Happy Birthday To Me

by on March 2, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Yeah…I just passed my birthday again. At over forty, that puts me solid into the middling of my years, unless my plan to live forever works out. Then I’m just starting on this merry go round. 😉

I got a bunch of birthday wishes, the first one coming from Hallmark. Fitting I suppose. Then a bunch of random e-mail from companies whose newsletter mailing lists I’m on. Thank God I didn’t get one from Bloomberg. Then some people I actually know. Thank you. All of you. 🙂

I got in a fun game of BattleTech, where both me and a friend who will remain nameless for his own protection found out just how powerful electronic warfare can be. C3 for those who know it. For the rest of you, think of it as really good equipment for shooting stuff far away as if it is really close. It was a good game. It was a fun game. And spending time playing is always a good way to spend a birthday weekend. We also ate Indian, so it was a good time all around.

On a not-so-good point, one of my favorite authors released a new list of fans that made it into his work, and it appears my part has been edited out. He wrote me in after a call for names with the standard qualifications that nothing is guaranteed and that editing phase can take anybody out. And from what he said, this particular editing phase was particularly complicated with many scenes cut and added. Given matters are as they are, I expected I would be edited out, but it still disappoints me to see it happen. And finding out about it on my birthday weekend was a real bummer.

Outside that, on a personal update, I’m still writing my stories and about to publish a new one. Two are pretty much ready for it, but I’ve got real life matters to look at first. Taxes. Woohoo. And the not-so-fun job of seeking an eviction for homebuyers who decided they were going to stop paying me money for the house. So I go to court in a week. I’ve successfully gone over forty years without spending time in a courtroom, now a pair of squatters has me seeking it out. On the plus side, if I can get them out, and find someone else to buy the place and really give me actual money for it, I get to rebuild the retirement savings I lost to Obamacare. Which is pretty much a really good reason to go through with all of this lawyer and court stuff.

So Happy Birthday to Me. 🙂

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The Republic of Texas

by on March 1, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Democrats established a firm control of Texas politics after Reconstruction ended, and their local paramilitary white supremacy organizations continued to suppress the vote of the former slaves. But when the freedmen pushed a Republican to the federal House of Representatives in the 1890s, despite everything they did, the Democrats were done playing nice. They were the rightful rulers of Texas, not the Northern Carpetbaggers, not the so-called Southern Scalawags, and definitely not those Negroes who needed to be shown their place again. If assassinations and terror tactics did not do the job, then they would just have to change the laws so it would be illegal to vote. They added poll tax requirements, instituted White Primaries, and added literacy tests all while making certain that the segregated schools would not teach the skills needed to pass them. They banned Negroes from jury duty and law enforcement, which also banned them from carrying weapons of any kind, and turned them, once again, into second-class citizens not fit to show their faces in polite society.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 29, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The 1876 election is generally considered to be one of the most controversial elections in American history. Democrat organizations like the Red Shirts and White League operated openly, unlike the defunct KKK, organizing armed marches numbering in the thousands to drive out or murder Republican officials, or keep Republicans from voting at all on election day. They printed ballots with Republican symbols but Democrat names to entice illiterate voters into casting the wrong ballot, and vote stuffing was so impressive that it resulted in 101% of the possible vote tallied in one State. Three States sent two official election results to the Electoral College. One endorsed by the existing State government, and one endorsed by the Democrats. And the Oregon governor disqualified one elector because he was a Postmaster, and therefore a government employee, and replaced him with a Democrat elector. An Electoral Commission awarded all disputed votes to Republican President Hayes, and a hasty series of backdoor meetings between Republicans and Democrats followed. The Republicans finally agreed to pull out the last of the federal troops enforcing the now-unpopular Reconstruction efforts, and the Democrats agreed not to protest the election. And so Reconstruction came to an end in the United States of America.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 28, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Nearly 90% of the Texas Republican Party membership was freedmen in the 1870s. It was literally called the Negro Party because of this, though there was a small mixture of Northern Carpetbaggers and Southern Scalawags, what proper Southern gentlemen called those who had been more loyal to the Union than their own Confederacy. Nearly all respectable Southern white gentlemen belonged to the Democrat Party, who of course were only looking to protect the rights and privileges of the State they had helped mold. Unlike the Northerners and their lazy allies who just wanted to buy up the land of loyal locals and turn them out like beggars. The problem for the Republicans was that there were more whites living in Texas than blacks, and as voting rates approached 90% of all eligible voters, despite the violent voter suppression efforts going on, the Democrats simply had more votes to fall back on. They used their majority to enact segregated schools, poll taxes, laws to disallow the carrying of weapons, and other measures designed to make it harder for freedmen to live and vote as other people. And yet the freedmen continued to vote.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 27, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The 1870s were effectively a time of undeclared war in much of America. The Ku Klux Klan hunted and killed Republicans and freedmen in the Southern States, and the Federal government declared them a terrorist organization. Federal troops occupied the Southern States and hunted the Ku Klux Klan into extinction. But it seemed like every victory included a defeat. Confederate officers and leaders were able to vote again starting in 1872, and a flagging Southern economy resulted in a national depression in 1873. Northerners lost trust in Reconstruction due to tales of corruption coming out of the Southern States, and the Democrats were quick to capitalize on that. They renounced the get rich quick schemes of Northern Carpetbaggers and demanded that local rights be protected. It was an easy campaign to make, and increasingly unhappy Northerners wanted less and less to do with the ungrateful Southerners.

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