Yes, I was emotional last Thursday. I hope everyone can understand I was there as a son, husband and dad.
I was deeply honored to stand at the White House July 9 with my wife,
Ashley, and my daughters, Margaret and Liza, to accept President
Trump’s nomination to succeed my former boss and mentor, Justice Anthony
Kennedy, on the Supreme Court. My mom, Martha—one of the first women
to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to
become a lawyer—sat in the audience with my dad, Ed.
That night, I told the American people who
I am and what I believe. I talked about my 28-year career as a lawyer,
almost all of which has been in public service. I talked about my 12
years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit, often called the second most important court in the
country, and my five years of service in the White House for President
George W. Bush. I talked about my long record of advancing and promoting
women, including as a judge—a majority of my 48 law clerks have been
women—and as a longtime coach of girls’ basketball teams.
This segment of "Air Force Now" features the A-1 Skyraider in action
inVietnam with the First Special Operations Squadron also known as the
"Hobos". In this instance the Skyraider is seen flying cover for "Jolly
Green Giant" rescue helicopters performing search and rescue
operations.
As American involvement in the Vietnam War began, the A-1 Skyraider was
still the medium attack aircraft in many carrier air wings, although it
was planned to be replaced by the A-6A Intruder as part of the general
switch to jet aircraft. Skyraiders from Constellation and Ticonderoga
participated in the first U.S. Navy strikes against North Vietnam on 5
August 1964 as part of Operation Pierce Arrow in response to the Gulf of
Tonkin Incident, striking against fuel depots at Vinh, with one
Skyraider from Ticonderoga damaged by anti-aircraft fire, and a second
from Constellation shot down, killing its pilot.
As they were released from U.S. Navy service, Skyraiders were introduced
into the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF). They were also used by the
USAF to perform one of the Skyraider's most famous roles: the "Sandy"
helicopter escort on combat rescues. USAF Major Bernard F. Fisher
piloted an A-1E on 10 March 1966 mission for which he was awarded the
Medal of Honor for rescuing Major "Jump" Myers at A Shau Special Forces
Camp. USAF Colonel William A. Jones, III piloted an A-1H on 1 September
1968 mission for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. In that
mission, despite damage to his aircraft and suffering serious burns, he
returned to his base and reported the position of a downed U.S. airman.
After November 1972, all A-1s in U.S. service in Southeast Asia were
transferred to the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) and their roles
taken over by the subsonic LTV A-7 Corsair II. The Skyraider in Vietnam
pioneered the concept of tough, survivable aircraft with long loiter
times and large ordnance loads. The USAF lost 201 Skyraiders to all
causes in Southeast Asia, while the Navy lost 65 to all causes. Of the
266 lost A-1s, five were shot down by surface-to-air missiles (SAMs),
and three were shot down in air-to-air combat; two by North Vietnamese
MiG-17s.
In contrast to the Korean War, fought a decade earlier, the U.S. Air
Force used the naval A-1 Skyraider for the first time in Vietnam. As the
Vietnam War progressed, USAF A-1s were painted in camouflage, while USN
A-1 Skyraiders were gray/white in color; again, in contrast to the
Korean War, when A-1s were painted dark blue.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest
historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage
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Your humble photographer with Cô and Thuý going to a restaurant. My '69 Datsun Bluebird in the foreground. The Saigon Central Market in the background.
In some ways, historians are like anyone else: they hate to make
mistakes. But if you write enough, sooner or later, you will make a
mistake—I assure you. I certainly have, but I have been more fortunate
than most. Sometimes, mistakes benefit you. What I suppose are my two
most significant errors to date came more than two decades apart, and
both had overall positive results.
In the late 1980s, I wrote a book entitled Hitler’s Legions.
In it, I accepted as fact a U.S. Army intelligence report which stated
Generalleutnant Josef Folttmann was killed near Belfort Gap in November
1944. (I was just starting out as a historian in those days and the
report was written by the same intelligence officers who gave us the
Battle of the Bulge three weeks later, but I did not take that into
consideration.) Shortly after Legions was published,
Friedrich-Theodor von Stauffenberg wrote to me, corrected me, and
informed me that Hans Oschmann was the general who was killed in the
battle in question. When I asked him if he was sure, Stauffenberg sent
me a copy of a book General Folttmann wrote in 1957—13 years after I
killed him off. It listed Oschmann as killed on the date I cited.
Tet Offensives, Hungry China and Dumbed Down Americans
With their brief existence, and dumbed down now
by a degraded and warped education, most Americans have a telescoped and
cartoony sense of history, so nothing matters, really, beyond the last
two or three presidential elections, and each foreign country is
represented, at most, by a caricature or two, so Germany is Hitler and
Merkel, China is Mao and Xi, Russia is Lenin, Stalin and Putin, Japan is
no-name-comes-to-mind, Korea is Little Rocket Man, Vietnam is Ho Chee
Mann and Mexico,
right next door, is, ah, Speedy Gonzales. Having no historical depth,
many Americans will claim that China, for example, is a peace loving and
fair-minded civilization that shuns invasions and genocides, but you
couldn’t have become the most populous nation on earth without gobbling
up many lesser ones, and China’s appetite will only increase as its
girth balloons even further. To thrive, it will need a chain of vassals
and colonies, same as it ever was.
As
President Trump continues to drain the swamp, social media stars
Diamond & Silk are on a mission to expose what’s left of it.
Americans cannot trust the mainstream media to report about the DemocratsDummycrats. If the media won’t report the truth…Diamond & Silk will.
Dummycrats
documents the duo’s journey across America to reveal the hypocrisy
spewed by progressive, big government loving politicians on the left.
With their boots on the ground, Diamond & Silk scour California in
the search of Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi. Unable to find the answers
the American people need, the ladies travel to D.C. Meanwhile, they
send Kyle Olson to El Paso to uncover the dangers that come with open
borders to reveal how the Democrats put the interests of lawbreakers
above those of American citizens.
With laughs, tears and anger, Dummycrats
takes you on a journey for truth, stepping on the political antics of
the left to get answers that the American people deserve -- as only
Diamond & Silk can!
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) lashed out at Democrats in a furious floor speech on Thursday
about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation, arguing the
allegations against him are "uncorroborated mud."
McConnell spoke
just hours after senators began reviewing a report from the FBI on the
allegations, which Democrats quickly criticized as lacking breadth.
“The
fact is that these allegations have not been corroborated," said
McConnell, who on Wednesday night filed a motion to end debate on
Kavanaugh's nomination. "None of these allegations have been
corroborated by the seventh FBI investigation."
If SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh is successfully taken out
of contention, it could usher in the darkest era of American political
tactics from both sides of the aisle, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
warned Democrats.
“It’s time to vote, I keep telling my colleagues,” Graham told
Capitol Hill reporters during comments regarding the highly contentious
nomination process of Judge Kavanaugh. “If this is the new normal, God
help us all.”
Sweden's Islamic invasion catalyzed by the death of free speech.
A few prefatory words: I was invited to give a talk in
Gothenburg, Sweden, on Saturday, September 29, as part of an
“Alternative Book Fair.” The Gothenburg Book Fair was being held that
weekend, and the point of the alternative event was to highlight books –
mostly about Islam, I gathered – that the official fair had rejected. I
was asked to talk about freedom of speech, a freedom that is in
increasingly short supply in Sweden, as elsewhere in Western Europe. As
if to prove the point, civic officials – at the urging of police, who
were spooked by Antifa threats – banned the “Alternative Book Fair.”
Here's what I planned to say.
When I was twenty years
old, there was a famous free-speech case in the state of Illinois. Nazis
wanted to march in a Chicago suburb called Skokie, which had a large
population of Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors. Skokie sued
successfully in county court to prevent the march. The Nazis, with the
help of the American Civil Liberties Union, took the case to the state
appellate court and the Illinois Supreme Court. Long story short, after
the case had gone to the United States Supreme Court, the Nazis were
allowed to march.
The bureau failed to disclose the partisan nature of the dossier to the FISA court.
Meanwhile, in the swamp, the whole Trump/Russia collusion fiasco
continues to simmer in the background. The latest revelation is that
former FBI general counsel James Baker met with Democrat National
Committee lawyers to discuss the Russia investigation and the infamous
Christopher Steele dossier before the bureau secured a FISA warrant to surveil Donald Trump’s campaign. Yes, that would be the Clinton/DNC-funded dossier that formed the primary basis
for the FBI’s warrant request. In fact, Baker met with the same private
DNC law firm — Perkins Coie — that served as the passthrough for
Clinton cash to get to Fusion GPS for that dossier.
It would seem uncorroborated “evidence” is a theme for Democrats to smear a political enemy.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday
shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job
performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.
The latest figures include 37% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is
performing and 40% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a
Presidential Approval Index rating of -3. (see trends).
Senator Rand Paul’s wife has spoken out in regards to the
growing trend of harassment and actual physical violence against
Republicans and conservatives, revealing that her family has experienced
‘horrific’ threats in recent months.
