Featured Articles — July 25, 2009

July 25, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama Voices Regret to Policeman By Michael A. Fletcher and Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post
President Obama, attempting to quell a mushrooming racial controversy that threatened to eclipse his top domestic initiative, expressed regret Friday for saying that police "acted stupidly" by arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home near Harvard University.

Obama knows ’stupidly’ when he doesn’t see it By Mark Steyn, OC Register
Encounter between cops and black professor suggests grievance-mongering will always be with us.

Now What? By David M. Smick, The Weekly Standard
When people asked what fundamentally caused the financial crisis, my answer is not what they expect. I respond with one phrase–the fall of the Berlin Wall. By the early 1990s, after the collapse of the socialist model, emerging market economies such as China, India, Eastern Europe, and the commodity producers wanted to be like the West–capitalists. And they became pretty good at making their economies more productive. This had the effect of lowering real wage costs globally while setting up these economies as powerful exporters.

What the CIA hid from Congress By Jane Harman, The Los Angeles Times
Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration’s surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman.

The Way We Live Now

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Lifestyle | 3 Comments 

Five days ago, Minnesota newlyweds Jillian Peterson and Kevin Heinz uploaded a video of their 20 June nuptials at St. Paul’s Christ Lutheran Church to YouTube.  It is already closing in on almost five million hits.   And the happy couple have made a big splash in many newspapers and chatted with Matt Lauer on The Today Show.

The bride and groom —both 28— choreographed the aisle entrances of seven bridesmaids, five groomsmen, and four ushers.  Their choice of music was Chris Brown’s “Forever.”

It would be nice to think that this is a charming anomaly.  Far more likely, it is the beginning —and high point— of an unfortunate trend along the lines of applause at funerals.

UPDATE 7/25/09 1 PM: Maarja Krusten’s comment alerted me to Washington Post arts and dance critic Sarah Kaufman’s stylish and insightful column (“Going to the Chapel & We’re Gonna Get Jiggy”) about this video in today’s WaPo.

Peterson danced growing up and told Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer that she “loved dance as a way to express yourself and share joy.”

And that’s exactly what’s behind the enormous response to their video. It’s all about the joy.

We all know what we’re supposed to do at weddings: Look on politely as a matchy-matchy parade of friends makes its slooooow way down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Try not to giggle. Rise for the bride.

But, by dancing their entrances and sending that upbeat, physical energy right back out to their guests, the Peterson-Heinz wedding turns the rote behaviors into spontaneous reactions. Of course the guests watch attentively as the wedding party bobs in. You can bet not a single child had to be shushed at that point. This was no longer a display of bad posture and dyed-to-match pumps — it was an uplifting swell of celebration with a beat. The bride — unescorted, we note; so independent! — was and wasn’t the center of attention. The true focus was on the unified, wordless but palpable emotions of her whole support system.

It plugs us in to something deeply human. Dancing is how so many cultures have celebrated weddings for eons. Okay, maybe not exactly like this, with the ushers turning their programs into confetti, with one groomsman thrusting a stray flower between his teeth and flinging himself into a handstand, with two of the bridesmaids clasping hands and doing a little riff on swing dancing.

Jill and Kevin claimed to have only had one rehearsal and said the whole group contributed to the choreography. They did an amazing job of it. It builds in force right up until the crowning moment: the pas de deux, where Kevin takes his bride’s arm and they glide in step toward the beaming minister, capturing what Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse knew in their sweet “Dancing in the Dark” number from the film “The Bandwagon.”   There’s nothing so intimate as a slow stroll. After everyone’s bouncing, that short walk together was terribly moving.

That said —and I couldn’t agree more and no one could have said it better— I still dread the spate of spinoffs to which hapless wedding goers —and YouTube watchers— are about to be subjected.

ROMANCE MEETS REALITY REUPDATE: 7/25/09 4.30 PM: An item from “Page Six” in today’s New York Post titled “ABC Bounces Newlyweds”:

A NEWLYWED couple from Minnesota became the latest victims in the vicious morning TV booking wars, when ABC had them thrown out of their hotel and canceled their airline tickets to fly home.

Kevin and Jill Heinz were left stranded after they committed the unpardonable crime of appearing on NBC as well as ABC. “We’ve been kicked out of our room,” Kevin told Page Six yesterday from the lobby of the Millennium Hotel. “New York is cut-throat. That’s what we’ve learned.”

The Heinzes became a sought-after “get” for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today” after the video of their June 20 wedding march — featuring the ushers and bridesmaids doing a funky dance down the aisle — became a sensation on YouTube, with 1.4 million hits.

Producers at “GMA” booked the couple on yesterday’s show, flew them to New York and put them up at the Millennium, but the newlyweds also agreed to pretape an appearance on “Today.”

“We did it by the book,” a “Today” exec told Page Six. “We said, ‘Come in at 6:15 and we’ll have you out by 6:30,’ which is exactly what we did.” But particularly galling to the ABC execs, “Today” aired its Heinz segment before “GMA” put them on air live.

Then, when ABC execs learned that NBC had agreed to fly in the ushers and bridesmaids to reenact their dance with the newlyweds on this morning’s “Today” show, they decided to cancel the couple’s hotel and flights. NBC quickly moved the couple to another hotel and agreed to fly them home tomorrow.

“We figured they’d be happier staying with their whole wedding party on the ‘Today’ show’s tab. It certainly makes us happier,” a “GMA” exec told Page Six.

As for the Heinzes, maybe they picked Chris Brown’s “Forever” as their nuptial dance track because of the lyrics: “We can be two rebels breaking the rules, me and you, you and I.”

Dr. House And Mr. Obama

July 24, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Obama administration, Religion | 3 Comments 

If healthcare reform, Obama style, gets traction and becomes the new reality in America, one completely overlooked consequence will be that the highly-popular television show, HOUSE, will have to say “yes, we can” and go off the air.   Or at-the-least, the program will have to be shortened to one act, focused completely on a waiting room and with the only dramatic tension being just which one test the team will choose to run.  

If you are not a regular viewer, what you need to know is that the fictional Dr. Gregory House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie, is a medical genius.   He heads up a team of brilliant diagnosticians at a New Jersey teaching hospital and each episode necessarily involves a quest, via many tests and approaches, to figure out what usually-obscure illness threatens the life of the patient du jour.

It’s Sherlock Holmes in an emergency room stuff – sort of a “what done it?”

A few years ago, I had some pain in my chest and went to a local emergency room.   I was admitted to the hospital for some tests.  They put me on a treadmill, wired me for sound, and later did this thing called a “chemical stress test.”  That’s code for: “Injection of weapons grade uranium into patient to cause meltdown.”  There was one more test they could have done.  In fact, one doctor strongly recommended it.  It is called cardiac catheterization. A doctor inserts a thin plastic tube into an artery or vein in the arm or leg. From there it can be advanced into the chambers of the heart or into the coronary arteries.

The test is really the gold standard when it comes to diagnosing a heart problem.  It’s also apparently quite expensive.  Alas, the good doctor who wanted to see it done was overruled by my HMO – I won’t mention the name of the company, let’s just say it sounds a little bit like “Permanent Czar.” 

I passed all the tests – no heart problem – and headed home.  But my wife and I had a nagging question: Would that heart catheterization test have been a smart thing to have?

Over the next several days I received calls and emails from friends all over the country and I began to notice an anecdotal trend.   I heard testimony from people who had gone through what I had experienced, with all tests coming back fine, only to do the heart catheterization and find a serious arterial blockage requiring emergency surgery.

One such call was from my favorite liberal Democrat and good friend, Bob Beckel.  He told the same story – test after test came back negative, then the heart cath and a trip to multiple by-pass land.   He and others told me to pitch a fit with my czarist (Germanic form) health insurance company and keep doing so until they agreed to pay for the test.  So I did.

Already-too-long story short, I had the heart catheterization test done four months after my hospitalization, and thankfully it also indicated that there was nothing wrong; except for the stress of having to go through that period, fighting all the way, to get what could and should have been done during my prior hospital stay.  That would have saved time, maybe even a little money.  

Now, here is my question:  How is health care reform ala Obama going to do anything other than make it even harder to get such a test done? 

Does anyone without a power-grab agenda seriously believe that government-run health care will make it more likely that an expensive test will be run after several others have indicated no problem?  Calling Dr. House, Dr. Cuddy, Dr. House – I mean, really?

Many doctors already have to fight hospital administrators and health insurance companies en route to quality patient care.   Just ask them.   Will placing another level of authority over them, ceding more local turf to the feds, make things better? 

Frankly, when I take a look at what health care could become in America if we don’t collectively say “No, we can’t,” I find myself pretty cool with my HMO.  I know they get a bad rap, but if we don’t watch it, there will come a time when we look back and nostalgically refer to right now as “the good old days.” 

Sure, some stuff is broken and needs to be fixed.  Why not start with tort reform?  Why are we not hearing about this from the White House and the Democrats in Congress? 

Follow the money.  

I actually think the whole issue is being framed incorrectly and therefore it is easily subject to misunderstanding, even manipulation.   We don’t need health care reform.  Our standard of care is pretty good.   No, what people are really talking about is health coverage reform.   But no plan on the table right now is able to even suggest the broadening of coverage to include those millions who don’t now have insurance, without compromising the quality of care.

We are at a crossroads on this issue as a culture.  And many Americans – certainly many politicians – seem more than willing to trade our high standard of quality care for a model that dumbs it all down.  We are on the verge of selling our national soul for a mess of perilous pottage, and in the end we will all suffer.  Most of that suffering will be in long lines or crowded waiting rooms.

Has there ever been a situation in our history where increased government involvement in the actual running of something (not mere oversight, but managing the details day to day) has turned out to be a cost cutter?  Anyone? Anyone?

Creating a system whereby a significant number of people can get a service for free that others must pay for does not tend to keep overall costs down.  In fact, they skyrocket, placing an even greater burden on those who pay.  It’s misguided compassion and inherently based on class-envy. 

And don’t even get me started on the whole privacy-medical-records thing.  Recently, I had a conversation with a family – military people – and they have been looking forward to a particular promotion.   The problem was with a visit to the doctor a while back and the casual mentioning of “anxiety” to the physician. This led to the insertion of a comment on the computerized record that found its way to a decision maker on the promotion issue.  Bottom line, the advance was nixed.  Not because of any real issue, but because an annotation carelessly made, and subject to misinterpretation, became part of the record extant.  

Welcome to your future if the Dems have their way with one fifth of the U.S. economy. 

Finally, as I finish my health care rant, I can’t help but bring up the issue of evangelicals and Obama, at least in the context of so many younger ones lending him their support last fall.  My conversations with many young-Obama-evangelicals suggested that the number one reason they were willing to, in effect, abandon vital conservative evangelical positions such as the pro-life issue, had to do with temporal concerns and compassion, particularly the idea of providing universal health care. 

Now, six months into his administration, and as the details of his plan (or stealthy lack thereof) come into at least marginally better focus, I wonder if some of those hip “values” voters who bought into the mania have any remorse?   And when his plans sink under the weight of their sheer audacity, will it have been worth it? 

Maybe many will be dazed and confused and left to ponder life without utopian fixes and reflecting as Dr. House did in episode number 119: "It does tell us something. Though I have no idea what."

7.24.69

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

 

Watchful waiting: RN aboard the USS Hornet in mid-Pacific waiting for the Apollo XI command module splashdown.

24 July 1969: Day 9 of Apollo XI’s Mission to the Moon

6:47 a.m.- Crew awakens and begins to prepare for splashdown. 12:21 p.m.- Command and service modules are separated. 12:35 p.m.- Command module re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. 12:51 p.m.- Spacecraft splashes down 825 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu and about 13 nautical miles from the recovery ship, the U.S.S. Hornet. 1:20 p.m.- Hatch of command module opens and frogman hands in isolation suits. 1:28 p.m.- Astronauts emerge from the spacecraft in isolation suits and are sprayed with a disinfectant as a guard against the possibility of their contaminating the Earth with Moon "germs." 1:57 p.m.- Astronauts arrive by helicopter on the flight deck of the Hornet. Still inside the helicopter they ride an elevator to hangar deck and then walk immediately into the mobile quarantine trailer in which they will remain until they arrive at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston early July 27. 3:00 p.m.- President Nixon welcomes the astronauts, visible through a window of the trailer. Speaking over an intercom, he greets them, extends them an invitation to attend a dinner with him August 13. and tells them: "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation…. As a result of what you have done, the world’s never been closer together …. We can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the stars."

Columbia has landed: Having traveled 952,700 nautical miles since 16 July, the Apollo XI command module splashes down in the distance as RN and NASA Administrator Dr. Thomas Paine watch from the USS Hornet.

 

 

RN’s Welcome Home and Chat With Apollo XI Astronauts

Neil, Buzz, and Mike: I want you to know that I think I am the luckiest man in the world, and I say this not only because I have the honor to be President of the United States, but particularly because I have the privilege of speaking for so many in welcoming you back to earth. I can tell you about all the messages we have received in Washington. Over 100 foreign governments, emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and kings, have sent the most warm messages that we have ever received. They represent over 2 billion people on this earth, all of them who have had the opportunity, through television, to see what you have done. Then I also bring you messages from members of the Cabinet and Members of the Senate, Members of the House, the space agency, from the streets of San Francisco where people stopped me a few days ago, and you all love that city, I know, as I do. But most important, I had a telephone call yesterday. The toll wasn’t, incidentally, as great as the one I made to you fellows on the moon. I made that collect, incidentally, in case you didn’t know. But I called three, in my view, three of the greatest ladies and most courageous ladies in the whole world today–your wives. From Jan, Joan, and Pat, I bring their love and their congratulations. We think it is just wonderful that they have participated at least in television in this return. We are only sorry they couldn’t be here. Also, I will let you in on a little secret. I made a date with them. I invited them to dinner on the 13th of August, right after you come out of quarantine. It will be a state dinner held in Los Angeles. The Governors of all the 50 States will be there, the Ambassadors, others from around the world and in America. They told me that you would come, too. All I want to know is: Will you come? We want to honor you then. MR. NEIL A. ARMSTRONG. We will do anything you say, Mr. President, anytime. THE PRESIDENT. One question, I think all of us would like to ask: As we saw you bouncing around in that float out there, I wonder if that wasn’t the hardest part of the journey. Did any of you get seasick? MR. ARMSTRONG. No, we didn’t, and it was one of the hardest parts, but it was one of the most pleasant, we can assure you. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I just know that you can sense what we all sense. When you get back now incidentally, have you been able to follow some of the things that happened since you have been gone? Did you know about the All-Star Game? COL. EDWIN E. ALDRIN, JR. Yes, sir. The capsule communicators have been giving us daily reports. THE PRESIDENT. Were you American League or National League? Col. ALDRIN. National League. MR. ARMSTRONG. Neither one. THE PRESIDENT. There is the politician in the group. MR. ARMSTRONG. We are sorry you missed that. THE PRESIDENT. You knew that, too? MR. ARMSTRONG. We heard about the rain. We haven’t learned to control the weather yet, but that is something we can look forward to. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I can only summarize it because I don’t want to hold you now. You have so much more to do. You look great. Do you feel as great as you look? MR. ARMSTRONG. We feel great. THE PRESIDENT. Frank Borman feels you are a little younger by reason of having gone into space. Is that right? Do you feel a little bit younger? MR. ARMSTRONG. We are younger than Frank Borman. THE PRESIDENT. He is over there. Come on over, Frank, so they can see you. Are you going to take that lying down? ASTRONAUTS. It looks like he has aged in the last couple weeks. COL. FRANK BORMAN. They look a little heavy. Mr. President, the one thing I wanted–you know, we have a poet in Mike Collins. He really gave me a hard time for describing the words "fantastic" and "beautiful." I counted them. In 4 minutes up there, you used four "fantastics" and three "beautiful." THE PRESIDENT. Well, just let me close off with this one thing: I was thinking, as you know, as you came down, and we knew it was a success, and it had only been 8 days, just a week, a long week, that this is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely, and also, as I am going to find on this trip around the world, and as Secretary Rogers will find as he covers the other countries in Asia, as a result of what you have done, the world has never been closer together before. We just thank you for that. I only hope that all of us in Government, all of us in America, that as a result of what you have done, can do our job a little better. We can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the stars. We don’t want to hold you any longer. Anybody have a last–how about promotions? Do you think we can arrange something? MR. ARMSTRONG. We are just pleased to be back and very honored that you were so kind as to come out here and welcome us back. We look forward to getting out of this quarantine and talking without having the glass between us. THE PRESIDENT. Incidentally, the speeches that you have to make at this dinner can be very short. If you want to say "fantastic" or "beautiful," that is all right with us. Don’t try to think of new adjectives. They have all been said. Now, I think incidentally that all of us, the millions who are seeing us on television now, seeing you, would feel as I do, that, in a sense, our prayers have been answered, and I think it would be very appropriate if Chaplain Piirto, the Chaplain of this ship, were to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. If he would step up now.

7.24.59

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Здравствуйте!: RN and PN arrive in Moscow for what would be a tense and historic trip. Photograph by Howard Sochurek for Life magazine.

Fifty years ago today, Bill Safire knocked down a barrier and shouted to RN’s military aide Don Hughes: "This way to the typical American house."  And the rest is history.  (History recently recounted here (etc.) by Jonathan Movroydis; the Safire story is amusingly detailed in his memoir Before the Fall and recalled in today’s New York Times). In addition to the various staff and State Department officials, the Nixon party included atomic submariner Admiral Hyman Rickover, Milton Eisenhower, and Harvard historian and sage William Yandell Elliott.  The official party were covered by some seventy reporters with their own 707. Time magazine gave RN a send-off cover, showing him against a backdrop of St. Basil’s and the Kremlin on Red Square and Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome that was the centerpiece and symbol of the American Exhibition the Vice President was traveling to open.

The Kitchen Debate, in addition to being significant, was pithy, colloquial, provocative, and is still worth reading both as a piece of history and as a battle of wits.  RN was unfazed by Khrushchev’s calculated use of homely (and frequently vulgar) phrases and proverbs; in fact, saw and raised the Soviet Premier on his own ground.

Khrushchev: "Don’t you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down? Many things you’ve shown us are interesting but they are not needed in life. They have no useful purpose. They are merely gadgets. We have a saying, if you have bedbugs you have to catch one and pour boiling water into the ear." Nixon: "We have another saying. This is that the way to kill a fly is to make it drink whisky. But we have a better use for whisky."

A complete transcript is here.  (And for RN’s gutsy oneupmanship regarding the comparative nature of barnyard scents at the meeting preceding the Kitchen Debate —which had to be expurgated for 1960’s Six Crises— check out page 207 of 1978’s RN.)

The Kitchen That Made History: The US Veep and the Soviet Premier with First Deputy Premier and old Bolshevik Anastas Mikoyan in the middle and a young Leonid Brezhnev over RN’s shoulder. The photograph was taken by Bill Safire, whose ingenuity engineered the historic confrontation. Following on RN’s demonstration of grace under pressure during the life-threatening ride from the airport in Caracas, the facedown with Khrushchev elevated the Vice President’s already well-burnished foreign policy credentials in the lead-up to the 1960 presidential election.  Time magazine, summarizing the trip, said that RN  “managed in a unique way to personify a national character proud of peaceful accomplishment, sure of its way of life, confident of its power under threat.” And Newsweek waxed all but ecstatic:

It was first a contest of men.  Here was Dick Nixon,  young (46), slender, eager — the son of a California grocer, an American man of success.  Opposing him was Khrushchev, aging (65), short, bull-strong — the son of a peasant, ex-coalminer, successor to Stalin.  It was, too a contest of nations….their secret deadly talks could change the course of history.

RN takes a walk in Moscow.  The Soviet government barely publicized his trip and exercised ruthless crowd control.  But whenever RN could break free the crowds were curious and enthusiastic.   Photograph by Howard Sochurek for Life magazine.

The Diplomate

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In the Soviet Union in 1959, as on all of RN’s Vice Presidential diplomatic trips abroad beginning in 1953, PN continued to break ground by pursuing her own independent and substantive schedule.   Her work was recognized by Life magazine with its 10 August cover.

The late Herb Klein was the Veep’s Press Secretary on this trip, and he later recalled an otherwise unheralded event:

Shortly after arriving at the Spaso House [the American Ambassador's residence where the Nixons were staying], the Vice President asked Pat if she would like to take a walk with him through the town.  I walked with them, and there was only one American Secret Service man, and one Embassy representative who acted as interpreter.  This was one of the few times the Nixons have been able to go through a public area unnoticed.  the Soviets seemed to notice only that Mrs. Nixon wore shoes with pointed toes.  In a small store she gave two little children some candy.  their parents were amazed when the interpreter told them that the candy was given by the wife of the Vice President of the United States.

In addition to Moscow, the Nixons visited Leningrad, Sverdlosk, and Novosibirsk — where PN broke through the language barrier (and the distancing ploys of her official hosts) to mix with the crowds.

Featured Articles — July 24, 2009

July 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Rhetoric Meets Reality By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post
What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.

Blown deadline, blown chance? By Carrie Brown and Chris Frates, Politico
With his August deadline now dead, President Barack Obama must hope the prospects for health reform this year haven’t expired as well — but the backsliding and bitter words on Capitol Hill this week show just how much his sweeping plan is at risk.

Health Reform’s Hidden Victims By John Fund, The Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama’s health-care sales pitch depends on his ability to obfuscate who is likely to get hurt by reform. At Wednesday’s news conference, for example, he was asked “specifically what kind of pain and sacrifice” he would ask of patients in order to achieve the cost savings he promises.

Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare By Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
This is big, what’s happening. President Obama appears to have misstepped on a major initiative and defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood, which itself is news: He rose from nothing to everything with the help of his fine-tuned antennae.

50 Years On

July 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Russia | 1 Comment 

Bill Safire was also at the American Exhibition in Moscow and saw the "Kitchen Debate" first hand. He writes his 50 year reflection in an op-ed at The New York Times.

The Winds Of Change In 1959

July 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Russia | Leave a Comment 

George Feifer, a Russian born Soviet expert who just happened to man the Ford exhibit at the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, argues (in an article for Radio Free Europe) that it was this occasion — and the great "Kitchen Debate" –  that set the precedent for thawed tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and opened the world to a curious people who gained their freedom 30 years later:

But that wouldn’t be my last word about the fine summer of 1959, because its air was light with not only a promise of change but also substantial beginnings. They grew from Khrushchev’s thaw that was relaxing restrictions and raising hopes for the humane socialism craved by the educated people who were most eager to talk to the exhibition’s guides.

Together with Khrushchev’s ultimate vision of communism — more butter, or some butter, on Russians’ bread — his attachment to “peaceful coexistence” melted the Cold War’s ice more than at any time since it had formed.

The following year, Khrushchev met in Paris with President Dwight Eisenhower, whom he’d praised for his wisdom and love of peace in ways unprecedented for a Soviet leader. The collapse of their summit thanks to the downing of Gary Powers’ spy plane two weeks earlier bitterly disappointed Khrushchev because his plans to increase the production of butter rested on reducing the production of guns.

Despite the U-2 fiasco, however, Khrushchev significantly reduced the size of the Soviet armed forces, prompting scorn from his military-industrial complex.

No one can know what progress toward real detente might have been made if the CIA had heeded Eisenhower’s instinct not to make another U-2 overflight of the USSR on the eve of the Paris summit. Nor does anyone know how much sense lies in the old hypothesis that efforts by the two sides’ hardliners to sabotage the doves’ efforts to temper the great East-West conflict made those hardliners best friends in that respect.

But if that hypothesis ever did make good sense, it was then, during the substantial relaxation under Khrushchev and Eisenhower, both of whom knew war well and profoundly hated it. That was what had made possible the American Exhibition, with its subversive advertisements for capitalism in the heart of the Soviet capital, in the first place. Surely it also fed the good feelings that poured from its eager visitors to us lucky guides.

Well Informed, Improvised And Exceptional

July 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Russia | Leave a Comment 

Serge Schemann from The New York Times commemorates the 50th anniversary of the "Kitchen Debate" between Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschschev and then Vice President Richard Nixon, in which the two argued the philosophical tenets of socialism and capitalism at the American Exhibition in Moscow.

Interesting is Schemann’s lament about the lost art of unscripted political discourse, a talent that RN cultivated as a well informed pol and a student of history (in light of what some in the MSM are hammering as last evening’s drab and meandering press conference. Howard Fineman likened President Obama’s performance to "watching a three-card Monte game while simultaneously listening to a lawyer read from the Federal Register.").

Schemann is especially captivated by RN’s command of Russian history and literature during his dialogues with the Soviets, and remains impressed by his iconic status in Moscow as an elder statesman:

In his memoirs, Nixon pictured his retort as a deliberate chess move. He had read that the Soviet premier had been a pig herder, and, he wrote, “Khrushchev would respect only those who stood up to him, who resisted him, and who believed as strongly in their own cause as he believed in his.”

I believe it was more than that. Though he had risen in politics in part through Soviet-bashing, Nixon was an ardent student of Russia. After I wrote a series of articles about a dilapidated Russian village, he had sent me a handwritten letter recalling passages from Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” in which Levin, the liberal landowner, finds his attempts at agricultural innovation stymied by immutable Russian peasants.

Tolstoy and other Russian writers, he told me later, shaped a lasting fascination with Russia, which played a major role in his relish to take on the Soviet leader and, I think, in the respect the Russians developed for Nixon.

When the Soviet Union began to unravel in the early 1990s, I had an opportunity to meet Nixon in Moscow. Then 78, with Watergate far enough removed for him to treat it almost casually in conversation, he was received by the Russians as a respected and historical figure, and accorded meetings with both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, then locked in mortal political combat.

Nixon’s analysis of that struggle was spellbinding, especially when he transposed it onto the American scene. “Gorbachev is Wall Street, and Yeltsin is Main Street,” he said. Or: “Gorbachev is Georgetown drawing room. Yeltsin is Newark factory gate.”

It was a very personal view from a man familiar with that battlefield. He found an “animal magnetism” in Yeltsin, but his money was on Gorbachev, in whom he saw a man who had fought hard to get where he was and would not give it up lightly: “He likes power. He intends to keep it. He is a fighter.” Perhaps it was because he saw something of himself in Gorbachev that he failed to see that the Russian, too, would fall painfully from power, 10 months later as it transpired, and take the Soviet Union down with him.

He also revealed something else about the kitchen debate: not only had he deliberately thrown his manure at Khrushchev’s manure, but he armed himself for the confrontation. Nixon said he had realized that Khrushchev liked to use the shock value of crude farm talk and had lined up retorts from his own rural past.

A Universal newsreel of the debate is below:

7.23.69

July 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

 

 

 

Battered but unbowed: The post-splashdown Apollo XI command module Columbia.

With one day to go before the anniversary of Apollo XI’s splashdown, TNN remembers another 20th Century triumph of American ingenuity, technology, and talent.

Les Paul and Mary Ford are introduced by Alistair Cooke on a 1953 broadcast of the legendary CBS show Omnibus. "How High the Moon," was written by Morgan Lewis and Nancy Hamilton in 1940.  The Pauls’ unique multitracked version spent twenty-five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 —nine of them at Number One— in the spring and summer of 1951.

The fact that today’s average cellphone packs greater computer power than the entire Apollo XI command module puts Les Pauls’ Rube Goldbergish reel-to-reel recorders in some technological perspective.

Les Paul, a true National Treasure, celebrated his 94th birthday last month.  Despite a stroke and crippling arthritis in his fingers, he performs Monday nights at Iridium on Broadway in New York.

Featured Articles — July 23, 2009

July 23, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | 1 Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

At big moment, President Obama goes small By Ben Smith, Politico
President Barack Obama came alive about 50 minutes into Wednesday night’s news conference — when somebody finally changed the subject.

ObamaCare in Trouble By Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
Polls are turning against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan. The political calendar is, too. On Monday, the Washington Post/ABC poll reported that 49% of Americans approve of his handling of health care while 44% disapprove.

Behind the CIA’s Assassination Program By David Ignatius, The Washington Post
When the CIA’s alleged assassination program surfaced this month, the first reports focused on what hadn’t been done: Congress hadn’t been briefed, supposedly on orders from Vice President Dick Cheney, and the program hadn’t actually resulted in any "hit team" attacks on al-Qaeda operatives.

Big Government Medicine By Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics
Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street-inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health-care system. And it aims to tax how energy in the United States is used to monitor carbon use.

Is Bernanke Wise Enough to Exit? By Larry Kudlow, RealClearMarkets
Fed head Ben Bernanke went before Congress this week with his midyear update on monetary policy and the economy. In so many words, the former Princeton economics professor is taking credit for averting the collapse of our financial system; is cautiously optimistic about economic recovery by year-end and 2 to 3 percent growth in 2010; and says he has the tools and wisdom for a carefully crafted liquidity-exit strategy that will prevent future inflation and more asset bubbles.

Helmand: The more troops you use, the less you lose By Allan Mallinson, Daily Telegraph
‘The fog of war", like so many militarisms, goes back to Clausewitz. Reflecting on 20 years’ fighting in Napoleonic Europe – from the great campaigns and field battles to the proto-guerrilla-war in Spain – the Prussian strategist wrote: "The great uncertainty of all information in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which not infrequently – like the effect of fog or moonshine – gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."

The New Nixon Doctrine

July 22, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

At World Politics Review, Eugene Gholz has a prescription for U.S. foreign policy in the 21^st Century, all based on the premise of W.W.R.N.D (What Would Richard Nixon Do.). The article requires a subscription, but it’s well worth the read as it confers a modern application of Nixonian philosophy from North Korea and China to the future of NATO and Iraq.

Here is an excerpt from Gholz’s North Korean case:

The situation has changed dramatically over the past 40 years. Today, South Korea’s resources dwarf its northern adversary’s power base. In 2008, South Korea’s GDP was more than 30 times greater than North Korea’s. And South Korea’s population is more than twice as large, not to mention better educated and better fed, even if North Korea’s military still enjoys a disproportionate share of that country’s limited wealth. North Korea’s geographical advantages enable it to threaten South Korea with its famous long-range artillery in hardened bunkers close enough to shell Seoul — at least until the emplacements are overrun by a South Korean offensive. But South Korea has plenty of power to do the heavy lifting for its own conventional defense.

The appropriate standard for an updated Nixon Doctrine is not whether the American ally can stand invulnerable on its own, but rather whether the American ally, with appropriate technical support and training from American advisers, can fight for its own freedom. South Korea’s military is already in good shape today. Given a graceful transition to a new alliance relationship, South Korea could afford to invest in building up any capabilities that heretofore have been supplied disproportionately by American forces.

The alliance is actually already moving in this direction. With the U.S. Army stretched thin by the need to rotate troops through Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2004 the U.S. shifted forces from Korea to the Middle East. The two governments later agreed to significantly reduce the number of American troops stationed at Korean bases. Under an updated Nixon Doctrine, the size of U.S. Forces, Korea could simply continue that downward trajectory. The remaining steps would be to transition the remaining 25,000 American soldiers off the Peninsula and to revise war plans that call for large numbers of American ground forces to flow into Korea at the start of a renewed conventional war.

Another aspect of the situation on the Korean Peninsula makes the U.S.-South Korea alliance an ideal case for application of an updated Nixon Doctrine: the nuclear balance. Much of the discussion of the Nixon Doctrine during the 1970s focused on its third plank, regarding conventional forces. But its second plank, regarding nuclear forces, is also an essential component. South Korea faces a nuclear-armed adversary and needs the alliance with the United States for protection from nuclear coercion. Maintaining American extended deterrence is a relatively low-risk way to respond to North Korea’s nuclear bluster.

And the new Nixon Doctrine in Iraq:

President Nixon’s statement of a new doctrine governing the U.S. relationship with its allies was deeply linked to the situation in Vietnam in 1969. He spent most of the November 3 speech in which he clearly stated the doctrine’s principles explaining the origins and expected future trajectory of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. The Nixon Doctrine, reinforcing the already announced policy of Vietnamization, was a rearguard action to keep the United States engaged in the Vietnam War, as Nixon resisted domestic political pressure to set a fixed timetable for withdrawal.

Nixon’s speech makes the terms of the 2008 presidential election campaign’s debate about withdrawal from Iraq eerily familiar. In both Vietnam, circa 1969, and Iraq, circa 2008, the United States was looking for an exit strategy. The key questions were the pace at which the U.S. could responsibly shift the burden of providing internal security to local forces, and the conditions that would convince the local politicians to make hard choices and the local forces to fight hard for a weak government that lacked political legitimacy.

The task that confronted the Nixon administration in Vietnam seems easier in two key ways. First, Vietnam is relatively homogeneous ethnically, while Iraq is famously split between Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiite Arabs. In Iraq, the key groups bear longstanding grudges against each other, and through much of the war, they have steadily used political, economic, military, and terrorist means to undermine each other’s interests. In Vietnam, the governance challenge primarily concerned competence at providing services. In Iraq, the government has more to overcome.

Second, by 1969-70, the main adversary in South Vietnam came from outside the country: North Vietnamese infiltrators supported by Chinese and Soviet aid and advice. The military failure of the 1968 Tet Offensive cost the indigenous opponents of the South Vietnamese government dearly. As a result, external American support for the South Vietnamese regime might have roughly counterbalanced the external forces arrayed against it. In contrast, the primary source of continuing political violence in Iraq is internal. The foreign al-Qaida fighters were largely defeated in 2007 and 2008 by a combined effort of American and indigenous Iraqi forces. Further progress in Iraq now depends on deft negotiations, local politics, and counterterrorist intelligence, none of which are easy for an external patron like the United States to influence.

President Nixon, then, had better prospects for implementing the Nixon Doctrine through Vietnamization than President Obama has for implementing an updated version today. In the former case, Vietnamization seems to have worked, at least in part: A significant part of the Vietnamese army fought effectively for a time, supported by American aid, advice, and air power. But the government did not gain enough competence and political legitimacy, and external support for North Vietnam overwhelmed the South’s defenses.

Bob Zelnick And Vietnam

July 22, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Frost/Nixon, Nixon in the News, Vietnam | 3 Comments 

In an interview with Boston University’s Today, journalist and research assistant for David Frost (of Frost/Nixon fame), Robert Zelnick (played by Oliver Platt in Ron Howard’s film), says that he has come to agree with RN’s Vietnam policy:

As time went by and I studied more about Vietnam, I came a little bit closer to Nixon’s position. I do believe that he or some president might have made the peace agreement stick if there hadn’t been the War Powers Act that was passed by Congress or the bombing cut off or the great diminution in aid to our South Vietnamese ally that was passed by Congress. I think there was some merit in Nixon’s argument, though it came as a great surprise to me at the time.

7.22.69

July 22, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

Day Two of the long voyage home.

Featured Articles — July 22, 2009

July 22, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama Ups Ante on Health By Laura Meckler, Jonathan Weisman and Gerald Seib, The Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama is significantly raising his personal stake in the effort to overhaul America’s health-care system, as Democrats and the public express growing unease about the costs.

The remarkable vote to kill the plane and what it means for America’s military future. By Fred Kaplan, Slate
F-22 plane. Click image to expand.An F-22This is a big deal: The Senate today voted to halt production of the F-22 stealth fighter plane, and it did so 58-40, a margin much wider than expected.

The Next Culture War Joel Kotkin, Forbes
The culture war over religion and values that dominated much of the last quarter of the 20th century has ended, mostly in a rout of the right-wing zealots who waged it.

Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard By Nina Munk, Vanity Fair
Only a year ago, Harvard had a $36.9 billion endowment, the largest in academia. Now that endowment has imploded, and the university faces the worst financial crisis in its 373-year history.

The New Nuri al-Maliki By Sam Parker, Foreign Policy
The circumstances surrounding Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s visit to Washington this week could not be more different from the last time he was in town. In July 2006, Maliki was largely unknown, both in Iraq and in the West, and lacked a constituency. Today, he is the dominant force in Iraqi politics, has consolidated much of the emerging Iraqi state into his own hands, and has won a measure of democratic legitimacy after January’s provincial elections.

That’s One Small Step For Oops….

July 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | 3 Comments 

Say What?:  “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
As Neil Armstrong later observed: “I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement . . . certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.”

The first words spoken on the Moon were either misstated or mistransmitted.

The now-famous phrase —”That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”— isn’t what Neil Armstrong intended to say as he lowered his left leg onto the lunar surface.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”  may sound sort of stirring.  But, as the astronaut subsequently admitted, it makes absolutely no sense.

“Damn, I really did it.  I blew the first words on the Moon, didn’t I?” he is supposed to have asked NASA officials on his return to Earth.

What he intended to say, of course, was: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Depending on the version you embrace, it was either the excitement of the moment or the vagaries of radio communications that led to the dropping of the crucial “a.”

A couple of years ago, acoustics expert Peter Shann Ford put the 1969 Lunar tape through some modern testing and claimed to have found the missing indefinite article buried in the interspace static.  He met with Mr. Armstrong, who said that “I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful.  I also find his conclusion persuasive.”

On further reflection, however, he was more conscientious and less certain than even this restrained endorsement indicated.  He told his biographer Peter Hansen:  “It doesn’t sound like there was time for the word to be there. On the other hand, I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement . . . certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.”

Diagram illustrating Peter Shann Ford’s article “Electronic Evidence and Physiological Reasoning Identifying the Elusive Vowel “a” in Neil Armstrong’s Statement on First Stepping onto the Lunar Surface.”  The article’s Abstract stated: “Electronic voice signal analysis of Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s statement on first stepping onto The Moon reveals the presence of an ‘a’ sound after his words, ‘That’s one small step for’.  Physiological reasoning describes the expression of this vowel sound int he lingual-buccal-labial transition from the terminal consonant ‘r’ in ‘for’ to the initial consonant ‘m’ in ‘man’.”

This largely unheralded controversy is more interesting —and far less disturbing— than that surrounding NASA’s “loss” of the “original” Moon landing video.  People of Earth (and here, although I use Yoko Ono’s phrase,  I speak on behalf of all fellow Earthlings) were awed by Apollo’s achievement; but we were underwhelmed by the grainy substandard picture transmission and staticky audio.  “You can put a man on the Moon but you can’t send back a primetime quality picture? What’s up with that?” was a widespread attitude once the initial excitement had passed.

And at some point, the question “What’s wrong with this picture?” assumed literal as well as figurative meaning.  The ersatz quality of the event’s video undoubtedly fueled the conspiratorialist fires as, in at first surprising and then depressing numbers, many people decided that the whole thing was a hoax.

A survey reported in last Sunday’s Telegraph (London) revealed that one in four Britons don’t believe Apollo XI left Cape Kennedy much less went to the Moon.  A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of Americans shared that skepticism, and there’s no reason to think that number has decreased in the intervening decade.  (Although conspiratorialists no doubt wonder why a more recent survey hasn’t been taken.)  A Google search last week for “Apollo moon landing hoax” elicited 1.5 billion results.  (Admittedly some of them represented pure research —mine, for example, is now the one and a half billionth plus one— but still…..)

So NASA’s recent —and, dare I say it, convenient— discovery of the “lost” Moon Landing footage will serve to fan some flames of doubt even while it clarifies things for the rest of us.

In fact, the original footage hasn’t been “found.”   It is still lost and was probably erased or recorded over in the 1970s or ’80s during a tape-shortage at NASA.  (Talk about an explanation that raises more questions than it answers.)

The video images recorded by the camera the astronauts took to the Moon were in a superduper new non-standard format that couldn’t be transmitted over the air on Earth in any case.  So they were beamed back to a NASA station in Australia (which happened to be the nearest point on earth during the time of transmission) where they were reconverted into terrestrial quality and then rebroadcast.  Each conversion degraded the images and the rest is either history or conspiracy depending on your point of view.

For the last few years —in anticipation of the 40th anniversary—  a concerted search was made to find as much material as close to the original as possible.  Caches were discovered in NASA’s own vaults, in Australia, and at a CBS studio in Houston.  Lowry Digital, a Hollywood company that specializes in restoration (their work includes Citizen Kane) set to work restoring more than two hours of this material.  The complete work will be released in September, but excerpts of the critical moments were made available for the Anniversary:

The churlish will complain that the restored footage is better but still not very good.  And the conspiratorial will complain that the “restored” footage remains completely unconvincing:

“A Cause Larger Than Himself”

July 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Writing at the Ottawa Citizen, Arthur Milnes from Queen’s University says that RN’s ‘69 inaugural is one of the greatest:

“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another — until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

Nixon also made a pledge to the international audience watching his first inaugural, one the world would respond positively to today if given in the post-George W. Bush era. Nixon, the man who later opened the doors to China and who negotiated the SALT I nuclear arms limitations treaty with the Soviet Union, was a grand multilateralist and all signs point to Barack Obama’s taking the same approach to world affairs. America’s strained allies will surely take note and greet this change positively, if Mr. Obama follows this kind of Nixonian path.

“As we learn to go forward together at home, let us also seek to go forward together with all mankind,” Nixon said on Jan. 20, 1969. “Let us take as our goal: where peace is unknown, make it welcome; where peace is fragile, make it strong; where peace is temporary, make it permanent. After a period of confrontation, we are entering a new era of negotiation. Let all nations know that during this administration our lines of communication will be open. We seek an open world — open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people — a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation.

The Future Of Internet TV

July 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under News media | Leave a Comment 

On his show Silicon Graffiti, Pajamas Media’s Ed Driscoll speaks with Scott Baker and Liz Stephans (two traditional media professionals who made the switch to internet broadcasting) of Breitbart.tv’s daily B-Cast, on the future of internet TV:

7.21.69

July 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

Two triumphs of 20th Century American technology.

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