraq look bad. Little do they know that by portraying what's happening in Iraq as a civil war, they are making Iraq look good.

Makes perfect sense to me.

	From: jmhm	Date: March 2nd, 2006 07:47 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

fish!

From: mjmj	Date: March 21st, 2006 04:57 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

more of the same, but the latest helping of it:

But I'd like to address the wholehearted swallowing by the Democratic establishment that this startling little bit of GOP group-think represents. As Jamison Foser says today (via Atrios):

Osama bin Laden may be dead? Good news for Republicans: They got bin Laden! New tapes prove bin Laden is still alive? Good news for Republicans: It reminds people of the threat of terrorism! Democrats don't criticize Bush? Good news for Republicans: Democrats are timid! Democrats do criticize Bush? Good news for Republicans: Democrats are shrill!

as quoted at firedoglake

	From: metasilk	Date: March 2nd, 2006 10:14 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Unfortunately, my otherwise bright grandfather (a research biologist) and a gamer friend of mind (ex-military) both prefer Fox for "news". Damned if I understand this.

From: (Anonymous)	Date: March 3rd, 2006 02:22 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
Okay...

After some extensive shopping around, generally I find that Fox News is actually really the only station even moderatly close to the dead middle line. CNN, NBC, ect. are very very very liberal, and Fox News is right wing, but not near as far as the rest of the mainstream media. I looked around to see what this is about, and I actually found what they were talking about, and you people are SO biased that you did not even look around for it, you just assumed. (I hate fox just as much as the next guy, but I knew they couldn't be that naive) A civil war that they were talking about was
" "Will Iraq descend into civil war?" The answer is that civil war is already underway in Iraq. Most people do not see it, because it is not following the typical fault lines on which we have been lead to focus. Such as the Shiite/Kurd/ As is usually the case in war, we are the victims not of deception but of self-deception.

In Iraq's civil war, the most prominent faction is what America calls Iraq's "government." "

Also MSNBC had a very similar article about Iraq in a civil war.

You have to open your eyes, bring yourself back towards the midline and away from so far left so that you are able to think for yourselves, and not just be fed information by the liberals of today.

	From: jmhm	Date: March 3rd, 2006 02:36 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Okay...

After some extensive shopping around, generally I find that Fox News is
actually really the only station even moderatly close to the dead middle
line.

Wow.

You're insane, but thanks for writing in.