Dan Ford's blog

On trumping the Second Amendment

2012-02-09T06:06:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a "debate" today on the mandated provision of contraceptive (and eventually, no doubt, abortion) services by religious institutions for whom this is anathema. Curiously, all three participants basically agree that the Catholic bishops are wrong. (That's some kind of debate!) I was particularly caught by this introductory squib:

Greenhouse: Catholics are claiming a special right to conscience that trumps law.

Um ... isn't it called the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Managing decline

2012-02-06T15:55:00.002-05:00

The New York Times, with no particular alarm and perhaps even a bit of schadenfreude, reports that the United States has lost some of its allure:

In 1987, on the Constitution's bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different.

No doubt there are other contributing factors, but the first thing that springs to mind is that in 1987 Ronald Reagan was celebrating "morning in America," while in 2012 Barack Obama is leading from behind. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The first thing we do, let's kill all the law schools

2012-02-02T16:26:00.000-05:00

Well, naturally a lawyer wouldn't want to follow Shakespeare's famous dictum, which he puts in the mouth of Dick the Butcher: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. So what's happened is this: fifty-one recent graduates of law school in New York, California, Illinois, Delaware, and Florida are suing their alma maters in hopes of recovering tuition and other expenses. They can't get jobs appropriate to their skills, they claim, and the law schools misled them into thinking that they could.

It's a pity, as Henry Kissinger said of the belligerents in the Iran-Iraq War, that they can't both lose. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

2012 = 1936

2012-02-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

Growing up and going to school in the 1940s and 1950s, I was of course imbued with the notion that Franklin Roosevelt had done a heroic job in saving the country from the Great Depression. It was only in recent years that I began to scratch my head in wonderment: if he did such a great job, how come it took him twelve years and the most destructive war in history to restore the country to prosperity?

A better argument can be made that Mr. Roosevelt lengthened the Depression by an unholy combination of government borrowing, increased taxes, the creation of a new entitlement program, and a vast increase in the regulatory state. "We will tax and tax and tax," he famously said, "and spend and spend and spend, and elect and elect and elect."

Does this sound familiar? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Looking on the bright side

2012-01-31T15:48:00.001-05:00

Budget Deficit Tops $1 Trillion, but Is Falling, Report Says

So says the New York Times this afternoon.

Oh, well--if it's falling!

The U.S. debt at the end of last year was 15,330,000,000,000.. At the end of 2007 it was $9,229,000,000,000, an increase of 65 percent in just four years. Another way of looking at this is that Messrs Bush and. Obama have added more to the national debt than all the presidents from George Washington to Bill Clinton, accomplishing in four years what it took what it took forty-two presidents two centuries to achieve. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A politically incorrect professor

2012-01-30T15:52:00.000-05:00

Warning: there's an ad before the interview comes up. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Survival in the sewers

2012-01-28T23:57:00.001-05:00

Their faces are smudged a bit, but considering that they're supposed to have lived in the sewers of Lwow for a year, they're admirably well turned out. The still is from a movie featured at the Telluride Film Festival. In Darkness tells the story of a low-life who hunts Jews for money during the German occupation of Eastern Europe. When he finds one, it seems he gets a better offer than the Ukrainian Nazis have offered him, so he becomes a protector of Jews. (Lwow was Polish in 1939, until Father Stalin intervened and handed it over to the Ukrainians.) And then, I gather, he gets caught up in the challenge, and becomes an Oskar Schindler of the sewers. Blue skies! (as it were) -- Dan Ford

State of the Union in twelve words

2012-01-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

"My fellow Americans, the State of the Union is all Bush's fault."

There! I just saved you an excruciating hour of self-justification. I suggest you take the time and watch the DVD of Go Tell the Spartans. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Clinging to their guns and secularism

2012-01-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

"America is coming apart," writes Charles Murray in the Weekend Journal. What follows is a dispiriting account of what has happened over the past half-century to what used to be called the Middle Class--i.e., the working class. Yet "working" is not the best possible qualifier because, as Mr Murray points out, an astonishing number of working men aren't in the job market at all. It's not that they're unemployed--they're not all that interested in employment! Nor are they much interested in marriage.

But here's the truly astonishing figure in Mr Murray's analysis: 59 percent of white working class males in their thirties and forties don't go to church! So much for "clinging to their guns and religion." Guns, maybe, but church--not so much.

The figures are otherwise familiar and appalling: 65 percent of births to women without a high school diploma are also to women without a husband, as compared to less than 6 percent of those who've graduated from college. Only 48 percent of white working-class males in their prime years are married, compared to 83 percent of upper middle-class men. And so it goes: in almost every respect, America's blue-collar class has separated itself from traditional American values of hard work, church going, family-rearing, tax paying, and upward striving. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

How many jobs would $7 billion have bought?

2012-01-19T06:26:00.000-05:00

President Obama says "Oh heck, no thanks!" to Trans-Canada's proposal to build a seven-billion-dollar pipeline to bring Canadian crude to American refineries. Evidently he thinks there's still enough money to be borrowed from China to pay unemployment benefits to American workers instead.

So what happens now? Canada will build a pipeline to the Pacific coast instead, the crude will go to Asia, and we will continue to import the stuff from Hugo Chavez's US-hating tinpot dictatorship in Venezuela. Our president has, I think, quite lost his mind. He's determined that we shall follow Europe into the rabbit hole, while Canada's economy (never mind Brazil's!) continues to outpace ours. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The six-figure bus shelter

2012-01-18T14:50:00.001-05:00

You can buy a bus shelter like this one in Grants Pass, Oregon, for $20,000, which seems like a lot--but wait until the the local, state, and federal governments get through with it. It seems that when all regulations are met, each shelter will actually cost $106,000, which as one councilman pointed out is the cost of a basic three-bedroom house in this part of the world. "What we should do is build a house at each station, and if you miss your last bus, you can stay there overnight." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Wikigag

2012-01-18T04:56:00.000-05:00

First we had Wikipedia, then Wikileaks, and now Wikigag, in which the online encyclopedia has shut down for a day to protest--what, exactly? That the U.S. Congress is considering doing something about internet piracy. Hm. Here's the Wall Street Journal's take on the kerfluffle: "Companies supposedly devoted to the free flow of information are gagging themselves, and the only practical effect will be to enable fraudsters. They've taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

This is going to be wow

2012-01-16T17:49:00.000-05:00

I only get twenty free articles a month on the New York Times (I be danged if I am going to pay for propaganda!) and I just wasted my nineteenth on one entitled Wikipedia to go dark on Wednesday I thought it was Wikileaks that was going down! But no matter; the story was good for a laugh.

It seems that in response to the U.S. Congress's temerity in debating an internet piracy act, the Good People are going on strike. "This is going to be wow," said one of Wiki's founders, in the penetrating diction we have come to expect of the wowsters of today. I am reminded of two earlier shutdowns. There was John Galt in Atlas Shrugged; he led America's capitalists on a strike against meddling bureaucrats. Then there was the governmental shut-down during the Reagan administration, in anticipation of which the president quipped: "Let's see if anyone notices!"

Well! Wiki will go dark! Is it wow, or will nobody notice beyond those high-schoolers with book reports due on Thursday? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

How to join the One Percent

2012-01-15T11:38:00.000-05:00

In its continuing effort to stir up class resentment, hence improve Mr. Obama's election chances, the New York Times has a splendid little online tool to compare yourself with the neighbors. All you have to do is type in your annual income, and bingo! Back comes your relative wealth not only for the United States and your region, but for selected other regions as well. Want to join the top 1 percent and be the object of the President's contempt? Move to Flint, Michigan, earn $179,000 a year, and there you are!

By the same token, Mr. Obama's 2010 income of $1,730,000 puts him in the top 1 percent everywhere. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

SANK ROO DA NOO

2012-01-15T11:23:00.000-05:00

I had occasion this morning to type an Italian phrase in phonetic syllables, which reminded me of Harry's Bar in Paris. Every day, in the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, there was an advertisement on the lower right corner of the front page for this expensive honky tonk, instructing the visitor: "Tell the cabbie: SANK ROO DA NOO." What a great ad! After the passage of half a century, I can still remember the address for Harry's Bar. What's more, Google tells me it's still there, though it tells me to spell the final syllables DOE NOU. Evidently today's tourists are a bit more sophisticated than those of the 1950s. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Tebow or not Tebow?

2012-01-14T06:29:00.000-05:00

Ever since I was introduced (metaphorically) to Timothy Tebow during a visit to Colorado in December, I have been enchanted by the Denver Broncos phenomenon. Here is a guy that positively outrages the Good People because instead of wife-beating, coke-snorting, and other amusing hobbies of the rich and famous, he has the temerity to believe in God. And not just your moderately acceptable Unitarian god, but the one with the Son! Mr. Tebow kneels to pray, thanks Jesus for his successes, and wears a Purity Ring. Well!

Today it seems that the Broncos meet the New England Patriots, and oh boy, are the Good People hoping that the Pats will take Mr. Tebow down a notch or two. In anticipation, the Wall Street Journal has an op-ed on the Tebow phenom, and the New York Times has a similar but more subtle critique that runs under the guise of a news story. (It gets harder and harder, reading the Times, to distinguish between the editorials and the news stories.) "What, exactly, is it about Tim Tebow that so fascinates and provokes us?" asks the reporter/editorialist. Faithful readers of the newspaper will be relieved by his conclusion: "To date, there’s no hard evidence of any divine intervention."

Wow, that's a relief. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On being civil

2012-01-13T17:35:00.000-05:00

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Carrying the fuel oil to Nome

2012-01-10T05:40:00.000-05:00

There's a splendid story in the NYT this morning about the struggle to get fuel oil to Nome. That's a Coast Guard cutter, forcing a path through the ice. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Young 'un, military genius

2012-01-08T15:36:00.001-05:00

The NYT reports with a straight face about North Korea:

North Korea’s state-run television called its young untested leader, Kim Jong-un, a “military genius” on Sunday and showed him driving a tank, sitting in the cockpit of a warplane, and interacting with soldiers in a youthful display of camaraderie that was unlike the style of his late father.

The broadcast, a documentary on North Korea’s Central TV, also claimed that Mr. Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, oversaw the April 2009 test-launching of the country’s long-range rocket.

“I had determined to enter a war if the enemies dared to intercept” the rocket, he said in the program.

This doesn't seem quite so funny when one considers that Kim Young 'Un commands an army of 1.2 million men, or about double what Mr. Obama hopes to see for the U.S. Army by the time he leaves the presidency. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Iowa

2012-01-04T06:37:00.000-05:00

Okay -- time to start paying attention, huh? Oh, the burden of living in New Hampshire! -- Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

An American life

2012-01-03T12:25:00.001-05:00

Curiously, I am coming to rather dislike George Kennan, though not the book that celebrates his life. John Gaddis's biography is magnificent--compelling, convincing, detailed, human. And the man he portrays is admirable in his youthful mastery of the Soviet Union: "the most impressive example of hell on earth that our time has known," in Kennan's words.

But his middle-aged distaste for America's consumer culture is embarrassing. What a narrow, condescending snob Kennan turned out to be! And what was with his 'Program A', in which he advocated that the US and Britain forces occupying Wester Germany withdraw 'to the ports' in the preposterous hope that this would encourage Stalin to similarly withdraw the Red Army from the eastern third of the country? That was nothing short of nutty. Far from ending the division of Europe into East and West, that would have pretty much turned it over to the East, at the very least a massive Finlandization of the Continent.

Still, I can't recommend the book too highly: George Kennan: An American Life. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Dear, respected young'un

2011-12-28T08:37:00.000-05:00

"Has anyone imagined this loss even in a dream?" the state-run Korean Central News Agency laments today. "We will defend with our lives the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea headed by the dear respected Kim Jong Un in any storm and stress."

Well, it doesn't quite have the bite of "Damn the torpedoes!" or even "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" but perhaps something was lost in translation. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

An admirable life

2011-12-26T09:20:00.000-05:00

I spent most of Christmas Day supine on the couch, reading John Gaddis's fine biography of George Kennan, 1904-2006. What a life! Kennan not only lived through most of the great events of the 20th Century--and influenced some of them--but lived long enough to look back at them from the vantage of the 21st Century, a privilege granted to very few. (As it happens, I have a friend in Camarillo, California, who was 101 last summer, and likewise has a remarkable view of the world's recent history.)

Mr. Gaddis's specialty is the Cold War, and I was assigned his books during the three years I was enrolled in the War in the Modern World 'programme' at King's College London. He became Kennan's authorized biographer thirty years before the great man's death, on the one condition that it would not be published during Kennan's lifetime, a provision that gave their friends reason to wonder, as the decades went by, which man would survive the other. Not to worry! Nature took its course, and the book is in our hands at last: George F. Kennan: An American Life. Merry Christmas! -- Dan Ford

Hail, dear leader!

2011-12-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

How long do you suppose this fearsome warrior will preside over North Korea? Will the Korean military really take orders from him? Can you imagine yourself marching to war to defend his glory? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Farväl, Saab!

2011-12-20T12:49:00.000-05:00

In the 1960s, the Saab 93 was a glorious oddity, fairly popular in New England because it was the rare automobile available with front-wheel drive. That helped the car get through the snow, though its tiny (38 horsepower!) engine was a two-stroke, giving it so little compression that the car had a tendency to roll when left parked in gear--and you couldn't use the hand brake because, like the contemporary Volkswagen Beetle, the brakes might freeze. As a result, a friend of mine carried several short lengths of two-by-four with which to chock the wheels when he left the car unattended.

Today we read that Saab has vanished from the world's automotive scene, victim of bad judgment on the part of General Motors and the musical-chairs acquisition game that followed the GM bankruptcy.

The Saab was born toward the end of the Second World War, when a Swedish aircraft manufacturer needed a product for its Trollhättan factory when peace broke out. This was the same factory that had assembled Brewster 'Buffalo'-type fighter planes for Finland in 1940. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A tip of the hat to Tebow

2011-12-18T11:53:00.000-05:00

I only learned who Mr. Tebow was, and what "Tebowing" means, because I went skiing in Colorado last week, and all Coloradans seem to be Denver Bronco fans. So I was piqued that the Gray Lady herself would put Mr. Tebow on the front page of her online edition, with the tag line of "Keeping Religion Out of Football." (The implication seems to be that Mr. Tebow is as much of a threat to athletics as that Sandusky chap at Penn State.) I was particularly broken up by this quote:

“I sit at home, start watching TV and all I’m seeing is Tebow. That’s kind of disturbing. We have a guy here that’s breaking records every week and you have a guy in Tebow that’s saying ‘God’ every word and he gets coverage. Of course I love my faith and God, but come on man.”

“You see him and he’s patting everybody on the back saying, ‘You’re going to make this catch. I promise because God said,’ and he makes it happen. Stuff like that. It confuses people.”

Now I'm confused! It's bad to make a catch happen? I'm not much of a football fan, but isn't that exactly what a player is supposed to do? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

What It Is Like To Go To War

2011-12-11T19:35:00.000-05:00

Karl Marlantes was a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, and many years later he wrote a magnificent novel about the experience, the oddly titled Matterhorn. Now he has turned to the question of What It Is Like To Go To War and, more troubling, what war does to the young men who fight it. He raises the question of how--assuming as he does that a military is necessary and that wars are likely if not inevitable--we can go to war with the least possible damage to the nation's honor and to the sanity of our young warriors. Altogether, an admirable reflection on a subject most people would prefer to ignore. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Hannibal

2011-12-08T15:40:00.000-05:00

Years ago Sally and I saw Silence of the Lambs on an Easter matinee. I was astonished that so much artistry could be devoted to such an ignoble purpose. More recently I read Hannibal Rising, which I concluded was the finest Second World War novel I've read in a long timt--and I'va read a lot. So for my present expedition l took along a digital copy of Hannibal (also seen in Anthony Hopkins mode, though from Netflix). To be sure, its Gothic horror stuff, but of such intelligence and wit as to leave most Literature in the dust. Stephen King crossed with Humberto Eco!

Bye bye, Mr Cain!

2011-12-05T08:31:00.000-05:00

You brought a breath of fresh air into a dreary nominating process, not least by your proposal to abolish the progressive income tax in favor of something people could grasp: 9-9-9. Good for you. (It would never have passed the Congress, of course, but it did shake up the conventional wisdom.) It was a delight to see a black man sweep the polls in a Republican contest. And you could speak brilliantly, unlike some of your colleagues on the right. We will miss you. (Well, I will miss you, anyhow.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Only in academia

2011-12-04T06:59:00.000-05:00

Only in academia: Cambridge University will host a conference in June 2012 on the subject of The Gulag Unbound. "Like any long-term system of life management," explain the organizers, "the Gulag developed its ways of healing, entertaining, and educating its population. Inmates responded to their particular condition by developing equally specific means of artistic creativity, religious ritual, and erotic behaviour." Read it here. (That's a post at a humanities site. I can't find a Cambridge reference--perhaps they're embarrassed by it?)

I particularly like the bit about entertainment and erotic behavior. There is of course some truth to that, as Solzhenitsyn points out: "If one has no other youth but youth in camp then ... one has to be gay there too, where else?" (When he was writing, "gay" meant the careless sort of happiness that is the province of youth.) But I dread the thought of what the dons will do with it. Perhaps they'll prove that the NKVD did the zeks a favor by putting them in a spot where they could be creative, entertaining, and erotic? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

We are the 1 percent!

2011-11-30T04:45:00.001-05:00

From the Vineyard Gazette, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts:

Blue Heron Farm, the Chilmark estate that President Obama and his family have rented for the past three summers for their August vacations, was sold last week for $21.925 million.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Day of the Gas

2011-11-29T04:41:00.001-05:00

Joseph Waumbaugh, who was a University of California student before he became a cop, and a cop before he became a novelist, has a hilarious op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about the infamous incident of pepper spray at UC Davis. This, he speculates, is how the atrocity came to besmirch the American nation:

A campus cop — one of the 99% that the Occupy protesters are championing — looked at a bunch of envious kids who'd missed the great era of protests and Woodstock that their forebears experienced. All they've got at UC Davis is a pitiful little sit-in, but they're arm-locked and caterwauling and making the most of it.

After watching the scene for several hours, something like this goes through the campus cop's head: "I'm not busting my hump trying to untangle these entitled little twits and hauling their butts away for a few hours, which will only make their day and bring them back feistier tomorrow. My sciatica is killing me and I can already feel the arthritis in my hip and I don't get paid enough for this kind of truss-busting crap, so I'm gonna give them a taste of Come-to-Jesus juice. And if that doesn't make them go home, screw it." Then he casually strolled along the seated row and let them have it.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Climate 2.0

2011-11-28T07:13:00.000-05:00

Mostly I'm amused by the fuss over what was once called Global Warming but now goes by the name of Climate Change. (It seems that the temperature can go down as well as up!) I regard it as sour grapes by my classmates who have retired to Florida and are now miffed that the climate at home might be getting a bit more tolerable.

But here's the thing: I read the front page of the New York Times online every morning, and I never saw a mention of what the wits are calling Climategate 2.0, a second batch of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia in England. So I went to the NYT website and did a search. The only thing I could find is this blog: Another Treaty Negotiation, Another Batch of Climate Science E-Mail, which is interesting enough but begs the question. Where's the front-page news story? Does the Gray Lady, whose home page today includes a Paul Krugman essay on "Things to Tax," really find this so uninteresting? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

America's War on Business

2011-11-26T05:01:00.001-05:00

George W. Bush gave us the War on Terror and the Great Recession. That was bad enough, but Barack Obama has given us the War on Business and a perpetuation of the no-growth, no-jobs economy that Mr. Bush left behind.

Never mind the Obamavilles that have sprung up around the nation and the world, whipped on by the president's vendetta against Millionaires & Billionaires. Think of Boeing being refused permission (permission!) to build a plant in South Carolina. Think of the Keystone Pipeline being postponed into the next administration. Think of the virtual moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And now think of AT&T being refused permission (permission!) to merge with with T-Mobile. Instead of spending $39 billion to create the country's largest wireless company, AT&T will now spend an utterly useless $4 billion to cover the costs of the failed breakup, enriching lawyers and bankers but doing nothing for the future of the economy. What a waste!

It's beginning to look as though we will be a generation recovering from the combined legacies of Messrs Bush and Obama, just as we were from those of Hoover and Roosevelt. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Skype

2011-11-25T06:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon we had a lengthy video conversation with our descendants aboard a sailboat in a New Zealand harbor. We don't often do this, because it's intrusive and they don't often have an internet connection. But what joy to see their faces! (It was Friday morning in New Zealand and not Thanksgiving Day at all, so it was more of a holiday visit for us than it was for them.) It astonishes me too that there is no obvious cost for this pleasure. It's a mystery of life in the 21st Century--people make money by giving their services away!

Well, to be sure, since I am always at my computer, and since it's easier to use a mouse than to pick up a phone, and since the phone numbers too are on the computer screen, I also use Skype for most of my telephone calls as well, even local ones. (How weird is that? I'm probably routing my voice through Fargo, North Dakota, to reach someone down the street.) That costs 2.5 cents a minute, something like that. Yes, a mystery. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

We are the 1 percent!

2011-11-24T05:13:00.009-05:00

Gotta love that New York Times, defender of the underdog, scourge of Wall Street, big bankers, and Millionaires & Billionaires in general. But who reads the Gray Lady, after all? Why, those same Millionaires & Billionaires.

Here's a clip from yesterday's paper online, enticing readers to its automotive section. The Mercedes SLK 350 starts at $58,000 and runs up to, well, if you have to ask, you can't afford to throw caution to the winds. The extra spicy Audi TTRS runs "from" $57,000. As for those Yankee-built Porsches, a Cayenne Turbo (talk about spice!) will run you $108,000 delivered. But quell your guilty feelings: it gets 22 mpg.

Happy Thanksgiving! -- Dan Ford

On making Jimmy Carter look good

2011-11-23T11:09:00.000-05:00

Holman Jenkins has a grand op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, comparing the first terms of the Carter and Obama presidencies. Mr. Carter has never been one of my favorites, but that is largely because of his antics since becoming a former president. When he was in office--as Mr. Jenkins points out--he began the process of deregulating American business and stamping out inflation that his successor would continue, thus launching the twenty-year burst of prosperity that we enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s. Mr. Obama by contrast has done his best to recreate the stagflation of the Carter years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he devoted his last year in office to undoing that damage? Mr. Jenkins isn't optimistic:

The suspicion becomes nigh irresistible, however, that Mr. Obama is lacking in the leadership department as the country stumbles towards its ultimate financial crisis. But give him credit for one world-historical achievement: He makes Carter look good.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Things are looking good --sssh!

2011-11-22T16:35:00.001-05:00

There's an upbeat report about the F-35 fighter program in Aviation Week. The magazine isn't online, alas, but there's a synopsis on the Early Warning blog by Loren Thompson, who concludes with some caustic words about how the mainstream media never seem to find space to publish the good news.

Aviation Week & Space Technology reports today that the nation's biggest weapons development program has surpassed its testing goals for calendar year 2011, and is on track to do the same in 2012. The goal for 2011 was 872 flight tests, and as of last Thursday, 875 had been completed. This is very good news, since three U.S. military services and a dozen allies need various versions of the plane to replace aging Cold War fighters. Without it, they can't preserve U.S. air superiority through mid-century.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford (with a tip of the virtual hat to Renee Richardson)

The Hillary moment

2011-11-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, who were pollsters for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively, have a remarkable op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, urging the president to step down:

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

I voted for Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton in the New Hampshire primary four years ago, but if I had it to do over, I'd do it the Caddell-Schoen way. In the end, I might well vote for the Republican candidate, as I did last time, but a Clinton II presidency together with a Republican Congress might serve the country just as well, perhaps better. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Occupy the Wall Street Journal

2011-11-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

I sometimes review books for the Wall Street Journal. The most recent such assignment was for the American Library volume "Into the Blue", an anthology of aviation articles and excerpts from books over the years. It runs in the WSJ today, with a four-column pretty picture of a J-3 Piper Cub "in the blue".

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904537404576554800336792210.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Occupy the White House

2011-11-18T16:40:00.000-05:00

The San Diego Occupiers hold a moment of silence in "solidarity" with the nutter who fired a few rounds at a window of the White House. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Oh, good grief

2011-11-15T19:07:00.000-05:00

At 5:33 p.m., the police began allowing protesters back in, single file.

Oh, well! If they're in single file, what harm can they possibly do? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Closing the Obamavilles

2011-11-15T06:45:00.000-05:00

Evidently Mayor Bloomberg realized that a fetid campground, with winter coming on, was going to lose him more votes than it would gain, and the NYPD began clearing Occupy Wall Street last night. The "occupiers," predictably, have decided to claim victory. Victory over whom? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Horrors! business is messy!

2011-11-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a faux-serious feature called Campaign 2012, which pretends to be newsy but really consists of talking points from the Democratic National Committee, dishing the dirt on the Republican candidates. In recent weeks it has of course featured Rick Perry (oops!) and Herman Cain (excuse me?), but today it turns to Mitt Romney. What kind of dirt can you dish about a Mormon who looks so serious that you want to kick him in the pants, just to see if he's real? Well, nothing can escape the diligent journalists at the Gray Lady, and it seems they have discovered that Mr Romney was once (gasp!) a businessman.

Mitt Romney’s business career is a cornerstone of his campaign. But his brand of capitalism had unintended human costs and some messy financial consequences.

Yes, by golly, the preacher was once a businessman, and business is, well, messy. Ech. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all draw back and make our livings as Senators and professors of Constitutional law? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The woman effect

2011-11-12T06:45:00.000-05:00

A month ago Sally and I were visiting our daughter and her family in Tonga (they are sailing to New Zealand). It was a grand experience, but since coming home I've had a low-lying lurgy that kept me thinking about my intestines more than I ordinarily do, or care to do. Yesterday Sally prodded me to visit the doctor, which I did. He is male (graduated Dartmouth, hence a skier, a necessary quality in my mind) but of course is surrounded by women. He sent me off to the hospital to deposit samples of bodily substances in tubes and cups, which were overseen by other women. By the time I was done, two hours later, I was feeling much better, and this morning even more so.

I calculate that, including Sally, I was altogether attended by no fewer than nine solicitous women, and I am now convinced that the so-called placebo effect is actually a woman effect, and that if enough and sufficiently friendly women would look after us, we would all feel very much better. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On diversifying one's tactics

2011-11-11T17:12:00.000-05:00

The most violent of the Obamavilles that have sprung up around the country this fall is the one in Oakland, California. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Later in the evening, Occupy Oakland protesters gathered for their general assembly meeting and withdrew a resolution calling for future demonstrations to remain peaceful. A faction of the protest group has advocated for violence as a "diversity in tactics" approach to demonstrating.

Evidently that was just before a man was shot and killed just outside the Oakland encampment, the fourth death in an Obamaville this week. The other died by suicide or from natural causes, in New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Burlington, Vermont. As even the New York Times admits, occupying Wall Street (or Oakland or Burlington or even Washington, D.C.) is just not a healthy lifestyle:

Dr. Philip M. Tierno Jr., the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center, said the conditions could leave park-dwellers susceptible to respiratory viruses; norovirus, the so-called winter vomiting virus, which can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and which could quickly overwhelm the limited bathroom facilities in the area; and tuberculosis, which is more common in indigent populations and can be spread by coughing.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A package has been delivered ...

2011-11-07T19:18:00.000-05:00

I just now got an email from UPS "Quantum View" telling me that a package had been delivered:

Delivery Date / Time: 07-November-2011 / 6:34 PM
Delivery Location: FRT DOOR

So I went to the front door (at 7:15 pm) and sure enough, there was the package. I am pleased to have it, and yet ... isn't there something just a bit weird about a world in which it takes an email to tell me there's a package on my front step?

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On creating jobs

2011-11-05T06:07:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has discovered that--oh, horrors!--the government can't create jobs. Here's a sample of the new wisdom from the Gray Lady:

The fact is that creating them in a far-too-sluggish economy is practically impossible in our current capitalist democracy. No corporate leader is rewarded for hiring people who aren’t absolutely required. Most companies hire only when its workforce can no longer keep up with the demand for its products.

Even with all the attention on hiring, the government’s ability to create jobs is pretty dispiriting, no matter who is in charge.

That second paragraph is so splendid that one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Most jobs are created by small business, and all business is small at the start. And small businesses aren't hiring--or aren't being established in the first place--because there is an oppressive, super-sized government sitting on top of the economy, populated by regulators spinning new regulations, legislators creating new mandates, and a president ranting about millionaires and billionaires. If you have a dry-cleaning company with 49 employees, and in a couple years Obamacare kicks in, requiring any company with 50 employees to provide a specified laundry list (as it were) of benefits, would you be likely to hire that 50th employee? No.

The full article is here. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

From Athens to ...

2011-11-04T07:40:00.000-04:00

... Oakland, California. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Post blizzard

2011-11-03T10:58:00.000-04:00

We have power and Internet access again, after the October(!) blizzard that hit the Northeast last weekend. If things carry on like this, we are really going to welcome that global warming! We'll need it to melt the summer snows. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The horror!

2011-10-26T17:15:00.000-04:00

Wait, it gets worse:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

“The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own,’” Obama told a crowd of 200 donors over lunch at the W Hotel.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Do tell!

2011-10-24T17:09:00.000-04:00

From the Gray Lady today:

LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Barack Obama tells donors at a luxury casino in Las Vegas that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. And, the president says, "people are crying out for action."

He noticed! -- Dan Ford

Religious intolerance in Illinois

2011-10-23T07:30:00.000-04:00

The US Department of Justice has wrung a $75,000 settlement out of the school district of Berkeley, Illinois, which also has to provide sensitivity training to all its personnel as a result of denying a request from a Muslim teacher. As the delightful Dorothy Rabinowitz parses the offense:

The school teacher in question, Safoorah Khan, a middle school math lab instructor, had worked at the school for barely a year when she applied for some 19 days unpaid leave so that she could make a pilgrimage to Mecca. The school district denied the request: She was the only math lab instructor the school had, her absence would come just at the period before exams, and furthermore, the leave she wanted was outside the bounds set for all teachers under their union contract.

Thank goodness the Obama administration is on top of the case! -- Dan Ford

But only two thousand of them?

2011-10-22T03:45:00.000-04:00

Historians have more or less settled on a figure of twenty-two thousand as the number of Polish officers, noncoms, intellectuals, professionals, and just unlucky men (and one woman) shot by the Russian secret police in the Katyn Forest massacres in the spring of 1940. Moscow has now admitted that they were innocent of any crime--but has reduced the number by ninety percent, according to the Associated Press:

MOSCOW — Moscow is ready to declare thousands of victims of a World War II-era massacre that continues to strain relations with Poland innocent of any crimes, Russia’s foreign policy chief announced Friday.

About 2,000 [sic!] Polish officers and other prisoners were executed by Soviet secret police in the Katyn forest of western Russia in 1940 on charges they were enemies of the Soviet state.

The Katyn massacre has been a source of tension between Russia and Poland for decades since the Soviet Union blamed the killings on the Nazis. It was only last year that Russia formally took the blame when the lower chamber of Russian parliament admitted the executions were ordered by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Prosecutors closed the criminal case against the Polish officers in 2004.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a radio interview on Friday that Moscow is “ready to consider a perfectly legitimate request to declare these people innocent.”

Several Polish families went to the European Court of Human Rights to prove the victims’ innocence. Lavrov said Russia is anxious to work out a solution that would “satisfy families of the Polish officers and keep Russia within the legal framework.”

Russia’s ambassador to Poland said earlier this year that Russia made a political decision to declare the officers innocent of any crimes against the Soviet Union.

Lavrov confirmed Friday that Moscow and Warsaw are still thinking about how to settle the issue.

They could of course start by getting the figures right. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On missing Dad

2011-10-21T06:04:00.000-04:00

One of the great things about Friday is the opportunity to read Peggy's Noonan's column in advance. (Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, so we know she's a conservative, but she was also an early and bitter critic of George W. Bush.) Here's the keystone from her Saturday essay in the Wall Street Journal:

Sorry to do archetypes, but a nation in trouble probably wants a fatherly, or motherly, figure at the top. What America has right now is a bright, lost older brother. It misses Dad. [Mitt] Romney's added value is his persona. He's a little like the father in one of those 1950s or '60s sitcoms.... He's like Robert Young in "Father Knows Best," or Fred MacMurray in "My Three Sons: You'd quake at telling him about the fender-bender, but after the lecture on safety and personal responsibility, he'd buck you up and throw you the keys.

As for that bright, lost older brother in the White House, she concludes her essay by saying: 'Sometimes he lectures America. But he doesn't buck it up, and he must know in his heart that it's coming for the keys.' Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

To the back of the bus!

2011-10-20T04:42:00.001-04:00

Dispatching a second-class citizen to the back of the bus has an ugly history in America, so it comes as something of a shock to discover that the practice is alive and well and living in Brooklyn, where the B110 bus runs into Manhattan with men at the front and women at the back. The bus company is privately owned, but it competed for and won a city contract, so Mayor Bloomberg argues that it's bound by the city's non-discrimination rules. “Private people: you can have a private bus,” he added. “Go rent a bus, and do what you want on it.” I don't often agree with Hizzoner, who is prone to enforcing his own liberal opinions on the rest of us, but here he has a case. Indeed, I would go further: Guys, if you don't want to sit with women on your way to work, you can get down from the bus and walk. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Trillion-dollar Barack

2011-10-19T05:55:00.001-04:00

The line to notice is 2008, when things were considered so bad that many of us voted for "hope and change" in the primaries and the general election. How did that work out for us? Four trillion dollars in deficit spending, with at least another trillion certain for the fiscal year that began on October 1.

The value of a soldier

2011-10-18T09:43:00.000-04:00

We now know the precise value of an Israeli soldier as compared to his Palestinian peers: one thousand to one.

I'm happy for Sergeant Shalit and his family, who will see each other for the first time in five years, but I am skeptical that his release will advance the cause of peace in the Mideast. For sure, Hamas is even now looking for the next Israeli soldier to kidnap. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Coach

2011-10-17T08:06:00.000-04:00

Just back from TWO successive nights on airplanes. I got the middle seat on the long jump from Fiji to Los Angeles, and Sally got it on the red-eye to Boston.

Both flights were full. I came to the conclusion that protesters would do better to occupy the airlines than Wall Street, especially American Airlines. What was once gracious (I am old enough to remember complimentary drinks whenever anything went wrong with the schedule) has become a truly awful way to travel. As is now customary, every flight was a full one, and nobody cracked a smile when the AA gate attendant came out with her "exciting offer" to gate-check excess bags without charge. Most of the people with three and four carry-ons ignored her, since they had already ensured that they would be the first to board, hence to fill the overhead racks with suitcases, backpacks, and garbage bags packed with souvenirs.

There were two bright spots on the trek. One was the string band that serenaded us onto the 747 in Fiji; the other was the complimentary Samsung recharging station at LAX. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Worst thing that ever happened, 8 Oct 1939

2011-10-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

Seventy-two years ago today, western Poland was annexed by Germany as part of the Third Reich, to be resettled with ethnically pure Aryans. The central part of the country will be administered as a colony called the General Government, with the Christian population to slave for the Reich and the Jews to be exterminated. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Worst thing that ever happened, 6 Oct 1939

2011-10-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

Seventy-two years ago today, the last effective Polish resistance ended. In this photo, German and Russian officers shake hands over their dismembered victim, which would not be truly free again until December 1990. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Governor Perdu imitates Blackadder

2011-10-02T07:28:00.001-04:00

From Blackadder:

Vincent Hanna: Master William Pitt the Even Younger, no votes, are you disappointed?

Pitt the Even Younger: Yes, I'm horrified! I smeared my opponents, bribed the press to be on my side, and threatened to torture the electorate if we lost! I fail to see what more a decent politician could have done!

From Governor Bev Perdue of North Carolina, who instead of toruring the electorate would rather do away with us altogether:

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that."

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Killing from behind

2011-10-01T09:31:00.000-04:00

One of the few positive accomplishments of the Obama administration--indeed, perhaps the only one--is the targeted killing of Al Qaeda leaders and their associates, from Anwar al-Awlaki to Osama bin Laden himself. I've never been comfortable with the notion of assassination, especially when carried out by military forces--not so much because of the horrors of extrajudicial killing, but because of the effect upon the troops who must carry it out. But I'm glad these murderous nutters are gone. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Tell us a story, Daddy

2011-09-30T06:56:00.001-04:00

Here's the estimable Peggy Noonan on President Obama's fascination with spin, as shown in an interview with Ron Suskind:

Mr. Suskind asked him why his team had difficulty creating a policy to deal with unemployment. Mr. Obama said some of it was due to circumstances, some to the complexity of the problem. Then he added: "We didn't have a clean story that we wanted to tell against which we would measure various actions." Huh? It wasn't "clean," he explained, because "what was required to save the economy might not always match up with what would make for a good story."

Throughout the interview the president seems preoccupied with "shaping a story for the American people." He says: "The irony is, the reason I was in this office is because I told a story to the American people." But, he confesses, "that narrative thread we just lost" in his first years.

Then he asks, "What's the particular requirement of the president that no one else can do?" He answers: "What the president can do, that nobody else can do, is tell a story to the American people" about where we are as a nation and should be.

Tell a story to the American people? That's your job? Not adopting good policies? Not defending the nation? Storytelling?

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

D'you suppose Iran would take him back?

2011-09-28T06:32:00.000-04:00

Meet Shane Bauer, recently released by Iran on $500,000 ransom paid by the Sultan of Oman after great effort by Secretary Clinton and President Obama, who gave up his lead-from-behind policy long enough to affirm that Mr Bauer is not an American spy. Upon his release, the creep thanked none of these individuals but instead gave a shout-out to Hugo Chávez, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky and Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens). He also said: "Two years in prison is too long and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and Iran," as if the two countries are morally equivalent. That being the case, Mr Bauer would do us all a favor by going back to Tehran. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A president to admire

2011-09-27T11:25:00.003-04:00

Here's a new biography of James Garfield, who appears to have been one of America's most under-rated presidents (not to mention one of the shortest to serve). The book is Destiny of the Republic. Garfield was a fatherless boy in rural Ohio, who left school at sixteen to do manual labor In time he enrolled at Western Reserve (now Hiram College), paying his tuition by working as a janitor, and made such a splash that the college hired him as an assistant professor in his sophomore year. After getting a degree from Williams College in Massachusetts, he went back to Western Reserve as its president at the age of twenty-six. This is the sort of career trajectory I really admire, and which alas would be unthinkable today.

Garfield served heroically in the Civil War and was elected to Congress while still in uniform. When the Republican convention of 1880 found itself deadlocked, it turned to him, and he became president in March 1881, only to be shot by an assassin four months later. Evidently he would have survived if his doctor had not been an idiot. (Gregory House MD lay far in our future.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Dresden gets a war museum

2011-09-26T05:33:00.001-04:00

I am skeptical of a war museum in Dresden, which as the subject of a notorious fire-bombing might be inclined to portray itself as a victim, but the new museum (designed by Daniel Libeskind and operated by, of all things, the German military) seems to be stirring controversy for all the right reasons. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The tag-team dictator

2011-09-25T05:01:00.001-04:00

Vladimir Putin (on the left) is the new face of Russian authoritarianism. He became prime minister in 1999, president in 2000, and prime minister again in 2008, shape-shifting with Dmitri Medvedev (on the right). There is no question however where the power lay, even though the two men followed the letter if not the spirit of the Russian constitution. Now the smiling Mr. Medvedev has announced that Mr. Putin will run for president again next year, "possibly extending his rule until 2024," in the words of the New York Times.

Mr. Medvedev, meanwhile, will replace him as prime minister. Isn't that cunning? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The sky is falling

2011-09-24T05:32:00.000-04:00

Usually the FAA contents itself with sending out safety tips and notifications that airspace will be closed because the President or (more often) Vice President is going on vacation or a campaign speech. But this morning I got this ominous caution in the email:

Urgent Airmen Notification - Satellite Re-entry
Notice Number: NOTC3252

Until September 26, 2011
U.S. airspace and territories

Specific instructions and restrictions are available from normal NOTAM sites and local air traffic facilities.

*For the latest information, call your local Flight Service Station at 1-800-WX-BRIEF.

Really, this raises more questions than it answers. For openers: why is this a warning to airmen and not to people on the ground? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Worst thing that ever happened: 22 Sep 1939

2011-09-22T12:40:00.000-04:00

This is for those who believe that Russia and the western Allies were gallant collaborators in the Second World War. Seventy-two years ago today, the Russian and German armies held a joint victory parade in Brest, formerly on the border between Poland and the Soviet Union. That's Panzer General Heinz Guderian at center, Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein on right.

On the same day, Lwow formally surrendered to the Red Army, Generous terms were offered, in which Polish soldiers would be disarmed and allowed to go home, while the officers could keep their personal kit and leave for any country that would accept them. At noon, the NKVD entered Lwow, arrested every uniformed Pole, and sent him to a prison camp or to slave labor. Many were later murdered in the Katyn Forest massacres. Never forget! -- Dan Ford

Five million dollar man

2011-09-22T07:43:00.000-04:00

Meet Dennis Gannon, who stands to earn five million dollars from the City of Chicago during his retirement. And he hasn't actually worked for the city since 1991! Even better, for him if not for the taxpayer, his retirement income started at $150,000 a year (in 2004) even though he never earned more than $56,000 as a city employee.

This is possible because--only in Chicago!--Mr. Gannon left the city payroll to become a union officer, and the city pension plan not only let him continue to accumulate pension credits while working for the union, but based that pension on his union salary, which was $200,000 a year.

Mr. Gannon's good fortune is not a matter of interest only to Chicago taxpayers, since Mr. Obama's current stimulus plan is about half devoted to bailing out states and municipalities. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Red, white, and blue

2011-09-21T05:37:00.001-04:00

Here are two hundred Chevrolet Sail automobiles lined up for shipment to Chile and Peru. They are manufactured by Shanghai GM in, well, Shanghai. Remember when Japan was known for manufacturing cheap plastic and metal toys, and suddenly took over the American small car market with Toyotas, Hondas, and Datsuns? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Worst thing that ever happend: 20 Sep 1939

2011-09-20T12:45:00.000-04:00

I have a particular sympathy for the city of Lwow, because a friend was in the city when it was bombed and besieged by the German army, and later by the Russians. The "official" surrender to the Red Army was on 22 September, but there was an earlier surrender, 72 years ago today, to the German forces. Here a Polish officer signs on the dotted line.

But Lwow was east of the partition line specified in the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 23, so the Germans had to get out of the way and let the Russians take over. That would lead to another signing ceremony on the 22nd. Before that happened, there were a few clashes between German and Russian troops, probably with some fatalities, which likewise have been concealed from history.

Since Stalin was on the winning side in the Second World War, he got to keep his ill-gotten gains in eastern Poland, so Lwow is now Lviv in western Ukraine. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Netflix blows it

2011-09-19T08:45:00.000-04:00

Those little red envelopes have become a part American life, in the countryside especially, and especially in the winter. In July my ten-dollar subscription become two eight-dollar subscriptions--a sixty percent increase. I responded by dropping the online streaming option, which anyhow mostly provides old films and obscure Danish and German features. So many people did this (or opted for online streaming only, or gave up the service altogether) that Netflix's profit dropped. Today I got an email apology from Reed Hastings, who identified himself as Co-founder and CEO of Netflix:

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

And what is he doing? He's changing the Netflix name to Quikster. Oh good! That will help! (Netflix for streaming video, Quikster for the little red envelopes.) Not since New Coke has a corporation done a better job of shooting itself in the foot. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Millyuns and millyuns and millyuns ...

2011-09-18T06:59:00.000-04:00

The president seems to have beat a tactical retreat on his odd call for raising taxes on those earning $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) on the grounds that "millionaires and billionaires" supposedly pay federal taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. (Mr. Obama calls this the Buffett Rule after Warren Buffett, who first made the argument.) Tomorrow he will raise the threshold to $1,000,000. After all, it's hard to whip up class envy against two-hundred-thousand-aires, especially when the president's most devoted followers seem to fall into that income group.

The devil is in the details, of course. You may be sure that, whatever the millionaires' tax is called, in practice it will amount to taxing dividends and capital gains as ordinary income. This ignores the fact (as Mr. Buffett cannily ignores the fact) that dividends have already been taxed at the source, and that capital gains are mostly illusory, generated by government-inspired inflation.

However it works out, it won't affect Mr. Buffett much. Like Bill Gates, he has already socked away his millyuns (billyuns?) into charitable trusts. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The worst thing that ever happened: 17 Sep 1939

2011-09-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

By September 17, Poland had been battling the German army for more than two weeks, always outmatched but always valiant. Then the Soviet Union invaded from the east, so that the country was being dismembered not by one of the largest and most powerful military forces in Europe, but by two of them, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. From this moment, there was no possibility that Poland could remain free, or that Europe would be spared a Second World War. Above: David Low's cartoon in the Evening Standard, 20 Sep 1939. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

About that plug-in automobile ...

2011-09-15T05:01:00.001-04:00

David Cohen is a classmate, an engineer, and a writer on energy topics. Here is his take on the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and other super-green plug-in vehicles:

Our government is embarked on a mission to support the development and production of rechargeable electric vehicles. The reason for this support is to place vehicles on the street that produce no carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other exhaust pollutants and greenhouse gases in the air of our city streets.

On the surface we can see and understand the desire to minimize the release of carbon products into the earth's atmosphere. However few people in our society seem to realize that at the present time this is a serious mistake. The cost in money and fossil energy actually exceeds that of a vehicle powered by an internal combustion (IC) engine. In addition, the greenhouse gas release and CO2 emission also exceeds that of a normal IC
engine.

What is going on here? How is that possible?

The answer is simple and is obvious to those who know where our electricity comes from. 50% of our electric power originates in power plants fueled by coal. Another 20% is derived from the combustion of natural gas. Up to 3% is derived from burning fuel oil.

Only about 27% of our electric power typically comes from green or carbon free [i.e., nuclear] sources. In fact our electric grid is responsible for more greenhouse gas and carbon emissions than our entire fleet of fuel burning vehicles.

This simply means that we will increase atmospheric pollutants and carbon bearing products into the atmosphere instead of reducing them for every rechargeable electric vehicle that is placed on the road....

Will rechargeable electric vehicles ever be a good idea? Yes indeed, but it requires a green energy source. That is in the far distant future. At present our transportation fleet can save green house gas by raising efficiency and not tapping into our electric grid. Hybrid vehicle technology is our best hope for the near future. The all-electric vehicle may become attractive 50 to 100 years into the future if our power grid becomes 2 to 4 times larger than it is at present, and consumption of fossil fuel at the power source becomes significantly reduced below its current level.

There is currently one other potential flaw in the rechargeable electric vehicle idea. That flaw is grid capacity. Our electric grid is nowhere near big enough to support tens or hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles that may be recharging every night.

The electric vehicle potential must be guided by a professional systems engineering team that will control the growth of this idea to meet our needs as a society. We should not delude ourselves into believing that this is an idea whose time has now come. It hasn't.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The government is here to help

2011-09-14T05:01:00.002-04:00

If you go to the doctor or a hospital today, your health care provider must choose one of 18,000 codes to describe your complaint. How anyone can sort through 18,000 choices is beyond me, but it's about to get better, or much worse: Washington has dictated a new set of codes to the tune of 140,000 of the little alphanumeric cuties. Among them: walking into a lamp post: "initial encounter" (W22.02XA) and walking into a lamp post: "subsequent encounter" (W22.02XD).

How many jobs will that "create or save"? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

President Perry? Look on the bright side!

2011-09-13T08:01:00.000-04:00

Robert Kuttner in the Puffington Host:

So, barring a miracle, even if Obama is re-elected, the likelihood is for a generation of depressed economic potential, sour politics, and more voter disillusion with government. At worst, Obama could be the Democratic Herbert Hoover for not just one term but two.

Okay then, suppose Obama loses. If the Republicans win, President Rick Perry will almost certainly take a Republican House and Senate with him.

We can imagine intensified assaults on Social Security and Medicare, more moves to turn America into a theocracy, and the courts will be lost for a generation. More deregulation and privatization, too.

However -- nothing the Republicans say or do will improve the economy for regular people. An austerity program, even tempered by tax cuts, will only worsen the stagnation. More Americans will be reliant on a safety net the Republicans are shredding.

So, going into 2016, the Republicans will own an economy in protracted depression. And as opposition party, progressive Democrats will be full-throated, no longer in the awkward position of being upstaged by their centrist president.

Assuming the Republicans don't find a way to cancel the 2016 election, a Democrat would have a good shot at winning. And a progressive Democrat (if one can be found) would have a good chance at being nominated.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

9/11

2011-09-12T11:35:00.001-04:00

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Stimulus that's paid for

2011-09-10T07:11:00.000-04:00

The most astonishing feature of Mr Obama's speech the other evening was the assertion that his half-trillion-dollar Stimulus II is "paid for." It's like the jobs "created or saved" that have been a hallmark of his administration. (All government programs are "paid for," most commonly these days with borrowed money.)

Holman Jenkins in the WSJ has a hilarious satire on the speech, in the form of its supposed first draft: 'Notwithstanding the economic crisis, I have chosen to pursue my own agenda instead because I'm comfortable with it.' Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

From Ia Drang to Ground Zero, the opera

2011-09-08T14:13:00.000-04:00

Rick Rescorla was twice a hero. In 1965 (photo at left) he fought in the battle of the Ia Drang Valley. In 2011, as a security officer for a brokerage firm, he died in the fall of the World Trade Center towers, having rescued all of his charges but returning to the inferno for one last look.

On Saturday, September 10, the San Francisco Opera will show the premiere of the opera based on the trajectory of his life, with Thomas Hampson (photo at right) singing the lead role. (The arts being what they are, you won't see much about Vietnam in the SFO website, but the photograph says enough.)

And think about this: Mr. Rescorla was an adopted American. He was born and reared in Cornwall. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Middle-aged white guys

2011-09-08T06:55:00.000-04:00

President Obama has not made a complete success of the past three years, but he has accomplished one notable feat:

He has made the competition look awfully white. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On restoring civility in American politics

2011-09-06T17:56:00.000-04:00

President Obama calls for civility after Representative Giffords was shot:

"At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

And Jim Hoffa introduces the president in Detroit:

"And you see it everywhere, it is the tea party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war....

"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Labor Day blues

2011-09-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

Robert Samuelson has a curious op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he seems to settle for permanent stagnation:

On this Labor Day, there is little good news about labor. We have entered a long period of crushing unemployment and downward pressure on wages that may well transform the nation’s economic and political landscape. There was no job growth in August, and the overall numbers are stupefying: 14 million unemployed; nearly 9 million part-time workers wanting full-time jobs; 6.5 million who want jobs but have given up looking and are, therefore, not counted in the official labor force. People are only gradually recognizing the magnitude of the problem.

Wouldn't it be more productive to conclude that for three years the administration and Congress have been making the problem worse rather than better? We have returned to the 1930s, when the Roosevelt administration met every setback with more of the same--more taxation, more regulation, more infrastructure spending. Unemployment in 1939 was still 17.2 percent, even though the United States had already begun to gear up for the Second World War as Britain and France ordered aircraft.

It wasn't Franklin Roosevelt who got us out of the Great Depression. It was Adolf Hitler. Instead of waiting for another catastrophe to change things, Mr. Samuelson would do better to suggest a change in government strategy. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The situation is dire...

2011-09-05T06:53:00.000-04:00

Talk about burying the lead! The NY Times has a doomsday story about the postal service that sees it shutting down this winter "unless Congress acts," which I think we can safely assume means "unless Congress throws billions of taxpayer dollars into this sinkhole." It goes on to describe the heroic measures the postmaster general is taking to cut expenses, and even to point out that most of the USPS budget goes to salaries and benefits (80 percent, compared to 32 percent at FedEx). And that its health benefits are more generous even than those of most federal employees!

But not until the ninth paragraph do we come to the kicker: "Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30, intended to finance retirees’ future health care...."

That's not the weight of the world that you feel on your shoulders. It's the weight of all the unsustainable promises made by politicians to governmental employees over the years. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The worst thing that ever happened: 3 Sep 1939

2011-09-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

Seventy-two years ago, Britain declared war on Germany to honor its defense pact with Poland. France and most of the Commonwealth nations--Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa--did the same. Yet the Allies did little to thwart the German blitzkrieg, which would continue unabated for another month. Above: a French soldier takes time out to pick flowers along the roadside in what wags called the "Sitzkrieg."

For all the bad press he later received, it's worth noting that it was Neville Chamberlain who made the declaration of war. Winston Churchill would not become prime minister until May 1940. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The worst thing that ever happened: 1 Sep 1939

2011-09-01T00:01:00.002-04:00

Here was Warsaw after the first Germany terror raid, seventy-two years ago this month. Thus began the Second World War, the worst thing that ever happened in the bloody history of the world. The Germans would be followed on September 17 by the Russians, dividing Poland between them according to the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 13. Go here for more about the rape of Poland. The photo, taken from a church tower, is from Wikipedia Commons. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Driving while drunk, illegal, and related to the president

2011-08-31T16:59:00.001-04:00

Embarrassing relatives go with the territory when you're president of the United States. However, if you are Barack Obama, you can count on the New York Times not only to bury the story, but to omit it altogether. I was puzzled this morning not to see any mention of Uncle Onyango, arrested in Framingham for drunk driving and being held on an immigration "detainer" (something like a retainer except that it's injurious to one's freedom of action.) So I did a search on the NYT website and got this response:

Your search - Onyango Obama - did not match any documents under Past 30 Days

It's not as if the NYT doesn't have access to the Boston Globe. They own it, after all. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Neither rain, nor snow, nor ...

2011-08-30T12:42:00.000-04:00

Well, to be sure, the old saw says nothing about tropical storms. But in my experience almost anything can stop the U.S. Postal Service. Tropical Storm Irene passed by us at six o'clock in the evening on Sunday. Twelve hours later, the Wall Street Journal was in its accustomed place in the newspaper tube, but here it is Tuesday, and the U.S. mail has yet to make an appearance. In similar vein, the road to Durham has been cleared of a small pine tree that had been blocking it, but the signs are still up: Road Closed. I understand that to mean: Proceed if you like, but don't sue us if anything goes wrong!

Proof, if any be needed, that it will not be government employees who haul us out of the ditch. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The builder

2011-08-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

Farewell, Steve Jobs! The Wall Street Journal this morning had an editorial with "Jobs" in the title, but it was not about unemployment, but with the man who more or less by himself built the most valuable company in the world. I personally don't care for the Apple experience--it's too closed for my taste--but I can't imagine life without my iPhone. I work at my computer every day from five o'clock to noon, and visit it occasionally in the afternoon and evening, but it is an anonymous tool, like the chair I sit in. My iPhone by contrast is part of me. I carry it wherever I go. I use it to check my mail, to listen to music, to read books (I do own a Kindle, mostly to check how my own books look in digital form, but I prefer to read on the iPhone), and even occasionally to make a telephone call.

While Barack Obama spends trillions of our dollars in a fruitless attempt to get American growing again, Steve Jobs built Apple into a company worth $346 billion, at no cost to the taxpayer. He made our lives easier and more amusing, and he became rich in the process, adding both to our Gross National Product and our (and the world's) Gross National Happiness. Good on you, Steve, though I could do without that iTunes interface. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The awful pain of austerity

2011-08-25T11:56:00.001-04:00

Now that the debt ceiling debate is over, and the Tea Party has done its worst (or best, depending on your political orientation), what does that portend for Federal spending? Gasp! It will only go up a little bit. (The Wall Street Journal has an editorial.) So much for the president's new dedication to spending restraint. Mr. Obama, in his first term, will have spent a bit more than fourteen trillion dollars. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The worst thing that ever happened: 23 Aug 1939

2011-08-23T00:01:00.005-04:00

Seventy-two years ago, the 20th Century's premier despots signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union. It divided Europe (and in particular, Poland) into two halves, with the western half going to Germany and the eastern half to Soviet Russia. The pact was the keystone of the Second World War, the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world. Without it, neither country would have dared go to war, for each feared (with good reason!) a stab in the back by the other.

With the pact in place, Hitler and Stalin were free to launch their individual wars of aggression. As was usually the case when he made a bargain, Josef Stalin got the larger share of the booty: in addition to half of Poland, he got the three Baltic states--Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia--and a good piece of Finland, though the Finns would give him a black eye in the course of his land grab there. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Good on you, mate!

2011-08-22T06:08:00.003-04:00

Not many thanks to the United States, it seems that the Libyan rebels have stormed the capital, and that for the most part it simply welcomed them in. Good on them!

They probably won't be as friendly to the U.S. as they might otherwise have been, had we been more forthcoming in their struggle. Indeed, they mightn't be friendly at all. That's the hard part of democracy and popular uprisings. But it's their country, and I wish them well with it. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

How to improve your cellphone service

2011-08-20T05:26:00.000-04:00

It's magic! says the New York Times:

Spotty cellular service magically improves on Martha’s Vineyard when President Obama arrives each August.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Early days in Vietnam

2011-08-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

In May 1964, I took the publisher's advance on my first book, added $26, and bought a ticket to Saigon. I kept a journal of my three months in South Vietnam, hoping to publish the dispatches on my return. Alas, Lyndon Johnson decided to escalate the war, so the conflict by August was far different from the one I'd investigated in my old fatigues, a tiger-stripe bush hat sewn up for me by a Saigon tailor, boots from L.L. Bean, and field gear bought on the black market. So I used the experience instead to write Incident at Muc Wa, later filmed as Go Tell the Spartans with Burt Lancaster starring. (He also contributed $150,000 when the producers went broke.)

Years later, I got out that old typescript and found it a fascinating snapshot of insurgency in its early stages, when there was still a chance of containing it. (Is there ever a chance of containing revolution?) So I published it as The Only War We've Got. More recently, I touched up the digital edition and lowered the price to $3.99. If you have a Kindle device, or are willing to download a bit of software for your computer or smartphone. it's worth a read. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On promoting tolerance and civility in London

2011-08-18T17:36:00.000-04:00

A story in London's The Telegraph is so poignant it deserves to be quoted at length:

An Oxford University law graduate threw bricks at police officers in broad daylight during last week’s riots in London, a court heard yesterday.

Fahim Wahid Alam, who also has a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, is accused of being part of a mob that attacked police in Hackney last Monday afternoon.

Mr Alam, 25, attacked police as he walked home from a job interview with an organisation that helps to promote a more tolerant and civil society, Highbury Corner magistrates’ court heard.

He is alleged to have thrown two bricks at police officers, one of which hit a constable on the leg, during almost three hours of disorder outside Hackney town hall, on Mare Street. He was arrested at 6.30pm that evening....

Yesterday the court heard that on the same day he is alleged to have attacked police, he had attended a job interview with the London Civic Forum.

The organisation’s website says its aims are to “build healthy communities and improve quality of life for all.” The website carries pictures of Londoners cleaning the streets after the riots and a statement that reads: “London Civic Forum has been shocked and saddened by the wave of destruction that has rocked our city and others since last Friday.”

A spokesman confirmed that Mr Alam had been offered a job as an intern researcher, which he had been due to start next Tuesday.... The London Civic Forum said his job offer would now be reconsidered.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Battle Bus

2011-08-16T17:38:00.000-04:00

The BBC, which is the Gray Lady of British television, has not for a generation seen a liberal cause it didn't applaud. But President Obama's million-dollar campaign bus (one of two that have been pimped up by the Secret Service at taxpayer expense) is an exception:

In British elections we're used to what we call "battle buses", cheerfully painted wagons, festooned with party slogans and colours.

US President Barack Obama has embarked on his first bus tour in office. But his vehicle for the trip through the rural parts of three Midwestern states looks like it really is heading for a battle.

Big, blocky, black, with painted-out windows, it looks more like a police mortuary van than a symbol of hope arriving on your street.

Mr. President, if you've lost the BBC, you've lost Mittel Europa. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The shrinking dollar

2011-08-15T06:31:00.000-04:00

Somewhat unfairly, the chart attributes the dollar's decline to the day forty years ago when President Nixon "closed the gold window" and made the dollar what economists call a fiat currency. Lewis Lehrman has a good op-ed on the subject in today's WSJ. Personally, I date the decline a bit earlier, as starting in the 1950s, and the result even shabbier: those 1950 dollars were each worth ten of ours. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Barbie looters

2011-08-12T05:58:00.000-04:00

It's reassuring to know that the British (or "Afro-Carribeans") still queue up, even when breaking and entering. More great photos here. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford