PrairiePundit

  DC Daily Journal: ... Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine has been confirmed as the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Senate’s 60-25 vote, cast in the early hours of Friday just after 2 a.m., marks a significant step in President Trump’s vision to reshape the Pentagon with leaders aligned to his America-first priorities. As the Senate adjourned for a two-week recess, Caine’s confirmation stood as a testament to the administration’s commitment to swift, bold action. The vote came roughly six weeks after President Trump made headlines by dismissing Caine’s predecessor, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., in a sweeping Pentagon overhaul. While Democrats voiced unease over the abrupt changes, Republican leaders rallied behind Caine, urging rapid confirmation to ensure steady leadership at a time of global uncertainty. The urgency was clear: America faces mounting challenges abroad, and the Trump administration is determined to meet them head-on. Sen. Roger Wicker...

 Fox News: Biden shouts during speech, challenges anyone to name 'one thing' the US set out to accomplish and failed See, also:  Fact check: Biden tells three false personal anecdotes in economic speech

Victor Davis Hanson:   Refighting the Vietnam War Triumph Regained shows that America’s war in Vietnam could have been won earlier at far less cost, and in fact almost was, even belatedly by 1968. In 1968 I was assistant commander of the 3rd Marine Division communication center in Dong Ha.  One of my roles was to review communication and send it to the appropriate commands.  It was my impression from these communications that the US was indeed winning.   I later became an executive officer of a rifle company on the DMZ and that experience confirmed much of what I was seeing at the communication center.  The NVA at that point was doing what it could to avoid contact with the Marines in Northern I Corps.  We would see an occasional artillery attack and troops in the field would encounter occasional hit-and-run mortar attacks.   There would be occasional ambushes of patrols but little in the way of mass attacks.  The attacks on Khe Sanh fai...

 Peter Kaufner: While U.S. pundits see Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to Hanoi as a way for her to get out of town and avoid awkward questions, the Chinese media responded with sharp commentary accusing her of inciting Vietnam against China.  For her part, Harris accused China of " bullying " in the South China Sea.  The U.S.-China-Vietnam strategic triangle is certainly on the minds of ordinary Vietnamese. At a park in central Saigon, some students asked me, "Do you know why we love Trump?" "Is it because he hates China?" I asked. "Yeah!"  They responded in unison. Yes, Donald Trump is a  Vietnamese folk hero .  In fact, Trump is more popular in Vietnam than in any other country except the Philippines. Why do Vietnamese like Trump?  Everyone tells me it is the way he talks, which I am pretty sure means the way he talks about China.  Fearing Beijing's reaction, the government limits what the Vietnamese can say a...

 Power Line: For several weeks now, a supposed remark from Joseph Robinette Biden has been making the rounds comparing to the present moment the ignominious fall of Saigon in 1975 (when, incidentally, Senator Biden, “Mister Empathy,”  opposed  the U.S. taking in Vietnamese refugees who had been on our side in that misbegotten war). Biden is reported to have said, “Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.” By this he means Nixon and Kissinger paid no political price with war-weary Americans for abandoning South Vietnam through a peace treaty that provided a “decent interval” between the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and the collapse of South Vietnam. If this quote is accurate (and it sounds truthful knowing what we know of Biden), a number of observations need to be lodged. It is not a parallel situation in many important ways. First, Nixon was gone by 1975 when the Saigon collapse occurred. But President Gerald Ford didn’t get the blame because he had asked Congress, in a he...

  Red States: You'll Never Guess Who Was Also Involved in the 1975 Debacle in Saigon Biden had the same callous indifference to the allies of the US in Vietnam he is showing toward Afghan allies. 

 Red States: We have a must-see video from a Republican Arizona state representative who delivers a little reality to a deluded Democrat who mocked and downplayed the threat that we face from Communism. Arizona state Rep. Daniel Hernandez claimed that the threat of Communism was nothing compared to the threat of white nationalism and the Capitol riot. Hernandez seemed to be pushing the Democratic talking point that the three-hour riot was somehow about “white nationalism.” But Rep. Quang Nguyen wasn’t going to let that go. He spoke about how what Hernandez said irritated him so he came over and pressed the white button to be able to speak. “Is it ok to say white button?” Nguyen asked, with a little bit of wit. Nguyen then said he had something to say about Hernandez’s comments that Communism wasn’t the enemy. “White nationalism didn’t drown 250,000 Vietnamese in the South China Sea,” Nguyen exclaimed. “The Communists did. White Nationalism didn’t execute 86,000 South Vietnamese at ...

 Epoch Times: The Chinese regime is reportedly building structures at its borders with  Vietnam  and  Burma , as an influx of its citizens are fleeing to southeast Asia in search of economic opportunities. ... China and Vietnam share a 1,281-kilometer (796 miles)-long border, which is separated by low partitions. In October, locals shared videos online,  reportedly showing  parts of the Chinese regime’s new wall structure at the border, which is more than two meters (6.56 feet) tall. Some Chinese and Taiwanese entrepreneurs said they believed the Chinese regime was building the structures to prevent Chinese from leaving the country in search of jobs, as more and more multinational firms have moved their production lines out of China and into Vietnam or other Southeast Asian countries. As Chinese wages increased and U.S. trade war tariffs loomed,  a manufacturing exodus  out of China and into Southeast Asia began last year. Guo Haiguang, head of a ...

NY Times: The Untold Story of the Black Marines Charged With Mutiny at Sea Racial strife aboard a Navy ship left three men facing the threat of the death penalty. They became little more than statistics in the military’s dismal record of race relations in the Vietnam era. I was a 1st Lt. when I got to Vietnam in 1968.  Initially, I was the Assistant Commander of the 3rd Marine Division Communication Center.  The black troops in that unit did their job just like the other Marines and I saw no racial strife. I later became the Executive Officer of a rifle company of Marines on the DMZ.  We had several black Marines in that unit and they all did their job without complaint.  I did not see any racial strife among the troops.  I recall that one of the black Marines had gone awol after returning from R&R before I joined the company, but had served his time in the brig and was back with the company.  He was a good Marine after that experience and ...

Fuel Fix: A liquefied natural gas export terminal being developed in Louisiana by Australia-based LNG Limited has landed a supply deal for a power project planned in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam. In a statement issued on Sunday evening, LNG Limited announced that its proposed Magnolia LNG export terminal in Lake Charles has landed a 20-year supply deal to an electric power project being developed by Singapore-based Delta Offshore Energy in Vietnam's Bac Lieu province. The contract with Delta Offshore Energy and the government of Bac Lieu province will be for 2 million metric tons of LNG per year for 20 years. Magnolia LNG has yet to be built but the company holds a federal permit to build a plant at the site that will produce 8 million metric tons of LNG per year. LNG Limited is seeking permission to boost that production by another 800,000 metrics tons per year but the Vietnamese supply represents one-fourth the proposed plant's currently permitted production. ...

CNBC: Home Depot’s suppliers are trying to head off some of the increased costs from rising tariffs by moving at least some of their production out of China, executives told investors Tuesday. “I’m not aware of a single supplier who was not moving some form of manufacturing outside of China,” said Ted Decker, executive vice president of merchandising. “So we have suppliers moving production to Taiwan, to Vietnam, to Thailand, Indonesia and even back into the United States.” CEO Craig Menear said the tariffs on Chinese goods are projected to have a “cost impact” on U.S. sales of about 2%, or $2 billion. With suppliers moving at least some of their manufacturing outside of China, that reduces that impact by roughly one percentage point, executives said. ... Meanwhile, USA Today says: Vietnam says that China is mislabeling products as Vietnamese to avoid U.S. tariffs Mislabeling products is a form of consumer fraud and those doing so should be prosecuted.  It does demonstra...

Forbes: China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined ... ... Cina is not alone in the Asia Pacific region in the growth of CO2 emissions.

Washington Examiner: Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential front-runner and advocate of large-scale immigration, once tried to block the evacuation of tens of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees who had helped the United States during the Vietnam War. As a senator, the future vice president, now 76, was adamant that the U.S. had "no obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals," dismissing concerns for their safety as the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong swept south toward Saigon in 1975. His position was in stark contrast to the one he took nearly 30 years later over Iraqi and Afghan interpreters who had worked with U.S. forces. "We owe these people," his then top foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken said in 2012. "We have a debt to these people. They put their lives on the line for the United States." Biden said in 2015 that keeping Syrian refugees out of the U.S. would be a win for ISIS and tweeted in 2017 that "...

NY Times: The Bullet Inside My Body What’s it like to have a bullet lodged inside of you? We asked survivors of mass shootings, from Parkland to Pulse, to tell us how it feels to live with a constant reminder of the tragedy. I was surprised that this was thought to be newsworthy.  I have been carrying shrapnel from an NVA mortar attack for over 50 years.  I worked with a World War II veteran who had so much shrapnel in his body he set off the metal detectors at the airport.  Personally, it is something that I spend little time ever thinking about.  The surgeons usually clean up the wounds and give you antibiotics.  They also make a decision that attempting to remove bullets and shrapnel can sometimes do more damage than just leaving it there.

I have to admit to an instant dislike of this guy because of his Eddie Haskell demeanor.  But for a guy who lied about serving in Vietnam to lecture an honest man like Kavanaugh on lying pegged my BS meter.   Tom Cotton ✔ @TomCottonAR . @ SenBlumenthal lied for years about serving in Vietnam, which is all you need to know about his courage & honesty. Maybe he should reconsider before questioning Judge Kavanaugh’s credibility. 4:53 PM - Sep 27, 2018 48.1K 23K people are talking about this

Matthew Continetti: ... What I want to tell you about Wendy's story is that it's embarrassing, both self-pitying and self-congratulatory, and proves exactly the opposite lesson that it intends. The year is 2015. The scene is the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna. "I thought I'd be home in short order," Sherman writes. "By day 25 I had barely left the hotel and eaten only 1 meal outside the Coburg." The poor dear! Confined in this shack, this madhouse, this roach motel! It's a wonder she didn't go Jack Torrance on us. OK maybe not. Still, let us have a moment of silence for Sherman's palate, limited during those days of trial to duckliver with elder, chive, and hazelnut; nuart lamb with chard, cherry, and ginger; breakfasts of free-range eggs with Alpin cheese, chives, and bacon, or bircher muesli with currants. Subsistence must have been difficult. She pressed on. ... There is much more including the bargaining for this terrible deal tha...

Washington Post: Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam? Cronkite’s report remains controversial because it’s at the center of a seemingly endless debate about news coverage of the war, and whether the media exposed an unfolding debacle or undermined the American cause. The Democrats lost the war because they wanted to.  Cronkite was just part of the misinterpretation of events in Vietnam along with other liberals in the media.  Peter Braestup wrote the definitive book on the failure of the media Big Story  How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of the Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington.   Cronkite, in particular, misinterpreted Tet and the battle around the Khe Sanh Combat Base near the Laotian border. The Seige at Khe Sanh started before the Tet offensive and petered out of the Tet offensive was defeated by US and South Vietnamese forces.  The North Vietnamese were concerned about the ...

Times: The US is preparing an onslaught against insurgents in Afghanistan when the Taliban’s fighting season starts in the spring. American troop reinforcements are arriving and an array of additional bombers and ground-attack aircraft are lined up at the two main American bases at Bagram, near Kabul, and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. They include 18 F-16s, 12 A-10 “Warthog” Thunderbolt II close-air support aircraft, half a dozen armed Reaper drones and a steady rotation of B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers that fly in from bases outside Afghanistan. As a taste of what is to come, a B-52 dropped 24 precision-guided bombs this week on Taliban training camps in northern Afghanistan. The US military said it was the biggest attack of its kind by a B-52. ... The B-52 continue to be a devastating weapon against enemy troop concentrations because they can carry a much heavier pay load than the fighter jets that have been used for the same mission,  Besides the precision ...

Washington Examiner Op-ed: ... At the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on May 11, 1968, Reagan delivered "The History and Significance of the U.S. Role in the Pacific." Reagan laid the blame for America’s foreign policy ills — and especially for Tet — squarely at the foot of Robert F. Kennedy. Reagan began by lashing out at critics of the Vietnam War and specifically asked how the recent Tet offensive, which the U.S. and South Vietnam decisively had won militarily, could have been turned into such a loss at home? Reagan reviewed that media commentators had created the false impressions that we had lost. Reagan corrected the record: "It was the communist attackers who took the staggering losses..and who broke at the end and pulled back. Why did this message never get through to us? Why here at home have we suffered a smashing, catastrophic, psychological defeat? A defeat we imposed on ourselves. Why, with all the power and wealth and human resources at America's command have...

George Neumeyer: From Hollywood comes a steady stream of movies casting powerful liberals as embattled and marginalized conservatives as menacing. Hollywood’s latest tribute to a hopelessly entitled press, The Post , is in that vein. Meryl Streep plays an astonishingly brave and nervy Katharine Graham, willing to risk her fortune and even her freedom to publish the Pentagon Papers in the Washington Post. It is a feel-good film for the kind of press liberals who consider Trump’s mere tweets a singular and monstrous threat to their freedom. The film borrows from the Nixon tapes to make it seem like his impotent ravings imperiled her paper. But most of those rantings don’t even pertain to the Pentagon Papers, and in the one tape that does Nixon sounds remarkably blasé. If director Steven Spielberg had included the whole conversation with Al Haig in the movie, viewers would have heard the two agreeing that the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers primarily threatened to tarnish the legac...