Book recommendation: Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu
That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan
A friend, legislative colleague and fellow history buff
leant me this book some time ago, but it took me until now to read it. As a
Marine Vietnam vet, I tend to space out my reading on Vietnam because it is painful and
bitter. This excellent book is more bitter than most. I’m going to read a novel
by Tom Kratman next, as I know more bad guys will get killed than good guys,
and I need the respite. I didn’t expect this to replace Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place, but Valley of Death will now be the standard
work on Dien Bien Phu. It puts the battle in
the context of what led up to it, the world wide strategic and diplomatic situation,
and the aftermath. Switching between the horrific fighting and conditions and
the diplomats haggling in comfort in Geneva
is especially telling. Morgan is especially good at including telling personal
incidents from both sides. His dedication, “This book is for all the soldiers
sent to die in battle by politicians who have never seen combat,” is especially
poignant. I highly recommend reading this history.
Two Americas. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Two quite different 21st-century Americas are
emerging. The nation is not so much divided by "wars" between the
rich and poor, men and women, or white and non-white. Instead, there is the
world of reality versus that of triviality.
Stimulus Is Not the
Solution to Greece's
Economic Woes
Excerpt: Economists often confuse economic indicators with
actual economic performance. … Most New Deal programs had a multiplier effect
on the private sector that was either small or sometimes even negative; it is
between 0.5 and 1.5. In other words, each dollar of government spending led to
an increase in private spending of $1.50 at the high end and sometimes even a
decrease, depending on the program.
Congressional Budget
Office Should Use Dynamic Long-Term Fiscal Scoring
Excerpt: Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.)
have introduced legislation to require the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to
conduct long-term fiscal scoring and annual measurement of the fiscal gap.
Their effort is timely. Today, the largest fiscal questions facing Congress
concern policies that will determine the health of America's finances decades
in the future, says Salim Furth, a senior policy analyst with the Heritage
Foundation.
In China, an
Unprecedented Demographic Problem Takes Shape
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/china-unprecedented-demographic-problem-takes-shape?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130822&utm_term=FreeReport&utm_content=readmore&elq=083213899d6449c7adcaffecec34251e
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/china-unprecedented-demographic-problem-takes-shape?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130822&utm_term=FreeReport&utm_content=readmore&elq=083213899d6449c7adcaffecec34251e
Excerpt: Chinese society is on the verge of a structural
transformation even more profound than the long and painful project of economic
rebalancing, which the Communist Party is anxiously beginning to undertake. China's
population is aging more rapidly than it is getting rich, giving rise to a
great demographic imbalance with important implications for the Party's efforts
to transform the Chinese economy and preserve its own power in the coming
decade.
Ted Cruz's Father
Gives Epic Speech
An absolutely outstanding short but powerful speech from a
source that I would not have expected. Well worth the few minutes to
watch. –MM
50,000 abandoned dogs
roaming streets of Detroit
in packs
Excerpt: Packs
of wild, abandoned dogs are roaming the streets of Detroit, leaving city
officials overwhelmed at the prospect of handing an issue that raises both
animal rights and safety concerns. “It was almost post-apocalyptic, where there
are no businesses, nothing except people in houses and dogs running around,”
the Humane Society of the United States
director Amanda Arrington told Bloomberg News about a recent visit to Detroit. (Being a
dog lover, I hate this story. But it is Detroit
after all, a city full of irresponsible people who abandon pets. With no
families to care for them they turn wild. But I don't blame the dogs, I blame
the people. – LLW. Coming soon, to a socialist utopia near you. ~Bob.)
The Thug Culture That Killed Chris Lane.
By Arnold Ahlert
Excerpt: In a testament to the depravity of thug culture, an
Australian collegiate baseball player attending school in America was killed by
three teenagers looking for fun, police reported. Christopher Lane,
who was out for a jog in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma where his
girlfriend and her family live, was targeted at
random after he passed a home where the boys were staying. ”They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said:
‘There’s our target,’” said Police Chief Danny Ford. ”The boy who has
talked to us said, ‘We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided
to kill somebody.’” (The media and the Left will only wake up to the problem if
they start killing Gays and Muslims. ~Bob.)
Scandinavian Rape, Scandinavian Blinders. By Bruce Bawer
Excerpt: A Muslim asylum seeker; a rap sheet; a meaningless
deportation order: in today’s Scandinavia,
these are among the standard bullet points on many a rapist’s résumé.
Lights, Camera, Hillary. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: his week CBS joined NBC and CNN in the Hillary
entertainment business. While NBC airs a 4-hour miniseries produced by James D.
Stern, the son of a top Bill Clinton donor, whom the New York Times accused of
pushing Hillary Clinton’s candidacy eight years ago, CNN will air a documentary
about Hillary and CBS is developing Madame Secretary, a television series about
a female Secretary of State. The biggest challenge for all these projects is
how small a figure they have to hang so many hours of dead air on.
Camille Paglia:
"There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century
or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will
win."
Excerpt: Camille Paglia's Leftist credentials are
impeccable, so she can say things like this in pro-jihad, pro-Sharia Leftist
Salon. If Pamela Geller or Nonie Darwish or I had written exactly the same
paragraph below, Salon would have rejected it, or if it had appeared elsewhere,
Salon would have vilified the writer as a racist, bigoted Islamophobe,
fear-mongering for profit by talking about a mythical clash of cultures.
The News in Zingers.
By Argus Hamilton
Excerpt: The White House released video of the First
Family's new dog Sunny on Monday. She will undergo the usual training. Sunny
will stay in the White House Press Room until sitting up and begging and
rolling over and humping the president's leg are second nature.
The one fact the
administration doesn't want you to know about the economy's stubborn
sluggishness. By Robert J. Samuelson
Excerpt: Here is the most interesting fact about the economy
that you've never heard: Without health spending, the rest of the economy is
barely producing more than it did in late 2007, just before the start of the
Great Recession. We've spent five and a half years struggling to get back where
we were, and many industries are hardly making it.
Excerpt: I can think of no clearer evidence of the failure
of the American school system to educate our Black urban youth than to
compare how Blacks in other countries speak the English language. The other
night I was watching the BBC News Hour and they were conducting on the street
interviews about the recent British government's hikes of the nation's student
tuition. When they stopped to interview a young Black man in London
he spoke eloquently, articulately and you would have thought he was an Oxford scholar. It turns
out he's recently out of high school and works in a flower shop. (It’s racist
to suggest that blacks can speak as well as whites…~Bob)
NSA. By Jim Geraghty,
Morning Jolt
Excerpt: The problem is every time
somebody in authority tries to reassure us by describing what the NSA is doing,
it turns out to be a lie. Well, either it's a lie, or they don't know what
they're talking about. Like when President Obama told Charlie Rose that the FISA court is
"transparent." (The court's proceedings are entirely
in secret.) Or when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says, under
oath before Congress, that the NSA never gathered "any type of data at all
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans." He later claimed he
misunderstood the direct question posed to him and apologized to Congress. Or when President Obama tells Jay Leno, "We don't have a domestic spying program" --
and then we learn, like we did late Wednesday, that the NSA gathered "tens of thousands of e-mails and other
electronic communications between Americans" with no connection to
terrorism and a federal judge rules the government has "disclosed a
substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection
program" three times in less than three years.
Colorado town mulls drone hunts to decry spying
What a great fund raising idea! While the chances of the
government actually sending drones to Deer Trail to spy on folks is practically
non-existent, it could open up a lot of small business opportunities for the
little town. Cafes, maybe a motel, shops selling tee shirts, model drones, and
post cards. Local farmers hiring themselves out as drone hunting guides, taking
hunters out and dropping them off in corn fields with their 12 gauge shotguns.
After all, Roswell, NM has been doing that sort of thing with
UFO's since 1947. – LLW
Bradley Manning says
he wants to live as a woman
Excerpt: Bradley Manning plans to live as a woman named Chelsea and wants to
begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, the soldier said Thursday, a day
after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for sending classified material to
WikiLeaks. (I'm trying to think what difference it could possibly make, unless
he is released into the general prison population. Then, it could make a BIG
difference. – LLW. The difference is the courts will require us taxpayers to
fund the “treatment.” ~Bob.)
Tweet from GregGutfeld @greggutfeld
Don't worry fans of Bradley Manning. In 8 years he'll be
out, with benefactors, a book deal and tenure.
White House spokesman
jokes about Islamic attacks on Christian
churches in Egypt
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/21/white-house-spokesman-jokes-about-islamic-attacks-on-christian-churches-in-egypt/
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/21/white-house-spokesman-jokes-about-islamic-attacks-on-christian-churches-in-egypt/
Excerpt: The White House’s deputy press secretary today
downplayed Muslim attacks on Christians
in Egypt,
joking about the savagery that has left at least six Christians
dead. Press secretary Josh Earnest was asked by Fox News’ correspondent, Ed
Henry, if President Barack Obama has a “red line” beyond which he would act
against Muslim attacks on Egyptian Christians.
“Well, I didn’t bring my red pen out with me today,” Earnest joked.
Germany: Fracking Since 55
Excerpt: Perhaps one of the more eyebrow-raising
presentations at London’s 2011 Shale Gas
Environmental Summit was that of Germany’s Klaus Sontgerath, head of
department, Lower Saxony State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology. In his
presentation, he illustrated that Germany
– one of Europe’s greenest countries - produces more onshore natural gas than
any country in Europe apart from the Netherlands.
Companies sweating
Obamacare tax—and acting on it: Study
Excerpt: Mid- and large-sized companies overwhelmingly
expect health-care costs to increase under Obamacare—and most are eyeing
possible changes to their health insurance offerings because of a looming
excise tax for pricier plans under the health-care reform law, a new survey of
employers finds. In fact, 40 percent of 420 companies surveyed by Towers Watson said
they will be changing their insurance plans' designs in 2014 in light of the
coming excise tax as well as to control employee-related health costs.
Excerpt: In the third of the six films of the Star
Wars saga, the Sith Lord who has infiltrated to become the ruling
Chancellor of the democratic republic confederation of peaceful worlds
announces to the elected Assembly of representatives of those worlds that to
deal with an exaggerated, fabricated crisis, “The Old Republic will be
reorganized into the first Intergalactic Empire.” The distracted Assembly responds
with polite applause. One of the few characters who understands what is
happening remarks wryly, “So this is how the Republic ends. With applause.” (I
wrote about one of the grabs of unconstitutional authority a week or so ago,
the one about delaying one part of Obamacare until 2015. This article does a
much better job of reviewing the whole run of clearly unconstitutional acts by
Mr. Obama, and points out that such actions are absolute slaps in the face to
the basis of our government, which is the Rule of Law. When George Bush did
things that were at all questionable, such as claiming that there was enough
evidence of WMD in Iraq that we needed to go to war there, the media, many
senior politicians, and a whole host of public figures were jumping up and down
in screaming protest, and there were mentions in plenty for the idea of
impeachment. Now that Mr. Obama has made anything Bush did seem trivial in
terms of constitutionality, where are the media, where are all the senior
politicians in both parties, where are the renowned public figures, and most of
all, where are the constitutional scholars? If we are not a nation of laws,
then what comes next, Mr. Obama will run for a third term? Everyone with a body
temperature over 95 deg F who can walk, crawl, or be wheeled into the polling
place gets to vote, formal citizenship no longer required? Certain law
enforcement officers will be able to write their own warrants to search, seize,
and arrest? There is no slope any more slippery than the slope that says that
for this special instance, the President can ignore the Constitution. And some
wonder that there is any kind of movement for survivalists? If we no longer
have protection of the laws, then starting to prepare to take care of yourself
and your loved ones under conditions you cannot begin to predict is not
extremism, it's prudence. --Del)
Oh, it goes far beyond Fonda being a "critic" of
the Vietnam war. She's a traitor who openly sided with the enemy to do damage
to her country and should have been tried and imprisoned the instant she
returned from Hanoi.
I hope I outlive her and am able to make the trip to her grave. Maybe even
charter a bus, load it up with Vietnam war vets and kegs of beer, so we could
arrive at the cemetery with full bladders. – LLW
Who
needs a democratic Egypt?
By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt:
We may want Egypt
to be democratic, because it fits our notions of how countries should work, but
that isn’t something that we actually need. The editorial writers and foreign
policy experts who never got beyond the expat bars of Cairo will try to blame
Egypt’s lack of democracy for our terrorism problem, and Obama and McCain may
even echo their idiocy, but just like the attempts to blame Israel for Islamic
terrorism, it’s not a policy, it’s a hollow apologetic for terrorism. If
anything, Egypt’s original
unwillingness to bow to the Brotherhood nearly redirected Al Qaeda away from
its war against America as
the Egyptian faction sought to fight an internal war of the kind that Al Qaeda
in Iraq and Syria are now
fighting.
DHS employee spends
spare time promoting race war against 'whites'
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/22/dhs-employee-spends-spare-time-promoting-race-war-against-whites/#ixzz2cjMGejW8
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/22/dhs-employee-spends-spare-time-promoting-race-war-against-whites/#ixzz2cjMGejW8
Excerpt: A Department of Homeland Security manager in charge
of buying weapons and ammunition for the government is, on the side, running an
inflammatory website that throws around gay slurs and advocates the mass murder
of "whites" and the "ethnic cleansing" of "Uncle Tom
race traitors," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. (He’d be
safe if just anti-white, but they won’t tolerate anti-gay. ~Bob.)
New York, California, Illinois Hemorrhage Tax
Dollars. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt:
A new study on state-by-state income migration
from the Tax Foundation (h/t WSJ), found
that New York, California,
and Illinois—the
largest blue states in the country—led the country in income flight during the
last decade. New York
was hit particularly hard, losing $46 billion dollars of taxable income to
people leaving the state over the past ten years. And these states were not
alone: blue stalwarts like Maryland, New Jersey, and Massachusetts
were not far behind.
Arab
Spring: Worst Soap Ever. By Ann Coulter
Excerpt:
Democrats are so opposed to promoting the United States' interests around the
globe, it doesn't occur to them that, sometimes, our national interests might
coincide with the interests of other people. Liberals made fun of Sarah Palin
for not being able to define "the Bush doctrine." Can Obama tell us
what "the Obama doctrine" is?
U.S.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) calls for National Constitutional Convention. By
Randy Krehbiel
Excerpt:
Such a convention has never been called, largely because the Constitution
itself was the product of a convention authorized only to amend the existing
Articles of Confederation, but which replaced it entirely. Thus, political leaders and scholars
have long held that such a convention could be dangerous and even destructive
to the nation. But as conservative frustration with the Obama administration
has grown, some factions have begun advocating for such a convention.
(Progressives might see it as the opportunity to eliminate all restrictions on
government. Scary. ~Bob.)
No comments:
Post a Comment