Wednesday's podcast: A chat with Barry Jacobsen, military historian and US Army veteran

Guest:   Barry Jacobsen, military historian and US Army veteran.....we will discuss the latest on gun control........and other stories.....

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Wednesday's video: A chat with Barry Jacobsen, military historian and US Army veteran

Guest: Barry Jacobsen, military historian and US Army veteran.....we will discuss the latest on gun control........and other stories.....

P.S.  Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos. If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.

 

NPR now stands for Not Popular Radio

 

(My new American Thinker post)

Best wishes for all of those NPR employees who got their layoff notices.  

 

It's not nice at all to get the word that you are out.  

 

This is the story:   

 

NPR itself confirmed Thursday that it had cut 10% of its workforce on Thursday, impacting roughly 100 employees, adding that it tends to roll back the workforce from 1,200 to an estimated 1,050 employees, the "largest reduction in staff since the 2008 recession."

 

"We literally are fighting to secure the future of NPR at this very moment by restructuring our cost structure. It's that important. It's existential," NPR chief executive John Lansing told NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik.

 

Apparently, ad revenue will drop $30 million in 2023.   

 

Back in the 1980s, I lived and worked in Mexico, and would listen to NPR's "Morning Edition" every morning via Armed Forces Radio on my Radio Shack shortwave radio.  In the evenings, I would catch "All things considered" when I was wrapping up my day or making a few more phone calls.  

 

It was my news source when I was shaving and getting ready for work.  As I recall, they weren't Rush Limbaugh, but as leftists, they weren't crazy.  

 

In other words, I could pick up the bias but it wasn't like today when listening to NPR is like paying for a subscription to a Beto O'Rourke podcast.  

 

How crazy is NPR today?   Not long ago, they broadcast an abortion.  The editor did issue a warning that the audio of a woman while getting a surgical abortion may be disturbing.   Really?   Broadcasting an abortion like a play by play call of a game may be disturbing?

 

More crazy stuff?  A few days ago, the same NPR issued an official correction following a story published Friday which argued “there is limited scientific research” supporting the idea that males have a “physical advantage” over females in competitive sports.

 

Are we crazy yet?  So NPR became Not Popular Radio because sane people do not want to listen to an abortion or believe that women can compete with men and keep winning trophies.

 

Good luck NPR, but don't blame the economy for your misfortune.   Your staff has a serious diversity problem and I don't mean race, gender or LGBTQ whatever.

 

P.S.  Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.

Happy # 79 Denny McLain

We remember Denny McLain who was born in Chicago on this day in 1944.  

Denny broke with Detroit in 1963.    

He became a regular in the starting rotation in 1965 and won 108 games over 5 years, including 31-6 in 1968 and 24-9 in 1969.     

McLain won The Cy Young Award in 1968 and shared it with Mike Cuellar in 1969.  

His career fell apart in 1970 after some gambling allegations and was out of baseball in 1972 at age 28.    

McClain won 131 games.

P.S.  You can listen to my show.  If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.

We remember those who served in Vietnam, 1961-73

On this day in 1973, US troops left Vietnam.  

It ended a war that began when President Kennedy sent some advisers, was later escalated under President Johnson to 500,000 troops and finally ended by President Nixon.  

As you may know, the parties signed a cease fire in January 1973.   It followed the "famous Christmas bombing" when President Nixon forced the communists to sign the agreement.  We called it "Operation Linebacker" and it was effective.  The bombing missions were so good that the communists were shortly begging for a paper to sign.

Twenty-seven months later, or May 1, 1975, the North walked into Saigon, and we’ve known it as Ho Chi Minh City ever since.

Did it have to turn out that way?    

President Nixon did not think so.  He wrote about it in No More Vietnams, a book that gets better with age.  The point is that we choose to win wars or lose them, the latter of which we did in Vietnam.  To win would not have required a single soldier – just a few B-52s to remind the North that we meant to enforce the ceasefire.  We should remember that North Vietnam was devastated in 1973.

The tragedy of Vietnam is that the USSR could not believe that we let South Vietnam collapse in 1975, as Stephen J. Morris wrote on the 30th anniversary of the disintegration of Saigon:

If the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972. 
But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. 
Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the results were devastating for the south. 
As the triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight “a poor man’s war.”

Even Hanoi’s main patron, the Soviet Union, was convinced that a North Vietnamese military victory was highly unlikely. 
Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. 
Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself with a continuation of American logistical support. 
The former Soviet chargé d’affaires in Hanoi during the 1970’s told me in Moscow in late 1993 that if one looked at the balance of forces, one could not predict that the South would be defeated. 
Until 1975, Moscow was not only impressed by American military power and political will, it also clearly had no desire to go to war with the United States over Vietnam. 
But after 1975, Soviet fear of the United States dissipated.

No kidding that fear of the U.S. dissipated.  

The post-Vietnam years contributed to the perception that the U.S. was weak and unwilling to defend its interests.  From Nicaragua to Iran to the Soviets in Afghanistan and Cuban troops in Africa, it was a time of U.S. weakness.  

Thankfully, it ended with the Reagan presidency.

Yes, there were many mistakes in Vietnam, from using the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to send 500,000 soldiers to war to not fighting to win. 

I believe that the biggest mistake was not preserving our gains, or a South Vietnam that would have looked a lot like South Korea today.

Again, it could have turned out very different, especially for the many who served in Vietnam.  They won the battles, and the politicians lost the peace.

This is President Nixon's book and for some of the young people who don't remember.

P.S.  You can listen to my show.  If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.

We remember Senator Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)

Senator Eugene McCarthy was born in Minnesota on this day in 1916. He died in 2005.

My first memory of Senator McCarthy was 1968, or the year that he shocked the Democrats by doing so well against President Johnson in New Hampshire.

He ran again in 1972 but it was all over by then. McCarthy was "a one-issue" candidate and Vietnam was not a concern in 1972 now that most of the troops were out or coming home.

Some people tried to compare Governor Howard Dean in 2004 to Senator McCarthy.  Not really. I think that McCarthy had more class!

P.S.  Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos. If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.