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View 710 Friday, January 27, 2012

I confess to feeling a great wave of relief. I was deeply disturbed by the Elliot Abrams diatribe against Newt Gingrich which circulated yesterday, but much more so by the included quotes which supposedly showed Newt being disrespectful and downright condemnatory of Ronald Reagan and his cold war policies.

I had been reasonably close to Newt in those days, and after, and in the decades that I have known him I have never heard him say anything derogatory about Reagan, even when he was in disagreement over some of Reagan’s tactics; and in fact I could not really remember that happening, although it must have; after all, I also disagreed with some of Reagan’s tactics in his final years as President, and said so; but tactical disagreements are not denunciations nor are they disrespectful.

Abrams said

Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to defeat Communism. Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289159/gingrich-and-reagan-elliott-abrams

He buttressed that with what looked like quotes from a Gingrich speech made in the House. I probably met Elliot Abrams before I met Newt Gingrich: it was at an American Conservative Union event at the Mayfair Hotel in Washington DC. Dr. Stefan Possony was on the ACU Board and I was in DC essentially to carry his briefcase, although I think I had a press assignment, probably from the National Catholic Press. This would have been early in the Reagan Administration, possibly just after the Inauguration (to which I had an invitation but didn’t go). At the ACU meeting Possony and I had lunch with Mr. Abrams, and I had no reason to have anything but respect for him. Subsequent encounters and incidents have not changed that view until the NRO article yesterday. Thus my dismay: here were two people, one an old friend, another a fellow Cold Warrior, and the warrior was at my friend’s throat. I had never heard Newt say anything like what Abrams was quoting. I never heard Newt “spew insulting rhetoric” at Reagan or his top aides, and I am quite certain that if he ever had, he would have lost the regard of Nancy Reagan – who has said that Newt inherited the torch of liberty from her Ronnie. Anyone who knows Mrs. Reagan would know that if Newt had been “spewing insulting rhetoric at Reagan,” Mrs. Reagan would never have spoken to or about him again. They remain friends.

Here is what Newt actually said in the speech that Abrams quotes to justify his “Spewing insults” remark:

"The fact is that George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are right in pointing out the enormous gap between President Reagan’s strong rhetoric, which is adequate, and his administration’s weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail." http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/27/elliott-abrams-caught-misleadi

There’s more. See “Elliot Abrams Caught Misleading on Newt” by Geoffrey Lord

In fact, I’m sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott Abrams, a considerably admirable public servant and a very smart guy, has been swept up in the GOP Establishment’s Romney frothings over the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primaries. …

. . .

Due to the diligence of one Chris Scheve of a group called Aqua Terra Strategies in Washington, Mr. Abrams has been caught red-handed in lending himself to this attempted Romney hit job. [clip]

I put in that last line to make sure that Chris Scheve, one of Newt’s staffers when he was Speaker, gets the credit he deserves. The entire piece by Lord is well worth your time. http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/27/elliott-abrams-caught-misleadi

What Newt was saying was true when he said it: the President had the right ideas, but his administration was not implementing them strenuously enough. This is a disagreement on tactics, not fundamentals. In those days Newt was in the minority, and very much frustrated by the slow progress of the Strategic Defense Initiative. I could understand that disappointment. So was I. But that’s another story for another time; what wasn’t happening was any denunciation of Reagan by Newt Gingrich. Those were the times when General Graham and I were partners in trying to make America a Spacefaring nation again, and if Newt had alienated the President we would have had a choice to make. That never happened. Newt was on the SDI team from the time he was elected to the House, through his long time in near isolation as he made those conservative speeches, through his selection as Minority Whip, and through the end of the Cold War. He supported SDI, DC/X, space exploration, commercial space development, X Projects and Prizes.

Abrams is dead wrong, and was persuaded to believe nonsense.

All right, so why? Well, during the Cold War there was an alliance between the neo-conservatives and the paleo-conservatives. We old time conservatives were reluctantly willing to expand government power to meet the threat of an enemy armed with 26,000 deliverable nuclear warheads, even when the liberals made a number of demands as a price of letting us get on with fighting the Cold War. Perhaps that was a proper thing to do and perhaps not. Possibly the world was not doomed to a CoDominium, but President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger certainly thought we were, and that the best the United States could do in the Cold War was détente. Kissinger famously compared himself to Metternich, trying to preserve what he could of the free world in the face of rising communism. Containment, the west’s governing strategy of the Cold War, required that the USSR be contained; that required a long term commitment to doing it; and with the fall of Viet Nam and the planting of pro communist regimes in Latin America, the US determination appeared to be inadequate.

Neocons and paleocons worked together, and the neocon Commentary Magazine was as intellectually important as National Review. Both were committed to Frank Meyer’s fusionism. If all this is babble to you, don’t worry about it. At one time it was very important. What you need to know is that neocons and paleocons were fundamentally agreed only on defeating the USSR; we were not agreed on social issues nor on the nature of government. Irving Kristol, a man I much admired then and now, began his intellectual career as a Trotskyite and some of the Marxist intellectual propositions stayed with him. Many of the neocons were less than enthusiastic about fundamental conservative principles like limited government and the belief that government cannot and should not  “solve” all the “problems” of life; nor should it attempt it. To many neocons government can do nearly anything: it’s not so much a problem of limiting government but of putting the right people in charge of it. Give us the sword of state and we will create a more beautiful world.

When the Cold War ended, many of them became “Big Government Conservatives”, as if such a thing were possible (in the view of paleocons like me, government must be limited in its scope else it will attempt to involve itself in every aspect of life, such as licensing stage magicians who use rabbits in their acts). Neocons and paleocons became estranged, and sometimes became outright enemies. There remain some common interests, particularly American/Israeli relations, so the enmity is often masked, but it is there.

Elliot Abrams was a friend and political ally during the Cold War (I hasten to add he is unlikely to remember me); and I had not followed his intellectual career since other than to express my concern over his persecution over the Iran/Contra affair. I was astonished to see his denunciation of Newt and devastated by the “quotes”. I remain astonished that he would let himself be deceived by the phony quotes , and I am greatly relieved that they were in fact false. As I said, I was around during those times, I had ties to both Reagan and Gingrich, and I did not remember any such quotes or attitudes.

When I mentioned all this to my wife she said “How old is Abrams?” I had to say I last met him a long time ago, and I didn’t know; I assumed we were about the same age. To which she just nodded. But I find that Abrams is 15 years younger than me, so his memory may be better than mine. On the other hand, if he believes that Newt Gingrich could have said the nonsense that Abrams was persuaded that Newt had said, perhaps his biography has his day of birth wrong by twenty or so years.

Obama’s State of the Union reminded me, I am sad to say, of some of the speeches of Huey Long, and of the man Huey got some of his ideas from, an Italian Socialist called Benito Mussolini. The State can do all, and any real problems are caused because the State is not doing enough to enforce fair play and steer things in the right direction. All we need is more State effort to solve social problems. Rich and poor can all get along, and the State is there to make sure they do. Mussolini went to his death affirming his devotion to Socialism.

Everything for the state. Nothing against the state. Nothing outside the state. Duce! Duce!

For those who want to understand the internecine battles within Socialism, I recommend Ignazio Silone’s novel Bread and Wine. Silone was an anti-Stalinist anti-Mussolini Socialist, exiled by Mussolini at the time he wrote the book. Of course he denounces Mussolini as not a Socialist at all. Mussolini disagreed.

View 710 Thursday, January 26, 2012

Apollo 1 1/27/67

Jerry,

On a more somber note: Apollo 1, 1/27/67. I still remember the announcement and it still haunts to this day. I suppose we are visual creatures and will remember Challenger and Columbia more viscerally. But don’t forget those that did not leave the surly bonds of the Earth.

I cannot say it any better than Heinlein in the poem he wrote that Mr. Thompson quoted in the email of 2/1/03 with Columbia down.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2160.html

From Mail Saturday, February 1, 2003 (On Columbia)

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view242.html#Saturday

O Spirit, whom the Father sent
To spread abroad the firmament;
O Wind of heaven, by thy might,
Save all who dare the eagle’s flight.
       And keep them by the watchful care
       From every peril in the air. (Modern version, the Mariner’s Hymn)

….Dr. Pournelle:

Mr. Heinlein wrote a verse in one of his short stories, of the Prayer for Travelers:

Almighty Ruler of the all,

Whose Power extends to great and small,

Who guides the stars with steadfast law,

Whose least creation fills with awe,

O grant thy mercy and thy grace,

To those who venture into space.

Amen.

Mark Thompson…."

Amen indeed, Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Agreed. I once had to listen to the tapes of the Apollo 1 fire. I do not think I will ever forget them. “Fire in the spacecraft.” It is worth your while to listen to this tribute by Julia Ecklar. There is also this one. Warning. These are pretty strong stuff.

Full View of Earth from VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP

Jerry

The picture was taken on 1/4/12. Look at the highest re, the atmosphere along the limb is spectacular.

<http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2159.html>

Regards, Charles Adams

Some reflections.

In 1985 it was not obvious to anyone that the Cold War would end without battle and bloodshed. It is possible that President Reagan thought he saw that end coming; if so he was alone. None of his supporters did. In 1985 it looked as if the Cold War would continue, possibly forever. Igt was easy to panic in those days. Few remember them.

I believed then that the only hope for the survival of freedom was drastic change in America’s military; the adoption of a strategy of technology, including the implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative – Star Wars – and this would require that America become a Spacefaring Nation again; indeed, that was the title of the last formal report of the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy that I chaired, a policy endorsed and vigorously pursued by the late General Graham’s High Frontier organization. The Spacefaring Nation report was hand delivered to President Reagan, who personally read it, as he had read all the Council reports. The first of our reports was influential in the formation of the Strategic Defense Initiative, as had been our Strategy of Technoloy.

In the mid 1980’s it was obvious to me that the computer revolution was going to change the world in fundamental ways, but that view was not universally held or agreed to. One of those who had looked at ways that technology would change the world was Alvin Toffler, whose Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980) were influential with many, including Newt Gingrich who had read them carefully. In 1980 I said that by the year 2000 everyone in the Free World would be able to get the answer to any question that had an answer. This would have profound effects on the Cold War.

Then, after the Falkland War of 1982, I drew another conclusion. Arthur Koestler had famously said that a sufficient condition for the elimination of totalitarianism was the free discussion of ideas within the totalitarian state. In 1982 a Moscow citizen was sentenced to 10 years in prison for possession and use of an unlicensed copy machine. In those samizdat days intellectual ideas were circulated at great risk in the Soviet Union. Stories and ideas were hand typed using carbon paper, and the price of loaning someone a copy was usually that the borrower return two of them (and of course keep a copy for himself). This was not the free discussion Koestler said would be sufficient to end a totalitarian regime; but the Falkland War demonstrated that a nation that did not have small computers and people accustomed to using them was not going to have an effective military. I did some more thinking on the subject and concluded that without the widespread distribution and use of small computers, a nation could not keep up in the technological war.

We opened The Strategy of Technology with the following:

"A gigantic technological race is in progress between interception and penetration and each time capacity for interception makes progress it is answered by a new advance in capacity for penetration. Thus a new form of strategy is developing in peacetime, a strategy of which the phrase ‘arms race’ used prior to the old great conflicts is hardly more than a faint reflection.

There are no battles in this strategy; each side is merely trying to outdo in performance the equipment of the other. It has been termed ‘logistic strategy’. Its tactics are industrial, technical, and financial. It is a form of indirect attrition; instead of destroying enemy resources, its object is to make them obsolete, thereby forcing on him an enormous expenditure….

A silent and apparently peaceful war is therefore in progress, but it could well be a war which of itself could be decisive."
–General d’Armee Andre Beaufre

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/Strat.html

The conclusion seemed obvious: ideological totalitarianism was doomed. The Soviet Union could not continue as an ideological state. It would need something else to hold it together. The Soviet Union was a world power only because of its military power; its ideological appeals were fading. It would need economic strength to maintain its military power – to be the Second World nation rather than just another Third World nation. It was already Bulgaria with missiles.

The conclusion from that again seemed obvious. Make the missiles too expensive, and the USSR becomes a Third World power. What was needed was pressure on the Administration to continue a strategy of technology against the USSR; if you could not destroy the Soviet Union you could reduce its threat to the world. But to do that you could not be soft.

This wasn’t popular among the Democrats who held power in Congress, and who had held power in Congress for thirty years, causing a number of Republicans to assume postures of a permanent opposition. The Republicans, most of them, were no more firm. They were a permanent minority, and they knew it. The notion that the Republicans might again take the House was considered odd. Newt Gingrich and his small contingent did believe it was possible. They also understood that George H. W. Bush did not believe it, nor did the Republican establishment.

The Soviet Union fell. George H W Bush managed to get long time Republicans and Reagan enthusiasts like Larry Niven to tell his fans that he couldn’t wait for November to turn George H W Bush out. And Clinton came in, with a Democratic majority, but it was a vulnerable majority.

Then came 1994, when the only leader in America who thought that it was time for a real change took out a Contract with America. The Republicans took both houses of Congress.

And note that in 1996 the Republican Establishment, which had failed to take the House and had no choice but to accept Newt’s leadership after he took the House for the first time in forty years – forty years of wandering in the wilderness – the same Establishment ran Bob Dole, the only man Clinton could beat, for President. Dole is now denouncing Newt Gingrich.

In the 1980’s some of us could see that the world was changing in fundamental ways. It wasn’t clear what the implications of those changes would be – certainly not all of them. The Internet hadn’t happened yet. The USSR had 26,000 warheads aimed at the United States. Reagan was mashed between hawks like Abrams and the Iran Contra people and appeasers from the Carter wing of the Democratic Party. One needs to understand those times to understand what was being said.

Newt on the Space Program

Dr Pournelle,

Very little of what Newt says in this Cocoa, Florida (south of Cape

Canaveral) town hall discussion will be new to readers of your site, but it’s a nice summary of the way forward.

<http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/SpacePolic>

—Joel

Whatever his faults and strengths, Newt is unquestionably the best friend space exploration has in the upcoming election, and he has endorsed the notion of Prizes and X-Projects as a low cost way to support the program without stifling it with government and bureaucracy. For my views on X programs see: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/gettospace.html For a summary of my views on prizes, see http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail242.html#prizes 

Government believes that the answer to our problems is to raise revenue, which is to say, raise taxes. The President believes that this is fair play. They raise the taxes on the successful in order to raise the salaries and benefits of, if not themselves, then those who work for them. This is known as Fair Play.

Warren Buffet’s secretary makes enough money as wages to be in the 30% income tax bracket. Buffet pays himself a salary of a dollar a year, but has money on which he has already paid taxes invested in enterprises that pay in capital gains. Is Fair Play a capital gains tax of 30%? The effect of that on both revenue and the economy would be severe. But we all know that.

I will say again, crime is not rebellion, and sin is not a denial that sin exists; and the distinction is real.

If you want something else to worry about I offer you:

Super-powered ‘frankenmalware’ strains have been detected in the wild:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/25/frankenmalware/print.html

“Viruses are accidentally infecting worms on victims’ computers, creating super-powered strains of hybrid software nasties. The monster malware spreads quicker than before, screws up systems worse than ever, and exposes private data in a way not even envisioned by the original virus writers.”

Sounds an awful lot like . . . biology.

Evolution. Brrrr.

Ed

Of course we have seen this coming since the Game of Life, Sugarscape the Brookings institute simulations (http://www.brookings.edu/press/Books/1996/artifsoc.aspx ) . I did a column on Sugarscape in BYTE July 1997. http://groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis479/projects/*sugarscape/sugarspace5.htm

Does biology sound like a self-modifying computer program?

There used to be meetings of people interested in artificial life and its evolution, but I haven’t heard of many recently, possibly because I just lost track. I haven’t heard anything about Sugarscape or the Game of Life in some years. Not sure why. In any event it ought not be surprising that someone could write a self-evolving program that would pick the best it could find in malware – or malware that will infect any worms it can find. And it’s just beginning.

While we are thinking about self-modifying programs, think also about intelligent design assisted evolution: that is, Lamarkian evolution rather than Mendelian.

The story line in Freefall http://freefall.purrsia.com/default.htm is very relevant to this topic; but do go to the beginning of the story, because there is a lot of backstory that you need in order to understand why a talking artificially intelligent wolf is discussing Three Law Robotics. You can catch up in a few days, and I have found it more than worth the time it takes.

And that ought to be enough to think about for the day. LASFS tonight for me. Don’t forget to subscribe.

Norman Edmund RIP

Norman Edmund, Founder of scientific supply catalog company Edmund Scientific. The Edmund Scientific catalog was my dream book in high school And I got my first computer, which was mechanical and ran with marbles and mechanical switches, from Edmund. The company is still run by his children and grandchildren. http://www.scientificsonline.com/ RIP

http://www.scientificsonline.com/

View 710 Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The State of the Union was painful. I had intended to watch and make notes, but I didn’t. I did watch the whole thing, to my – I was going to say astonishment, but I can’t say I was really surprised. On reflection, what else could President Obama do, other than announce that he would not be a candidate for President as Lyndon Johnson did? Like Jimmy Carter he has few choices. He can’t run on his record. All during the speech in which he told of what he was going to do, I kept wondering if he would ever address the question of what he has done. He pretty well didn’t. Much of his speech was nearly identical to last year’s state of the union. It’s all going to be great when you finally get it.

He does claim credit for the demise of bin Laden. Considering the time it took him to make the decision to send in the forces, it wasn’t as heroic an achievement as it might have been, and one can question the kill order – would it not have been better to take him prisoner and interrogate him? But that’s another debate for another time. He can have credit for bin Laden.

He called for a rebuilding of America’s infrastructure. To the extent that this is a federal matter, surely he was given enough in bailout and stimulus funds to have done that? I note that there was no mention of shovel-ready jobs this time. He told us that he had saved General Motors, how GM was now the world’s most successful car company. I suspect there are others who will debate that assessment. His salvation of General Motors involved confiscation of the equity of bond holders and turning that over to his political allies, particularly the unions whose past achievements had driven the company to bankruptcy and beyond in the first place.

He called for more programs, to the point at which I was ready to yell “What did you do with the last $Trillion we gave you?”

He can’t run on his record.

Ms. Pelosi is now saying that she has the real dirt on Newt Gingrich which she will release at a time and place of her own choosing, and it will be enough to finish Gingrich. It would be a mistake to think that this has not been coordinated with the White House.

Obama can’t run on his record. He has to come up with other reasons to convince the American people to return him to office. It won’t be because of his accomplishments.

Jerry,

Lately I’ve grown so tired of politics, [I know, you tell me despair is a sin] but after reading a couple paragraphs on cnbc’s decidedly biased website about the state of the Union campaign speech by President Obama I have 2 questions to ask you:

What do you think of the statement that dividend income should be treated differently then ‘earned’ income–haven’t taxes already been paid on that income already and should the risk taken in investing in the growth of the economy be encouraged & rewarded?

Also it seems like you don’t send out subscription notices for renewing here or has my time perception been skewed by my years in the desert?

Take care

Please Publish the 4th Tran book!

Alan

I should send out renewal notices, but I don’t like spamming people. I do think everyone who has recently subscribed or renewed.

What Obama called for in the State of the Union was an increase in capital gains and dividend taxes. Capital gains and dividend income comes from previously taxed income put at risk investment. If you want less of something, fine or tax people for doing it. If you want fewer people investing, raise taxes on investment income.

Warren Buffet’s income is from capital gains and dividends, all of which comes from money which has already been taxed at least once. His secretary’s income will be wages, and since she is not likely to be underpaid, it is very likely to be a great deal higher than the capital gains tax rate. Raising the capital gains rate on money owned free and clear will cause the owners of that money to seek other places to invest. There are no surprises there.

Mitt Romney inherited essentially nothing, so every cent he has comes from money he has earned and paid taxes on. Confiscating everything he has would not greatly reduce the national debt. Fining people for being successful and using the confiscated money to bail out the unsuccessful would not seem to be a very good investment strategy.

What is fair play?

It may be unfair that Romney, who is younger than I am, is so much richer than I am; is this fair? Is it fair that he has more money than an Occupy Wall Street camper? Even if the Occupy camper is a trust fund heir who doesn’t have to work? Should success be rewarded or punished?

Should Penny earn as much money as Sheldon?

There are joint LAPD and US military training exercises going on in Los Angeles. I have mail from people worried about this as a black helicopter operation, possibly an upcoming military coup, and it is no coincidence that it took place during a State of the Union address.

Back in the old Civil Defense days, this sort of thing happened all the time, as it should, so that civil defense, national guard, and regular military could practice communication including language (“Cover me” means an entirely different thing to a rifle squad than to a civilian police officer). If I were in charge we would have Civil Defense again, FEMA would be abolished, and there would be such exercises at regular intervals – including involving the Boy Scouts on Emergency Preparedness, as we used to do when I was involved in Scouting.

The whole thing ends tomorrow night.

Of course there are also those thinking these ops are just another Hollywood set location in action: if you think that, look again. Technology has greatly advanced and there are really good light amplifying cameras, but you can’t do production movies in the dark – and indeed, even if you didn’t need the gaffers and best boys, union rules would insist that they be there anyway. Even Hollywood isn’t exempt from either physics or the Iron Law.

The Somali gangsters – for some reason called pirates – who had kidnapped an American and a Danish aid worker (they had volunteered to go help clear out minefields in civilian areas) and held them for ransom have good reason to regret doing that. Actually, the gangsters – I refuse to call them pirates since none of this has to do with sea or river transportation – are mostly dead. It was a grievous lesson for them; we can hope they profited from it. Whether they do or not, it is probable that other Somali gangsters and pirates will draw the right conclusions from this.

President Obama will take credit for this. He should; but it also removes one campaign issue from the election. There is no one running for the office of President who won’t approve of this sort of thing.

If you have not read this, it is worth your time. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/images/pdf/mccaffrey-nbc-iran-nukes-and-oil-january-122012.pdf

View 710 Tuesday, January 24, 2012

State of the Union tonight. I am working on other stuff; this will likely be a political speech since our current President seems more eager to campaign than to govern. Perhaps he will explain his decision on the oil pipeline?

This may be of interest:

Solar Storm

www.solarham.com <http://www.solarham.com/>

Pursuant to yesterday’s (0400 Z) long-duration M8.7 flare, the solar energetic particle (SEP) event continues; the tail of protons over 100 MEV has decayed back to near-normal levels but total protons over 10 MeV is still 30 dB over the level at the start of the flare.

The CME scheduled to hit today is still expected to arrive about 0900 ET (1400 Z); there is not yet any precursor activity in the ACES data. G2 – G3 geomagnetic storming is expected.

There is a video of the CME on the site.

Jim

We are well overdue for a big solar event, but we have no way to predict this; only that they seem to occur at about one century intervals, and our last really big one was in 1859

I ran across this looking for something else, and remembered that Andrew Marshall and I are near contemporaries. He was at RAND Corporation when I was at Aerospace, and I think we may have met back in those times. He’s still at it, and has become a national treasure.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Andrew_Marshall

Time for the State of the Union.