burchismo

Saturday, March 06, 2010

RETRACTION

I don't know if I'm blogging again or not, but there's something that's been bugging me for a few weeks now and I need to get it off my chest. Back in September of last year, I wrote about the possibility that the Obama administration was setting itself up for a reduction in the military effort in Afghanistan. I intimated that I thought that was likely.

The Marjah offensive and increased tempo of drone strikes in the Af-Pak theater seem to be clear indications that Obama is willing to pay the price to the far-left appeaser bloc of his supporters. Where do they have to go? i guess he figured out that he has their support no matter what, and that the cost of failure in Af-Pak is too high.

I was wrong. Obama deserves credit for doing the right thing.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 9:17 AM

Thursday, March 04, 2010

RAPTOR vs. LIGHTNING II

[I'm blogging!!!] The F-35 development program is fast becoming a complete disaster. It's way behind schedule and over budget. Now, here's a good piece that's asking -- is the F-35 even militarily vital?

In hindsight, I think DefSec Gates got it exactly wrong and backwards: The F-22 should have been continued and the F-35 canceled. Even if Sukhoi gets its fifth generation fighter into real production, it won't be more than a match for the F-22. It will tip the balance of air power only if it can overwhelm with numbers. With only 180 or so F-22s, that's a possibility, although it will be a stretch for the Russians to actually field that many planes in even a decade. Nevertheless, the issue is a basic one of how air power works: There's air superiority, and then there's air power. Over the next decade, if you have real air superiority, do you need the kind of stealth that the F-35 (supposedly) offers in a strike aircraft? Not really, at least not in most conceivable conflicts. And, if the question is even close, is it necessary to take the risks and pay the outrageous costs to get the F-35 into production and operation? Wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate our technological superiority on the one place where it matters most -- getting control of the sky -- and then count on that to make our current mix of strike aircraft viable for many years to come?

The F-22 assembly line has been shut down. But it could be re-opened. And if it were, it would produce a proven, operational aircraft that, right now, can guarantee absolute air superiority. But not with just 180 aircraft.

Would Gates and Obama have the courage to stop and reverse course on the choice they've made between the Raptor and the Lightning II? Probably not. But I'm pretty well convinced that it would be the right thing to do.

GB, THHotA [I'm blogging!!!!]

posted by Greg 7:02 AM

Saturday, February 20, 2010

HUH?

... so, although I can't say I'm blogging any more, I do use the blogroll links on this site all the time for my own surfing. Over the last couple of weeks, following a computer meltdown, I was forced to make some major hardware and software upgrades. This required some serious work in the Batcave, yanking out five or six years worth of built-up mess in the wiring and re-wiring and re-re-wiring of my personal network. This, in turn forced me to engage in the first major clean-up and reorganization of the tons of ... stuff ... built up in the Batcave since it was first switched on back in '04 or so ...

... all of which has created a small reserve of residual personal energy, which I've been devoting to cleaning up and supplementing my blogroll ... updating dead links, clearing out blogs that have been dead for years, adding ones I've begun to frequent since I last updated things here, and reorganizing things around the various themes of my daily surfing. Although I don't have to actually post anything in the blog itself to make these changes take ... well, I'm doing it.

I do still write about many of the same things I used to write about here, but I do it in some very circumscribed private email fora. In the last few days I vomited out some typically curmudgeonly stuff in one of those groups. Who knows, if I have one more cup of coffee this morning, I might even post it here ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:54 AM

Sunday, September 06, 2009

THE MASK SLIPS

If you depend on the the old-line print and broadcast media for news, you'll see a little blip this morning: One of Barak Obama's 32(?!?!) "czars," a fellow named Van Jones, resigned "under pressure from right wing groups." Jones issued a statement that he'd been the victim of a smear campaign.

OK. Again, if you read the major newspapers or watch the major TV news networks (except for Fox -- which I don't and never have), this little tempest in a teapot would come as a surprise, since there was no reporting of the "smear campaign" before yesterday.

The mainstream media focuses on only one of the last items that was uncovered in independent research on Jones, that he had signed a "911 Truth" nutcase conspiracy petition. Jones said he didn't really read it before he signed it. Sounds like one of those political, inside-the-beltway "gotcha" games. Shrug. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Move on, indeed. Back in APRIL, when Jones was first appointed, independent research had uncovered the truth about Jones in his own words, talking about his radicalization in 1992:
I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of… I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary…I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th..By August, I was a communist.
That's a quote from a glowing 2005 newspaper profile of him in his base in the Bay Area.

Jones' signature on a "911 Truther" document was completely consistent with the EXTREME far left world-view this man has consistently espoused and acted on for almost twenty years. It wasn't an accident, an aberration or unusual for him.

So, which is it? Did Jones "sneak in" to the White House? Did someone appoint him to a job doing what the Obama Administration explicitly considers to be a central aspect of its policies and fail to notice that he was an avowed communist whose entire political career was almost a right wing caricature of the radical left? Or did they know and not care? It can really only be one of those two things.

In either case, the mask slips. The best interpretation of the Jones incident is that the Obama administration is incompetent.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 11:08 AM

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

AFGHAN DISASTER

Some say Obama is beginning to position himself to reverse course on Afghanistan, the so-called "good war." I can take unhappy credit for predicting this many months ago.

If you want to know what's really going on in Afghanistan, don't waste your time with anything but the reporting of the absolute best war correspondent to come out of "The Long War," Michael Yon. Here's his latest dispatch from Afghanistan. Read it if you want to be informed. And then make a contribution to Yon by hitting his Paypal tip jar. Yon is an independent journalist supported entirely by his readers. Do yourself a favor and buy some real information from someone who is there and risks his life to find out the truth for you.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:00 AM

Saturday, August 29, 2009

THE THUNDERING SILENCE

One of the things that most repels me about the left's domination of our public culture is its refusal to address the harrowing, fundamental misogyny of the Islamic world. Start your consideration of this with a few minutes reading this woman's description of the lives women are forced to endure across the Muslim world. Make yourself do it. Then, spend a few minutes reading the comments to the article here to see the kind of apologetics engendered by the moral and cultural relativism into which our public culture has sunk.

Seventy years ago, leftists volunteered to fight the fascist Phalangists in the Spanish Civil War. American volunteers -- overwhelmingly from the leftist intelligentsia -- formed the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" to fight the fascists there. Where is that kind of militant, transnational defense of liberty today when literally hundreds of millions of women in the Islamic world are denied the basic human rights that the left in the West claims to be fundamental to its identity? Why isn't there a "Susan B. Anthony Brigade" of Western feminists fighting alongside the Marines in Afghanistan?

Could it be that it is much much more important to be opposed to "American imperialism" than it is to have the slightest shred of moral and intellectual integrity and consistency?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 10:57 AM

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

DEAD KENNEDY

It seems like whole political history of our time has been punctuated by dead Kennedies. Take just a minute to read the Wikipedia article about "the Chappaquiddick Incident" as you listen to the lionizing of "the Lion of the Senate" going on on the radio and TV.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:33 AM

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

RAPTOR BLUES

I don't know if it's a function of F-22 fans mobilizing to try to build support for reviving the Raptor production line, but there have been a number of items in the defense-tech world recently about the threat posed by the latest generation of Su-27 derivatives. Here's one, for instance, that talks about Russian efforts to "stealth up" the Sukhoi birds. And this overview of the current state-of-the-art Russian bird, the Su-35, makes the plane look pretty damned impressive.

I feel pretty sure the Su-35 would eat F-35s for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The only solutions would be to either give them indigestion by feeding them LOTS of JSFs, or to overpower them with Raptors. But 187 F-22s seem like pretty thin protection from the likes of this beast. If The Messiah is willing to waste TRILLIONS of dollars on absurd "stimuli," couldn't we afford just a few more Raptors?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:03 AM

Sunday, August 23, 2009

THE ICY COMMANDER WAS RIGHT

For almost 40 years, lunar geologists had believed that Alan Shepherd, a/k/a "The Icy Commander," had cut the longest walk on Apollo14 short and missed taking samples from the target they had assigned him. Check out this item and the amazing attached image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It turns out Shepherd was right when he claimed they'd reached the objective -- and it wasn't a problem that he high-tailed it back to the lander to engage in his famous lunar golf swing. Shepherd's dead now, but you can still see his footprints on the Frau Mauro highlands of the moon.

GB

posted by Greg 6:37 PM

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

DISFAVORED TECHNOLOGIES

As long readers of this blog will know, I am a strong proponent of two technologies that have what I believe to be truly world-changing possibilities, nuclear power and "missile defense." Both are and have been strongly disfavored by the left, the deep "Green-Red Alliance" that preaches a broad anti-technology gospel. Each addresses a basic threat to the core vitality of our civilization posed by backward societies that have the potential to hold us hostage. Both technologies have to be supported by our political "leadership" in order to overcome an inertia against them that has been injected into our political culture by the left. Both are threatened by the fact that the left is currently in power in the nation that has, until now, led the free world. We live in a moment of great peril, but great promise, if only we can be shaken from our fears and embrace our potential. Will we awaken?

These thoughts are prompted by two items that have come to my attention in the last day. The first is the blog Atomic Insights, a good addition to any reading list devoted to the subject of nuclear power. The second is this retrospective at AvLeak about the history and current state of missile defense. Check 'em out and consider how close we are to solving huge problems that plague our society, if only we could have decent leadership.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:52 AM

Sunday, August 16, 2009

IMMORAL

We're fighting a war in Afghanistan. Or so I hear. When you read things like this, it's pretty hard to tell what we're fighting for:
An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law. It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.
What's the point? Americans are dying so these people can have a "democracy." Democracy is the big value here, right? Democracy -- not liberty. As a civilization, we've become so castrated that we can't stand up and say that this is wrong.

Since that's the case, we have no business reorganizing things so that one group of oppressive savages can be in charge instead of another.

Meanwhile, to the extent that it's even possible to say who the enemy in the war is (given the brutality of the natives on our side), the Guardian is reliably on the side of whoever is killing our troops.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 11:33 AM

Saturday, August 15, 2009

HOPE?

I haven't kept up with blogging since the Apollo 11 anniversary. As usual, both too much and too little going on is the reason. In the meantime, out in the so-called "real world," the United States has gone a little crazy over the chance to have some actual input into the collection of train wrecks that has been the Democratic Party "salvation plan" for America. Who could have guessed that the Democrats would be so inefficient that they would let slip away the opportunity to cram it all down our throats in one choking shove? But here it is -- one chance to put on the brakes before we dive head-first down the rat hole. And the only thing the Democrats seem to be able to do is forget the monstrous rhetoric they encouraged for eight years and act shocked -- shocked! -- at the nastiness that's been unleashed when they messed up and let us have a chance to have a say. For the first time in months and months, I feel hopeful.

And for those who need a reminder of why this matters, here's a view from someone in England who lives where we've been heading.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 5:09 PM

Monday, August 03, 2009

1 + 1

An item linked at Drudge:
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.
In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.
And then, this, at the Washington Post:

"Everyone knows nuclear plants run on uranium, right?" Grae continues, and then launches into a litany of uranium's persistent problems. Nuclear plants in service today run on a fuel mix that generates enough spent uranium and plutonium to build dozens of nuclear weapons each year in the United States alone. That waste will remain highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. It already adds up to more than 78,000 metric tons, with highly uncertain prospects for safe, long-term storage.

But what if these very same nuclear power plants were able to run on a different fuel mix? A mix that: first, would generate only a minor amount of waste, if any, that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. Second, could destroy tons of plutonium instead of generating it. Third, would produce less than half the volume of current fuel waste, which would remain radioactive for only a few hundred years. And, fourth, is made from an element far more abundant, less radioactive and cheaper than uranium: thorium.

And what if the technology had already gotten positive reviews from the American Nuclear Society, the World Nuclear Association and, in particular, from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world's nuclear watchdog, which, in a 2005 report titled Thorium Fuel Cycle -- Potential Benefits and Challenges, called it "an attractive way to produce long-term nuclear energy with low radiotoxicity waste?"

The answer is available. Now. But, really, by all means, let's run around like chickens with our heads cut off, and do, for all practical purposes ... nothing. OK?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 5:52 AM

Friday, July 24, 2009

RAPTOR-KILLING MEMES

The main arguments that have -- so far -- killed the building of more than about 180 F-22s are listed out in this AvLeak piece.

I have mixed feelings about the F-22, as I've expressed here before. But when Congress is firehosing "stimulus" money to "save jobs" ... why not?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 10:04 AM

Monday, July 20, 2009

A NEW BEGINNING -- FORTY YEARS ON

One of the things that spurred me to start blogging again was the nearing of this day – the 40^th anniversary of the landing of the first human beings on the moon. Long-time readers of this blog can imagine the mixed feelings with which I contemplate the passing of four decades since Neil and Buzz took those first steps. On the one hand, there’s no denying the thrill of remembering the awesome achievement that put men on the moon. Just 66 years after the first heavier than air flight, and just a little more than two decades after the first war fought in part with ballistic missiles, our species managed to fling a tiny part of itself at least a little way into the vast ocean of space. The intensity of the effort of the ten years that led up to Apollo 11 has few parallels in human history, and almost nothing to compare in terms of the breadth of coordination it took and the audacity of its goal, combined with the fundamentally worthwhile nature of its achievement.

For all intents and purposes, it was done in the blink of an eye – and in the blink of an eye, it was all thrown away. Having built all the tools required to become a true space-faring species, we turned our back on the adventure and, instead, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars (far more than the cost of Apollo) and all of the decades since in a floundering descent into the corrupted political pig-trough that the US national space program has become. For thirty of the forty years that have passed since Apollo 11, private individuals have tried to work around the hulking roadblock NASA has become to real space development. For the first twenty years of that time, much was spent in the coin of blood sweat and tears with little to show for the effort in terms of the only thing that counts in the end – real flying hardware. But a little noted event last week marked the achievement of a meaningful milestone: SpaceX, a company that started from nothing and has built all of its hardware itself, had its first complete commercial success, launching the satellite of a paying customer into orbit with a rocket it designed and built itself from scratch.

The wreckage of the US national space program still lies in the road, but a way forward has now been blazed around that obstacle. Little by little, the human species will again begin to build momentum toward the stars.
GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:08 AM

Saturday, July 18, 2009

FADING AWAY

Oh, yeah. There's this, too.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 10:00 AM

LONG TIME NO SEE

I've been taking one of the longest breaks ever from my blog. There have been lots of reasons for this. I've been preoccupied at work and and with other non-work pastimes, and it's summer, so there's plenty to do away from the computer. But more important, I've tried (unsuccessfully) to turn my attention away from "the big world." Watching the unrelenting disaster as our so-called leaders have applied precisely the wrong prescription to the maladies that afflict our society has been so horrifying that it's been frankly unhealthy for me to pay too much attention to the world. But I can't turn away. Like creeping past the scene of a terrible road accident, I feel terrible for doing what everyone else is doing -- slowing to stare at the blood -- but I do it anyway. As I commented to some friends the other day, if you made this stuff up in a novel, it wouldn't be credible: No government could be so corrupt and incompetent, especially one that had come to power on a critique of corruption and incompetence. But it's really that bad -- and getting worse every day.

So, let's see ... with that theme for an inaugural post returning to blogging, let's take a look at a few illustrations of just how absurdly bad things are:
National Debt Road Trip
Penny Wise
Pound Foolish
Get it?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:31 AM

Friday, May 22, 2009

BATTLE-TECH NOTES

A couple of items from the sources on military technology I frequent. First, the Air Force tells Congress what it would like to spend money on -- if there were any money to spend: Fielding significant numbers of F-35s as soon as possible, upgrading the existing force, and the "next generation bomber" (the so-called "NGB").

Now that we know that we're going to lose guaranteed air superiority some time in the mid-to-late-2010s because of the decision to end F-22 production at a grossly inadequate number, the only solution to be sure that we can function in the air battle space in that time and beyond is to flood the sky with other planes and take our lumps. The F-35 is slower, less maneuverable and carries a smaller war load than the F-16. Counting on its stealth to make up for that is foolish. Stealth was a magic bullet in the 1980s through the current time, but its value will erode as sensor technology catches up. In a more evenly-matched threat environment, there's going to be no substitute for sheer numbers. Want to stimulate the economy? Pour on the Lightning IIs.

The need to keep the Eagles and Falcons we have flying for another 20 years or so is also right. Again, it's simply a numbers game. I'm reminded of the role the Me-109 played for the Luftwaffe in World War II. By the beginning of what we think of as the war (as opposed to the Spanish or the Chinese, for whom the war began a lot earlier), the 109 was "obsolete" in the sense that the Allies were beginning to field superior planes. But the 109 made up for this through sheer numerical superiority and operational reliability. The F-15 (especially the Strike Eagle) and the F-16 will have to play a similar role in American air power over the next one to two decades. For that, money will have to be spent.

As for the strike capability envisioned with the NGB, I'm not so sure. It's hard to tell much about this program, because there are signs that some of it is developing in the black budget. But a new manned pure "strategic" bomber, with all its attendant expense, seems like a long shot in an environment in which we can't have assured air superiority. By the time such a conception of the NGB could actually come on line (the late 2010s at the earliest), I think a cheaper, unmanned solution to delivering ordinance might make much more sense.

And then, over here, we see continuing talk about the pressing need to develop practical tactical-level directed energy weapons. The sources cited in this article make the point that the need is obvious and the experience we've had with playing "catch-up" with these kinds of systems ought to be a lesson. But it won't be ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:40 AM

Sunday, May 10, 2009

COMEDY GOLD

Good morning. Yes, that's the coffee you smell:
Some of Barack Obama's richest supporters fear they have elected a "class warrior" to the White House, who will turn America's freewheeling capitalism into a more regulated European system.
Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America - and that they were more than just election rhetoric.
A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: "I'm appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it's the real world. I'm surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He's a real class warrior."
Would you like some crow with your coffee?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:13 AM

Thursday, May 07, 2009

THE RIGHT FLANK

Here's a piece by Bruce Bawer at LGF that sets out clearly the sad state of the collapse of the "right flank" of the anti-jihad movement. What a sorry bunch of chattering little monkeys we are ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:29 AM

Saturday, April 25, 2009

SINGULAR VISION

Here's a short interview with one of the smartest people I ever have had the pleasure to meet, science fiction author Vernor Vinge. If you're not familiar with the idea of "the Singularity" as originally formulated by Vinge, this brief piece provides a good overview.

Vinge is apparently still pretty optimistic that the kind of uniquely dramatic change he envisions will occur within the next twenty years. Ten years ago or so, when I met Vinge, I certainly would have agreed that 2030 was a good guess for a date by which things would take a massive spike upward.

Not any more. I've become distinctly pessimistic that such developments will happen within two decades -- or even whether they might happen at all. The amount of resources that would have to be devoted to the necessary tasks simply aren't going to be available, I'm afraid. The decade of the 2010s will be one of retrenchment, at best. At worst (and the worst seems distinctly possible now), crucial nodes of social and technological integration necessay for the "great leap forward" of the Singularity will be so disrupted that it will be impossible to realistically foresee achieving the kinds of progress required. In other words, things may get much worse before they get better ... if they ever do.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:49 AM

Friday, April 24, 2009

THE WAR ON TWO FRONTS

On the other side of the world, the fuse is burning shorter. In Pakistan, the ultimate nightmare, an Islamist takeover of Pakistan -- and thus their possession of a ready-made nuclear arsenal, continues to become more likely. They are advancing into territory prepared for them by 1400 years of cultivation: at least hundreds of thousands of people who sympathize with their goals lie on the other side of a shaky barrier being hastily thrown across the line of their march. Every effort to stop the savages will be undermined by their partisans among the defenders of Islamabad.

Will this offensive be the one that breaks through to the ultimate prize of nuclear weapons for the jihadis? Maybe, maybe not. But if it's not, there will be another. And another. And another. The chances that they will succeed during the term of Barack Obama's presidency are very real. The day that happens, all of his rhetoric about "reaching out" and "dialogue" will be as nothing, puffs of scented air blown away in the hot wind of the Punjab.

Meanwhile, here in the civilized world, there is a war of words, as rational people try to shore up the front of common decency against threats from the demons of our own primitives. For years, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has suffered a constant barrage of hate from the left, as he is villified as a "fascist" by the idiots who see Nazis behind every judgment of right and wrong. But what those morons haven't had the moral sense to detect is that he and others like him have been stalwart defenders of liberal values against real fascists who have sought to hijack the anti-jihad movement. Johnson's willingness to be honest about the distinction between his views and those of racist tribalists who want to harvest the fear of the rising threat of Islamism has subjected him to terrible criticism from the far right. The howling is now of equal volume from both sides. Here's a recent piece that offers one of the few notes of support for this man who has been willing to stand against irrationality, from whatever direction it comes.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:25 AM

Thursday, April 23, 2009

MEANWHILE ....

Let's pause and do a reality check. If you have the stomach for it, check out this developing story about a video of gross torture carried out by a member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates. This is particularly interesting because the story is playing out in the civil litigation community here in Houston that is my professional environment.

If we call what the CIA did to Kalid Sheik Muhammed "torture," what is this? "Super-torture?" Yes, I know that one of my heroes, Christopher Hitchens, had himself waterboarded, after which he very vehemently confirmed that this practice was, indeed, torture. And it probably is. But the story at the above link ought to make one pause for at least a moment to consider the difficult question of making distinctions among examples of such darkness ...

At any rate, this story serves as a chilling and pointed reminder of the devil's bargain our civilization has made with the savages who sit on top of the oil lake in the Arabian desert. Oh that our so-called "leaders" had the will to really address this!

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:45 AM

Monday, April 20, 2009

RETURN TO THE PAST

My last post was about how the growing power of the Chinese military sets the stage for a tectonic shift in what might be called 'the state system" or the global balance of power. This detailed Rand presentation on a study of how US and Chinese air power might compare in actual combat in a few years is instructive in that regard.

The more I think about this, the more I see a retrun to the kind of dynamics in the world that pertained from about 1880 or so through the Second World War. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars through about 1880, Britain was the undisputed master of the seas, and therefore of the world. But with the coming of coal-fired, steam-powered battleships, "rising powers" such as Germany and Japan (and the US) began to at least have the potential to challenge that straegic pre-eminence.

In our time, air superiority is the equivalent of the kind of sea power that marked Britain's supremacy and the challenges to it a hundred years ago or so. The ability of China (and others) to field "smart" weapons that can undermine the strategic dominance of US military power will retrun the world to the kind of Great Power pushing and shoving that marked the period from 1880 to 1945 or so.

One key difference, though, between our time and that of the great Dreadnoughts is that the US will certainly not have the kind of political will required to maintain an imperial milieu. So -- how does the new age of Dreadnoughts work itself out when there is no analog of Britannia willing to rule the seas of the air?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:51 AM

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

NEW WORLD ORDER

Here's a good overview of Chinese pursuit and implementation of precision-guided weapons from the strategic to the tactical level. It's been well more than twenty years that US military planners could count on significant advantages in this kind of thing. It seems that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. And with China, the genie has found a home prosperous enough to support it.

For some reason, this feels like a prelude to a return to an earlier era in strategic relations -- the era of more-nearly equivalent Great Powers; the age of the Dreadnoughts. I feel pretty sure the US won't have the stomach to fill the role that the British did in those days -- the primer inter pares willing to shoulder the burden of staying on top in a world where multiple Great Powers are pushing into the first rank. At a first order of analysis, this seems to lead to the necessity of either defining relatively clear spheres of influence for new Great Powers, or ceding global primacy to another Power that is willing to muscle its way to the top and expend the blood and treasure necessary to stay there. A politically stable China seems to fit that description.

Better get to work on figuring out how to define spheres of influence ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:21 AM

Saturday, March 28, 2009

SCHADENFREUDE

How delicious -- The Economist recognizes that there is less to Barack Obama than met the eye:
HILLARY CLINTON’S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. It went to the heart of the nagging worry about the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois: that he lacked even the slightest executive experience, and that in his brief career he had never really stood up to powerful interests, whether in his home city of Chicago or in the wider world. Might Mrs Clinton have been right about her foe?

. . .

... at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.
There's more, and well worth reading, if for nothing else than to see a sterling example of the thundering realization that being Barack Obama -- and not being George Bush -- isn't sufficient qualification for the presidency. I wonder whether Obama has had that realization yet.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 10:54 AM

Thursday, March 26, 2009

LOSING OUR WAY

When an individual person spends their time articulating nothing but criticism of themselves and obsessively ridicules his own identity, we recognize the pathology of clinical depression. So what to make of a whole civilization that does the same thing?

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:23 AM

Thursday, March 19, 2009

NO CLUES HERE

Nope, nothing meaningful at all. Move along ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:52 AM

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

GIVING UP IN AFGHANISTAN

This was inevitable. Obama definitely doesn't have the stomach for it, so we're going to be pulling out of Afghanistan before long. He'll use the meltdown of our economy as an excuse for changing the policy he ran on. I wouldn't want to be a woman in Afghanistan ...

Oh, and BTW, this pretty much guarantees an Indo-Pak war within the next five years. A nuclear war.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:22 AM

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

MASTERS OF BULL

This piece about how Harvard's MBA program has produced the people who have run our economic society into the ground over and over is worth a look. It glances along one of the main vectors of my ruminations about The Collapse that keep influencing the direction of my thinking: That our educational and cultural institutions are deeply broken, producing group after group of young people equipped with a very wrong-headed view of the world and a very inadequate basic knowledge of fundamentals.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 9:08 AM

Monday, March 09, 2009

PRESENT

To those few loyal friends who have asked after me, I note that I am still present. Yeah, that's the ticket ... I'm voting "present" right now ... that's all.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
GB< THHotA

posted by Greg 8:32 AM

Friday, February 06, 2009

STILL NOTHING

I'm in trial ... And so is America. A case is being put before the American people -- "the Stimulus." It seems like hollow bluster to me. The "Stimulators" accuse their opponents of adhering to a discredited ideology from the past that has turned out to be based on myths. But they mouth the faith of the Stimulators as if they were facts: "Spending X billion dollars in such and such a way will create Y jobs." They're not facts. They're theories; theories based on models and assumptions piled up upon assumptions.

All the while, the huge, lurking monster in the middle of the room is ignored: American industry has evaporated. Over the last forty years we have come to the point where we buy far more from abroad than we can afford. We do not create nearly enough real value in the United States to pay for this consumption.

If I were the judge in this trial, I would stop it: The Stimulators have put on no real evidence to support their claim, and they ignore the central issue in the case. Directed verdict: plaiintiff takes nothing.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:13 AM

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

VECTORS OF POWER

Here's a nice, bitter pill for your morning:
Today, however, our dependency upon foreign investors will approximate more and more the state of international indebtedness we historians associate with the reigns of Philip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France -- attractive propositions at first, then steadily losing glamour.

It is possible that the early sales of Treasurys this year could go well, since panicked investors may prefer to buy bonds that pay nothing to shares of companies that may go bust. But certain sharp-eyed analysts of the Treasurys market already hint that the appetite for Obama-bonds is limited.

Do people really think that China can buy and buy when its investments here have already been hurt, and its government can see the enormous need to invest in its own economy? If a miracle happened, and China bought most of the $1.2 trillion from us, what would our state of dependency be then? We could be looking at as large a shift in the world's financial balances as that which occurred between the British Empire and the United States between 1941 and 1945. Is everybody happy at that? Yet if foreigners show little appetite for U.S. bonds, we will soon have to push interest rates up.
While I disagree with some of the identification of causes in this piece (it is all laid far too readily at the feet of the hated Bush), the basic economic logic of power described here is inescapable.

So ... it's time for me to ante up something positive, some prescription for how to escape this death-spiral. The problem is what I think of as "financialism:" the idea that all the problems and all the solutions are somehow to be found in the manipulation of money in ever-more-sophisticated ways. Both the monetarists and the Keynesians get this wrong. You simply can't make something from nothing, no matter how clever you are.

An extremely gifted financial operator told me a few weeks ago that the only way out of the mess we're in is inflation -- printing money. I don't doubt that the radical first-aid required at this point to keep the patient alive long enough to get to the hospital involves a massive dose of inflation. It's analogous to pumping fluids into a bleeding man going into shock. But in the long run, inflation is just an emergency measure, and one with its own dire consequences if kept up too long.

No, there's only one long-term solution to the problem. We -- the American people -- are going to have to earn our way out of the hole we've dug ourselves into the old fashioned way; by creating something real that other people in the world want to buy. If we don't see that, if we don't take the distorting glasses of "financialism" off and see the world as it really is, we can kiss "the American dream" goodbye.

Barack Obama will either see this, and deliver this news to the American people, or we are well and truly doomed to second-rate status as a nation and a civilization -- at best. Why it has to be Obama who does this is the subject for another post ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:11 AM

Monday, January 12, 2009

CULTURE WAR CONTINUES

This note describes what would once have been unthinkable, David Horowitz appearing at a meeting of what might be considered the headquarters of the post-modernist domination of academia, the Modern Language Association. I have many friends who tell me that my decades-long focus on the pomo infestation in academia is misplaced. They say one or both of two things: (1) It's not as bad as I maintain, or (2) it was bad, but it's fading and no longer important. As I've written here many times, I reject these critiques. The moral relativism and stealth Marxism of post-modernism is still alive and well in academia, and has a deeply pernicious influence on our culture at large.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:11 AM

Friday, January 09, 2009

SUCKERS

The mainstream media, in the tank for Hamas.

They never learn. And they don't care.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:57 AM

Monday, January 05, 2009

HAPPY (?) NEW (?) YEAR (?)
... and a note about fantasy

In earlier times, this blog had an impressively large readership, given its modest scope and narrow personal focus. Months of neglect should have done away with that. For the friend, acquaintance or random web surfer who stumbles into this dusty, neglected corner, I offer the explanation for the unkempt condition here that I have been working on a major project that has taken up all of my free writing time. Whether that project will ever come to anything is a question that won't be answered for some time and, until it does, I shall leave it as a matter that won't be addressed here: To disclose it publicly would be to doom it to certain failure.

In the meantime, the world as we knew it continues to unravel. More than once I have considered beginning the project of recording some thoughts about that here ... but the job of doing so systematically is more than I can undertake now. On the other hand, I may well jot a note or two here from time to time about the nature and extent of the disaster overwhelming the world. In that vein, consider the following:

There were a number of absurd fantasies abroad these last ten years or so upon which much of the now-disappearing world was premised. One of them was that the swift erosion of the American industrial economy was somehow made irrelevant by the rise of "the information economy." The absurdity of this notion can now be seen clearly. You can't eat bits. Nor can you wear them, drive them to the store or live inside of them. And bits are the first thing to go when people are forced to retreat to primal priorities such as the simple survival of the flesh. At a certain level, a great deal of the illusory growth of the American economy over the last twenty years boiled down to a mutual fantasy pact: We all agreed that information was something it wasn't.

Consider how seductive this mutual fantasy was for intellectuals: The very stuff they were good at -- ideas -- was the thing we shall build our lives on. The age-old Platonic dream of a world where Idea literally is Real was to ... become Real. Literally saying so would make it so; the ultimate wish-fulfillment of the intellectual.

As they say, NOT.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:43 AM

Saturday, November 22, 2008

ANOTHER EVIL OMEN

AvLeak has just axed all of their senior journalists covering the space beat. Even if government space policy under the new administration is likely to be one long, slow-motion train wreck, and even if the entrepreneurial space scene is likely to be mightily depressed by the collapse of the economy, it would have been nice to keep Aviation Week's experienced team together to chronicle the disaster.

Oh well ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:49 AM

Sunday, November 09, 2008

GOOD FOR A LAUGH

At least we can always count on PJ to eke out a few good laughs from the truth, no matter how terrible the truth is.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:06 PM

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. I must and will suspend the doubts I have about his character, because I respect the office to which he has been lawfully elected. I urge all those who did not support him in the campaign process to also suspend your doubts, and join together to support President Obama. He will be tested, both by crisis from abroad and by pressures from the radical elements of his own party. Leadership of the experiment in secular, republican government upon which the American people embarked 232 years ago has now been entrusted to his hands. To wish President Obama other than success is a disservice to that great enterprise. May he be inspired by the ideals of the Founders, and the strength of the American character to lead us well.

posted by Greg 7:58 AM

Friday, October 10, 2008

SHOUTING INTO THE WIND OF THE PERFECT STORM

Although my personal life is slowly returning to something like it's pre-hurricane shape (but by no means really the same), I'm not inclined to begin blogging again. A much bigger and more disruptive storm is raging across the world, ripping away decades of progress. I have the idea that the eye of the storm will pass over us on election day, when Obama will be elected and, for the great majority of the public voices, it will seem as though calm has come at last and that the terrible calamity has passed.

But it will only be a pause in the disaster. Having smashed up the structure of the world into loose debris, the second part of the storm will then commence, as Obama, with his great mandate, will begin to "fix" things.

It will be many, many years before the notion of economic liberty will be able to reassert itself, and when it does, it will look very different than it did before the storm. When the floodwaters recede, the true magnitude of the devastation will be revealed as we venture out, eyes blinking in shock at the extent of the damage. We will see the temporary walls of sandbags being replaced by high barriers, the construction being carried out by those who will cheerfully explain how foolhardy we were before the storm to have been so blind to the danger of living out in the open. They will have a mandate to radically reshape the contours of our great city in the name of safety, and their hands will be out, demanding payment for the public works.

I have ideas about how those who would not retreat behind the high walls might preserve a little blue sky, but I am not hopeful that they will be heeded, so I am loathe to even speak them. What's the point now that our savior has arrived? With this storm at his back, he will sweep into such power that a quiet voice that speaks of balancing risks against rewards will seem foolhardy. And, even in the best case, the chance to try to strike a better balance won't come again in my lifetime. So it seems best to me to just be quiet and hope that another generation will have the will to stand against the wind.

It is a time of hunkering down.

... LATER:

It suddenly came to me. An image from a movie in my childhood that pretty well sums it up for me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWphqA1Slrw&feature=related

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 5:43 AM

Friday, October 03, 2008

BILL WHITTLE SPEAKS FOR ME

Here.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:16 PM

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

POST-IKE

We got power back to the house this weekend. Getting things roughly back to pre-Ike-tastrophy mode took a couple of days, and I still have quite a few things to do to completely eradicate the signs that we were in what a friend of mine called "Apollo 13 mode" for two weeks. Meanwhile, I'm in my temporary office space and actually getting back to something like a reasonable rythm at work again. But it will be a while -- probably until this weekend -- before I start posting again with any regularity. meanwhile, the collapse of Western civilization continues apace ....

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:44 AM

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

STILL NO POWER

Our house is still without grid power. I spent a good deal of yesterday working to get things rigged for a longer haul running on the generator for minimal function and survivable air flow in the house, because I think it might be another week before we get electrons flowing from outside again ...

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 12:41 PM

Saturday, September 20, 2008

VIRTUE, AFTER THE STORM

There's no way I can "catch up" on all I've missed out on since the hurricane. I'm still spending a LOT of time just maintaining the minimal functionality I've got with the generator here at the house (these little machines take quite a bit of monitoring and on-going fiddling to operate consistently), and trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered office at work. But in amongst all that, I'm scanning here and there in my usual haunts online and picking out the most interesting looking bits to read more deeply.

In that process, I came across this essay about the importance of the notion of "virtue" in moral philosophy. (That may seem like a trivial or almost like a tautological statement, BTW, but it's not, as this piece explains.) Although the example given by the author at the end to illustrate what may be a way forward, "back" to a virtue-based ethics, is one that makes me queasy, I do agree with the basic premise of the piece -- that the fundamental ground of liberal moral philosophy is essentially empty at its core; that something more, and more fundamental, is required than the basic liberal prescription of individual autonomy.

Looking for a solid foundation upon which to ground such a "pre-liberal" core of virtue is a hard project for a secular, scientifically-minded person such as myself. And it must be made clear that this project does not entail a rejection of the liberal moral or political program. Rather, it is a recognition that, ultimately, the liberal moral program is only instrumental in nature, albeit hugely important. The liberal moral and political insights of the Enlightenment are wonderfully and crucially important. But they aren't enough.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 3:56 PM

OFF AND ON AND OFF AND ON

We lost power again, three (?) days ago. I now have a generator providing haphazard power to the house, but it's a touch-and-go thing. If I can get that stabilized, I may post more later.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:50 AM

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

BACK

I am finally back online, with power to the house, four and half days after Ike. We had downed trees and fences, but Anthea, all the animals and I came through OK. Thanks to all who stayed in touch via Blackberry (which came back online only a few hours into Day 1), and especially Michael and Chizuko, who fed me news via email through that low-bandwidth link.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 4:26 PM

Friday, September 12, 2008

IKE

8:00 PM: Winds gusting up now. Had some power interruptions. If I haven't responded to your emails, we're OK. But I'm thinking we'll be losing power for the duration soon.

See you on the flip side ....

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 7:59 PM

Thursday, September 11, 2008

911

Seven years ago today. NEVER FORGET.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 6:43 PM

STORM WINDS

It looks like hurricane Ike is headed this way, although the models have more spread of projected paths than I've seen lately. Which is a good segue into a link dump of some material about Islam that's collected in my browser as a result of a little online discussion I've been having in a forum I frequent:
The Language of the Koran: This piece is a personal testament by a Muslim who grew up in Syria from a devout childhood to a loss of faith based on something one doesn't hear much about unless you dig pretty deeply, the linguistic difficulties of the Koran itself. This item is brief and, as I indicate, personal, but it points to two things that are, in my opinion, extraordinarily important. The first is the fact that the actual text (as opposed to the content and substance) of the Koran is itself extremely problematic. The language is not the Arabic spoken by any population today, and an honest approach to that fact opens the door to the second important point: That deep, scholarly understanding of that text outside of the world of believing Muslim scholars who work primarily from the accepted religious authorities on the issues raised by the problematic language is almost completely nonexistent. Over the last 200 years, Christian and Jewish biblical scholarship has been deeply enriched by textual analysis from a whole host of angles, from material created by deeply committed religious scholars, to completely secular researchers and analysts. Everyone but the most ignorant fundamentalists accepts that understanding of the Bible has been enriched by this process. Nothing even remotely like this has taken place in the Muslim world.
A Culture of Darkness: And this brief item explains why. It reviews the objective evidence that demonstrates how Arab and Muslim culture is almost completely closed off to all learning from outside itself, and even from critical perspectives from within.
With Predictable Results: Not surprisingly, this darkness, with an obscure hodge-podge of nearly incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo at its heart, leads to the rationalization of some pretty primitive and nasty things, like the systematic victimization of women. This item revisits just how bad things are for women in Iran, and how much worse they're likely to get. And this piece, making its way through the PC filters of The Guardian, casts just a little light on how terrible life is for women in Pakistan. Meanwhile, feminists in the West expend their considerable energies pitching fits of comical outrage about Sarah Palin. Now there's a sense of priorities for you.
But We Keep paying for It: And while the world sleeps, we continue to pour our wealth into Muslim hands through the high-pressure fire-hose of our oil addiction. If you have any doubt, check out this short little snapshot of the economic life of Abu Dabhi, a nasty little medeival kngdom that produces nothing and whose people could not possible create anything -- except the oil to which we are addicted.
And, Ultimately, We'll Have to Really Fight: Which finally leads to two book reviews. The first, about a recent book chronicling Israel's epic secret war against Iran that's been going on almost completely silently behind the scenes for 30 years, gives only modest hope that effective step against the genuine enemy of civilization are possible. And the second addresses that darling of the left, Tariq Ramadan, the "moderate scholar" who gets trotted out on a regular basis to exemplify the fruits of peaceful dialogue with Islam, and how superior that approach is to the bloody brutishness advocated by the likes of me. I have a particular personal animus toward Ramadan, because a few years ago, I basically lost a group of life-long friends over my refusal to agree to their assessment that he was a moderate. This was taken as evidence that I had become a neocon zombie. Which I take as evidence that Ramadan has been extraordinarily successful in deploying the Islamists most effective weapon against us -- our own open-mindedness, tolerance and desire to believe the best of other people and cultures.
OK, dark, rich Arabiya coffee break's over -- back on your heads!

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 5:06 AM

Monday, September 08, 2008

PALIN HEARTBREAK

I have shared in the enthusiasm of the simple-minded right wing of American politics over the last week over John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Like the majority of Americans, I have also been disgusted by the media's digging into her personal life, but have taken comfort in the clear fact that this partisan personalistic attack on her has ricocheted and hurt the Democrats.

But now, I'm afraid a personal detail about Palin has surfaced that I can't ignore, and that will cause me to completely rethink the impact she's had on my enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy.

She has a tattoo.

The Big Dipper is tattooed on her ankle.

See the second-to-last point in the document discussed in this news story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080902/pl_politico/13084

I have to confess that this is a crushing revelation about Palin, something that will likely negate the ten-point lead that the McCain-Palin ticket is now showing among likely voters in the most recent Gallup poll, and rightly so. When compared to the kind of personal details of Barak Obama's open book of a life (actually, two open books, and a third on the way), this tattoo scandal shows the utter irrelevancy of the kind of "dirt" the hate-filled right wing has been "digging up" on Obama.

I'm ashamed. Ashamed of myself, and ashamed for my country, that such a person could have, even for a moment, been so close to the highest office in the land.

Antroy, I'm sorry.

GB, THHotA

posted by Greg 8:11 AM