Ezra Klein writing in the Washington Post describes an online conference between President Obama and ‘progressive’ bloggers. Despite the upbeat message to the liberal faithful not to be discouraged by the resistance the health care proposal is receiving, the fact is that there is resistance; one which which President Obama believes he can blast through in a closed door session. Trust Us is the message, Klein says.
The audience for this call — which I was not originally invited to, but was able to listen in on — was mainly progressive bloggers, and so the underlying argument was that liberals should have some faith that a disappointing draft out of the Senate Finance Committee is not the end of the process, and they should not lose heart.
But it’s also a risky strategy: The plea for progressives to avoid making “the best the enemy of the good,” and instead remember that flaws can be fixed in conference committee, is, on some level, the White House saying, “Trust us.” Conference committee, after all, is a closed-door negotiation that is hard to influence. What emerges will be very hard, if not impossible, to change. If the White House does not hew to the same bottom lines as the progressive bloggers, or is not able to persuade the congressional negotiators to honor its preferences, the product could diverge quite sharply from what some liberals are hoping for.
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“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy,” Obama said on a visit to a Washington hospital.” But his political opponents sense a weakening of his onset and for the first time think the One can be defeated.
Last week, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint predicted the Obama plan would not pass Congress, and said such a failure could be Obama’s “Waterloo,” referring to the battle that effectively ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s military career.
“It will break him,” DeMint said,
Obama made direct reference to DeMint’s predictions, and called on lawmakers to avoid the “politics of delay and defeat.”
I think DeMint’s analogy is wrong and Obama nearer the mark when he expressed a fear of “delay and defeat”. Health care is not Obama’s Waterloo. Waterloo was Napoleon’s last gasp. Obama is still moving forward, albeit much more slowly than just a few months ago. 2009 is not yet Obama’s 1815. A better analogy is 1812: the year of Napoleon’s arrival in Moscow, when his army seized the capital he long desired only to find he could not loot it of enough to sustain his men. “La Grande Armée, that set its position in a military camp manner and was carelessly looting sellable valuables, had also its share of responsibility: many buildings caught fire from bonfires they made for cooking.” Having stripped everything before it like a swarm of locusts, La Grand Armee was forced to return the way it came, over the same landscape it had picked clean. Tolstoy denied that Napoleon had been defeated by the strategic generalship of his opponents; he was simply beaten by harsh arithmetic of nature and of negative sums and by his own hubris. In his ambition, Napoleon forgot that conquest was not the same thing as governance.
Tolstoy records the dispersal of the French army into the empty houses of the wealthy Muscovites as a failure of command which sapped the integrity of the French army. They fired the city through carelessness because they did not belong there. When they left the city in a panic, they had ceased to be an army and all they cared about was keeping their loot. Rather than confront his men about this, Napoleon let them keep it, which hampered their withdrawal and made them more vulnerable to successful attack by the Russian partisans. Not only that, instead of taking a route which offered the prospect of provisions, he took the route back through Smolensk which had already been laid waste.
If Obama’s victories — the stimulus, bailouts, cap and trade and now health care — are from another point of view, a kind of looting, then he may have arrived at the point where there is nothing more to loot. Like Napoleon, the capital is his, but it lies in ashes, unable even to sustain his victories. If DeMint is looking for an analogy, it is that twilight moment when Napoleon looked out over the burning city, given over to frenzy and first realized he had thrust his hand into a monkey trap. It is doubtful that Obama, like Napoleon, will be defeated by his bumbling opponents. They are too inept. What crushed the Grand Armee was the vanity of its commander. At first his men did not drop the silks, silver, jewels and fine fabrics willingly. Yet as Grand Armee trod its dolorous road back to Western Europe the wayside became littered by discarded heaps of treasure that but a few weeks before they would have killed for. But that was 1812. Waterloo was three years and a long distance away, across Berezina Bridge, beyond many frozen rivers, yet it always lay in wait at the end of the Emperor’s road. Even Napoleon must have known it.
Berezina Bridge
The Fate of the Grand Armee, the width of the line proportionate to its numbers
The beige in advance, the black in retreat (Hat tip: Gerard Vanderleun)
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the fact is that there is resistance;
We Surround Them.
The Resistance is everywhere.
Battle of Borodino, 1812.
Napoleon’s basic strategy was to conquer a nation with two separate initiatives: a military offensive that overwhelmed the adversary’s defenses, and a charm offensive that co-opted the aristocrats and mandarins who ruled the nation.
The reason he was able to sustain his expansion across Europe was that he was able to woo the powers-that-be in each capital to accept his leadership. The wooing was always at its core a seduction, backed by the threat of violence against those who did not submit.
Napoleon’s strategy foundered in Moscow, where he found that the Russians had no intention of submitting to his imperial ambitions. Instead, they chose to abandon their capital, leaving him with an unsustainable army during the terrible Russian winter.
His decision to over-reach was his undoing.
— —
Obama’s basic strategy is to control the nation with two separate initiatives: an electoral offensive that overwhelmed his adversary’s defenses, and a charm offense that co-opts the politicians and media who run Washington.
The reason he was able to win the Presidency was that he was able to woo the powers-that-be (Kennedys et. al.) in Washington to accept his leadership. The wooing was always at its core a seduction, backed by the threat of the race card against those who did not submit.
Obama’s strategy will founder in fly-over country, where he will find that Americans have no intention of submitting to his progressive ambitions. Instead, they will choose to abandon their support for him, leaving him with an unsustainable political agenda during the terrible financial crisis.
His decision to over-reach will be his undoing.
— —
Top-Down attempts to rule a nation of free people will always fail in the end. Over-reach is inevitable, as is the failure that follows. It was always thus, and always will be.
History rhymes like a Walt Erickson poem.
L3
— The Logistics of War
It is doubtful that Obama, like Napoleon, will be defeated by his bumbling opponents”
Agreed the republicans are dysfunctional.
But that was 1812. Waterloo was three years and a long distance away, across Berezina Bridge, beyond many frozen rivers, yet it always lay in wait at the end of the Emperor’s road.
How closely do you want to push this analogy? Three years from now and a long distance away is the 2012 election, lol.
His decision to over-reach will be his undoing.
Leo, what was Obama’s decision to overreach? Which one do you think it was?
–
I actually believe that the Stimulus Package was the critical mistake that Obama made.
At that time, the key decision Obama had to make was to solve the Hockey Stick: http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/20/hockey-stick/
From an email of mine to Jim Burns on Janurary 27, 2009:
Jim,
Since you want a realistic economic plan here is a simple one:
* Take the $350 billion left in TARP (half of the $700 billion dollar bailout).
* Take the $825 billion in current stimulus spending.
Round it off to $1000 billion (A trillion).
Give the $1 trillion dollar to each social security payer – lets say there are 200 million who qualify:
* Quick math means $5,000 per person. So you & Jen get $10,000.
* This is placed in a new 401b plan.
* All money in a 401b plan must be invested in American banks (i.e.: to buy stock in banks).
* Banks are legally obligated (by Congress) to offer up to $1 trillion of new stock.
* $5,000 dollars is subtracted from your future social security payments (i.e.: the goverments liabilites).
* A person may opt out of this, if they don’t want $5,000 subtracted form their future social security payments.
Alternative:
* People can use this as a one time payment on their mortgage.
Presto:
* Everyone feels richer.
* Banks are recapitalized.
* Money is spent a lot more sensibly than on the $825 billion nonsense.
* *MUCH* more usefull oversight of banks by 200 million Americans than with the TARP nonsense.
Amit
P.S.: This plan would need to be tweeked a bit, but fundamentally it would get a +1 instead of a -1 for the current nonsense congress is passing.
Or to put it more bluntly, would you & Jen like this deal?
Can you see how this is a win/win/win for everyone (Americans, U.S. Goverments, & banks).
Especially the banks which need to be recapitalized?
How about we just stop the stimulus now. period.
“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy,” Obama said
Something about that sounds “programmed,” boiler-plate, and clueless about the mess he’s made of the economy. It’s like one of those comic scenes where a guy is pointing to a caged mouse on the podium and calling it a threat, while everyone else sees the grizzly coming in the door behind him.
I mean, how long until Michelle starts dressing like Sonia Braga and The One becomes an avid collector of velvet paintings and African figurines bought on River Road?
“This isn’t about me”
(translation: darn it, i want this to be about me, so that opponents can be, well, you know, racists.)
Nice try, Mr. President. A little dirty, but what the hey.
L3/3; –yep, it can all be seen as all destiny, but equally true:
After Borodino, Napoleon occupied Moscow, and that this occupation didn’t follow all history and tradition and result in Alexander I’s treaty, was due to Alexander I just making a personal decision that what the heck, he just wasn’t gonna be ‘respectable’. So he & command split the scene –and there it was, Napoleon could not win.
Waterloo, as Wellington himself said, was a very close-run thing; Napoleon came very near to to winning, thus to’ve scattered the allies on the continent for lord knows how many years (the Royal Navy was a different matter). The difference is of course said to be ‘the playing fields of Eton’ but at least as important was the favorable ground held by Wellington (as good, arguably, as Meade’s at Gettysburg). This ground –here’s the kicker –had been the young Wellington’s playground as a youth, visiting friends or family or somesuch. He had ridden it over extensively as a kid, and had remembered it, and when the conditions ripened did bend great effort to fight the battle there, on that ground that was not only good for the defender, but very deceptively good in the bargain.
So two little things, Alexander’s mood, and Wellington’s coincidence, wag the finger at the force of destiny!
“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy,” Obama said
His writers shouldn’t have chosen the word “breaking.” I leaves them wide open for the rejoinder “if you think the health care system is broken now, just wait until Congress and the Obama administration get finished with it!”
Some of the wavering Democrats in Congress are already hearing this rejoinder in their nightmares.
“We has met the enemy, and it is us” Pogo
“Tolstoy records the dispersal of the French army into the empty houses of the wealthy Muscovites as a failure of command which sapped the integrity of the French army.”
To follow the analogy just a little further, The One allowed the Democratic Caucus (and their lobbyist buds) to write the stimulus bill (now there’s a word with two meanings…) without significant Executive Branch oversight. That was most assuredly a failure of command. After that, though, the analogy breaks down. The current Congress has no integrity to sap.
Say, how did we do it before Medicare and Medicaid introduced all those wobbles that are now arguing –sez the Dems –for ‘more of the same’?
Obama writes: “This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics.”
Which in Obama-speak means “This is about me. This is about politics.”
If so many people on this board have precisely the same response to Obama-speak, it won’t be long before the general public starts having the same response?
At that point perhaps O’s campaign against middle america is truly lost.
“Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”
So when will we see the retreating forces from the Hamptons and Malibu fleeing with piles of Evian water and Manalo shoes littering their path?
Stephen Talty’s The Illustrious Dead makes a clear case that Napoleon’s defeat in Russia was primarily due to Typhus. The disease eliminated half his army, which was at its peak, and severely hampered his retreat. The Grand Army never recovered and the replacement army that took the field at Waterloo was a shadow of it’s former self. The first Kenyan president victories have been more or less surrenders from a devastated and plagued republican party. Hopefully a revitalized conservative base will rise up and defeat this horrific legislation and lead to the eventual total defeat of nationalized socialism.
Wish I could edit what I wrote above.
Anyway, the KEY mistake that Obama made is that he used in a political capital on the stimulus package.
Instead of spending his political capital to create feedback loops (my proposal for capitalizing the banks & starting towards solving the first problem), he wasted it.
His political capital is not coming back.
Actually, Napoleon headed south out of Moscow trying to avoid passing over the areas already subject to forage on the summer campaign. It was the battle south at Maloyarolavets, Oct 24, that the Grande Armee was repulsed and sent to retreat upon stripped territory. Smolensk had supplies, but by then command and control had broken down as the first units in looted and consumed what they found leaving the body and the tail of the Armee nothing. What is missing from the chart of the Grande Armee’s march, is the size of the Russian forces. They too suffered the effects of the campaign and were in no condition to land a killing blow, but rather to hover at the edge pushing the invader along. It’s the old “you don’t have to be faster than the bear..” adage.
As an interesting side note, the northern wing of the Grande Armee included a corps of Prussians. It’s commander dragged his proverbial foot during the withdraw and finally defected units and all to their tailing Russian force. Though loudly, for political reasons, denounced by the King of Prussia for this act, he would see the entire state of Prussia take the opportunity of defecting to the allied coalition by 1813. When the hard power that held the French coalition was sufficiently weakened by the events of 1812, the players were able to seek their own interests in the great game and realigned themselves to the allied coalition.
Thanks Wretchard for recording that the Russians beat Europe’s first Fascist, paving the way for victory over him in the West. They also did the lion’s share of the bleeding to stop Hitler, and a year and a half after Stalingrad came D-Day.
Obama’s Broken Promises
There’s plenty of waste in Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates only 1 percent of the savings under the legislation will be from curbing waste, fraud and abuse. That means the rest will likely come from reducing what patients get.
One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430).
The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
This mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care. Do we really want government involved in such deeply personal issues?
Shockingly, only a portion of the money accumulated from slashing senior benefits and raising taxes goes to pay for covering the uninsured.
The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (June 21) finds that 83 percent of Americans are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care, and 81 percent are similarly satisfied with their health insurance.
They have good reason to be. If you’re diagnosed with cancer, you have a better chance of surviving it in the United States than anywhere else, according to the Concord Five Continent Study. And the World Health Organization ranked the United States No. 1 out of 191 countries for being responsive to patients’ needs, including providing timely treatments and a choice of doctors.
Trust Us is the message, Klein says.
Ronald Reagan July 17, 1980
Stimulatin and Legislatin
Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional.
Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay.
A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said.
“The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”
—
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the
Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192).
The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs.
He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective.
The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).
SJN/20; they did the “lion’s share of the bleeding”, after the Nazis broke the Molotov/Von Ribbentrop Pact.
Remember the alliance with which the two partners destroyed Poland, the Baltics, and Finland?
After which (sometime after that little Katyn Forest incident), after Hitler broke his & Stalin’s “deal” and invaded, then and only then, backed up and with no choice, did Russia became a great Hitler-fighter.
USA, OTOH, had nothing to fear from any German invasion, but went to war anyway. And in that year and half between Stalingrad and D-Day, the USAAF & RAF was losing about 150,000 highly trained and costly airmen and tens of thousands of first-line aircraft making sure the German armies didn’t have what they otherwise would have had, to throw against Stalin. May well have made the diff in the ground war in the east, you know. Kursk was a close-run thing, even with Hitler making every blunder in the book. A few hundred more Panthers and Tigers –which the 8th AAF and RAF had denied them, and the Red Army might’ve been done for then and there.
Sorry, but you brought it up, & history is history and truth is truth.
But are we Russia or are we France in the analogy? France still worships their fascist rapist monster 200 years hence, despite his mass murder, displacement of hundreds of millions across Europe, and his stunning greedy non-stop looting. His legislative legacy not only still survives to this day, it is enshrined as Holy Writ in the DNA of France.
I fear we are France.
I want my country back.
oh, and not to mention, before D-Day, the invasion of North Africa and destruction of Afrika Korp and freeing of North Africa, and the invasions of Sicily and Italy, the re-taking of Sicily and most of Italy, all destroying tremendous volumes of German fighting power land and air, which would’ve otherwise been arrayed against Red Army.
And (back to Stalingrad) then there was that Pacific Theater, which victories (Midway, esp) there freed Stalin’s Siberian divisions to remove to the Battle of Stalingrad and become the reinforcements which most experts –even some Russian experts –conclude made the difference in that battle.
Maybe I’m too optimistic, and Lord knows the American public has disappointed me many a time, but I think Obama is going to be defeated on both cap and trade and health care. His support is extremely fragile, and he’s not a person who can unite people. His enemies hate and despise him so badly that there is nothing he could do to win them over, not that he even cares about trying.
What worries me most is that, as someone else here has said, he’s a “post turtle.” He doesn’t belong where he is, no one is really certain where he came from, and he has no real history. He’s about as questionable in his origins as another notorious American: Lee Harvey Oswald.
I don’t think Obama is going to make it through his first term. I think he’s going to be a “martyr” and it will be his successor riding a wave of public sympathy who will get the socialist agenda passed, just as Johnson did for Kennedy.
Obama’s a puppet and when it is the appropriate time, the strings will be cut and the hounds will be out in full cry against the “racist fascists that killed Obama!”
Much as I despise him and his cronies with every fiber of my being, I hope he lives to leave the White House in rude good health because his death might well accomplish damage to the nation that he, even at his worst, could never have done.
Remember that glass cookie jar your mom had? The one that made a distinct “clink” sound when you put the lid on? So when you hear her coming down the hall and hurry to close it up and move the chair away from the counter you make too much noise and as she rounds the corner into the kitchen you say “I wasn’t in the cookie jar”? Just the fact that you say it indicts you as much as her finding you with a cookie in your hand. Methinks “This is not about me; this is not about politics” is of a piece with you saying “I wasn’t in the cookie jar.” F
To MAC 27: If BO is a puppet to be cast away at a momentous opportunity I think that they would have selected someone other than Joe Biden to take his place. I believe that health care will be the big battle, by the time we get to Cap & Trade, we will be overwhelmed with bad numbers and bad science.
“The president has decided — just days before the deadline he himself set for passage of health-care bills in both chambers of Congress — that he wants to create a new and very powerful executive branch agency, the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), which would be accountable only to him and have the authority to re-write the Medicare program from top to bottom by executive memo.” James C. Capretta NRO
When the going gets tough Obama goes authoritarian.
Yes, why bother with Congress at all?
Just issue an executive order!
Nanny Obananarama says: “Only I know what is best for the country. Everybody else has failure of vision, and if my plans fail it will be their fault. So give me direct authority.”
||The Senate bill allocates huge sums to “community transformation grants,” home visits for expectant families, services for migrant workers — and the creation of dozens of new government councils, programs and advisory boards slipped into the last 500 pages.||
Is it my imagination, or does the last part of that quote sound a lot like the establishment of local progressive ‘soviets’?
I’ve seen that concept/op plan repeated in every significant plan that’s pending. I don’t regard it as a fluke. I see it as a ‘parallel power structure’, co-equal with our traditional framework.
The only question remains: what’s the ‘teeth’ [force of law] for such entities?
LLIII,
Your point about Obama’s suduction of the elites supports a point I’ve long held – we are in the process of replacing our elites. The Soros/Obama/Goldman-Sachs crowd has long realized this and is implementing a plan to make their coalition the new masters. They have “useful idiots” in progressive circles in the US but the idiots don’t really see the game – only their fantasies.
Obama’s political agenda is really about milking the productive elements of American society, bleeding our country to weakness.
Wrichard writes:
“If Obama’s victories — the stimulus, bailouts, cap and trade and now health care — are from another point of view, a kind of looting, then he may have arrived at the point where there is nothing more to loot. Like Napoleon, the capital is his, but it lies in ashes, unable even to sustain his victories. If DeMint is looking for an analogy, it is that twilight moment when Napoleon looked out over the burning city, given over to frenzy and first realized he had thrust his hand into a monkey trap. It is doubtful that Obama, like Napoleon, will be defeated by his bumbling opponents. They are too inept. What crushed the Grand Armee was the vanity of its commander.”
Brilliant analogy. And a classic post that deserves to be in the Belmont Club greatest hits. The title, alone . . . .
What else is this kind of deficit spending/ponzi program legislation other than looting? But a ‘kind’ of looting? No, it’s a real looting, like embezzlement, which you may not see at first but is real. Ask Bernie Madoff’s investors.
Good reading at the comments section of Klein’s article! Mutiny breaking out from stern to prow.
Thanks Wretchard, this is one of the best posts I’ve seen on the high political stakes that are in play this summer.
I hope you are correct. One of the biggest threats to Obama’s power has to be that he essentially ran on a platform of lies. Deliberately hiding his true intentions to appear as a “moderate” to people who were dissatisfied with Bush, but who would have been totally unwilling to support a progressive platform. Similarly, the progressive wing of his power was willing to believe anything about him, confident that he was lying in his campaign speeches. While I believe that both sides have been proven wrong, the moderates, especially realize they have been betrayed by his actions since the innaugaration.
The fact that he ran this sort of campaign is a positive thing because I think it makes his support much more brittle than if he’d been honest about his intentions. When things start to slide, they will slide fast and hard (I think we are already seeing this). However, while Obama may be foolish enough to believe that the support will continue, I think his handlers were always aware that the public support could be extremely brittle. My fear, and belief, is that this brittleness will make them even more desperate to put his agenda into place before all of his political goodwill crumbles.
Perhaps rather than describing Health Care Reform as Obama’s Waterloo it is more apt to describe it as Middle America’s.
What I see emerging in the US is a new mode of government. Since it has not existed before, and is only emergent, I am having a hard time describing what I see — though I do indeed see it.
The other day I referred to it as “The DC Power Circuit,” so allow me to continue with that metaphor.
At the center of the DC Power Circuit is the Democrat Controlled Congress and Executive. But these do not control the DC Power Circuit, they are rather important nodes and, when the DC “PC” is in full control, will be controlled by it. The new system may not feature a Politburo in the old Soviet sense, but there will be an apparatchik class — a self recruiting elite that moves freely from government to “the Private Sector.”
Other important nodes are various Cartels with national reach. The Education Cartel is well established. More recently we’ve seen the establishment (or strengthening) of Cartels in Finance, Health Care, the automotive industry and, soon, Big Alternative Energy. More generally big business and major institutions (professional organizations, unions, Foundations, Major Universities) are maneuvering to capture a “node.”
The DC Power Circuit functions by draining power, money, resources and control from “Middle America” and redistributes it through the various “nodes.” Money is taken directly from pay checks, control is taken from businesses, and stockholder interest are ignored in favor of phantom “stakeholders” (basically, everyone — by which they mean The DC “PC”). This is done through the threat or application of force (though masked by a smile, with well meaning regulation its more benign appearing form).
More and more this looks like larceny (which it is) so the role of the media is very important. They are the Shamans who magically turn theft into benevolence. After all, the DC “PC” produces nothing and cannot redistribute what it has not first confiscated — deducting shipping and handling cost at every juncture (and there will be a lot of those). For this the victims need to feel grateful — until they feel cowed.
The DC Power Circuit values loyalty to the system over any other virtue (and most certainly over basic competence). Responsibility now means “to take the blame” and the blame is magically assigned and withheld by the Shamans of the PC Media (that is their role and I think adequately explains there often bizarre “logic”).
In short, the DC Power Circuit drains power and authority from the citizen and returns charity. It takes the wrecking ball to the “contractual” relationships of the Free Market/Free Enterprise system, which has produced so much prosperity. Even the Supreme Contract of Secular America, The Constitution, is easily warped. Instead of the Old America, we will get a slick version of the poverty producing system of Patron-Client Relationships — where those made weak will seek the protection of the powerful — that have been the feature (as well as the bane) of much of human history.
hdgreene. If a coalition of the Obama crowd, the Hillary crowd, the NEA crowd, the Unions and the Goldman Sachs crowd can get away with this there is not much left to defend in the first place.
The question is: What is that character of Americans today? What beats in the hearts of the Heartland?
Obama won by 52% of the vote. The GOP had a good year in 2004. The CA government got their nosed bloodied by the voter this last time around on the budget.
I agree that we are in a Cold Civil War, but the outcome is far from certain.
The fact of the matter is that our would be masters produce no new wealth, they in fact do not know how. They do not provide security. They have not the inclination, and if they did they would know know how to do it.
They are really a false aristocracy, and a self appointed one. They are not so large as we imagine them to be.
It will take more than some political legerdemain to push us back into an Acient Regime of master and serf.
I would say that the long odds are on the side of the serfs.
buddy larsen/24 and SJN/20;
Just to keep this matter in perspective. The war lasted for 72 months, from September 1939 to August 1945. For 22 of those months the Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany, not only “stabbing in th back” Poland, and attacking Finland (without a declaration of war by bombing a Helsinki, and seizing eastern provines of Romania. Otherwise, the Soviets fed and fueled much of the Wehrmacht’s advance with grain, oil, and iron ore. For approximately a third of the war, the USSR was Hitler’s ally. To Stalin’s constant whine of “Whre is the second front”, Churchill should have replied “It was crushed in France in May 1940.” As Aleksandr I reminded Metternich at the Congress of Vienna, “Your status as allies depends strictly on the calender.”
The Soviets occupied 80% of the Nazi armies from June 1941 to May 1945.
Buddy’s point is well taken though about the Combined Bomber Offensive, which suffered horrendous losses and allowed the Red Air Force to begin to get the upper hand in 1943. Ditto for the sailors who died by the tends of thousands to supply the Soviets with trucks, locomotives, and other vital equipment via Murmansk in 1942-44. And the Red Army would not have been able to launch “Operation Bagration” — the annihilation of 350,000 Wehrmacht in July 1944, a German defeat faster and worse than Stalingrad — if it had not been for good old American trucks. The Japanese were beaten off by Zhukov in Russia’s Far East well before Pearl Harbor. By August 1944 both the Western Allies and Red Army were about the same distance from Berlin. The biggest mystery to me will always be why the Germans fought almost as hard in the West as in the East.
26. buddy larsen:
In fairness, by July 1943, the Anglo/American bombing campaign had only begun, and had not had time to make any impact on German military production. For that matter, the first of the Panther PzV and Tiger PzVI tanks had only begun to enter service, were available in small numbers and had the usual new equipment bugs. If any Western measure made a difference at Kursk it was the invasion of Sicily, which began on July 10, forcing Hitler to withdraw forces from Russia to meet the new attack.
BTW, right now we are in the midst of the anniversary of Operation Bagration, which began on June 23, 1944. This operation destroyed not an army, but four armies, all of Army Group Center, inflicting casualties between three and four times German losses at Stalingrad. In late July, Bagration concluded by merging fairly seemlessly into the Lvov Sandomierz offensive which pushed the Germans back to the Polish border.
I wonder if DeMint’s words aren’t an over-reach of hubris themselves. As tacticians, the Republicans continually amaze at their ineptitude. They must not talk between themselves of a “Grand Plan” to defeat their political opponents and as such an occasional shout of hubris sounds hollow, devoid of the chorus of rousing voices. It would have been comical to hear Mel Gibson in Braveheart shout to the assembled masses, “Do you want to live forever?!?!” and have only one shout back, “NO!”
A tactical approach, or one blessed by the interaction, wisdom, and guile of many minds, would not shout a cry, the result of which makes an already heady opponent more angry and determined. Better to remain quiet and point out (less dramatically) the clear truth that needs to be communicated. Subtle, but humiliating humor by Tina Faye worked very well against Sarah…why can’t we inveigh some of Jeff Foxworthy’s (or Dennis Miller’s) great lines the way Will Rogers doled out his missives where the words were gentle, but the impact (and the disdain) was great. Even Fred Thompson had a few country witticisms in his short “spark-in-the-belly” run for office.
“We’ll show the world we are prosperous, even if we have got to go broke to do it.” – Will Rogers
Another tale has emerged from that strategic call to Obama’s liberal “troops:”
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/21/morning-bell-obama-admits-hes-not-familiar-with-house-bill/
With the public’s trust in his handling of health care tanking (50%-44% of Americans disapprove), the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to pass Obamacare: all Obama, all the time. As part of that effort, Obama hosted a conference call with leftist bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible.
During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”
Plausible deniability, Chicago style tactics, or ignorance?
The Republicans need to make the Dems own Wall Street. They need to hammer home just much the Dems are tied to Soros, Goldman and others.
The GOP needs to be shouting how these hedge funds and investment banks are raping the country, selling our children’s future and the Dems are actively supporting it.
Point out who in this administration used to be employed by these wall street firms, and how these firms are making out like a bandit at our expense. Then show how much wall street has donated to the democrats in the past few elections.
I think the image of Democrats hand in hand with wall street (and lawyers), hell bent on destroying America, can stick and will resonate with a lot of Americans.
A Democratic Senator, or Congressman up for reelection? Bam, hit them with this message. This message needs to make its way to college students as well – they need to see their future evaporate before their eyes. The GOP needs to learn the communication channels to reach them – incorporate basic economics into the message and make them think that it is too stupid not to know how obama is destroying it.
I’d target the older voters with this as well as how the Dems health care will impact them.
Napoleon’s strategy didn’t work in Spain, either. He could beat the Spanish army in the field and charm urban Spaniards but the people in the hinterlands were another story. The use of the term guerilla for irregular military operations dates from rural Spain’s resistance to Napoleon’s forces. The need to keep several armies in Spain to prop up his brother and check the British army in Portugal based hampered all of Napoleon’s subsequent military operations.
My own analogies have been running more along fin de siecle lines. For the last several years I have had this growing feeling the world is being ill served by those it has elevated to power and wealth. As in 1914, we seem plagued with those who aren’t going to let a crisis go to waste because they are cocksure of exactly how the events they out in place will play out. When the dust settled on that ‘opportunity’ millions were dead, several regimes that had been in power for centuries had vanished and communism had begun its ascendency to widespread political power to the beat of a funeral march.
I hadn’t thought of this as a Cold Civil War. In many ways it is. Americans in flyover country haven’t seen it as such. They knew the self appointed political ruling class held them in contempt, but they didn’t see how what has happening among that set would directly effect their lives. They woke up with the Stimulus bill.
Great post and comments. I especially enjoyed #37 & 38. They rekindled something I had been kicking around in my mind regarding Orwell’s 1984 and how such a “Party” would come about and how we “prols” could be overcome. I think it would likely come (or may be coming) as described in these comments. A gradual (or not so gradual anymore) accumulation of financial, political, coercive, and indirect power in a limited number of tightly connected “nodes” populated by a small self-repopulating elite of like-minded zealots.
I would be reluctant to write off the prospects for health care legislation or Obama’s political demise. Obama’s strategy of a political blitzkrieg to win a quick victory may be in jeopardy, but there is a tremendous amount of political power to be gained even in a watered-down bill.
Since we are wont to quote history, I quote Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The Senate has stripped f-22 funding.
A shameful day for America.
Cap and Trade is not a done deal. Members of Congress got an earful during recess about it, that’s why it’s tabled in the Senate until September, and why there is some much resistance in the House to Obamacare, the Blue Dogs in particular don’t think they can survive another bad vote.
Keep up the pressure and don’t despair, both C&T and Obamacare can be defeated.
I’ve been pondering several ill formed thoughts about Obama and the Dems.
a) What do they politically hope to gain by passing ‘Universal Healthcare’? If the majority of people are currently satisfied with their care and they are moved to something worse, where will the blame fall? Socialized Medicine certainly didn’t build a lifelong Labor majority in the UK. Of course it will create a large bureaucracy that will in all probability vote Democrat.
b) The Republican’s ‘leaderless’ style has actually been a boon. You can’t ridicule or target ala Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals if no gopher is popping his head out of the hole. This loose Tea Party network construct must be maddening to the Dems since no central figure ‘runs’ it. This is true grassroots and the members could be your neighbor, dentist or anyone else.
c) At what point does a bureaucracy crumble under its own weight? The current taxation plan will (per usual) cause the decline of government ‘income’. Taxes will have to go up for the middle class, eroding support for the very thing they are trying to build.
“The Senate has stripped f-22 funding.
A shameful day for America.”
Worse than shameful, suicidal!
We should be cranking these things out like sausages for ourselves and our allies.
It is the one thing for which the red team really has no answer.
40. SJN:
I think your count on bagration may be low. I have heard figures as high as 880,000 mentioned, though separating Eastern Front casualties is problematic, particularly when two oeprations such as such as Bagration & Lvov-Sandomierz run together.
I think you are totally correct about Zhukov and his victory at Khalkin Gol late May to early September 1939. I believe the crushing of the Kwangtoung Field Army may have been the decisive factor in the Imperial decision to pursue the Naval Southern Strategy instead of the Army Northern (mainland) Strategy. Soviet Order of Battle shows that the transfer of Red Army forces westward was delayed by the continued Japanese threat, even after Pear harbor. Had the Japanese attacked in the Far East, Stalin would have had to send some of his reinforcements there. Indeed, Red troops could have been caught in mid path along the Transib rail line as Stavka fell apart under confusion and indecision. And without Pearl Harbor, it would have been far, far harder for FDR to bring the USA into the war, meaning no supplies for Russia.
45. NC mountain girl:
“I hadn’t thought of this as a Cold Civil War. In many ways it is. Americans in flyover country haven’t seen it as such.”
The hell we haven’t. Many of us do see it that way. I’ve been using that particular phrase for several yeas already. the only question is if, and when the war will turn hot. Those of us who have seen war dread this, but History is notorious for ignoring our wishes. Increasingly I consider the model of Spain 1936, as suggested in these pages a few posts back.
Rurik: I am with you. I think that ammo sales point to this. I would say it is just the opposite: The Rank and File “useful idiots” of the Urban Democrats are the ones unaware of this. These folks, BTW, do not even think that they are Marxists. They think that they are the legacy of JFK Democrats. That is what “Left” means to them. Boy, will they be surprised.
907ie: Indeed.
Spain was as big a disaster for Napoleon as Russia. However the bleeding was spread over the years so his fantastical losses there get less press.
////
Lendlease was critical for Red Army success.
America provided all of her radio tubes; Germany had destroyed her only factory on the edge of Moscow.
Tungsten carbide purchased with American cash moved from Sweden to east of the Urals. Production volume on the same mill or lathe went up seven times.
Hughes rotary drill heads replaced ground pounding; drilling speed went up twenty to thirty times.
Dieselized Sherman tanks provided the deep strike spearhead for the Red Army. These are the Shermans seen in German propaganda films as being knocked out at the tip of the Russian advance. Ploesti was over run with Sherman tanks.
////
The Stalingrad fiasco was duplicated in the air: Luftwaffe losses were even more telling than the 22 divisions lost in the pocket.
When the Luftwaffe wasn’t losing in Russia it was getting destroyed over Tunisia by the USAAF and the RAF. Luftwaffe losses in the Med equaled their losses over Stalingrad!
////
The claim that Russia had drawn off 80% of German formations is bogus. Hitler moved his strongest formations to the West and kept them there until the last weeks. He shut off tank reinforcements for the East in favor of creating two new Panzer Armies in the West. Hitler moved his parachute army to the West and kept them there. They were his most elite troops. Hitler deployed his most advanced tanks in the West, even when they were designed specifically to defeat the Soviets upon the steppe. ( Tiger II, JagPanther, JagTiger ) The Luftwaffe had to abandon the East to fight off the USAAF which destroyed it.
Communist sympathizers wildly overrate the blessings of the Russian alliance.
Give it a rest.
Rurik, SJN, not to flog o/t, but have to say, pay special attention to the Red Army troop movements west after the Battle of Midway. Despite Zhukov’s smashing 1939 victory, Red Army kept a large force in place until Midway –after which transfers to Stalingrad kept Red Army on the town side of the river in the crisis phase. least that’s what da books say!
HDGreene/37; that’s about as well-put as anybody’s gonna see it anywhere. The fantastical doings among a circle of top financial organizations culminating in a crisis from summer 2007 to the election are beyond understanding except as a sort of an system self-immolation which –what else, stuffed a small circle of personal pockets as full as possible in time for the election to kick open the doors (the doors made weak enough to kick open BY that pocket-stuffing) to the New Kommissars.
Concur on F-22. Pray we don’t live to regret having 180 5G fighters to go against a few thousand very nearly as good 5Gs from adversaries made enemies by our own stupid decisions. It can’t be guessed perfectly, and far better to spend a little too much than to find out you’ve spent too little –the one error is liveable, the other not.
It’s not about me, he said with a smile
It’s you I am looking out for
You know that my words are quite absent of guile
And my heart weeps for those who are poor
Unable to see a physician when pained
From lack of insurance and such
And answering those who say what’s to be gained
I say that we gain Midas touch
For money will pour into Treasury’s lap
From savings my health care will bring
And bountiful funds from my carbon tax cap
Will blossom the country like Spring
I know there are some who say I’ve over reached
They say that my Waterloo nears
Some say that by acting I’ll soon be impeached
But friends I shall be here for years
I’ll not make mistakes others made in the past
I’ll not have my army retreat
Beyond 2016 my office will last
And victory will taste oh so sweet
An Emperor will take what he wants and he’s got
An army of zealots to boot
And I with my very own Count Bernadotte
Will have a whole country to loot
“What crushed the Grand Armee was the vanity of its commander”.
Perhaps someone here knows, but I have to wonder what Napoleon thought the invasion of Russia was going to be like in the light of his experience at the Battle of Eylau in Poland during February, 1807.
Fighting a mostly Russian force under a German commander, in appalling weather, the French held the field but failed in their actual intent of destroying the opposing force, which was able to withdraw in reasonable order.
The devoted Marshal Ney, who had been astonished by the stolidity of Russian soldiers, described it as a “massacre with no result”, the memory of which was so strong that French veterans passing the battlefield on their retreat from Russia were heard telling younger comrades how terrible it had been.
Napoleon, whose dinner on the eve of the battle had been a single potato which he cooked will sitting on a straw bale in a freezing barn, could have taken Eylau as a warning, and quietly resolved not to fight the Russians again unless he absolutely had to, and then to force them to fight offensively not defensively, and to avoid a winter campaign at all costs. That would have been the rational thing to do….?
PS: Lendlease was critical for Red Army success and made possible (net of Vladivostok’s activities) by the almost forgotten anglo-american victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Mongoose@39
I’m actually not as pessimistic as I might sound. I’m trying to come up with a way to explain what I see developing in a systematic way. I think other commenters see it as well, or something like what I describe (which is far from definitive).
I think a lot of the people who are being tempted into joining what I call “power nodes” have a lot to lose, whatever the short term gain (or bribe) they may receive. I suspect some of them feel threatened if they resist. I think many allies can be found in their ranks, which holds out much hope for a peaceful settlement of what you called the Cold Civil War.
We have to describe the beast, and how it functions, before we can identify its weak points. And we have to be able to describe it to people who don’t have much time to think about these things. I talk this way to ordinary Democratic voters and have yet to have one say, “You are nuts.” At least to my face. More often they say, “you’ve got a point.”
The left gets a lot of its support by attacking the short comings of the Free Enterprise system while contrasting it to an unspecified ideal “omelet” that they will deliver after a certain unspecified number of broken eggs. I think if we can provide the specifications, and show people the downside — that they will likely get many smashed eggs but not much of an omelet — it will go a long way toward tripping the Left up.
One problem we have is what I called the “Shaman media,” which includes most news but most especially entertainment. Entertainment programing can operate on the principle that the Leftist critique is correct and do so year after year. And if you want to be the Dan Quayle that gets in an argument with a fictional character, go ahead — if you can stand the ridicule. Meanwhile, the Shaman news networks will magically shift the blame for our nation’s problems (especially the real ones).
As for the Eastern front: Anyone discuss the GM two and one-half ton truck? It helped the Red Army “mount up.”
“Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!” Washinton DC, 1803
“Billions for community organizers, not one more F-22!” Washington DC 2009
“This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy,” Obama said
Reminds me of athletes who hold out of training camp or decline contract offers and say, “It’s not about the money.” It’s always about the money. With O, it’s always about him.
Napoleon should have realized that after Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) that Britain’s strategic command of the ocean meant that his dominion HAD to trade with her.
Without a negotiated treaty to end hostilities he was boxing himself in to an untenable position.
It was the economic necessity of trading with Britain by Russia that caused Napoleon to march upon Moscow. It was a fool’s campaign from first principles.
Strangely, Napoleon turned down various generous offers to terminate hostilities such as giving France all of Europe west of the Rhine and the Alps and North of the Pyrenees.
The parallels between Hitler and Napoleon are so strong books have been written on them…
Southern alien speaking the national tongue comes out of nowhere to command the national stage.
Institutes economic changes. Changes the structure of the armed forces; drastically expands the warfare state. Romps all over Europe with novel methods, represses citizens everywhere. Ultimately causes the entire continent to unite against his tyranny. The ‘wiz kid’ never figures out how to stop while he’s ahead — not a true strategic thinker. After the end, devastation is everywhere. A lust for peace lasts generations.
Way after the fact ultra-nationalists burnish the tyrant’s image as a way to compensate for their own emotional investment in evil.
Southern alien speaking the national tongue comes out of nowhere to command the national stage
…ah, shaddap, blert!
hdgreene…
You must mean the Studebaker truck.
All Russian lendlease trucks were from the Studebaker factory.
The Dodges went to the Pacific/Burma.
The Fords went to Southern Europe/Africa.
The GMC deuce and a halfs all went to Britain/Northwest Europe.
That’s why when 5th Army units were re-deployed to Britain they left their trucks and much else behind. Brand new GMC machines were waiting for them in England.
By comparison the Germans had total truck chaos. German mechanics had to be expert. BTW, Russians would never shoot a German with greasy hands — they were immediately shunted to Russian motor pools. One particular mechanic ‘switched sides’ four times by way of capture and walk-back. ( The lines were that porous and the troops that drunk.)
Dieselized Sherman tanks provided the deep strike spearhead for the Red Army.
Blert, I’ve heard before that the Brits put a better gun in the Sherman and got a much improved tank. Did the Russians put a better engine in it? Or did the US provide a better version to the Soviets on a priority basis?
I’ve seen GMC trucks referenced as going to the Russians. Could the Studebakers be a GMC design — or drive train, perhaps?
Per Russian spec we produced a custom run of dieselized Shermans just for them. The Russian refinery output had never been sophisticated enough to convert the middle distillate fraction into gasoline. What gasoline they did have was prioritized towards Studebaker trucks and aircraft.
I believe some of the earliest American and British tanks were provided — with gasoline engines — and the Russians quickly found them deficient.
Early Shermans were equipped with a 75mm gun that totally out classed the 1942 German tanks. However by the time America was in the fight the Germans had upgraded the MkIV to a long barrel (42 caliber, ultimately 48 ) and proceeded to ramp up the Panther. ( L70, even prototype L100 barrels!) Of course it was there armor up grades that made the American 75mm a pop-gun.
The British self-modified their Shermans with the 17pdr gun. It’s extra barrel length was striking. Stupidly, they failed to concentrate these ‘Firefly’ tanks into companies. Instead they spread them around thinly enough that the enemy could pick off the Fireflies first thing and then handle the remaining Shermans at leisure. This stupidity went on through the whole campaign!
Bradley begged for the blue-prints and the right to co-produce the Firefly’s gun. He, America, was turned down flat. Every manner of BS excuse was proffered. Ike threw the issue under the rug: no need to get the alliance into a sticky dispute.
BTW, fighting with the British within SHAEF headquarters brought immediate dismissal back to America with a blot on your record and a reduction in grade. Ike wouldn’t permit even one word of criticism by Americans vs the British.
And that’s the reason why Bradley and Patton curse the British only between themselves and in their diaries.
HDgreene is correct, in the power-patronage, and at heart Obama’s struggle is not a foreign invasion but the civil war between the elites who loathe and despise their native peoples, and the native peoples. The balance, being as always women. Who side with the elites for obvious reasons (hereditary nobility with the elites offers many advantages for women).
Obama can suffer no great defeat, no matter what he does, because women, in the form of media, or the elites (deeply feminized), or simply average women themselves, will always support him and will suffer very little.
Napoleon ran out of men, because he got so many of them killed. Who is Obama killing among his supporters? Women LOVE HIM. He’s Global Rockstar #1, the biggest Big Man, the man who promises to reduce Straight White Men into penury and create the cool, hip, edgy matriarchy with wonderful women doing enlightened global green stuff with edgy/dangerous Third World men replacing the dull, boring cube dwellers women have to endure now. Women won’t starve, won’t be shot, won’t endure anything other than inflation and pay cuts (while Straight White Men are fired and replaced with hip/cool/edgy non-Whites) in a straight up patronage play. Meanwhile women will consume the feminized media endlessly, with breathless recountings of balls, glamor, excitement, and just how “Dreamy!” Obama and company really are.
And women plus non-whites plus the media plus SWPL yuppies (deeply feminized and female-oriented) plus voting fraud equals a permanent majority no matter what, absent the one thing that Obama cannot counter.
Women are not good in street fights. They are nearly totally absent the military and police. THEY would love to surrender to any dominating foreign power (women did as a whole, quite well in Vichy France as the mistresses of the Germans) and that is always the case. For men, however, it’s far different and a Straight White Man goes from a decent living to despised back of the bus whipping object? Surrender is not an option for Straight White Men who face only modified chattel slavery.
Machiavelli advised that it’s better to kill an enemy than simply make him poor. Obama lacks the means to do so, and has therefore permanent enemies.
This isn’t Napoleon at Moscow. It’s a civil war, with Caesar and Pompey and Crassus, in the late Republic, enabled by huge amounts of money and wealth sloshing around, coupled with nascent mercenaries out of the Thirty Years War. The political struggle of Obama is about who will rule, totally and completely to the eradication of the other: his coalition of Women, non-Whites, and elite SWPL yuppies, or Straight White Men. One MUST destroy the other, politically and culturally. There is no middle ground, no compromise, no ability to muddle through. And a lot of innocent people will enter the Roman-German civil war model through which Magdeburg Quarter and other massacres were the norm not the exception.
As a practical matter, women “win” in health care rationing, because as the favored group, they get special treatment. Rationing means of course some animals are more equal than others, and women LOVE aristocracy, kings, princesses, and all that. Of course, most men despise it, for obvious reasons as well. [Of course the Senate killed the F-22. Women HATE defense spending, because it employs "icky" men with pocket protectors or grease stained fingers. Not cool/hip princes with inherited wealth who save the planet.]
#68 hdgreene – It ought not to be forgotten that the Mustang was changed from a distinctly average fighter to a brilliant one, by the relatively simple expedient of putting a British-designed engine in it; the Merlin. Arguably, whoever thought that one up won the air war in Europe.
While cursing the British, it is also worth recalling that the man whom Napoleon regarded as the root of his troubles is today largely forgotten. Not Blucher, Kutuzov, Nelson, nor Wellington, but:
Sir Sidney Smith.
Napoleon said of him “That man made me miss my destiny”, Commodore Smith’s 1799 defence of Acre having more fatally upset Napoleon’s Mediterranean timetable than Nelson’s Battle of the Nile victory.
A daring gad-about, Smith saw action at Toulon in 1793, where Napoleon was an artillery officer, and in 1815 arrived at Waterloo after Napoleon had fled, and worked to assist the wounded.
He was also a campaigner for action against the slaver-pirates of North Africa.
What ever you read about GMCs going to Russia is in error.
Of all the trucks, the Studebaker was the most reliable.
When the Red Army celebrated the crossing of the Dnieper in 1968 they were still equipped with Lendlease Studebaker trucks!(25th anniversary)
The Studebaker Brothers started in the California gold fields making wheelbarrows. The museum over here still displays one! They took their winnings/earnings back east and opened a vehicle factory: buck-boards, coaches… horse-drawn anythings.
Comes the Civil War and the Army needs wagons, wagons, wagons. Seasoned lumber suitable for such is instantly depleted.
The Studebaker boys promptly invent the kiln-cured lumber process: fresh cut lumber is racked out in a long barn with a fire pit at one end. The heat is driven through the matrix over a period of ten to twenty days. Presto: the natural two year drying process has been accelerated. The Studebakers are on a roll. They become a major enterprise for the rest of the nineteenth century.
They are the ONLY firm to make the transition from horse drawn vehicles to motor cars and trucks! Their firm finally went bust in 1962. They’d overpaid their Local after the war.( Local 5 IIRC ) Which left them undercapitalized. The new GM V-8s and automatic transmissions did them in.
Anyhow the general reputation of the Studebakers is that the were as reliable then as Toyotas are today. Someone around here still drives a Studebaker pick-up rather regularly. It’s fifty years old!
(The Studies little Six getting about twice the mileage of the GM V-8!)
144 cubes comes to mind.
The Av Gas Shermans were famous for Self-Destructing in a Ball of Flame whenever anything ignited the Gasoline Haze that enveloped them.
Amit @ 5: Instead of that, how about give $1million tax free to each of the 300 million or so legal residents with the promise of:
Never draw social security.
Never use Medicare/Medicaid.
That is $3 trillion dollars. Much less than the current debacle. It does a few things:
Stimulates the economy in a big way.
Abrogates the Social Security and Medicare problem.
Makes us secure in ways you cannot imagine.
Just a random and perhaps nutty thought.
Blert, thanks for the info. That’s a great story about the mechanics.
I was reading about the Weasel last week. It was an all weather, all terrain vehicle that would fit into a glider. Originally, it was designed to help the OSS attack dams in Norway. The Studebaker company put it together in six months.
Fletcher, I believe the forerunner of the Mustang was put together in record time, also. It was kind of a fluke of procurement since the Brits wanted the P-40, I think.
There is an OSS film starring the Weasel here: http://www.realmilitaryflix.com/public/441.cfm
What’s the rush? they’ll ask. The bill isn’t even slated to take effect until next year. You passed the stimulus package, they’ll note, in a similar rush during the administration’s first week — only to see it fall flat. Now Obama aides are claiming the package was never intended to have much effect this year!
How, voters will ask, can we cover 50 million more people without any new doctors or nurses? The answer is to ration health care, with the government deciding who’ll get hip and knee replacements, heart-bypass surgery and other medical treatments. And what does rationing mean? It means that the elderly will be denied care that they can now get whenever they want.
The Obama plan effectively repeals Medicare, putting a Federal Health Board between the elderly and their doctors. This board will instruct public and private insurance carriers on what procedures are to be approved, at what cost and for what patients.
The bulk of this rationing will fall on the elderly. We’ll have to revisit the idea that the elderly have, in the words of former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, “a duty to die.”
The more word gets out about what the bill contemplates, the firmer opposition will grow. That’s why Obama wants to push it through now, while he retains some popularity.
And if the bill passes? The howls of protest from the elderly the first time they’re denied care will be something to behold. It will become evident that the health-care resources being denied to the elderly are going instead to immigrants — legal and not. The anger will be enormous and instant.
Most Americans aren’t sick and don’t use medical facilities often. But the elderly constantly stay in touch with their doctors and medical providers. The curtailment of that access will become immediately apparent — and in more than enough time for the 2010 elections. Dick Morris
Robohobo, you must have Barney Frank’s calculator. But as long as I get the first million they give out, I’m OK with it.
Okay, scratch that. But the point is they are not using their minds but their politics.
Ezra Klein is an A-list left-wing blogger, one so popular (and by some standards, so good) that he got mainstreamed. That is to say, he had is blog moved to the WaPo and is also a regular columnist there.
I wonder how it is that he (1) didn’t get invited to participate in the conference call and (2) was later allowed to just listen in.
Did his signing on with an MSM outlet–even a decidely liberal one–result in a loss of street cred in some eyes?
Or does his employment with the WaPo make him an official member of the media and thus subject to a different standard than mere bloggers?
Not to disagree with Whiskey or HD or the others here, but there is an increasing sense that the real analogy here may be the Wizard of Oz. The spectacular rise of Obama and all the hoopla about his rhetorical skill seems to have masked a couple of important things, one of which is that he’s not really that bright. Nor, apparently are his handlers.
We had an interesting experience on Saturday when we went to protest an ACORN sponsored healthcare rally in Portland (ACORN is a big sponsor of Chellie Pingree, our congressional clown). The mighty ACORN really looked pathetic up close. Big fancy buses disgorging people who looked like they came from a combination of bars and homeless shelters plus a couple of hundred people who looked like they’d just gotten up after Woodstock. The signs were fancy, too, indicating that there’s money and planning somewhere, but there was not a sense of anything other than One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and the numbers weren’t even there to make it impressive.
Add to this that the SWPL etc who Whiskey describes make up what is really a boutique political movement. The whole thing gives the sense that it will go away when pressure of any persistent nature is applied.
HDgreene: you beat me to it on robohobo’s math. $1MM for each of 300 million would be $300 Trillion. A little over the top, even for The One and his magical spendiferousness.
But, as you say, so long as the check clears, who cares? (Frankly, it’s that “whatever’ attitude in the general citizenry that I find so discouraging. This pathology is one that affects them, but they find it too easy to seek rents and score private deals, rather than face the enemy. Obama is not stupid. He runs the air war of total stupefying BS to confuse those who want to engage on logic and principle, and he runs the ground war of patronage and payoffs, to silence the individual opinion-leaders and decision-makers.
Too effective, I fear.
We could have lost the war if the Japanese had gone full force into the Indian Ocean in 1942. Rather than raiding in April, what if they had launched an invasion of Ceylon, captured the good harbor, and then moved west to take Aden and Massawa in Eritrea.
There was nothing to stop them. They smashed most of the tiny naval force left in the April battles. Imagine if by July 1942, a fleet of 8 Japanese carriers sails up the red sea from the south, as Rommel advances from the west. With the Suez Canal opened, the fleet sails west to the Atlantic. All it has to do is sit off England for two months. No supplies get to England. England starves. Surrender would be the only choice. No risky invasion is needed.
What happens in Russia becomes an afterthought. If England surrenders, Japan can attack Russia from the East. Hitler can throw all his forces against a foe getting no supplies from America. Rommel pushes up through the Caucasus. We are lucky Japan didn’t have a good strategic thinker, who thought big enough.
It was the forces from the Eastern front that stopped the Germans at Moscow. December 7, 1941 saw them march through Moscow on their way to the front because the Soviet spy had told them about the attack on America.
For an interesting read, find a copy of “Under The Red Sea Sun”, by Commander Edward Ellsberg. It is his story of almost single handedly restoring the port of Massawa. An amazing shoestring operation, that had a significant effect on the war.
The stimulus package did not fall flat, it did what it was intended to do.
Payolla, look at the projects shovel ready and beyond and where the money will go. Pure patronage. Same Same with the Bank bailouts, Same Same with GM. Who wins are Democrat minions in that they take home the bacon opposed to those who made the businesses flourish and grow to begin with.
Anyone who believes that health care package is anymore than an homage to unions and democrat supporting insurers is in for a rude, and costly awakening. And it isn’t about politics, it is about power for those who could afford to pay and play. The game is hardball. The loser is the American middle class and the constitution. And all those mutual funds and small investments that grew with steady persistence the wealth of the average Joe. Unless you are in government, in a union or can afford to pony up some serious cash, do not expect the current administration to give a rats tail end about you. All the stuff about social and economic justice is a smoke screen for a jobs program involving Acorn and acorn like NGO’s.
Of course they haven’t figured out how to pay for it all once the folks who earn money for a living and put other folks to work earning money for a living are busted. In which case president Obama’s Waterloo is America’s Katyn Forest.
It is the ultimate fee based system where in Obama’s America there is no room for individual rights, individual thoughts or individual anything unless you happen to be an individual who can pay for it regardless of the law or legal standing. The only difference I see between president Obama’s administration and the Kremlin, is the present group has not put a hit out on the press, yet.
Blert and The Red Army did receive the diesel Shermans armed both with the standard 75 mm gun, and also the 76mm.
If you can find it in OOP book sections, I recomment “Commanding the Red Army’s Sherman Tanks” by Dmitrii Loza, translated by James Gebhardt, Nebraska U Press, 1996. My friend Gebhardt, was himself a US Army tanker, so he understood his subject well. It is the sort of book you open after dinner, and finish just before breakfast.
Healthcare Bill Yanked, Obama Polls Lower than Carter
Rep Waxman has canceled a scheduled markup session for the healthcare bill in the House Energy and Commerce panel. Instead, the Democrats from the committee are headed to the White House to meet with Obama. The markup session is where the bill really gets written, and canceling the session shows that they are not ready to try and move the bill out of the committee because they don’t have the votes. And if they don’t have the votes in the committee they probably don’t have the votes in the House either.
According to TheHill.com it sounds like none of the Democrats are really happy with the proposed healthcare reform:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Doug-
I was drinking something when I followed your link, and am now cleaning up phlegmatic club soda.
A warning next time, please, to put down beverages before clicking?
No WONDER that guy’s so certain there’s something bad in the air.
“Good Gawd, look what it DID to me!”
Obama is attempting to use corruptible power to conquer corruption, in defiance of the law of the universe, which states that when one uses corruptible power, the result is always more corruption than existed before. The law of entropy is the law of corruption, and it applies to politics, indeed, to all of human affairs.
So, Obama is increasing entropy: first to himself and to his staff and then to others in an attempt to reduce entropy. He will inevitably burn out: the question is simply how much he will increase the total entropy of the United States before he runs out of energy.
Wrretch: you gotta start a WWII blog to get Blert, HD et al On Topic. They have inspired me to dig up some reading on Bonaparte, which I have intended to do for a while.
However, HD may be on to something with the DC Power Ckt. One thing about a clique is that they can be identified. Once a target is identified, its a matter of munitions and delivery systems.
presbypoet – Sorry. Japan had not enough people nor resources to even start. All that Ceylon would have done would extend their logistic problem to a ridiculous degree. It likely would have shortened the war.
Think about this: All the polls show we are happy with our health care. We hear about bad situations WRT paymewnt and conclude a problem exists. I have Very Old relatives (96+) who are very happy with their (Medicare paid) healthcare. I am puzzled to understand WTF the problem is.
@ 91 “increasing entropy”
Great turn of phrase, and seems to describe our current state more accurately than anything I’ve come across. I’m not so sure there is any plan or “Grand Bargain”; it’s all chaos because everyone is fighting for their share of the loot from the public treasury. The future? Who knows, who cares.
Wretchard, your blog seems to be attracting more readers every day. The only problem is we have too many commenters to easily read all the posts. But as problems go, that’s a good one to have…
blert,
The Studebaker National Museum in South Bend is worth a visit. They sell histories of the company including one titled “Less Then They Promised” and some nice T-shirts too. The town also has some Church School in it.
Herb @ 92:
The problem is that health care is now rationed, to some degree, by one’s ability to pay. Some folks, not all of them poor, don’t like this system.
However, they should remember that while capitalism may yield inequality of happiness, Marxism in all its forms generally distributed misery and deprivation very equally.
Oh, yeah: the other problem for some people is that they ain’t running it. Yet.
What an excellent collection of commentators gathered here today! Thank you, our host.
It’s failing because the health care doesn’t offer anything to anyone. I think it’s a sure bet that the people that would most benefit from this bill, don’t even bother to vote. So why would anyone support this? It’s all pain all around.
Not to mention, the salesman can’t even tell you what’s under the hood since he doesn’t know.
h/t instapundit, enjoy this toothsome little peroration on Directive 10-289.
***
93. buckets:
@ 91 “increasing entropy”
Great turn of phrase, and seems to describe our current state….”
94. Lifeofthemind:
blert,
The Studebaker National Museum in South Bend is worth a visit
ROFLMAO!
(…good naturedly of course)
HD, The DC PC you describe appears to me to follow the pattern of “Chicago Politics” on a larger scale. While we discuss the overeach potential of Obama and the democrats, let us not forget a crtical political aphorism; Namely, that ALL politics is LOCAL.
Bearing this in mind then two things are obvious about “Health Care Reform” and “Cap and Trade”; both these bills will attack every famiy’s standard of living by ever increasing costs and/or taxes, combined with decreasing quantity and quality of life.
We are in the begining of a cold civil war as evidenced by the Tea Party movement. To defeat the Obama democrats power-play these people must be fought at the local leval by clearly enumerating the dollar costs, and quality losses.
Isn’t that the whole point? The worse things get the more demand for government action. Penalize families for their free choices and offer seemingly low cost governmental alternatives. Once dependent on these the new feudalism starts.
HD’s DC/PC becomes the new Lords of the Manor and the public (aka plebs; aka serfs) have to pledge their fealty to get benefits with which to survive.
Once it takes root the New Feudalism will be hard to reverse.
“Hughes rotary drill heads replaced ground pounding; drilling speed went up twenty to thirty times.” This along with the Studebakers may also have been the most underrated factor in terms of Red Army success between 1943-45 (when the war shifted into its mobile phase), since Soviet oil production was very inefficient prior to WWII, even though their engineers theoretical prowess (including an early model of horizontal drilling, now underway most famously in the gas fields of the U.S.) was second to none. I’ve talked to one former Chevron petroleum engineer from Texas, and he told me that most of the techniques used to boost Russian oil production from existing fields after it collapsed in the early Nineties were simply applications of 1940s and 50s era innovations. He would know. He also told me Peak Oil is bunk and that the Russians have only tapped their easiest to reach fields from the Tsarist and Soviet era.
It was not for lack of skill but lack of “rationale” in the Soviet system that these techniques were not applied. Brezhnev could have bankrupted the Arabs after the 1970s Embargo but he was committed to a policy of high oil prices. The Russians are simply still sore that in the Nineties their oligarchs, perhaps in partnership with Soros and other shadowy Western investors who have been playing games in the Soviet Bloc since the 1980s, pumped as much oil as they possibly could and stashed as many billions abroad as they could, resulting in the collapse of the ruble and Russian banking system in 1998. Putin came to power sworn to prevent that from ever happening again, and when Cheney tested his resolve with Khodorkovsky, BAM the oligarch was sent packing. The anti-Russia lobby in Washington hates the current Russian leadership because it has been somewhat effective in reasserting Russia as a force in the world rather than as simply putty in US, EU and Chinese hands (though the latter have been clearly gaining influence in Moscow, to the point that all this talk of Iranian gas being an alternate to Russian gas for Europe is such BS and Washington think tank wishful thinking. The Chinese and Indians will buy it all from Teheran).
Anyway, back to WWII. The U.S. was no. 1 in the world in oil production in 1940-1945, the Soviets were no. 2 right behind us. Churchill had a secret plan to bomb Baku and completely destroy the oil production there in case the Germans captured it in 1942. The Caucuses mountains and fierce Soviet resistance stopped them.
By 1944 the Wehrmacht was a mostly horse drawn army in both the West and the East, regardless of how elite the troops or Panzers were that we faced in the much more compact battlefield of Normandy. The hedgerows made the German forces we were facing look a lot bigger than they were, at least in terms of firepower, they were a force multiplier until we broke out in August 1944. The Germans though were substituting Panzer destroyers, Panzerfausts and 88s for truly mobile tanks. There just weren’t as many of them as in the East. While I cannot speak for the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine losses in the Med which were no doubt huge, the actual number of German troops in North Africa was an order of magnitude smaller than what they had deployed in the East in 1942. The numbers may have creeped up with the invasion of Sicily and then the Italian peninsula in 1943. Hitler always seemed to fear the West more than the East even though Soviet logistics were clearly more simple than for the Western Allies who were at the end of a 3,000 mile shipping chain. That’s why I don’t think it’s possible to make an apples to apples comparison between the Western Allies and the Soviets, the latter had no choice and were fighting on their own soil for most of the war. The Boys of Point du Hoc on the other hand didn’t have to go, but volunteered. Still, they died for the same cause, and there is no longer any ideological reason (save for downplaying the role of Baltic and Ukrainian SS volunteers and pogroms in the East to make those nations look better today) to denigrate the sacrifices of either side.
Looking at Napoleon’s Russian campaign, and comparing it to his other campaigns, it is apparent that the Emperor knew he was in deep trouble long before he reached Moscow…probably he knew it before Smolensk. Napoleon’s inabilty to bring the Russian armies to battle near the frontier was the first check…and his search for a decisive battle drew him in deeper and deeper, until he made his fatal march to Moscow rather than following his initial (correct) inclination to winter in Smolensk.
The Emperor’s handling of Borodino is a powerful indication of Napoleon’s self- awareness that he was in over his head. The Emperor is often censured, (unjustly, I think) for passing up an opportunity to turn the Russian left, a move urged, among others, by Marshal Davout, his best general. However, Napoleon HAD to have a battle: he could not afford the possibility that the Russians (with their more numerous cavalry on better horses) would see the move coming and retreat, or anticipate him and smash his turning column.
Getting to Senator DeMint’s point, Waterloo is a poor analogy (anyway, it’a a bad one, Leipzig was the decisive battle of those wars, not Waterloo– Napoleon could have won his wars till Leipzig, but never after). A better Napoleonic analogy is possibly diplomatic — the disintergration of the French/Russian alliance from Erfurt forward. The Democratic alliance is under stress from two dimensions — on the line between the Blue Dogs and the Northern Liberals, and between the very rich on the one part, and the Unions and organized poor on the other.
In any case, Senator DeMint would do well to keep his mouth shut when he has these insights, and quietly work the fault lines in the Democratic political coalition.
I may comment on #101 later, SJN, but quickly would like to point out the gigantic ‘cake n’ eat it too’ straddle in your concluding sentence’s parenthetical. It’s the ‘appeal to authority’ form of logical fallacy, that “there are those” who play down the fact of incidents of Hitlerite local anti-semitic thugs in German-occupied USSR, including Ukraine. By sentence contruction, you imply an ideological intent behind a covering-up that arguably doesn’t even exist.
For example, if one doesn’t often hear much about the USSR’s WWII pro-Hitlerites from anti-Stalinists, one also doesn’t hear much from pro-Stalinists about the mere-decade-previous Ukrainian Genocide, AKA the Holodomor.
26. buddy larsen:
Didn’t Stalin kill more Russians than Hitler and his military?
Russia declared war on Imperial Japan in August, 1945, to get the Kurile Islands, at a time when the defeat was certain. Nothing like waiting ’til the last minute.
Read the story about the B-29 forced down into Russian territory that was never returned. Can anyone spell Ilyushin copy?
tomw
That B-29 morphed into the TU-4 prototype…
Stalin loved it so much that he built a secret factory city tooled to American dimensions ( vs metric ) to reproduce B-29s.
A TU-4 still sits in front of Russian Air Force HQ.
When coupled with the Fat Man atomic bomb — thank you Oppenheimer — every American city could have been Nagasaki II.
…just be very glad that it was USA and not USSR that had the five-year A-bomb monopoly. (*whew*)
This post has really got me thinking. I agree that there are interesting parallels to Napoleon in Obama. The Russians bungled everything in 1812, but hubris and providence destroyed Napoleon regardless. Russia was his great over-reach and he stayed in Moscow with maps of India because he had illusions he was the next Alexander the Great (just as Obama thinks he is the next Lincoln, FDR, gee I’ve lost track which famous person he thinks he is this week)
As Napoleon’s political capital collapsed, the Prussians and much of Europe knew to detach themselves from him as he began his downward spiral in 1813. In fact, when Napoleon was in Russia, General Malet back in Paris had devised a plot to overthrow Napoleon’s government (hmm maybe Bill and Hillary can figure how to salvage their power in the background)
The other prophetic thing that I see about Waterloo that does make me think DeMint used the correct analogy is that all the cards were in Napoleon’s favor to win this battle. He figured he had about a 90 percent chance of winning. However, he lost the battle by having the worse communications that sent D’Erlon running around the field useless (think Pelosi) and Ney was completely unsupported and still fought with amazing bravery. He had no game plan that was clearly explain (think Healthcare) and when it was too late he drove his entire Imperial Guard straight into a trap. The thanks Marshal Ney got was to have Napoleon blame the whole debacle on Ney (he was thrown under the bus by Napoleon) and so I believe many Democrats will feel the sting of Obama’s narcissistic treachery. Hopefully, in this “sped up media 24/7 world we live in”, this will all play out and by 2011 he is on the way out defeated by a worthy opponent who will restore American democracy…..
Heaven knows we don’t want a Louis XVIII.
Now, wretchard….. ( or some Napoleonic scholar) let’s see which speech emerges when Obama confirms the worst of our fears about the economy and his failed bills and then we can call that his 29th Bulletin!!!!!)