Carnes Lord on Weakness In American Policy

Carnes Lord, Professor of military and Naval Strategy at the U. S. Naval War College, and author of The Modern Prince, has written the following:


"A characteristic weakness of the American approach to war and force has been the tendency to draw a sharp distinction between wartime and peacetime."


I wonder, does he think that explains these guys?
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More on the "Science" of Economics.

During the last Presidential campaign, the nation was treated to one of those so-called stimulating debates that the so-called conservative right is famous for, namely, "the redistribution of wealth".
That sterotypical American, 'Joe The Plumber", with the overt assistance of the teat-sucking media, reminded us all how much we hate the concept of distributing the wealth of America because of its ugly dirty association with that well-known European evil called SOCIALISM.
As often happens in moments like these, I find myself asking questions of myself that no one else seems to ask.  Here are some:  isn't all our wealth redistributed one way or another?  And isn't the redistribution of America's wealth controlled by the corporations and the government working together?   Isn't the trickle-down theory a form of wealth redistribution?
Isn't wealth redistributed daily in the form of setting prices, wages, salaries, bonuses, and, yes, Golden Parachutes?
When CEO's move our factories overseas, aren't they redistributing America's wealth, and yours , and mine?
So, we are not really talking about Socialism here, are we?  No, we are talking about keeping the redistribution of wealth in the same hands where it has been since the birth of the Nixon Administration.
So, how well is it going?  Here's one answer.  
In the 1960's, it was still possible to say that a hard-working enterprising young person could 'work his or her way through college'.  That was a famous American story, revered and justly so.  But it is long gone now.
Today, graduates begin life with an onerous debt.  This is the new American story.  This is the New Capitalism at work.  Or is it the New World Order?
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The Scandal of Automobile Repair

No, I am not preparing to discuss how cars are so complicated that we are no longer able to repair them ourselves.  That is worthy of its own post.
No, this is about the cost of taking your car to a garage for repairs.
The pricing of automobile repair is established by coded standards based on units of time.  The labor costs based on these units of time are in excess of the actual time required.  The system rounds upward the unit of time, usually in 15 minute increments.  A 5 minute task will be charged as 15 minutes (or more).  A 35 minute task will be charged 45 minutes (or more).
These charges start with a base Labor cost of 60 minutes, due, I suppose, for the work required to start the process.   Some call it a 'hedge factor' to offset possible losses.
Added to these labor costs is the material cost of parts which is usually fixed at a straight 100% mark-up.
When the repairs are finished and billed, the customer finds at the bottom of the invoice, as a percentage of the subtotal for material and labor, a figure for Shop Costs, i.e., rags, hand cleaner, paper floor mats, etc.   This add-on percentage will run from 10% to 25% of the subtotal for material and labor.
I submit that this Shop Cost add-on is passing the cost of normal overhead on to the customer, a practice unheard of in the past.
I further submit that this whole policy is a form of price control and not free market capitalism.  It socialistic capitalism and works only to the benefit of the corporation.

On The Good Ship Breckenridge

In a recent post I mentioned the naval troop ship U.S.S. John C. Breckenridge and, my personal memory thus aroused, I began to recall the experience and realized I was looking back fondly at a few weeks loaded with discomfort.
We (a thousand other military personnel and I) boarded the ship in Tokyo Bay for the return home after service in the Far East.  I spent the first night vomiting in the ship's toilets (or 'heads" as the Navy calls them).
This happened with the ship at anchor.  We were not underway yet!  Not a good sign.
I spent the next few days vomiting and trying to complete the cleaning details assigned to us to keep us busy.  A sailor in the boiler room advised me to eat saltine crackers until I couldn't eat anymore.  He said it helped fight stomach acids and reduced throwing up.  I waited in line for an hour at the ship's store to buy a box of crackers and learned I had been given good advice.
Our 'quarters' were the ship's hold with row after row of hammocks stacked 5 or 6 high with ladders to gain the high beds.  Hot, sweltering, smelly.  Meanwhile, each morning, a one or two page info sheet was distributed with weather information, a couple of news headlines, and a handrawn map of the Pacific with a tiny representation of our ship showing our progress across the great ocean.  It looked like we hadn't moved. Depressing.
Free movies on deck each night it didn't rain.  Calamity Jane, which most of us had already seen.  But I stayed to watch it again.  I remember Doris Day riding a horse on a trail telling us that she used to have a secret love but now she was shouting about it from the highest hill, she was even telling the golden daffodills that her secret love wasn't secret anymore.   
While at ships' store, I had bought a paperback novel, The Royal Way by Andre Malraux.  I read some of it on deck but most of my reading time was spent in my hammock.  The atmosphere of that hold augmented the atmosphere of the book which is the story of two men searching for treasures from royal ruins in the jungles of Cambodia.  The themes were the usual Malraux interests of death, individual quest, and adventurism with side trips on art and sculpture.  I enjoyed the book, admired Perken (I think that was the main character's name) even when he was not being nice at all.  A good read, but I know the book is rarely mentioned in any critique of Malraux.
To enhance the malaise of the trip even more,  I got a severe toothache.  Fortunately the ship had a dentist, and he pulled the tooth.  So when the ship flowed into the bay of San Francisco, I was  better able to enjoy seeing the Golden Gate bridge, the prison of Alcatraz, and the shoreline of California, the USA.
After two years absence, it looked very good.

A Urine Sample

One of the joys of being male is the ability to pass urine in a variety of  situations, some of which are self-amusing, enjoyable, or challenging.
Of course, in the beginning,  a very young boy may wet the bed, or wet his pants when excited.   When I was in First Grade, I left a puddle under my chair in the classroom.  I remember looking back at it as I left the room at the end of class and wondering if it would be there when I returned the next morning.  It wasn't.
Then one advances into real boyhood and the exercise of one's imagination.  I peed from rooftops, either off the gable letting urine fall to earth or onto the sloping roof itself to watch the slow trickle of pee over the asphalt shingles drip into the rain gutter.
I peed from a tree house, and from many other trees I had climbed.  I have peed in pools, ponds, streams and lakes. Off docks.  Out of boats.  Behind trees, and shrubs, and in alleys;  against the wheels of a car (with a door open to conceal my act).  I have pissed in the manure drop of a cow barn and down woodchuck holes.  I have shot flies, mosquitoes, salamanders and other assorted wildlife with a forceful yellow stream. I have peed in bottles, cans, boxes, plastic bags, ditches, catch basins, french drains, and gutters.  I tried to see how far I could send it and how wide a sweep I could make of the stream.  It was, as Tony the Tiger would say,  Gr-r-r-eaat!
As a man I have been less silly but there were circumstances which accounted for some odd experiences.   Flying from Seoul, Korea to the island of Paengnyongdo I needed to relieve myself and was directed to a relief tube in the side of the fuselage.  "Don't aim for it" a crewman told me, "put it in there so you don't miss."  The urine went into the atmosphere to evaporate.  Very efficient! 
On the island itself, our camp had a 2 inch diameter  iron pipe sticking out of the ground at a 45 degree angle.  Again, this was a relief tube for urinating.  Packed yellow snow around the base of the pipe was confirmed by the footprints in the snow coming from all angles in the camp.
Returning to the states on the troop ship USS Breckinridge, we had gang toilets but the urinals were not stalls or wall hung fixtures.  Instead they were twenty foot long metal troughs for the men to use standing side by side.
I suppose that all these methods are gone now that we have a coed military.
Today of course my life is a different story.  I don't stream;  I dribble.  And I am afraid of heights and I am too old to serve my country again.  C'est la pee!
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Shakespeare By The Sea XIX

For nineteen years community theater people have staged a production of a Shakespearean play on the lawn of Carlin Park on A1A in Jupiter, Florida.  Because the site is just a few hundred feet from the Atlantic ocean, the outdoor event has been called Shakespeare By The Sea.  The play has always been free to the public.  People only have to bring their own chair or blanket and use the upward sloping lawn as the seating area.  Bringing one's pet dog and one's own refreshments is encouraged also.  The atmosphere has always been relaxed and congenial.
Last evening we attended the first showing of this year's production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream and it was delightful.  The set design matched the occasions of the play but more importantly it permitted the many exits and entrances to occur expeditiously and unobtrusively.  The dance sequence by The Dancing Fairies looked professionally done.  Overall, the acting was well done with special praise for Alan Gerstel as Peter Quince and Kevin Crawford (also the Director) as Bottom.  An appreciative audience laughed loudly at all the right places.  The only flaw was the sound system which was overloud and out of balance.  Shouted speech was often indecipherable.
This year marked the first time the play was performed on a permanent stage built specifically for the event.  The architect has designed an open building that resembles a large proscenium arch.  Concealed behind and beneath the stage are air-conditioned rooms for dressing, storage, a green room and private restrooms.  The cost was $1.6 million.
Shakespeare By The Sea has come a far way from the first productions done in a dusty field with ant hills, and without water or electricity.  Park improvments over the years have given us established lawns, rest rooms, drinking fountains and hose bibb outlets for pets.  And all is still free but this year, for the first time, the company asks for donations.
I can forsee the future here. The event has become institutionalized.   It has a building, or, as bean counters prefer to say, a plant.  It will not be long before there is an admission charge and other improvements.
I am reminded again of the truth of an unfailing proverb:  Nothing fails like success. 

Quotations

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused."

from The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
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