G'Day, Mates, and welcome to Friday, June 26, 2026. Among other things, it's National Food Truck Day, National Chocolate Pudding Day, National Coconut Day, and National Barcode Day. It's also Madagascar's and Somalia's respective Independence Days.
1870: Richard Wagner's opera The Valkyrie, the second in his Ring Cycle, premieres in Munich, featuring "Ride of the Valkyries."
1894: Karl Benz of Germany receives a U.S. patent for a gasoline-powered automobile.
1919: New York Daily News begins publishing. It prints about 31,000 copies daily today, plus the website, of course.
1925: Charlie Chaplin's silent film The Gold Rush, which he writes, directs, and stars in, is released and becomes the fifth-highest-grossing silent film of all time.
1945: Fifty nations sign the United Nations Charter in San Francisco.
1948: United States begins “Operation Vittles” airlift to West Berlin.
1958: Mackinac Straits Bridge, in Michigan, dedicated.
1959: Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower open the St. Lawrence Seaway, allowing oceangoing vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes of North America.
1963: President John F. Kennedy delivers his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in West Berlin; a later misconception claims he said, "I am a doughnut" because of the German jelly-pastry, the Berliner.
1975: U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in O'Connor v. Donaldson that non-dangerous people can't be confined to psychiatric facilities without adequate treatment if able to live viably in outside society (which explains yesterday's post on such matters).
Birthdays Today Include: Pearl S. Buck, author (The Good Earth - Nobel Prize for Literature, 1938); Chesty Puller, Marine Corps lieutenant general and the most decorated Marine in history; Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft designer; Al Stillman, lyricist ("Chances Are," "Home for the Holidays"); Bill Lear, engineer, manufacturer, and CEO (Lear Jet Corp, remember 8 track tapes?); Peter Lorre, actor (Casablanca, Maltese Falcon); Colonel Tom Parker, manager (Elvis Presley); Milton Glaser, graphic designer (creator of "I ♥ NY" logo); Dave Grusin, jazz and film score great; Billy Davis Jr., pop singer (The 5th Dimension - "Up, Up And Away"); Georgie Fame, singer ("Bonnie and Clyde"); Robert Davi, actor (Die Hard; License to Kill, The Goonies); and Chris Isaak, singer-songwriter ("Wicked Game").
If today's your birthday as well, have a great day!
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Let’s open this morning’s discussion with an X note from Hung Cao, who is the acting Secratary of the Navy. This is in concert with a post over on Instapundit by way of our own Vodka Pundit, and I think it deserves much more exposure than even the mighty Instapundit will generate:
Leaving Vietnam as a refugee 51 years ago and returning today as the Acting Secretary of the Navy is a powerful, full-circle reminder of what is possible when blessed with freedom and opportunity.
— Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao (@SECNAV) June 26, 2026
Our productive visit strengthened US-Vietnam relations and our naval partnership.… pic.twitter.com/1PGsXlwXYY
Hung Cao was in Vietnam back in November 2025, accompanying Pete Hegseth on a diplomatic mission — a trip that carried far more symbolic weight than your typical State Department handshake tour. This is a man who fled that country as a four-year-old refugee when Saigon fell. The Vietnamese authorities that he sat across the table from knew exactly who they were dealing with. You can bet that was not lost on them. Nor is it lost on China.
More recently, Representative Derek Tran took the opportunity of a House Armed Services Committee hearing to urge Cao — now the highest-ranking Vietnamese American in the U.S. Armed Forces — to join him in demanding Vietnam release its political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. A worthy cause, and one Cao, of all people, needs no lecture about.
Which brings up something worth saying plainly: There is an almost perfect inverse relationship between how enthusiastically someone champions communism and how much time they've actually spent living under it. The people most eager to romanticize the system are, without fail, the ones who've never had to survive it. Hung Cao survived it. At four years old, his family fled it. That tends to clarify one's politics considerably.
What followed is a quintessentially American story — and that word, American, is doing real lifting here. The Navy saved Cao's family. In payment of what he saw as his debt, he joined the Navy. Then attended the Naval Academy. Thirty years in special operations. Explosive ordnance disposal. Deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Rose to the second-highest civilian position in the Department of the Navy. None of that happens without assimilation — not the performative kind, but the genuine article. Cao didn't arrive in America and remain apart from it. He became it. He earned it. He came here with nothing, and today he’s leading the Navy. The country is better for it.
It's worth saying because it needs saying: If more immigrants followed that path — learn the language, embrace the culture, contribute rather than demand — the immigration debate would look very different. Cao is not an argument against immigration. He's the argument for it, done right.
And here's the part that should make you smile and roll your eyes in equal measure: Do you think Hung Cao holds that office under a Democrat administration? Not a chance. The Left would have no use for a man whose entire life story is a standing refutation of everything they believe. He is a living, breathing argument that America works — that freedom works — that the system they want to tear down is the very system that turns refugees into Navy secretaries. That's an inconvenient man to have around when your platform depends on America being irredeemably broken.
One more thing worth noting: We wouldn't be reaching out to Vietnam at all under that administration, either. The diplomatic engagement, the strategic relationship-building in the Indo-Pacific — none of that happens when the people in charge view American power as the problem rather than the solution.
As our Catherine Salgado wrote at the end of May, Cao’s own son graduated from the Academy.
Cao excitedly said after the ceremony, "30 years after I graduated, my son graduates, and I get to present this commission… So it's pretty surreal." His son explained, "It's an honor. It makes it a lot more personal, obviously, when it's your dad signing my commission, saying that I was — I was good enough to follow in his footsteps." Beaming, Secretary Cao replied, "I'm just proud of my son who chose to serve this great nation."
Hung Cao's story doesn't need embellishment. Freedom produced this man and his son. That's the whole argument, right there.
Recommended: The (Mental Health) Saga of Naomi Guzman
Thought of the day: In my observation, people who say "I'll sleep when I'm dead" are simply trying to speed up the timeline.
VIP members: Hit that heart, and let's hear your comments. Your involvement matters.
Take care, gang. I'll see you here tomorrow.
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