Wednesday, December 22, 2021
[Photos] A Shopping Trip in Ben Thanh Market in 1938
Dried fish? Pomelo? A chicken? Heels? Plates? Perhaps a fizzy soft drink or simple meal on the street? What is on your shopping list when you go to Ben Thanh Market?
As these photos from 1938 reveal, many of the items you travel to famous the District 1 market were on sale there in 1938. While one may certainly have arrived via a different mode of transportation and wasn't likely to see as many plastic-packaged goods, let alone foreign brands, the bustling commercial center was strikingly similar to today.
When famed French photographer Eli Lotar traveled to Vietnam, he turned his lens towards nearly everything, with an intent to capture people in their normal activities, as opposed to stage shots. During a trip to Ben Thanh Market, this means he snapped people preparing and selling a variety of goods, families enjoying meals at the stalls surrounding the market, and a variety of transportation options waiting to take people wherever they needed to go.
More @ Saigoneer
PBS Poll: Biden Approval Rating Lower with Hispanics than White People & Job Approval Underwater in 45 States, Close in California and Rhode Island
PBS Poll: Biden Approval Rating Lower with Hispanics than White People
According to the PBS/Marist poll,
Biden’s approval among white Americans stands at 40 percent versus 33
percent of Hispanics, with a disapproval rating among white people at 56
percent versus Hispanics at 65 percent.
Job Approval Underwater in 45 States, Close in California and Rhode Island
More people disapprove of Biden’s job performance than approve in 45 states, according to the CIVIQS poll, which has covered the president’s job approval on a rolling basis since his inauguration. That leaves only five states where more approve than disapprove.
However, two of those five states that are overwhelmingly solid blue states — California and Rhode Island — showed the president’s approval numbers close to flipping, with only a two-point margin in each. Both states showed Biden at 46 percent job approval, with 44 percent disapproval, and both showed ten percent “neither approve nor disapprove.”
Lawmakers Side With Seals Over Vaccine Mandate
Although I applaud these lawmakers, this entire situation is disgusting.
SEALs are some of the most highly trained soldiers in the world, some might say the most highly trained fighting force in the world.
They serve their country with honor and distinction, and the idea of forcing them to take an unnecessary vaccine or face discharge from the armed forces is awful.
That being said, 47 lawmakers have filed a brief in support of a group of SEALs facing discharge because their religious exemption to the vaccine mandate has not been honored by the state.
More @ WLT
US Troops Unable to Receive Religious Vaccine Exemptions
Of all of the decisions so far made by the Biden administration, perhaps none has been quite as fraught with criticism as the attempted implementation of a federal vaccine mandate, aimed at further weakening the coronavirus pandemic.
The idea that any American should be forced into an unwanted, personal medical decision has not sat well with freedom advocates, who are afraid that this is but the first erosion of bodily autonomy here in the United States.
More @ Flag & Cross
US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say
Via Hal
Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.
The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.
More @ Defense One
Rand Paul’s 2021 ‘Festivus Report’ documents $52 billion in gov’t waste — including money for ‘pigeons playing slot machines’ and a study verifying ‘kids crave junk food’
Via sw44magnumman Brown
;
Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) on Wednesday released his annual “Festivus Report,” this year reportedly uncovering a whopping $52 billion in wasted federal government dollars — which he said went towards things like a study on gambling that paid for pigeons to play slot machines and another study verifying that, yes, kids crave junk food.
Paul, a fiscal conservative who chairs the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight, has released his annual government waste reports for seven years. And each year, it seems the government comes up with more and more outrageous ways to spend taxpayer money.
More @ Duty To America
DATED: Foreperson: 3 jurors unwilling to convict Resiles based on race, leading to mistrial
Via David
The foreperson of the jury in the murder trial of Dayonte Resiles said three jurors were unwilling to convict Resiles based on his race.
The foreperson discussed on Friday the most recent twist in the trial that ended Wednesday with the hung jury.
“[The three jurors] said, ‘I don’t want to send a young Black male to jail for the rest of their life or have him get the death sentence,'” said the foreperson.
Resiles faces life in prison and possibly the death penalty for the murder of Jill Su, a 59-year-old Davie woman who was killed in her home back in September of 2014.
More @ WSVN
Fallen Yet Not Forgotten
Just
a few hours after this photo was taken on June 5, 1944, this American
Paratrooper, (pictured) will die making the night combat jump into
France on D-Day.
Col. Robert "Bull" Wolverton, commander of the
3rd Bn., 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division is preparing to jump on
Saint-Come-du-Mont, Normandy in this photo.
His unit was the
same regiment to which belonged the legendary "Band of Brothers,"
Wolverston's Operation Market Garden and Battle of the Bulge in
Bastogne.
Despite being killed before landing on French soil, Order of battle for the American airborne landings in Normandy, Wolverton's
legacy endured, particularly on the strength of a prayer spoken to the
750 men in his battalion hours before the D-Day parachute drop behind
enemy lines.