Friday Follies: Obama, Clinton, Woods, Wie, Sampson, LST1166, Halberstam

This and that from around the world of news and sports:

-1st time ever in the US a global primary - voting by mail, fax and the internet. Hey, what a grand idea! Obama won this one, too!

-visited with Jim and Wilma and Erin and Colin yesterday afternoon at Jim's place while Tiger and Michelle were doing their golf thingee in sunnier climes. Hurray for the sterling showing by Mz. Wie! Would love to see her get a win and quiet the critics not to mention boost her own confidence about a gazillion percent.

-Hillary and Barack had a debate in Texas last night. What little I've read indicates that they were very civil to each other. Good for them. Hillary's closing statement - a good one and one in which she refers to her life as a public servant. Bless her.

-Sampson story at IU gets complicated. Players reported to have given ultimatum: Coach goes, we go, too! Oh boy... In the poll at cbssports.com (see linked article), 48% say fire him now.

and other stuff:

-a picture of the USS Washtenaw County (LST1166) off loading troops at Chu Lai in May or June, 1965. I'm probably on that ship somewhere. That landing was the first of many after the folks in Washington decided to go big in Vietnam - turned out to be a very bad decision. Discovered the picture while looking for more information on Di An, Vietnam. Good neighbor Jack Lents was there in 1966 and 1967.

-did finish The Coldest Winter. It's a goodie. Some of the notes I took while reading it:

-MacArthur's G-2's job is to prove his boss is right.
-the decision to go north of the 38th parallel by MacArthur in July of 1950 kind of the opposite of what the elder Bush did in Iraq War I when he chose not to go to Baghdad some 40 years later.
-MacArthur's life up to Inchon: luck on his side; post Inchon: luck ran out.
-the Cold War era closed out the Colonial era.
-General Ridgeway wanted a grinding war, a war of attrition, one in which the Chinese would pay dearly. Sounds like something tried in Vietnam, too.
-Maxwell Taylor, who later played a major role in Vietnam, told his troops to abandon Pork Chop Hill, a little piece of Korea that had seen both sides win and lose and suffer high casualties. The truce was signed a few weeks later. Good neighbor Jack Lents arrived in Korea the day the truce was signed.
-One of the many consequences of the Korean War: NSC-68 came to pass and the United States became a National Security State; when Eisenhower left office several years later, he warned the American people of the dangers of the Military-industrial complex.
-Another consequence: Democrats were labeled as weak on Defense and soft on Communism which led both Kennedy and Johnson to make decisions about Vietnam that had more to do with standing up to that charge than the reality of the situation.

The book is another good one from Halberstam and I highly recommend it.

Time for breakfast and more of Halberstam - The Next Century. Do you remember something called the peace dividend?