A Mixed Bag
I am not going to launch on a tirade this morning, even though there are at least three interesting stories in the blabbosphere. They all have something to say about The Narrative of Life in These United States that are quite electrifying, if you pay attention to those sorts of things.
Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. It is a mixed bag.
The most esoteric is the revelation over the shenanigans on the use of evidence from twelve trees that once grew in place called Yamal in Siberia, the great Russian Far East. It is a seemingly small story, about whether or not ancient tree-trunks provide an accurate gauge of ancient (and modern) temperatures. It also appears to be the basis for a direct assault on a major component of the Conventional Wisdom. I just don’t have it in me this morning to mount a peevish frontal attack on scientific minutiae, regardless of how significant.
That is one of the reasons I like to write about the real history of real people. It is close enough to inspire, and far enough away not to be personally dangerous, even on Victory Day of the former Soviet Union in its titanic struggle with the armies of fascism.
Like Uncle Joe Stalin. I can run a picture of the young man, who would be the guy who cut in on you at the high school dance and walked out with the girl you liked and not worry about Chekist goons showing up at Big Pink in their long flowing leather coats to hurl me into the Gulag:
(Uncle Joe in happier times. Looks like a poet, right? Could he pass a random urinalysis?)
We have to say good-bye to the public life of another Great American this morning. 80-year old Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana was trounced in his primary race yesterday with some upstart with links to the Tea Party. People seem sort of pissed out there in the heartland. Senator Lugar, bless him, is a retired Naval Intelligence Reserve Officer, and has always been kind to the other younger members of our little tribe.
He performed some outstanding service in his years in the Senate, the Nunn-Lugar Act being just one of them. I don’t know what former Senator Sam Nunn is up to today, but bless them both. They were heroes of another generation.
I don’t know what this means, precisely. There are those who are saying this represents a lurch to the right and a chance for the Left in the fall elections to fill the senate seat. Others say that Senator Lugar is too old, no longer owns a home in the state he represents, and this is just a case of losing touch with the base of his party.
I don’t know. I do know that this whacky election cycle has all kinds of interesting things in it. There is the civil war in Wisconsin, where beleaguered Governor Scott Walker will face Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, whom Walker beat for his office in the last general election.
The news was not all about the insurgents in the Republican Party, or their ideological civil war (Mr. Barret’s words) with the public sector unions.
I had forgotten that there was a Democratic Primary season, though apparently the system chugs along just fine on autopilot. What is curious about the results are that the President was not running unopposed, as I had assumed. A man in Texas, without access to a single jet or campaign organization, garnered 40% of the popular vote against Mr. Obama in the West Virginia primary.
The alternate candidate is named Keith Judd. He is an unusual man with an unusual hobby. He has the time to devote to his Presidential race, since he is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas. With 93 percent of West Virginia precincts reporting, Judd garnered 40 percent of the party vote.
Oh, I know. The campaign against Big Coal is hurting local pocketbooks, and that, in turn is what is hurting the President at the polls in the Mountaineer State.
I do not think the Obama campaign is going to lose a lot of sleep over this, since I think the West Virginia has been a write-off since before this campaign began.
Still, you can’t say this all isn’t interesting. Or can you?
(Mr. Rogers demonstrates exactly what I am feeling this morning about politics and politicians this morning. Photo screen capture from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Golden Pelicans
(Jack Reid’s Patrol Squadron 44 “Golden Pelican” crew. Jack is in the middle, flanked by his co-pilot and navigator. Photo USN).
I am going to be headed out to Pearl in a few weeks. It strikes me as a little surreal at this distance, and the point of going is to honor the people who made victory in the Pacific possible.
My 92-year-old drinking buddy Mac is one of the last survivors, and considering the significance of the 70th anniversary of the great battle, and the fact that so few of the participants are left, Mac is going to take his family out there. My boss Jake has been asked to make a speech, along with Mikey, who I worked for a couple times in his amazing career. I am going to tag along to pay tribute and see once again the Islands where my sons were born.
Jake had an interesting story about the Golden Pelicans, which interested me since I had a chance to fly with them to the Aleutian Island bastion of Adak one slow week while I was assigned to Pearl, hunting Soviet ballistic missile submarines.
Jake made one-star rank while on the USCINCPAC Staff, and was the “duty Admiral” for representational purposes one weekend when a special flight was laid on to scatter the ashes of ENS George Gay, the “sole survivor of Torpedo EIGHT,” from the CINC’s dedicated P-3 Orion aircraft on the waves where the battle was fought so long ago. After he was shot down with the rest of his squadron, he spend an eventful day amid the Japanese fleet. It was Gay’s colorful eyewitness account of the sinking of three IJN Carriers electrified the nation.
Of course, it wasn’t completely true. Gay’s story was useful in that it provided an alternative explanation to why Admiral Nimitz knew so much about the devastating results of the battle. George had a story that did not include the vulnerability of the JN-25 coding system used by the Japanese.
I met ENS Gay at one of the big fly-ins at Oshkosh, WI, years ago, and he signed a copy of his book about the battle, “Sole Survivor” for me. He actually made LCDR before the war was over, and despite a follow-on career flying for Trans World, he would always be “ENS Gay,” the only one of thirty squadron mates to survive the battle.
Jake noticed two older gentlemen who were on the CINC’s plane. For the life of him, he could not recall their names, but the event of the day were interesting. A stone was dedicated at Midway, and a harrowing event followed on a long flight 700 miles to the west as an aircrewman attempted to deposit ENS Gay out the hatch. He asked me to check it out- he thought the old guys might have been the pilot and co-pilot of the PBY whose contact with the Japanese provided plausible cover for the JN-25 intercepts that enabled Mac and station HYPO to offer Chester Nimitz the chance to bushwhack the Japanese.
The flight Jake was on covered the thousand nautical miles to the northwest of O’ahu. Midway, outer rampart of the Hawaiian chain, had been recognized to be strategic as early as 1867 when SecNav Gideon Welles directed that Brooks Island, as it was then known, be claimed and surveyed for the United States. In 1869, Congress appropriated $50,000 for dredging an entrance channel to the lagoon. Over time, the atoll became a relay station for the trans-Pacific cable that linked the American colony of the Philippines to the Mainland.
Pan Am later used the lagoon for a refueling station, and created a modest R&R and hotel facility in Mid-Pac. Pan Am was a great institution. I am sorry it is gone, though we saw remnants of their Pacific operations all over. I bought a copy of “Shattered Sword,” the latest history of the battle by Parshall and Tully, using extensive Japanese sources. It is a massive and daunting volume, but I am resolved to get through it.
Anyway, there are remarks to be drafted and stories to be told, so I thought I would take a whirl through the fight and get oriented so I could ask some pertinent questions to Mac, who lived the experience.
By 1942, Midway had become the front line of the expanding area of the Japanese-controlled Pacific Ocean. Wake island, the next of the strong of pearls across the broad blue waves, was a thousand nautical miles to the WSW. It was occupied by the Imperial Army in the opening days of the Pacific conflict, the Navy and Marine Garrison fighting hard before surrendering to overwhelming force.
The American spine had stiffened in the months of reeling defeat since the attack on Pearl- and the work of Station Hypo contributed to the ability to put maximum fire-power at the point of attack. The fight at Coral Sea was inconclusive, but shored up the route of the vital re-supply lines to Australia.
In May 1942, Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, was prepared to shift his offensive operations north and east from Coral Sea and knock out the USN once and for all.
His staff devised an intricate plan called Operation MI, to draw out the U.S. Pacific Fleet by attacking Midway. Using Midway as bait and gathering a vast naval armada of eight aircraft carriers, 11 battleships, 23 cruisers, 65 destroyers and several hundred fighters, bombers and torpedo planes, Yamamoto planned to crush the Pacific Fleet once and for all.
He would ambush the mauled American Fleet at Midway Island, and then secure a base for land-based aviation to regularly strike Pearl Harbor.
Alerted by his code-breakers that the Japanese planned to seize Midway, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief, Pacific Command, flew to the atoll on May 2, 1942, to make a personal inspection. He wanted to size up the defensive posture and the character of his Navy and Marine commanders on scene. Commander Cyril T. Simard, USN, was the air component commander, and Lt. Col. Harold D. Shannon was the Marine ground commander.
They gave the Admiral the grand tour.
Following his personal inspection, Nimitz took Simard and Shannon aside and asked them what they needed to defend Midway. They told him their requirements.
“If I get you all these things, can you hold Midway against a major amphibious assault?” Nimitz asked the two officers. “Yes, sir!” Shannon replied.
It was good enough for Nimitz, who returned to Oahu. On May 20, Shannon and Simard received a letter from Admiral Nimitz, praising their fine work and promoting them to captain and full colonel, respectively. Then Nimitz informed them that the Japanese were planning to attack Midway on May 28; he outlined the Japanese strategy and promised all possible aid.
There were issues in the massive build-up. On May 22, a sailor accidentally set off a demolition charge under Midway’s fuel farm. The explosion destroyed 400,000 gallons of aviation fuel, and also damaged the distribution system, forcing the defenders to refuel planes by hand from 55-gallon drums.
All the while the Marines continued digging gun emplacements, laying sandbags and preparing shelters on both islands.
Barbed wire sprouted along Midway’s coral beaches. Shannon believed that it would stop the Japanese as it had stopped the Germans in World War I. He ordered so much strung that one Marine exclaimed: “Barbed wire, barbed wire! Cripes, the old man thinks we can stop planes with barbed wire!” The defenders also had a large supply of blasting gelatin, which was used to make anti-boat mines and booby traps.
On May 25, while the work continued, Shannon and Simard got some good news, courtesy of Joe Rochefort’s band of code-breakers at Station Hypo. The Japanese attack would come between June 3 and 5, giving them another week to prepare.
That same day, the light cruiser St. Louis arrived, to deliver an eight-gun, 37mm anti-aircraft battery from the Marine 3rd Defense Battalion and two rifle companies from the 2nd Raider Battalion. Beginning on May 30, Midway’s planes began searching for the Japanese. Twenty-two PBYs from Lt. Cmdr. Robert Brixner’s Patrol Squadron 44 (VP-44) and Commander Massie Hughes’ VP-23 took off from Midway lagoon, then headed out in an arc stretching 700 miles from Midway in search of the main body of the invasion force.
(Midway Island- actually three small islands in a middling-large lagoon. Now administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the island was a key mid-Pacific naval bastion for a century.)
By June 1, both Sand and Eastern islands were ringed with coastal defenses. Six 5-inch guns, 22 3-inch guns and four old Navy 7-inch guns were placed along the coasts of both islands for use as anti-aircraft and anti-boat guns. As many as 1,500 mines and booby traps were laid underwater and along the beaches. Ammunition dumps were placed all around the islands, along with caches of food for pockets of resistance and an emergency supply of 250 55-gallon gasoline drums.
Six new Grumman TBF torpedo bombers arrived on the island that day, commanded by Lieutenant Langdon K. Fieberling. None of the TBF pilots had ever been in combat, and only a few had ever flown out of sight of land before. The TBF would later be named Avenger in honor of its combat introduction at Midway
Midway had practically everything it needed for its defense. Along with the 121 aircraft crowding Eastern Island’s runways, Midway had 11 PT-boats in the lagoon to assist the ground forces with anti-aircraft fire. A yacht and four converted tuna boats stood by for rescue operations, and 19 submarines guarded Midway’s approaches.
On June 3rd, a VP-44 Consolidated PBY commanded by ENS. ”Jack” Reid, was assigned sector search west by southwest, which was in the general area for a possible encounter with the IJN twin- engine “Betty” bombers that flew out of captured Wake Island. The crew hoped for an encounter with one of the Japanese aircraft. The night before one of the crew members had traded some beer for 5 new explosive .50 caliber shells from a B-17 crew. The ordnancemen on the crew had loaded them on the port waist gun.
The flight came to the end of their outbound 600 mile leg with no sightings. The crew urged Jack Reid to go further to see if they couldn’t make contact with a “Betty”. Jack checked with navigator Bob Swan and was assured that they still had plenty of fuel to go another 20 or 30 minutes on the present course. Jack agreed to the plan and told Bob, just give me as heading when we get to the end of the time limit.
The flight continued on for the allotted time and as Bob was about to give Jack the new heading for the dogleg and at that instant Jack spotted specks on the horizon. He gave the binoculars to the second pilot Gerald Hardeman saying: “Are those ships? I think we’ve hit the jackpot.”
Hardemen concurred. Moments later John Gammell, in the nose turret, sang out “Ships dead ahead, about 30 miles dead ahead.” a radio message was immediately sent to Pearl Harbor saying, ”Sighted main body”, minutes later, a second message, ”Bearing 262, distance 700 miles.”
Nimitz’ headquarters at Pearl Harbor and Fletcher’s carriers also received Reid’s “Main Body” message. Since they expected Nagumo to be coming from the northwest, not west/southwest, this message briefly posed a problem. But Nimitz stuck with his intelligence forecast, and radioed back to the carriers “The force sighted is not, repeat not, the Main Body.”
That is the essence of this story, the necessity of covering the vulnerability of the codes with plausible deniability.
Jack Reid scouted the force for another two hours, not knowing which part of the elephant of the huge Japanese formation he was observing. He kept the Catalina at low altitudes and came up from different positions, counting the sightings at each one and radioing the results. The long wakes in the ocean from the armada led him to either port or starboard of the ships. He knew full well, if detected, they would be hit by swarming Zero-sen fighters.
The force Jack’s crew had sighted consisted of 17ships, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and transports headed for Midway. It was not the target that Joe Rochefort predicted carried the largest threat to the island- the fast carriers.
Commander Robert A. Swan, of Santa Rosa, California, was the navigator on 44-P-4. He always had a familiar smile, with a personality to match. A Naval Reserve PBY pilot in 1942, Bob was the navigator on Jack Reid’s Catalina.
44-P-4 landed back at Midway with little fuel to spare, and one of the two massive engines sputtered out after they landed in the lagoon. When asked why they were able to stay aloft for an additional 3 hours, Bob replied, “Plane Captain Ray Derouin has three dependents-a wife and two daughters. He always puts in an extra 50 gallons for each one.”
Bob continued in patrol aircraft for the remainder of the war and stayed in the Naval Reserve after its conclusion, retiring as a commander.
VP-44’s greatest contribution to victory had been made, but the battle was only now being joined. On June 4, Reid and Hardeman flew more than 14 hours, again providing important contact reports. Indeed, he had become an important set of “eyes” for the US Fleet. His PBY was attacked by Zeros and by AAA on a Japanese cruiser, but Jack got his aircraft and crew to safety up in the clouds. Later he landed in the lagoon at Midway, and as he taxied toward Sand Island, one of his engines sputtered out for lack of fuel. Nonetheless, he was up and flying the next day, searching the Pacific for lost pilots and crews.
Jack Reid stayed in the Navy after the war and retired with more than 30 years services as a Captain, setting up his home in Aptos, CA.
The last members of 44-P-4 have passed on. Jake got a chance to meet them, and shoot the shit in the plane on the long flight west. I wish I had the chance, but you have to take what you can get. I still think about ENS Gay, and his card table at the Oshkosh Air Show, and the way he returned to the Battle of Midway from the back of the CINC’s plane.
Battle of Midway National Memorial
On September 13, 2000, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt designated the lands and waters of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge as the Battle of Midway National Memorial, “so that the heroic courage and sacrifice of those who fought against overwhelming odds to win an incredible victory will never be forgotten.”
The monument reads, in part: “They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so, changed the course of a war.”
This is the first National Memorial to be designated on a National Wildlife Refuge.
Numerous historic sites portraying man’s history on the islands since the early 1900’s are protected by the Fish and Wildlife Service, including several World War II defensive positions that were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Victory in Europe
(Order of Victory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)
The Victors poured into the streets of Paris and Athens last night. It is a sort of Victory in Europe Day for the forces of progressive anti-austerity. You saw the headlines this morning: Francois Hollande edged Nicolas Sarkozy to become the first Socialist President since the days of patrician Francois Mitterand. Greek voters lurched to the far left as a rejection of the two main parties that had endorsed German Chancellor Merkel’s tough fiscal love in exchange for continued bail-outs.
If you know how this is going to work out, more power to you. But the symbolism of this day- and its controversy- made me think about Wednesday, when I am inviting my Russian friends to join me at Willow for a celebration of the real Victory Day. There is some confusion on that score, propagated to some degree by the exigencies of the Cold War, and the harsh nature of total war against civilian populations.
You can blame the Germans for a lot of things, but once Hitler was dead, you can certainly understand why Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the Fuhrer’s designated successor, wanted to surrender to the Allies. He did so on May 7th, 1945, in the little red schoolhouse that Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, was using as his headquarters in Reims, France.
The way the ceremony was treated in the New York Times reflected the formal end of the war in Europe after “five years, eight months and six days of bloodshed and destruction.”
Colonel-General Gustav Jodl inked the unconditional surrender for the Reich. His was the second highest general officer rank—below only that of Field Marshall.
The Allies were represented by three-star officer, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff for General Eisenhower. It was also signed by General Ivan Susloparoff for the Soviet Union and by Gen. Francois Sevez for France.
General Eisenhower could not make it for the signing, which is sort of odd, considering the magnitude of the enterprise which was being brought to a conclusion, and probably reflects the uncertainty about how to not upstage the successful entry of the Red Army into Berlin, where the fires in the Reichstag still smoldered.
Ike did receive Jodl and his fellow delegate, General-Admiral Hans Georg Friedeburg, immediately after the signing, and he pointedly asked them if they understood precisely the terms to which they had agreed.
The Germans said “Jawohl,” and that would have been that in a rational world, but this is not one of those. The Red Army liaison officer to SHAEF was in a bit of a pickle. He had no instructions from the Kremlin, though he understood full well the nature of the sacrifice in blood his Motherland had given to enable the triumph over the Hitlerites. The surrender, by his reasoning, should naturally be to Marshall Zhukov, on behalf of Uncle Joe Stalin, in the capital of the hated Germans.
(Marshall Zhukov and his white charger trample the battle flags of the Reich. Marshal Rokossovsky of the 2nd Belorussian Front is behind him on the dark horse. Vic has the poster of this image from the Victory Day celebration in Moscow in 1998.)
Zhukov had led the 1st Belorussian Front through the last formations of German resistance: the defense of the capital consisted of several disorganized Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS Divisions, augmented by aged Volkssturm and Hitler Youth formations. The last hold-outs in the ruined Reichstag included foreign SS volunteers who had nothing left to lose.
Berlin’s defenders finally gave it up on the 2nd of May, though sporadic fighting continued to the west of the city as German units fought to break out to the Rhine and surrender to the Allies, rather than the Red Army.
After having signed the full surrender, General Jodl said he wanted to speak and was permitted to do so. “With this signature,” he said “the German people and armed forces are for better or worse delivered into the victors’ hands.”
General Ivan Susloparoff was faced with the worst choice a Soviet officer could confront: the possibility of incorrect thinking. If he did not sign the surrender, the Soviet Union would not be represented in what could be the unconditional end of the Great Patriotic War. If he did, he stood the real risk of incurring the wrath of Stalin.
That was not a good thing, and Uncle Joe was indeed seriously peeved at the surrender in France, which was an affront to the colossal cost his people had borne. As Susloparov returned to his office to report to Moscow, he saw a freshly arrived order not to sign the document.
Crap. You can imagine what he must have thought.
All’s fair in Love and Peace, though, and the goal posts were moved by the Kremlin. The Soviet Government announced that the Rheims surrender was “preliminary,” and demanded a second surrender ceremony. It was arranged at the former German officer’s mess at Karlshorst, in Berlin, late on May 8, or early on the 9th, Moscow time.
General Susloparov was there, and he got to see the senior representatives of the German forces capitulate to Marshall Zhukov: Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen Stumpff for the Luftwaffe, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel of the Wehrmacht, and Admiral Hans-George von Friedenburg of the Kriegsmarine.
(Allied Commanders at the “preliminary” surrender at Rheims. Soviet General Susloparov is at left, and smiling until he got back to his office.)
General Susloparov was lucky. He was not disappeared or made a non-person in the victorious Soviet Union for his misdeed. He was assigned to head the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow until retirement, and was the officer in charge of the Cadet Corps. He died in 1974, and is buried in Vvedenskoye Cemetary.
Here is how Uncle Joe summed things up in his proclamation on the real Victory Day:
Moscow, May 9, 1945
Comrades!
Fellow countrymen and countrywomen! The great day of victory over Germany has arrived. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has admitted defeat and has announced her unconditional surrender.
On May 7 a preliminary act of surrender was signed in Rheims. On May 8, in Berlin, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and of the Supreme Command of the Soviet troops, signed the final act of surrender, which came into effect at 24 hours on May 8.
Knowing the wolfish habits of the German rulers who regard treaties and agreements as scraps of paper, we have no grounds for accepting their word. Nevertheless, this morning, the German troops, in conformity with the act of surrender, began en masse to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops. This is not a scrap of paper. It is the actual capitulation of the armed forces of Germany… We now have full grounds for saying that the historic day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of our people’s great victory over German imperialism, has arrived.
The great sacrifices we have made for the freedom and independence of our country, the incalculable privation and suffering our people have endured during the war, our intense labors in the rear and at the front, laid at the altar of our motherland, have not been in vain; they have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The ago-long struggle of the Slavonic peoples for their existence and independence has ended in victory over the German aggressors and German tyranny.
Henceforth, the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace between the peoples will fly over Europe Comrades! Our Great Patriotic War has terminated in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe has closed. A period of peaceful development has been ushered in. Congratulations on our victory, my dear fellow countrymen and countrywomen!
Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our country and achieved victory over the enemy!
Glory to our great people, the Victor people!
Eternal glory to the heroes who fell fighting the enemy and who gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!”
So that is why we will be celebrating Victory Day on Wednesday at Willow with our Russian friends. The 9th of May will forever be Victory Day for the Russians, and that is just the way it is going to be. We can have VE day whenever we want. They know the real one.
As to those claiming victory in Europe this morning, I hope we eventually figure out exactly what this all means. It certainly won’t be by Wednesday.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Julia and Me
If you haven’t been following things, and chose to get ready for the Kentucky Derby with a dollop of tequila, I would not blame you. I was fully ready for the greatest two minutes in sports, though it came with the peril of nearly missing it altogether. There was so much going on.
Japan, home of the Kyoto Protocol, quietly went non-nuclear yesterday. Think of it: a national without oil or gas resources shutting down a source of relatively cheap, reliable and clean energy.
Well, cheap reliable and clean until it melts down, anyway. I don’t have any good answers on that front, and increasingly, I don’t think that I have any answers at all to the largely self-inflicted litany of troubles that beset us.
I got a note from pone of my pals who is wandering the Black Hills this week, and he is appalled at what the energy extraction interests are doing to the sacred lands of the Lakota Sioux. Well, they were sacred after the Lakota crushed the Cheyenne, who considered it sacred to them until they were expelled by the Sioux in 1776, the same year the European settlers decided to expel the King.
Change is the only constant, I guess. But a lot of us are just giving up on the whole thing. I have been following the unemployment numbers with amusement. You know the shell-game the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been playing. The latest report had a mediocre number of private sector jobs being created- a little over 100,000, while almost 550,000 left the workforce. The shell-game- follow the pea!- is that the rate of unemployment dropped a decimal point to 8.1%
That is nonsense, of course, though we could talk the Boomers who are retiring and try to parse the number of actual retirements and those who have just given up looking for work.
There has been an explosion in the number of Social Security Insurance Disability payments, for which there is no age requirement. You have to have “Plan B,” right?
I fell again yesterday while looking for something I did not need. Once on the floor, I saw what I had lost at the back of a shelf, safe and sound, and since I did not need it, I concentrated on the minor issue of returning to an upright position.
The problem with my left knee and mobility has helped to distill several things, which made me compare and contrast my life with the fictional Julia of the President’s campaign. Suppose I could not work? My regular routine is to visit the big Agency at Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia a couple times a week.
There is a chronic parking problem at the base. Believe it or not, the Agency facility was deliberately designed to have insufficient parking. This was a Carter-era social engineering concept intended to encourage car-pooling. Ignoring the fact that the workforce resides as far away as West Virginia and southern Maryland didn’t work out that well, but c’est la vie. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Lack of parking normally results in having to leave the Bluesmobile in the Commissary parking lot, which is nearly a mile away from the complex. As things stand, I cannot do it.
I suppose I could get a handicapped placard but once on the way down that road, what is the difference between me and the President’s Julia?
The scorn that has greeted the fictional character is rich, and if you have not seen the original, and the multitude of parodies, I encourage you to take a look at an America I do not recognize.
Julia is a Caucasian web-designer, by the way, and her Medicare and Social Security do not appear to be in trouble, at least according to the captions on the PowerPoint presentation.
I don’t know how that works. There has to be something to change the trajectory of doom that those programs are on. Social Security, for example, will be bankrupt the year the fictional Julia turns 21. I will be 82, though the way things are going I doubt if that is going to be of great concern to anyone except the administer of my estate.
So why not apply for SSI Disability if it comes to that? Millions who have dropped out of the job market have done exactly that. I am not saying it is fraud, per se, since we all have our aches and pains. Growing old is not for sissies.
The bill to the taxpayer is around $200 Billion a year- or, what in simpler times, amounts to pretty much what Defense used to cost. Amazing. And it is increasing, particularly in the hard-to-quantify aspects of “pain” and “mental illness.”
So, while Julia fills me with awe (and contempt), I find some troubling parallels in the way simple self-interest makes one think. My pal in San Diego hates the military-industrial complex, and considers people like me parasites the same way Julia is. Between the other Big Government programs (military retirement, VA disability and education benefits, SSI, etc. etc. etc.) I am hardly the paragon of Libertarian small-government.
There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in my protestations against unsustainable government spending when I fully intend to avail myself of getting what I can.
Of course, I could make the argument that I made a personal contract with the government for SSI, Medicare and the military benefits- which Julia did not. The deal was either non-negotiable (SSI & Medicare) or explicit and up front (the military retirement). In the former case, we have paid for our parent’s benefits as we went along. In the latter, the rules for eligibility were clear, and the formula for entitlement clearly earned.
But that doesn’t really matter if we destroy the currency, our savings and debase our meager investments in real property, does it?
I am still stunned by Julia campaign, and the attendant “Forward” slogan. Forward from what? Forward from Change?
This is so patently nonsensical that I worry that it is me who is crazy, and tone-deaf to boot.
(If you haven’t seen it, you should. A search will also harvest the bushel basket of parody. http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Battle of Puebla
(French Zouaves encounter Mexican cavalry at the first Battle of Puebla, 1862. Photo Wikipedia via Mike Manning.)
I don’t think I have a lot more of those sorts of trips left in me. Of course, my learned co-worker pointed out that there were not a lot of requirements left for this sort of thing, and I shook my head in wonder.
We can let the politics thing go. For all the yammering that is going to go on for the next months of summer- more Occupy demonstrations, tits and tats about the economy- I want to highlight just a couple things for you on the way to mint juleps and the Derby later today.
One of them is Julia, a fictional woman whose fictional life was rolled out in a PowerPoint show about all the cool Administration programs that benefit millions of Americans, especially women. It is available at the President’s campaign website and I strongly invite you to make a visit. It is very interesting:
http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia
It is curious that we are concentrating on Really Big Things, like a modest increase in interest rates for a small sub-set of college students on subsidized Pell Grants- Julia is one of them- against the continuing disaster of the greatest economic crisis since the Crash of ’29. Beats me how we get to this. There are some big deals out there- the role of America in the wide world, Iran’s Shia Bomb, the massive decline in participation in the labor force, the intrusive loss of privacy, the de facto establishment of a National Security State just to hit three- why on earth is Julia and her endless tapping of the public coffer the centerpiece of this campaign?
Must be that small group that meets Sundays in the West Wing. You can read about that in the Gray Lady this morning, if that is your cup of Dazbog. Jeff Zelany nails it here.
I prefer to take the fifth of May as a great collision in cultures. There is nothing we cannot appropriate as a decent excuse for the abuse of alcohol. I don’t know what St. Patrick would think of what we have done with his day in the name of solidarity with the downtrodden Irish masses.
Today is not green beer. It is tequila. Cinco de Mayo is now a Spanglish word in the American lexicon. It commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the great Franco Incursion.
You might ask what the hell that was. We have the Monroe Doctrine, right? All European powers are supposed to stay out of “our” hemisphere, right? The President said so.
Napoleon Tres took the opportunity of our preoccupation with blowing each other up (1861-65) to land troops in Veracruz, the same port where American forces landed in 1848 to storm the Halls of Montezuma.
It was not a happy experience for the French, and forces loyal to General Benito Juarez managed to defeat them at the battle of Puebla on this day in 1862. The victory was an inspirational event for wartime Mexico, and it provided a stunning revelation to the rest of the world, whose mainstream media had expected a rapid victory for French arms.
The French were eventually victorious, winning the Second Battle of Puebla on 17 May 1863 and then pushed on to Mexico City, forcing Juarez into exile and installing Habsburg Archduke Maximilian on the throne in 1864. Max proved to be too liberal for the large conservative hacienda owners and too conservative for the more liberal supporters of Juarez, who set up shop in Veracruz. He tried hard, even adopting the old Emperor’s kids (there is still a pretender to the throne out there) but his politics and nationality were not right for the time.
Once the Americans were done slaughtering each other, Washington woke from its preoccupation and threw its support to Juarez and the Liberals, and the Johnson administration (the older one) prevailed on Juarez to execute the hapless Archduke in 1867.
You can flash forward through a lot of our common history on this, right down to the latest nine bodies hanging from the bridge at Nueva Laredo. But the major misconception is that Cinco de Mayo is a major holiday in Mexico. Not so much.
President Juárez declared the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla a national holiday, but the misconception here in the US is that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day. Of course the actual Grita de Dolores is celebrated on dieciséis de septiembre, the 16th of September. I think I can find enough excuses to drink right through.
That was the other thing I meant to mention to you. Benjy Netanyahu just announced that he is going to have early elections this September. That is a full year early, and just in case you hadn’t recalled, the Israelis have had a thing about those pesky Iranians and their nuclear program. One of the Mercedes Mullahs was spouting some rhetoric about the Jewish State that would really irritate you if you lived there. “Israel is a one bomb state,” declared Mr. Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Chairman of the Assembly to Discern the Interests of the State.
(Estimated blast effects (surface and atmospheric) of a nuclear detonation in Israel. This would be very very bad. Photo Google Earth.)
Now, assuming that Mr. Rafsanjani realizes that the Palestinian people are sort of entwined with the Israelis, and would die along with them, his are still not the sort of words that comfort the more bellicose wing of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Early elections mean that Benjy would have a coalition government for several weeks as he forms the new ruling partnership, and hence a free hand. Why September?
I don’t know. Maybe the small group in the West Wing has some thoughts about that.
I checked the lunar phases. Would you believe that the dark of the moon falls on Mexican Independence Day?
So, here is a toast to poor old Max and the Second Empire, and to Mexico herself, a land of magic and smoking mirrors. What is it they used to say? Pity the nation so far from God, and so close to the United States?
“Salud, amor y pesetas. Y tiempo para gastarlas!”
“Health, Love and money, and the time to spend it!”
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Forward
(The President’s new campaign slogan, rolled out this week to much fanfare. You can imagine how the Right is going to doctor this one up.)
Morning. I am not back from the astonishing freedom of the road, where I was complete Captain of my destination (and, perhaps, Destiny.) According to the messages from my body, I have been bludgeoned physically. Mentally, I am now back in the hermitically-sealed bubble of the Beltway, and I am having a hard time transitioning from real life to the one here in the capital. Plus, the President’s re-election slogan has been bugging me since I first heard it.
I have chuckled with amusement that the millionaire Chief Executive (how exactly did he pay for Harvard and get all that money as a community organizer or a state representative? Book royalties? Hah!).
“Forward” is the one-word phrase for the campaign that replaces “Change.” At least I can get onboard with the truthiness of the latter- and I imagine the tone-deaf moron who suggested the former word thought he was dealing with an electorate who does not remember the rich association of the word with radical- no, Communist- politics.
I could rant on about that, but either way you look at it, the slogan is remarkable. It is either a colossal mistake, or one of the weirdest events in recent politics- a politician who is honest about what he is up to. “Forward” is a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. In 1905, jolly Vlad Lenin called his party’s newspaper “Vpered,” the Russian word for “forward.” Stalin used it later in his cult of the personality. It is truly an evocative word.
I need to talk to Svetlana down at the fence line at the farm and ensure that is an accurate translation. She is wonderful, and agrees with me in the most sincere manner that having a dacha in the country is only prudent, given the times.
With an exclamation mark behind it, “Forward!” is a call for the vanguard party of the proletariat to advance past capitalism and enter into the Worker’s Paradise. In fairness, I should note that “Forward” is also the state motto of Wisconsin, and many say that Republican Governor Scott Walker thus is a fellow traveler, based on the logical association.
I would say this: Walker did not get to pick the state motto, and the motto dates to 1851. The entire bizarre recall confrontation is about rolling back the “forward” accomplishments of progressive Wisconsin Governor and Senator Robert Marion “Fighting Bob” La Follette. Now there was a forward guy- but when he urged his progressive movement to move forward, he knew exactly what he meant.
(Senator “Fighting Bob” La Follette. I really like this portrait. I may grow my hair out.)
But I am so tired of politics. We are moving forward on so many things whether we like it or not.
No one represents fiscal sanity and civil liberties except Loony Ron Paul- all the rest of them are just recycled business as usual, with either a lot more or a little less intrusion on our ordinary lives. Some of this crap just comes out of left field, and you know some busy lobbyist has been working hard behind the velvet curtains.
Here is one for you: I just read an alarming piece that described a Senate provision in the Transportation Bill- Senate 1813, or, the “Moving Ahead for Progress-21 (MAP-21) Act.” It is for bridges and highways, and has the dreaded words “and for other purposes” in the title. Those are the ones that lard earmarks into the strange omnibus bills that the Hill has been producing for years- vast things, with thousands of pages no one has read and all sorts of little surprises.
You can read the whole thing online, if you have no life, and it is sponsored by noted progressive legislator Senator Barbara Boxer:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text
I dealt with her staff when I worked on the Hill years ago, and while I would not say that the Senator and her people are deranged, but they are certainly breathing air that is more rarified than the one I am accustomed to.
The “other provisions” line appears in Senate Bill 1813. You would think it would set off alarm bells, but it has not. The other provisions include mandatory installation of Vehicle Event Data Recorders (VEDRs) in all passenger vehicles.
That is the equivalent of the Black Boxes in civil airliners, and like every other casual assault on our liberties, this one comes with some impressive protection for our personal information. Naturally, VEDRs would be hooked to the vehicle navigation systems and have connections to off-board data networks (think about the “OnStar” system) and installation is mandatory.
That provision is on Page 1,068 of the Bill, starting with the 2015 model year. The Bill says the data recorded remains the property of the owner, except when the government decides it is not.
Or your insurance company. One of them- the Progressive One with that crazy lady who is always getting you the best deals- is up front about pricing policies based not on the official record of compliance with the rules of the road, but by onboard monitoring of how you drive.
(Flo from Progressive Insurance will go forward with you, adjusting your rates by the way you drive in real time. Photo Progressive Insurance.)
That is to say, Law Enforcement, should it have a desire, could get a court order (or in my line of work, a “National Security Letter,” which is much easier) and then have complete real-time access to your location, speed and driving habits.
A case disturbingly similar to this just hit the Supreme Court. You may recall that Antoine Jones, a defendant in a cocaine distribution case, argued that police should have obtained a warrant before attaching a GPS device to his Grand Cherokee to monitor his movements. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion for a unanimous court finding that the police conduct was an unconstitutional search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
The case was United States v. Jones, and Antoine won, big time, with the Progressive justices joining the traditional conservative block of Roberts, Thomas and Alito.
“It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case,” Scalia said. “The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted.”
Scalia said Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to the common law tort of trespass, at least until technology began to morph the technical capabilities of the National Security State for monitoring its citizens in the last few decades.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that a search occurs “at a minimum” when the government physically intrudes on a constitutionally protected area- which includes Antoine’s Cherokee. Even in the absence of a trespass, she said, the Fourth Amendment is implicated when there is a violation of a suspect’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
Senator Boxer’s provision is going to have the GPS tracker already installed in your car, hooked up the event recorder. It will be illegal to disable the device. There is so much that pisses me off about where this “forward” bullshit is going. Another step- and some Law Enforcement officer could get a court order to monitor your speed on the PA or Ohio Turnpike.
In the interest of safety, mind you, like that voracious Cop at the border to Ogemaw County. For your own good, of course. Like all those other speed traps- it is not revenue, it is safety.
I saw something odd on I-270 the other day, stuck in the Never-land of gridlock, still miles north of the Imperial City.
It was in the construction belt north of where the two-lane intestate turns into three lanes to snarl into the Capital. In the northbound lanes, a vehicle was parked behind some of the ubiquitous Jersey barriers.
I saw a flash of white light, which indicated that an automated ticketing system had been deployed to bag speeders. I had never seen a mobile unit before; they are common at intersections here in the urban environment. One of coworkers has a continuing problem with an auto-ticket location where I-495 peters out into Pennsylvania Avenue- a four-lane highway were the legal speed drops, for no particular reason, from 65 to 45 over the course of a couple hundred yards.
Senator Boxer’s Senate Bill seems to provide protection to vehicle owners and their data, but this is just one more step in giving the government real-time information on where we go, how fast we get there, and even the ability (like OnStar) to disable the vehicle remotely.
I want one of these devices why?
It will be mandatory in 2015. I may have to think about a new car now, or hang on to the old ones I have and flog them longer. I wonder what else we will have imposed on us through the miracles of technology? You could contact your local idiot in the House of Representatives and comment- the House has not got around to passing its own version of the Transportation Bill, and may take up the Senate version. Or just let the “and for other things” provision of the Bill make you partner up with the government behind the wheel.
It is all about safety, right?
Oh well. “Forward!”
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Mission Complete (Part 23)
(Breezewood, PA, the village of Motels. Photo Courtesy Automatic7).
The roads that connect North and South are always filled with adventure and the possibility of mischance. A real delight sometimes, and sometimes agony. This trip had both.
Approaching the Capital yesterday, I realized suddenly how this all works. I got a palpable sense of the importance- or self importance- of the place. It is physical, not philosophical.
I happened to drive the 849 miles through the little resort towns of Harbor Springs and Petoskey- thoroughly human scale, and in perspective from the vastness of all that fresh wonderful water on the limitless horizon. I thought about that, driving up the bluff that would soon conceal the view of the Bay. I glanced in the side mirror at the light at the top of the rise to see the last sliver of blue, and then snapped my gaze Forward, like the President’s unfortunate and truthful campaign slogan.
There was nothing to speak of in the rest of the journey except the endless concrete of the highways. I-75 is free-for-all, passing through transit and distribution centers for the thin veneer of human settlement. Then Saginaw, from whence a down-at-the-heels Paul Simon once hitch-hiked, and Midland and Bay City and sorry Flint.
The sprawl of Detroit posed no barrier to transit. It was not a friendly old ghost, as Motor City rocker Bob Seger once termed Manhattan- but a ghost nonetheless. I seemed to “float right through.”
Toledo and Cleveland? Not much happening. The low sandy soil of Ohio rolled by- the Spring construction season is in motion, but there was not enough traffic to slow me down. The FX35 was so full of crap that I could not see out the back window, so I gave extra room to the vehicles I overtook before obediently sliding back into the right hand lane.
I had set Youngstown as a goal for the day’s drive. I was not going to die over this trip, and hard experience has taught me that the PA turnpike (America’s First Superhighway!”) snaking up the mountains is nothing to be attempt fatigued and in darkness. The signs for the last Exit in Ohio slid by still in full daylight, and I adjusted to Cranberry, an interchange city north of Pittsburgh, as the place to stay over night.
Still daylight as Cranberry appeared on the beam of the rental car, and I pushed on to Butler Valley before getting off the Turnpike.
There was a Quality Inn, which wasn’t, but I got a handicapped room on the first floor where I could keep on eye on the fully-laden car. I poured a stiff whiskey and watched the dusk settle in, 600 miles under the keel of the Infinity for the day. I limped next door to the ParkNEat restaurant, where I placed a take-out order for a large chef’s salad.
“Is this a typo?” I asked Brittany the waitress. “It says it comes with fries on it.”
“You are not from around here, are you?” she responded with a merry smile. “It is a Pittsburgh thing. They put fries on everything.”
I allowed as how I was not from around there, but rather from her nation’s capital, and was interested in checking it out.
I left the other half for breakfast, did some calculations on when I would be likely to arrive in Washington, and collapsed on the bed, lights out, until after five. I rose, answered another angry note from my sibling with something sarcastic and drove off into the darkness of the pre-dawn.
My point about America- small town people who hump furniture and take day-jobs helping to close down houses and put fries on their salads- is that there is reality there and reality elsewhere. Once past the approaches to Pittsburgh, there was only the blip of Johnstown (of flood fame) and some valley towns that slumbered on the high plateau where I had seen the last snow of winter only a week ago.
Off the Turnpike at Breezewood, the Village of Motels, a crossroads town that exists only because of the highway and the route south to the Carolinas. Then down the big hill toward Maryland. The free highway was blissfully empty heading down to Hagerstown, and I thought I might be enough behind the rush hour toward DC that I might cruise right into town.
Not possible. The Capital is protected by a ring of steel and plastic, a mobile protective moat of automobiles. At Willow last night I opined that it was analogous to the process of the spermatozoa approaching the Ova- millions of individual strivers all targeting the prize, all headed with relentless self-importance and oblivious to what is going on around them in their urgency.
According to the trip advisory on the Hertz Never Lost navigation system, there were 35 miles to go to Big Pink when I arrived in gridlock on I-270, the “High Tech Corridor” dedicated to former Maryland Senator Charles “Chuck” Mathias- I remember him, vaguely, and used to work with his son at Lucent. Sitting in traffic, bladder aching from the pressure of the Vente Starbucks coffee I bought at the service plaza west of Pittsburgh, I realized that Government- me included- was part of the problem.
I bailed out on the George Washington parkway and traffic dematerialized. Riding the last twelve miles down the falls of the Potomac, I realized it was just about over. Except for gassing the rental car, unloading all the crap into the Bluesmobile and actually getting it back to the airport and taking a cab back home and then sitting blankly on my balcony in the clothes that did not suit my current climate.
Home again. Mission Complete, or at least MC, which is what I would put in the box of the government travel claim.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Outdoor Tupping
(The park and marina, looking toward the former Socotra compound on the bluff in The Little Village By the Bay.)
It is a global holiday dedicated to the glory of Labor. I am not sure what that is, precisely, except that when Caleb and I were sweeping out the garage attached to the main house yesterday, the collected dust of the years irritated my lungs. Work can be detrimental to your health, I suspect. But all the crap is moved, either to Transfer Station, Goodwill or Storage.
I thought it was good that the labor was done, this not being Labor Day, but rather more appropriately May Day, and much randier sort of holiday that long predates the organized labor movement. You know:
“Hooray Hooray,
The First of May
Hedgerow tupping
doth start today.”
Not that I know what tupping is, exactly, but a little research yields a link to pagan times on the eve of the Druid festival of Beltane:
“Welcome to the month wherein
Hedgerow tupping doth begin
(Just in England, though, My Dear;
We are much too moral here.)”
I think I will leave that last to the former Santorum campaign. I would prefer tupping to driving, but my work here, per se, is done. The labor remaining is that of throwing the bag in the car and getting on down the road toward home. First was payment to Blane’s Moving and Storage of a few thousand dollars for packing and toting the furniture and boxes we will keep. That incurred a last trip toward Harbor Springs to drop a check before leaving. They do not do credit cards, so that was the last official act in closing down the house.
It is on the road to Bay Bluffs, where we put Raven in the last ten weeks of his life, and the place where he passed from this world to the next.
I veered off M119 onto West Conway Road before those memories came flooding back. There are enough of them crowding around this morning. I need to stay focused.
Going home. That thought is a little jarring, since this building was home for many years. But the matter is done, and off we go.
There is not much to be done in preparation for turning the key a last time, and dropping it into the mail slot. But I am going to have to get on with it, and see where the road takes me today.
For starters, the pavement will take me past Independence Village, where Big Mama passed, and where Jackie and the nice folks on staff provide comfort in the declining days of the cast of characters there.
Willow on Wednesday? I hope so. The bar is only 800 miles away, and there are no blizzards on the Accu-Radar forecast.
Relax. Enjoy the drive toward real spring in Virginia. This was hard, but it seems to have worked out. It is not the last trip North, but it certainly is the last one that will be like this.
(Statue of Chief Ignatius Petoskey of the Little Traverse Band of Odawa Indians. He gazes at the headland west of Harbor Springs. Photo Ellen Goldenich.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com