Friday, December 9, 2016
Saigon December 9, 2016
Santa Claus and Christmas trees everywhere! Christmas music blared from loudspeakers to get you in the buying mood as you approached the entrance. Although Vietnam is a majority Buddhist nation, they have no problem celebrating other holidays. :) There are many in this world who need to take their common sense to mind.
About 50 cents on the street where food is always the best and cheapest. Reminds me of: Special Services Depot, Phan Dinh Phung/Cong Ly, Saigon
Lucky day! Found a $100 on the ground....:) I saw some in Cambodia that were absolutely undetectable from real ones. This certainly didn't fall into that category.
The fan I bought at the top store. Always need a fan near me while I sleep to drown out exterior noise. Last night I had to turn off the air conditioner and the fan was pointing away from me. This time of year is quite pleasant.
Vietnamese coffee is extremely strong. Most drink with sugar and/or cream though I don't. Their tea is excellent also and is used to chase the coffee afterwards. About 50 cents.
The shop owner asked if I would like for him to take a picture and I said certainly. This was 1:30 in the afternoon, but pleasant outside. He wondered why I wasn't uncomfortable, but it was very nice, though it wasn't the day before.
The shop owner who bought me another cup of tea and when I said no thank you, he said he would be happy if I would, so I did, with thanks.
The carts here are owned by the individuals who are taking a nap (12 to 2) in front of the coffee shop that is only open mornings. They go down streets calling out what they are willing to buy since nothing is wasted in Vietnam. You sort whatever you are finished with into different piles such as cardboard, metal, glass etcetera and when the appropriate person comes down your street, you have a buyer.
Live and let live. This is the one male from the group above who evidently didn't want to nap alongside the women, so laid down in front of the hotel. No one will say a word to him.
Nguyen Hue. Wish they had left it, as was.
The French Opera House, Saigon on the right and Continental Palace slightly to the left with the red tile roof where Graham Greene wrote the Quiet American. The new Italian owners (Continental Palace) walled in the ground floor, open porch where you could watch pretty girls bicycle by in their Ao Dais on the way to school while you had a cold drink.
My ride to Tu Do where I saw that they have demolished MY La Castille :( No interest in revisiting this, used to be wonderful street which personifies tourism at its worst today. Off to the county Thursday where it should be more to my liking.
Had two beers while I watcher the rain, so retrieved my umbrella to walk down the street and have a bowl of Pho below.
Buchanan Warns Trump: Be Wary of GOP Congress
Conservative commentator predicts president-elect will face fierce opposition on trade
President-Elect Donald Trump is riding high during the post-election honeymoon phase, but conservative commentator Pat Buchanan predicted it might be shattered by an unlikely source — the Republican Congress.
Buchanan, whose two presidential runs could be viewed as the ideological forerunners to Trump’s own successful bid this year, said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Wednesday that Trump almost certainly will need some sort of “border tax” on imported goods if he hopes to fulfill campaign promises to reverse massive trade deficits with major trading partners.
“No great nation every rose to be an industrial power and economically independent through free trade.”
“Here’s where he’s going to run into a real crunch with the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and all these transnational companies, which have already re-sited their factories and plants, and they’re doing it today abroad in Mexico and Asia and China and all the rest,” he said.
“And you gotta take away the economic incentive for doing that from the executive board. And that’s going to take some tough decisions.”
More @ PoliZette
Inland: New T30 Carbine with M82 Vintage Sniper Scope
| The End Of A Republic |
This new Inland T30 Carbine is very similar to the T3 Carbine of WWII. It comes fitted with a period-correct Redfield-style scope base welded to the receiver like the original. The purchaser can have it with or without the 2.5-power M82 sniper scope. The M82 scope is manufactured by Hilux and is a 7/8-inch diameter telescopic sight with post/horizontal hair reticle that replicates the rugged Lyman Alaskan scope adopted by the military during WWII.
More @ Guns America
Gun-Wielding Yoga Instructor Kills Two of Four Home Invaders
Yoga mats. Ferns. Air diffusors. Small decorative waterfalls.
These are the items one expects a yoga instructor to keep in her bedroom. A Taurus .38 Special is less expected, but, it turns out, more necessary.
That’s what 61-year old yoga instructor Hari Nam Kaur Khalsa found out this week, and she used her small revolver to kill two of the four men who invaded her home and tried to harm her.
Originally from Texas (surprise, surprise), Khlasa has been living in Batuco, Chile, since 1979 where she teaches kundalini yoga. Four men broke into her home last Thursday, and two of them found her in her bedroom. There they hit her in the head with a gun and tried to tie her up, according to the Dallas Morning News.
More @ Guns America
Northern Hostility Toward the Negro
Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan of New York wrote Calhoun in 1848 that “The feeling toward [the Negro] in the North is decidedly that of hostility. There is no respect for them. No wish for their elevation; but on the contrary a strong desire to prevent the multiplication of the race as far as it is possible to do so . . .” Former New York Governor (and later Union Major-General] John Adams Dix spoke of the “inferior caste” in free States: “Public opinion at the North – call it prejudice if you will – presents an insuperable barrier against its elevation in the social scale . . . A class thus degraded . . . will not multiply . . .” Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot in mid-1846 introduced a bill to ban African slavery from land acquired from Mexico.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com The Great American Political Divide
Northern Hostility Toward the Negro
“Closely interwoven with the Northern fear of [Southern political] dominance was fear of the Negro himself, and the [Wilmot] Proviso, commonly called the “White Man’s Resolution” by the free-soilers, seems to have expressed a Northern desire to keep the territories free not only of slaves, but of the black race.
The rhetoric of the free-soil movement is replete with expressions of hostility toward the Negro. One of the most notable instances occurs in James Russell Lowell’s allegorical treatment of the territorial issue in his enormously popular “Bigelow Papers.”
In this poem Lowell represents the Negroes as “long-legged swine” who ruin the territories, making them uninhabitable for the northern farmer. Anti-Negro expressions also found their way into free-soil platforms, albeit in muted form. The Barnburners Utica [New York] Convention called for preserving the western land “for the Caucasian race,” or in the more popular parlance of Thomas Hart Benton “keeping the territory clean of Negroes.” One free-soiler assured the House of Representatives that he had little concern for “the degraded and degenerate blacks.”
Northern hostility toward the Negro is likewise revealed in the vehement response to a proposal by Governor William Smith of Virginia to export the State’s freedmen to the North. In his speech representing the great dangers involved in rejecting the Wilmot Proviso, [New York Congressman] George Rathbun referred incidentally to Governor Smith’s proposal.
“What do we say [to it]?” asked Rathbun. He gave the answer: “That there is no territory in the free States belonging to them [the Negroes]; that there is no place for them. As far as New York is concerned, should the refuse part of the population of Virginia reach our territory, we will carry them back to Virginia.”
Smith’s proposal caused such consternation in Ohio that the Democratic minority in the State legislature was almost able to force through a law prohibiting Negro immigration altogether. One Democratic congressman from Ohio . . . appealing to the fear and hatred of the Negro in the North, used Smith’s proposal as a justification for bowing to the will of the South on the Proviso question.
In the North, where the Negro population was relatively small, the means of assuring white supremacy was to exclude the Negro, and when he could not be physically excluded, he was excluded from civic life.
The key to the strong emotional commitment in the North to free soil was the overwhelming fear of the extension of an alien race, as well as of an alien institution, to the point where it would directly affect the Northern people. The Wilmot Proviso had such a strong appeal precisely because it expressed the Northern determination to prevent the spread not only of slavery but of the despised Negro as well.”
(Democratic Politics and Sectionalism, the Wilmot Proviso Controversy, Chaplain W. Morrison, UNC Press, 1967, excerpts pp. 70-73)
Lincoln and the Supreme Court
Lincoln infamously ignored Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s order finding that the president held no constitutional authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus – and, reportedly had drafted an order to arrest the Chief Justice. Though Taney would remain Chief Justice during most of the war, his Court was on notice that arrest and imprisonment awaited Lincoln’s dissenters.
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com The Great American Political Divide
Lincoln and the Supreme Court
“The [Lincoln] administration would await no debacle, no breath-taking defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court. It could ill-afford such a calamity. It would move to make such a defeat less likely [and] it would be folly to permit Supreme Court decisions to add to the travail.
President Lincoln and the Republicans were now to decide, concerning the size of the Supreme Court, that the number “ten” was much more convenient than the number “nine.” Under the leadership of Representative James F. Wilson the committee on the judiciary reported to the house a bill to create a tenth circuit . . . [meaning] a tenth Justice. It was prudence that dictated a packed Court in order to strengthen the position of those Justices who would view with favor the acts that the administration deemed necessary.
Admittedly this was a moderate packing of the Court, but the tenth Justice in addition to the three other Lincoln appointees and other friendly Justices on the bench would provide an adequate margin of safety. So it was in the same days that the Prize Cases were being considered by the Court that Congress went about the task of creating . . . a tenth Justice. The Court could not fail to see the implications.
To pack it just at this time was a sharp warning that its size, its powers, and its role rested upon the will of the Congress and the President. There was no delay [in the appointment]. The Senate, deeming that swift action was necessary, passed the bill the same day that it took up consideration of it.
Keep[ing] the power of the Court “right.” That was the strongest motivation for adding a tenth justice . . . during the Civil War. Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky stated on the floor of the Senate on January 14, 1868, that the Radicals forced the creation of the tenth justiceship.
The power of the government to defend itself would be questioned again before the Supreme Court, and a tenth Justice would at least make certain “that questions of the power of government to suppress rebellion would not come before a Court too hopelessly weighted on the side of the old-line Democratic view of public policy.” The Supreme Court had to be removed as a factor potentially dangerous to the Union. A Congress and a President that had experience the debacles of 1862 would not stand idly by to experience disaster at the hands of the Supreme Court.”
(Lincoln’s Supreme Court, David M. Silver, University of Illinois Press, 1998, pp. 84-88)
Fake News: Credibility Is Not A Boomerang
Via Billy
New outlets, especially CNN are fighting the battle against fake news, forgetting their culpability in the same charge. On September 12th 2012 CNN broadcast the news about the Benghazi attack, accepting the Obama-Clinton explanation of an obscure internet video enraging the local population and inciting them to riot. Eventually, the truth came out that it was a terrorist attack, well planned and well executed. It resulted in the deaths of four Americans including the Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. This narrative ran for years, but it was refuted by Amanpour on September 12th, 2012. How is it that the narrative of a spontaneous riot lasted years, when it was known on that very date that it was a terrorist attack?
When it comes to Obamacare, CNN and the rest of the liberal media hyped the idea that the Affordable Care Act would not only save money, but result in a $2,500 savings; that it would allow participants to keep their doctor and their insurance coverage.
Obama made this comment on health care during his weekly address on Aug. 15, 2009, in Washington.
"If you like your doctor, you're going to be able to keep your doctor," Obama said at George Mason University on March 19, 2010, in Fairfax, Va.
New outlets, especially CNN are fighting the battle against fake news, forgetting their culpability in the same charge. On September 12th 2012 CNN broadcast the news about the Benghazi attack, accepting the Obama-Clinton explanation of an obscure internet video enraging the local population and inciting them to riot. Eventually, the truth came out that it was a terrorist attack, well planned and well executed. It resulted in the deaths of four Americans including the Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. This narrative ran for years, but it was refuted by Amanpour on September 12th, 2012. How is it that the narrative of a spontaneous riot lasted years, when it was known on that very date that it was a terrorist attack?
When it comes to Obamacare, CNN and the rest of the liberal media hyped the idea that the Affordable Care Act would not only save money, but result in a $2,500 savings; that it would allow participants to keep their doctor and their insurance coverage.
Obama made this comment on health care during his weekly address on Aug. 15, 2009, in Washington.
"If you like your doctor, you're going to be able to keep your doctor," Obama said at George Mason University on March 19, 2010, in Fairfax, Va.
More @ Christian Mercenary
The collapse of the political Left
Via Billy
It's been a tough decade for the political left. Eight years ago a Time magazine cover portrayed Barack Obama as Franklin Roosevelt, complete with cigarette and holder and a cover line proclaiming "The New New Deal." A Newsweek cover announced "We Are All Socialists Now."
Now the cover story is different. Time has just announced, inevitably though a bit begrudgingly, that its Person of the Year for 2016 is Donald Trump. No mention of New Deals or socialism.
It's not surprising that newsmagazine editors expected a move to the left. The history they'd been taught by New Deal admirers, influenced by the doctrines of Karl Marx, was that economic distress moves voters to demand a larger and more active government.
It's been a tough decade for the political left. Eight years ago a Time magazine cover portrayed Barack Obama as Franklin Roosevelt, complete with cigarette and holder and a cover line proclaiming "The New New Deal." A Newsweek cover announced "We Are All Socialists Now."
Now the cover story is different. Time has just announced, inevitably though a bit begrudgingly, that its Person of the Year for 2016 is Donald Trump. No mention of New Deals or socialism.
It's not surprising that newsmagazine editors expected a move to the left. The history they'd been taught by New Deal admirers, influenced by the doctrines of Karl Marx, was that economic distress moves voters to demand a larger and more active government.
More @ Washington Examiner
Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste
Via comment by genericviews has left a new comment on your post "Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureau...
I saw this at Brock’s Free North Carolina Site.
I cared about this until I saw it was in the Washington Post. After their election coverage, I don’t believe a single thing they print, not even the date. The WP can be depended on to even lie about the horoscopes. But I did go back and read the story because I work at the Pentagon and I wanted to see if they were reporting about me and I should be watching for the 60 minutes van to pull up in my driveway. And (after breathing a sigh of relief) the story made me angry. It is just more yellow journalism by writers who wouldn’t know how to really investigate anything to save their own mothers.
I saw this at Brock’s Free North Carolina Site.
I cared about this until I saw it was in the Washington Post. After their election coverage, I don’t believe a single thing they print, not even the date. The WP can be depended on to even lie about the horoscopes. But I did go back and read the story because I work at the Pentagon and I wanted to see if they were reporting about me and I should be watching for the 60 minutes van to pull up in my driveway. And (after breathing a sigh of relief) the story made me angry. It is just more yellow journalism by writers who wouldn’t know how to really investigate anything to save their own mothers.
More @ Generic Views
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