Halomancy

 

Salt

While salt was not the sole reason, it was a contributing factor in the French invasion and colonization of Cochinchina (southern Vietnam). The French established a near-monopoly on the trade of salt, along with other goods such as opium and rice alcohol, as part of their policy of economic control when they ruled Vietnam (comprising Annam, Tonkin, and Cochinchina). This policy benefited the French and a select group of local wealthy individuals.

Historical Context – The French conquest of Vietnam (1858–1885) was a series of military expeditions that pitted the Second French Empire, later the French Third Republic, against the Vietnamese empire of Đại Nam in the mid-late 19th century. France defeated the Vietnamese and their Chinese allies in 1885, incorporated modern-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into the French colonial empire, and established the territory of French Indochina over Mainland Southeast Asia in 1887.

A joint Franco-Spanish expedition was initiated in 1858, with the invasion of Tourane (modern-day Da Nang) in September 1858 and Saigon five months later. This four-year campaign culminated in Emperor Tu Duc signing a treaty in June 1862, granting France sovereignty over three southern provinces. The French annexed the three southwestern provinces in 1867 to form Cochinchina. Having consolidated their power in Cochinchina, they conquered the rest of Vietnam through a series of campaigns in Tonkin between 1873 and 1886. The Qing dynasty opposed French ambitions to subjugate Tonkin, as the region was part of China’s sphere of influence.

The French eventually drove most of the Chinese troops out of Vietnam, but remaining groups in some Vietnamese provinces continued to resist France’s control over Tonkin. The French government sent Fournier to Tianjin to negotiate the Tianjin Accord, according to which China recognized the French authority over Annam and Tonkin, abandoning its claims to suzerainty over Vietnam. On June 6, 1884, the Treaty of Huế was signed, dividing Vietnam into three regions: Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina, each under its separate regime. Cochinchina was a French colony, while Tonkin and Annam were protectorates, and the Nguyễn court was put under French supervision.

Note: I collect French Indochinese currency as a hobby.

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A Serious Proposal

The Trump Administration proposed (as a trial balloon) to pay $5,000 to each mother who has a child as an incentive for women to have children and boost the failing birth rate. I have a more radical suggestion. Offer mothers a G.I. Bill of sorts, wherein they receive the same general benefits once their children are in school. Offer mothers who qualify tuition, fees, books, and a child care allowance that requires them to maintain grades in college, vocational, and apprenticeship programs. The sorts of expenses have to be monitored, and yes, it’s another enormous bureaucracy, but is the outcome worth it? Only if you want to replace the population and not die off. If we can offer it to G.I.s, we can offer it to mothers.

Russia has a program where they pay women to be mothers so that they can stay home with their children. Their program requires that the mother, who must be of Great Russian descent (white), meet specific standards and be inseminated with acceptable paternal DNA (typically white, intelligent, physically attractive, and of above-average height). That is not what I’m suggesting here.

 

Bullet Points:

** Being an adult means you don’t think you look as bad as you thought you did a few years ago, because now you look worse.

**Joe Biden’s autopen issued blanket pardons for his brothers, James and Francis, and his sister, Valerie, as well as their spouses. Ashley Biden was one of the few members of Joe Biden’s immediate family who didn’t receive a pardon from the former president. “Ashley Biden’s failure to disclose to the IRS receiving $500,000 in grants in 2023 raises the question of what other contributions she is hiding.” The article from the Free Beacon outlines the situation and her tax problem.

** Today is ANZAC Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia, New Zealand, and Tonga that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders “who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations” and “the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.

** An apple a day only keeps the doctor away if you throw hard enough.

** I love the HMH guys. Watch them put the CH-53 through its paces. It makes me wish I were back in uniform. I realize that the term “Stallion” when referring to a helicopter is offensive to eunuchs and the woke. They’d have re-named it Sea Gelding if they had their way.

** Clean Coal is back in favor in the US. The United States has sufficient recoverable coal reserves to last approximately 422 years, assuming current technology is employed. Cowboy State Daily in Wyoming reported that former WV Senator Joe Manchin landed a lucrative job at Ramaco. This coal company is about to mine a deposit of rare earth minerals worth approximately $37 billion in Wyoming. Are you aware that Wyoming is the nation’s leading producer of coal, a title it has held for decades? Last year was typical, as 41% of the nation’s coal came from Wyoming. The runner-up was West Virginia at 14%.

** Comcast is selling off MSNBC. Will Musk buy it at fire sale prices and rename it X?

** The Communist Chinese are up to their usual mischief in Panama. SECDEF lays it out for you.

 

 

Keep Rosie, Ireland – No Give Backs

We live in a world seemingly full of blowhard lefty narcissists who always insist that if the next Republican presidential candidate wins, they’ll leave the country. And then they never do!

But to her credit, Rosie O’Donnell put her money where her enormous mouth is, and she followed through. When Pres. Trump won, she moved to Ireland, and applied for Irish citizenship. And seriously: good for her.

I think she’s off her rocker, politically speaking. But if she’s convinced, against all evidence after his first term, that Trump is worse than Hitler, and will bring a nightmarish reign of oppression down on America, she demonstrated the courage of her convictions by leaving. And as odd as this sounds, I think she’ll probably be happier for it.

There are millions of her political co-religionists in this country who believe that crap, and I don’t think it’s working very well for them.

You’ve seen them. And you’ve heard them screaming at their protests, in courtrooms, and at various crime scenes. Abortions for all! Death to Jews! Bring back foreign criminals! Death to America! Heterosexual sex is gross! Pay me not to work! Screw you, dad!

Do they seem happy to you?

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in a scene that is best known for Satan’s monologue after he’s been cast out of heaven. (His hubris is summed up: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”)

Shortly before that famous line, Milton captures an essential truth of human psychology in just two lines: “The mind is its place, and in itself/ Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” The older I get, the smarter Milton appears to be.

And I’ve seen people like Rosie – and Joy Reid, and Keith Olberman, and Noam Chomsky, and a cast of thousands like them – do just the opposite. They’re living in the best country in the world, blessed with wealth and opportunities, and surrounded by signs and wonders. But they find fault wherever they look, and wallow in their self-created misery. They look at a shining city on a hill, and see only a Mordor-ian wasteland of sexism, racism, and a plethora of politically incorrect phobias, injustice flowing from holes in the rocks.

They look at a flawed president who loves the country and is doing good things, and they see Orange Hitler. They look at a wealthy genius who is sacrificing a great deal to try to root out waste and fraud, enabling the government to serve its citizens more efficiently, and they see an evil oligarch.

They look at Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren, and they see a racist, hideous crone and a phony, homely, white lady pretending to be Sacheen Littlefeather—

Then there is the tale of Letitia James’ impending criminal charges.

No charge against Trump was more bogus than James’s lies about him wildly over-valuing Mar-a-Lago to get a more favorable loan rate from banks. She claimed at one point that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million, relying on the low end of a tax assessment (which is always lower than the actual market value), even though that assessment was 10 years old. Every real estate expert around said it was laughably low.

All of which is moot, because the giant international banks from whom Trump sought the loan always do their appraisals, rather than relying on biased owners. Valuation of unique, high-end properties is complicated to nail down, but you don’t get to be Deutsche Bank by relying on sellers’ fraudulently high valuations.

All of which is even moot, because Trump paid back the loans with interest, and the banks said they would be happy to do business with him again. Many NY lawyers and real estate investors agreed that this kind of a victimless case of a loan taken out and then repaid in full had never been pursued before.

And now it turns out that lyin’ Letitia is a real estate investor herself, and that she was committing the kind of fraud that she accused Trump of committing. For example, she bought several properties with her dad as co-signer, but falsely listed them as “husband and wife.”

So James was allegedly perjuring her hypocritical arse off, as she was using taxpayer dollars and her powerful position to go after Trump wrongly.

The cherry on top of this delicious schadenfreude sundae is that James’s half-billion-dollar, illegitimate verdict against Trump will eventually be overturned, and she will almost certainly be convicted of a raft of felony charges.

My hope — perhaps you could even call it a prayer — is that those two verdicts will be handed down around the same time.

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Identify the Aircraft

1

2000 built

2

3

325 built

4

Big hint…

5

149 built

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Parting Shot

End