Tell us a story, Daddy

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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 ...

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

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!

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

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Stimulus that's paid for

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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