Vietnam: The Lost Lie

Credit for this slightly edited post goes to Bill Collins, a retired Deputy District Attorney in California and a former US Marine Corps Sergeant.  This is his response to a question posed on Quora back in 2018. The questions was:

“The US Marine Corps was experienced in jungle warfare after fighting the Japanese in WW2. How is it then that they lost to Vietnam in similar conditions?”

Bill’s Response:

Apparently, you weren’t there. I was from January 1968 to February 1969. In case you’re not aware, that was the Tet Offensive, touted by the press at the time as a vast, effective success for the insurgent forces attempting to take over South Vietnam. It was not.

On January 30, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a coordinated attack all across the country. At first, they did surprise us considerably since they had previously stuck to the accepted guerrilla warfare practice of hitting us where we were weak and never confronting us where we had strength. However, the surprise didn’t last, and they found themselves confronting the most powerful military forces on earth.

They never won a battle. We always won. In time, the Viet Cong largely disappeared, and the NVA suffered major casualties, with many of their fighting units being annihilated. By about August or September, they were really not an effective fighting force.

I was at Hue, Phu Bai, Hoi An, and Chu Lai, and by the time I left the country, I truly thought the war was over, as I hadn’t seen effective NVA activity for months. In Hue, where the NVA had taken over the city and slaughtered 6000 of its inhabitants, burying them in mass graves, which I saw, they were utterly and fittingly destroyed.

Subsequently, President Nixon forced the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table in Paris, and after some wrangling, they signed the Paris Accords, agreeing to cease hostilities. American units, including whole divisions of Marines, left the country.

It wasn’t until April 30, 1975, when I had left the Marine Corps, graduated college, and was in my 2nd year of law school, that the North Vietnamese, having rebuilt their army, swept south with no resistance due to the withdrawal of American forces and the refusal of congress to enforce the Paris Accords, capturing South Vietnam.

American forces didn’t lose; we weren’t there. Congress and the administration capitulated, breaking faith with over 58,000 young Americans who had gone there at their country’s behest and given up their lives to accomplish its stated goals.

Thank you, Bill!

Bill saw much more action than I did. I left the Asian theater one month before Tet, never to return. But we all knew the answers to this question as time went on. It's heartening to hear it from a combat Marine that was in the shit.

JWB

A Hypothetical Trump Presidency circa 2024

So, I have had a few exchanges (could be called arguments, I suppose) about what happens if Donald Trump is convicted of federal crimes AND goes on to win not only the Republican nomination but also the Presidency in 2024. Is this hypothetically possible? Well, anything is possible.

First of all: The constitution says that anyone, regardless of their past crimes or actions, can run for President as long as they are: A natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years (does not have to be consecutive years either). That’s it, period. 

So Trump qualifies even if he were a 100-year-old pedophile mass murderer.  

Most people do not give Trump any chance of returning to the Presidency. The Democrats are excessively quiet about Trump’s issues. That’s because the best possible scenario for them is a Trump/Biden rematch. They think it’s a slam dunk. They are just letting Trump do what Trump does best. 

However,  there may be several “hypotheticals” where his return to office is possible. Here are my three possible scenarios:

1. In my humble opinion, the most likely hypothetical is that Trump wins the Republican nomination and, before election day, Biden falls ill and dies or becomes incapacitated. He will be 82 years old in November 2024, so it’s not far-fetched. I do not believe that Trump can win a rematch with a healthy Biden if his legal fortunes do not change. This scenario could put the entire 2024 election in jeopardy in more ways than one. The real fly in the ointment would be that, unlike Trump, Biden is the current President, and all responsibilities and powers - possibly even the Democratic ticket itself - would be governed by Vice-President Harris. Trump could take advantage of this.

2. The next most likely (but improbable, in my opinion) is that Trump wins the nomination AND delays all legal proceedings OR is found not guilty in all cases prior to election day. This may give the GOP base enough votes to win another electoral victory (although not a popular vote victory). But it’s pretty remote, in my estimation. All the independent voters Trump garnered in 2016 are essentially gone.

3. Trump gets the nomination, but Biden is impeached at some point before election day and removed from office… this carries with it a possible sentence of being barred from running as a candidate for President. This is the most improbable of all, given that the Senate (the body that, if successfully impeached, passes judgment) is controlled (51%) by Democrats.

All these scenarios ‘assume’ that even if convicted, Trump would not serve any jail time. If that happens, I have no clue how a jailed President could administer a government. 

But then, if anyone could, it's probably Trump.

Trump and Planet Earth

The U.S. is in the thralls of a UFO, Reality TV, and Sci-Fi armageddon. 

The Star Trek character Spock came from a plant called Vulcan that embodied an ethos of logic and fact as a culture. In America, we have a character named Donald Trump that comes from a planet called Earth that embodies illogic and falsehoods as a culture.

Whereas most all Vulcans subscribed to the culture of logic and reason, slightly less than half of American Earthers have yet taken up Trump’s hallowed practice of delusional illogic. However, this culture has an even greater number of followers in Russia, Iran, and China, to name a few. America is a close fourth.

Proudly dishonest and ethically bankrupt, Trump has, however, amassed an American cult following in the millions - this being, then, a perfect definition of illogic. Recent UFO investigations by a large panel of American elite lawmakers found no connection between enemies of Vulcan (Romulans) and the science of fabricated illogic. But conspiracy theories remain.

As of August 2023, former president Donald Trump has been indicted three times, to the abject glee of his followers. He has been indicted in state court for election finance fraud and twice in federal court for conspiracies involving lying, cheating, and stealing from the American people. His support has, as would be expected on planet Earth, risen.

In the alternate timeline of the 2009 movie “Star Trek - Into Darkness”, the planet Vulcan is destroyed in 2258 by the Romulan known as Nero, who had time traveled from the future. Using his space mining vessel, Narada, Nero created a singularity in Vulcan's planetary core as part of his quest to avenge the destruction of Romulus that Spock failed to save. The resulting implosion destroyed Vulcan, killing most of its six billion inhabitants. Only around 10,000 managed to escape. At the end of the film, Spock Prime tells the younger Spock a suitable planet has been located to establish a colony for the surviving Vulcans; this world is named "New Vulcan"[1].

My research, with the help of UFO committee witnesses, indicates that the evil former Vice President Hillary Clinton may very well be creating such a weapon to use on planet Earth if the current Trumpist culture in America were to grow in popularity and match that of other like-minded countries. She is reportedly getting funding from the Church of Scientology and the estate of the late Issac Asimov.

As an aside, Elon Musk has considered calling his colony on Mars "New Earth".

Consider this fair warning.

[1]Vulcan demise, Wikipedia, retrieved August 6, 2023 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(Star_Trek) 

It's the Economy, Stupid!

James Carville famously said, “It's the economy, stupid!” Carville was an elections strategist for then-Governor Bill Clinton, and he helped Clinton beat President George H.W. Bush in 1992 in the midst of a recession that left many Americans out of work and in debt. It has been a hallmark of political wrangling ever since. The 2024 election is no different, with many of the GOP candidates espousing how they will improve the economy.

Bidenomics:

Let’s be real here. No “President” alone can affect change in the economy by themselves. Now, they all will take credit for it when it’s good and blame others when it’s bad. That’s politics 101. But for the most part, the economy is a function of dozens of interrelated technical factors and is influenced by a multitude of international politics and unforeseen events from war to weather events. 

But on some level, the American political climate and the party in power can “guide” policy and focus to make the economy turn in one direction or another.  However, new policies and funding efforts often take years to show promised results. 

Case in point:

For decades, analysts predicted China would be the next country to dominate the global economy. However, the data shows the U.S. still leads its geopolitical rival. It comes down to the level of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). That is the amount of money invested from one country into another. For fifty years, China was the #1 hotspot for global investments. But since 2020, surprisingly, the U.S. is the world’s largest recipient of FDIs.

According to Wide Moat Research, 2022 saw another $216.8 billion in fresh capital flow into the U.S. from top investors in the U.K. and Germany.

Today (July 2023), total FDI in the U.S. stands at over $5 trillion, and that’s in addition to enormous reinvestment by companies returning jobs to the States.

In 2021 alone, U.S. companies brought back over 260,000 jobs from overseas. In 2022, it climbed to 350,000.

While Biden gets the credit for these gains, much of the policy emphasis came from the Obama and Trump administrations as they both attempted to moderate the level of reliance on foreign suppliers, with Covid being a catalyst that showed the importance of diversifying the supply chain. That has continued under Biden. The previous three administrations had a hand in the movement toward “Made in America,” but the rewards are just now becoming evident. 

I make this case because I want you to understand that no politician can put money in your pocket, cut taxes or lower your expenses. It takes a political ‘village’ and a long slog of politicians that are committed to the same thing.

The business climate is strong with the 2023 stock market and many 401K portfolios approaching a five-year high. The consumer climate is not quite as impressive, but inflation is down considerably, gas prices are down, and home prices are beginning to level off after major interest rate hikes.  But the future also looks much better than the recent past for consumers.

Unemployment rates are at an all-time low, and household income is rising. So any politician that is running on improving the economy will have a hard time with the facts.

The Elephant in the Economic Room:

Where there is room for improvement (tremendous improvement) is the national debt and the exorbitant deficit. It recently caused the U.S. global credit rating to DROP from AAA to AA. Most of the rating analysts' concern was the recent clash over extending the national debt ceiling. We came perilously close to default.

While I can lay the cause of the 2023 debt ceiling ‘crisis’ directly at the feet of a Republican-led House of Representatives, I cannot blame either party for the staggering debt. It has been a shared act of incompetent spending over the last 50 years. However, four of the five biggest overall increases in the national debt came from Republican administrations (see my 2021 post on the prior debt limit fiasco.).

Recently, President Biden created a team to assess ways to avert future standoffs over the country's debt limit. "Now that the latest debt ceiling crisis is behind us, it is necessary to explore all legal and policy options to prevent Congress from ever again holding hostage the full faith and credit of the United States," the White House statement said at the time. 

Rather than creating a “Team” and throwing the other political party under the bus, we should be focused on seeing that a debt limit raise is never going to be needed again. We must cut the pork out of spending bills (giving line-item veto authority to the President - every President) and reduce our defense budget by getting rid of rip-off contractors[1] that charge inexcusable bloated amounts for materials and services.

There is also a significant amount of contractor bloat in the government overall. We need to upgrade our federal services, incorporate AI to get things done faster, and improve technology to serve the people faster and with greater integrity. We need to get more done - the right way - with fewer contractors. I have worked on government contracts, from the IRS to DHS, and I can tell you that most government contractors rip off American taxpayers with impunity.

Give your representatives a piece of your mind before contributing to a campaign or giving them your vote. Let them know what you expect them to continue, as well as what you expect them to change.

JWB

[1] The Billionaire Who Built A Fortune ‘Price-Gouging’ Customers Like The Pentagon, Forbes, Retrieved 8/7/2023 from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2023/08/07/meet-the-billionaire-who-built-a-fortune-price-gouging-customers-like-the-pentagon/?sh=4a1ae5d11658