Pearl Harbor. Day that will live in Infamy

Actually Pearl Harbor day was two days ago, 7 December.  This one event changed the course of WWII.  Prior to Pearl Harbor, the US population was isolationist, what would be called anti-war 25 years later.  America had entered WWI, the results at the peace table were less than expected, writers had been blaming WWI on munitions makers attempting to boost sales, and the population was bound and determined that the US would not, repeat not, get mixed up in another European war.  This feeling was so strong, that Franklin Roosevelt, one of the canniest and most powerful presidents of the 20th century, was unable give support to Britain.  What little he could do, destroyers for bases and lend lease,  was hotly opposed in Congress. 
   Pearl Harbor turned all that around instantly.  As Admiral Yamamoto put it, " I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."   It took us three years, but we sank their fleet, killed their soldiers, nuked their homeland, did regime change on them, and occupied the place.  And, had the Japanese understood Americans, they would have realized that they could have continued their aggression against China, and seized the oil fields of Dutch Indonesia without starting a war with the Americans.  It is clear to all American historians that we would have done nothing more than send diplomatic protests to Tokyo no matter how agressive they became.  The Japanese stuck their hands into a hornet's nest and got stung, hard.  Their leadership, with the exception of Yamamoto, simply did not understand what they were doing.  They had been reading too much Mahan (Influence of Seapower upon History) which has a simplistic premise that winning control of the sea by destroying the enemy fleet wins the war.  From Mahan's point of view, the Pearl Harbor attack was perfect, one daring strike and the entire American battlefleet, eight decent battleships, was sunk.
   Two things spoiled the victory.  That year, 1941, was a year of transition from battleships to aircraft carriers.  Our aircraft carriers survived Pearl Harbor.  So, in actual fact, the US battle fleet survived Pearl Harbor.  The second thing was American resolve.  We raised all the sunken ships, we built a LOT of new ships and LOT of other stuff,  we enlisted 10 million men in the armed forces, we developed superweapons so advanced that they did even appear in 1940's science fiction.  We shrugged off our losses at Pearl and came back stronger than ever.
   The other effect of Pearl Harbor was to doom the Nazis.   For some reason, Hitler declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor.  He didn't need to, he had no obligations to Japan, he was locked in a death struggle with the Soviets, he didn't need any more hostilities, especially not with America.  But he did it.  At the time, Hitler convinced every American that he was in league with Japan.  We only found out after the war that Hitler was acting on his own hook.  Hitler's declaration of war was a great help to the Roosevelt administration.  The whole American establishment, the administration, the military, the foreign policy establishment, the industrialists, the union people, all feared the Germans, much more than Japan.  The establishment wanted to beat Hitler first, and then take out the Japanese.  With Hitler's gratuitous declaration of war, they could do just that.  If Hitler had been smarter and kept his mouth shut, there is a good chance the Americans would have departed upon a Pacific Ocean crusade, and left him deal with the Soviets and the Brits unmolested by Yankees.      
   Both ways, Pearl Harbor was a turning point.  It didn't have to happen, it wasn't inevitable, and history would be a lot different if the Japanese had not attacked. 

Good Day at BlackRock

The Economist is unhappy about BlackRock in a cover story.  The cover cartoon shows an enormous jet black Rock-of-Gibraltar leaning over the two lane road ahead, threatening to topple and block all traffic forever.  BlackRock is a Wall St brokerage house, that buys and sells stock for its clients.  It was founded in the '80s and has done pretty well, it has $4 trillion in assets.  Part of BlackRock's success is a computer back office that tracks stocks and has made some canny predictions.  It was canny enough to keep BlackRock out of the mortgage backed security black hole back in 2006.  In fact it was so good that BlackRock now leases access to the system, bringing in $400 million in fees per year.  The system, dubbed Aladdin, is so popular on the street that the Economist reckons that another $11 trillion in stocks is controlled by Aladdin, giving a grand total of $15 trillion under the influence, or perhaps control, of this one piece of software.  That's quite a chunk of change, the entire US economy is about that size.
   This concentration clearly bothers the Economist.  If they had a say in the matter, they would put BlackRock under strict government regulation, lest they hiccup and crash the stock market.  Good thing the Economist isn't in charge. 

Facebook

Facebook has started posting ads on your home.  Used to be, you only saw posts from your facebook friends.  Now they are giving me 10% straight ads from companies and organizations I never heard of and don't care about.  And  Firefox doesn't have filters to dump the ads. 
    There will come a point when the ads become so obnoxious that I will dump Facebook. 

Executive Council

We have a vacancy on the NH executive council.  Beloved north country councilor Ray Burton died of cancer last month leaving his seat open.  The democrats have picked their man, Michael Cryans, to run on their ticket.  We Republicans have some competition, at least we think so. 
  Anyhow, Christopher Boothby is running.  There will be a primary in January, 21st I believe.  I never heard of Chris before he decided to run.  I don't know who is running against him in the primary. 
   Anyhow, Chris is doing the reasonable thing, he is traveling round the district and talking to voters.  I sent out an email blast to north country Republicans and Tea Partiers to come and meet the candidate.  We had the back room at the Oasis Restaurant and it filled up with north country political types, including yours truly.  I must be  getting into the swim of things, I knew everyone who showed up.  Lotta hand shaking and how-are-yous and chit chat.  Chris and his wife Mara showed up on time, we had a pleasant give and take.  Everyone in the room was an old friend of the deceased Ray Burton, and a lot of Ray stories were told, back and forth. 
  Chris looks OK to me.  He won't be Ray Burton, but then its unreasonable to expect anyone to fill Ray'sa shoes.  We will have to see if the competition makes it up to the north country.

Vodka Triumphant

The State Liquor Store has re organized again.  Now the vodka shelf is twice as long as it used to be.  Serious booze, whiskey and gin has lost shelf space.  I figure shelf space allocation is a fair measure of popularity.  Which means more people are drinking vodka than anything else. 
  Too bad.  Vodka is for drinkers who don't like the taste of booze.  They distill all the flavor out of the stuff, and then mix it with orange juice or tomato juice or Kahlua or whatever. 
  

The Aerospace Plane

The idea has been around for ever.  I have a beautifully illustrated children's book from 1951 with a drawing of such a machine.  Basically a high performance aircraft that would use wings and jet engines to lift an orbiter space craft high and fast.  It would be reusable (you fly it back and land it after launching the orbiter) and hence lower cost than  a throwaway booster like Atlas.    
  Attractive as the idea is, so far nobody has ever built one.  There are five NASA design studies, the earliest going back to 1986.  Since none of them ever flew, it's fair to say that the concept becomes less attractive when you actually have to build and fly one. 
  Anyhow, hope springs eternal and NASA is going to try again.  This time with a rocket powered craft dubbed XS-1.  Design goal is to loft a 3000-5000 pound satellite into low earth orbit for $5 million or less.  NASA is talking about $3-4 million study contracts early next year, with a $140 million "build-a-flying prototype"  contract  in 2015.  XS-1 is supposed to reach Mach 10 (roughly half orbital velocity).  Gross takeoff weight might be 224,000 pounds.  That's airliner weight.   Presumably  XS-1 burns all its rocket fuel on the way up and then glides back to a dead stick landing, the way the shuttle used to do.   

Retirement before entering service?

Airbus Military announced that the prototype A400M transport aircraft has been retired.  A400M is the pan European heavy transport program.  The aircraft are huge 4 engine turboprops.  The first deliverable model only handed over to the French air force this summer.  It will take years of production to fill all the back orders for the aircraft.  Surely Airbus will have some engineering change orders needing flight check soon.
  So why retire the prototype?  These things ain't cheap, something like $100 million each.  Is the prototype so bent and broken that nobody wants  to fly it anymore?  Why not fix it up and bring it up to standard and ship it, and get paid for it?  Or use it for research and development.  Surely there are programs that could use a truly big airlifter for something?