Monthly Archives: October 2021

Commander in Chief of Allied Forces, Europe

Commanded the North African Campaign, Med Campaign, D Day Campaign, Invasion of Germany

Ike followed Truman as prez.

One of the best presidents in US history, to my way of thinking.  He got a truce in Korea, settled relations with the USSR (Stalin died while Ike was in office) during his presidency, though they heated up when Kennedy came into office.

During his administration the Russkies agreed to ‘free’ Austria, neutralize it, which was unprecedented and unanteceded, for that matter.

Ike sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce de-segregation of the schools… ended up with a standoff, near shooting war between the Arkansas National Guard and the US Army.  I’d give him high marks for commitment, but mixed reviews on the near shootout.  Those were crazy times… Arkansawyer adults lined up around the school, a group of adult females who called themselves the ‘cheerleaders’, screaming insults at a couple of scared black kids escorted to school by US Marshalls.  Weird, tough times testifying we weren’t a lot better as a species then, than now.  Some, but not a lot.

Eisenhower was determined to see world peace.  He began the ‘atoms for peace’ program, which furnished uranium for peaceful purposes to friendly and third world countries for power plant development.

Ike’s last moments in office, his farewell speech is posted elsewhere on this blog, but to summarize it, he warned Americans to beware the Military/Industrial Complex, which he believed would try to keep America in a state of war and near-war as long as possible, to further their own financial interests and ambitions.

Which was obvious good advice not taken.

Great prez, even though he had Tricky Dixon for VP, and his son married Tricky’s daughter.

Jack

Harry Truman  campaign slogan, “The buck stops here.” The Square Deal.

A middling good president who was never intended to be president.  Not a pro-politician, but a haberdasher from Missouri.  One of those pivotal presidents, keys in the chain of events that got us where we are, but a man mostly forgotten.

Truman presided over the end of WWII after Roosevelt died.  He had a tricky job and he wasn’t up to the task, but it’s impossible to know anything about Harry Truman without becoming convinced he did the best he could.  Whatever his failings, he was an honest, honorable man.

The decision to drop the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was his.  It’s difficult to imagine any president making any other, under the circumstances.  Japan had to be invaded, or bombed.  Probably dropping the bomb saved the lives of a million men lost if we’d had to invade.

The last ten days of the war Joseph Stalin declared war on Japan and sent Soviet troops across Manchuria.  Truman agreed, after the surrender, to allow the USSR to have Sakhalin, the North island of Japan.  A costly decision over the decades, including the Soviet shooting down of Flight 007 during the 80s, with maybe a couple of hundred passengers aboard.

Truman also continued the agreement to give Eastern Europe to the Soviets.  He adopted the Marshall Plan, which was the means by which American taxpayers rebuilt Germany, Japan and Italy, and the industries there.  The consequences were that those nations had newer, better industries than the US, and eventually bankrupted our core industries.

During the Truman Administration the Communists ended the long civil war in China by winning, beginning the Domino Theory, which got us into Vietnam.  The theory assumed Communists forsook nationalism, in favor of Communism, and that they’d work together to Communize the world without attempting to further national interests.  In retrospect, it’s difficult to believe any president, any US population would believe such a thing, but mostly we all did.

Fortunately, the Communists didn’t.

The protracted, undeclared war in Korea belonged to Truman.  North Koreans pushed Americans into the Pusan Perimeter, a tiny piece of land on the lower end of the penensula.  Then MacArthur did a sea landing at Inchon.  US troops fought North Koreans all the way to the Yalu River, then watched as legions of Chinese came across and drove them back to the 38th parallel, where the war stalled, eventually sort of ended with neither side happy.  US troops still guard the DMZ there.

Truman stood up to his prima-donna general MacArthur, who wanted to lay a 1000 mile wide belt of radioactivity around Manchuria to take care of the problem, wanted to use the Atomic bomb on whomever.  Wanted it REALLY badly, with the enthusiastic support of a lot of hero-worshiping Americans who were afraid of Communism, frustrated by the duration of the war, and who loved war hero MacArthur for his pipe-smoking press conferences island hopping during WWII.  His promise to the Phillipinos that he’d return, and his grandstand newsy announcement, “I have returned.” when US forces took Manila.  A man, MacArthur, who’d have liked to be prez.

Truman fired him.  Good on him.

Truman presided in the beginning of a time in history when the best thing a poor nation could do was go to war with the US and lose.  The beginning of the period when the US began giving away the abundance they’d won with fire and blood to anyone with a sad story.  A time when Americans  could afford to be generous, short term, at the cost of the future.

But the most tragic thing about Harry Truman involved the Atomic bomb.  He was the first man in the history of humanity who held the power to say to the world, after the surrender of Japan,

“We have the Atomic bomb.  No other country has one.  We’ve proved our willingness to use it on a human population.

“Beginning August, 1945, the world is going to experience something called ‘peace’, and something else called ‘disarmament’.

“Start gathering your weaponry, all you armed to the teeth nations, everything larger than squad-level weapons.  Pile it in designated central locations.  You are going to disarm, and you are going to go to peace with your neighbors, or you will face the consequences, the wrath of the United States in a way that will leave you a molten layer of green glass.”

But, of course, he didn’t.  Maybe it wouldn’t have worked, anyway.

But Truman was generally a good man, a not-so-good prez at a time when few could have done it better, though we might wish otherwise.

It surely might have been nice not to have had the Marshall Plan, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and it’s difficult not to feel a bit miffed at Harry Truman for being the father of it all, after Roosevelt.

Jack

Some of you blog-readers have expressed a severe disinterest in history. For me, that serves as a red flag. If Americans don’t know their own history there’s no way they can learn from the mistakes and misjudgments of the past.

So, for the sake of education, I’m going to go through a brief, non-partisan history of the pros and cons of the US presidents of recent times.

Roosevelt: The New Deal

The Plus side:

“Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt

Tell me why you like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

That’s why I like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

That’s why I like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

Good God almighty, he’s the poor man’s friend

“Cause in the year of nineteen and thirty-two

We had no idea just what we would do

All our finances had flowed away

Till my dad got a job with the WPA

“That’s why I like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

That’s why I like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

That’s why I like Roosevelt, poor man’s friend

Good God almighty that’s the poor man’s friend

Good God almighty that’s the poor man’s friend “

From:

©1974 Jesse Winchester

From the LP “Learn To Love It”

The down side:

Fought the ‘Secret War’ from 1939, to 1941, using US military vessels to support foreign convoys supplying munitions to UK and Soviet Union, in contravention of International Law for Neutral Nations and at a time when the US public was distinctly undecided about whether to enter WWII. The only secret of the ‘Secret War’ was the American public. Everyone else on both sides knew.

Cooperated in secret agreement, August, 1941, with UK Prime Minister Churchill cutting off the Japanese Empire oil supply at Singapore, assuring that the Japanese would attack US holdings. September, 1941, Roosevelt issued a classified warning to US forces in Manila to expect an attack there. That mistake of location almost lost the US war in the Pacific before it began with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. It was clear to Roosevelt that the US public would be unwilling to enter the war unless US holding were directly attacked. He arranged for the attack, but underestimated cunning of the enemy.

Allied the US with the Soviet Union for the duration of the war. Put up with Joseph Stalin’s stalls concerning opening a new front into Manchuria, thereby allowing Japanese troops to be used entirely in China, and on the Pacific Islands, extending the war in the Pacific at the cost of thousands of lives of US servicemen. Participated in the pre-post-war agreement to give Eastern Europe to the Soviets, which was the root cause of the Cold War.

The issue here isn’t whether we should, or should not have entered WWII. The issue is the well-documented record of a President of the US and his administration to deceive US citizens to manipulate public opinion in favor of his own agenda by subterfuge.

The worst thing about the Roosevelt Administration, however, was that during his decade in office he stacked the US Supreme Court with lifetime appointments of innovative readers of the US Constitution, so’s to assure his programs stretching the document to the limit weren’t declared unconstitutional by the high court.

Two of the most divisive results of this free and easy reading of the Constitution can be found in the Miranda Decision (got to read’em their rights), Roe v. Wade (the Constitutional right to abortion). Miranda was a matter for Congress to decide and adopt into the Criminal Code, clearly wasn’t a right given by the framers of the Constitution. The ‘right’ to abortion was an issue for State legislators to decide within their areas of jurisdiction, as well as one for the US Congress. Both were usurped by the US Supreme Court in these two of countless decisions since Roosevelt.

Franklin Roosevelt is the father of litigious America. Father to legions of lawyers hoping and trusting the ‘current court’ will read the Constitution in favor of their clients.

Roosevelt had his strengths and his flaws, same as any other president. But he was the beginning of the King Worshiper phase of American political philosophy that’s become a monster in the US today, and has been encouraged increasingly by every president since, except Eisenhower, Ford and Carter.

Before Roosevelt, Americans recognized each president was just a man, same as them, full of mistakes, flaws, and driven by self-interest. After Roosevelt they were in a habit of thinking they could trust politicians.

In a few days I’ll give you Harry Truman.

Jack

Morning Blogsters:

Hope your reality’s going just gaaaaaroooovy this morning. (There’s a word you don’t hear much anymore, grrrrrroovy)

Outside and down in the Rio Grande valley there are balloon firing off the occasional burst of glow.  I suppose they’re the ‘scouts’… balloons that go up to see which way the wind’s aloft are going to carry all the Albuquerque Balloon Festival folks after daybreak.  700 of those things down there waiting to inflate this morning.

Brings to mind the first time I ever knew about the Balloon Festival.  I was in the midst of writing Hell Bent for Santa Fe, at least doing the research for it.  I’d been several days on the road from Round Rock, Texas, following the trail, examining the route and the bivouacs of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition of 1841, camping out of the back of a Ford Pinto.

I was listening absently to the radio as I got into New Mexico, and the balloon thing was going on.

Then things changed.  A balloon basket accident happened, something exploded while the thing was on the ground ready to lift off, maybe four people in it.  Balloon lifted afire…. people hurt, maybe a couple jumped out when it was about 100 feet, which was a bit high, then I think maybe the fire drove another one out several hundred feet high, while the last guy dropped down on a rope and hung there out of reach of the flame, a quarter-mile up in the air.

That went on for some while, the radio announcer telling what was happening each stage of the thing, the guy swinging off that rope, the balloon lifting and disintegrating above him.  Suspense, listening to that.  Reminded me of seeing old newsreels of the Von Hindenberg crash.

Anyway, finally the rope broke and the guy dropped however far he had to to get out of all this.  Fairly spectacular way to leave the vehicle, as such things go.  Most people are content just to lie down in a bed and have a heart attack, or get themselves wrapped up in a territorial dispute over highway space.

Nowadays, I think, they probably make them carry parachutes in those balloons at the balloon fest, but I don’t know it as a certainty.

In those days I was doing a lot of flying of fixed wing aircraft, might have been tempted to think ballooning might be fun, but hearing the description on the radio of what happened with that guy broke me of sucking eggs in that regard.  When an airplane comes out of the sky it does it fast and honest, which is how I prefer things.

Anyway, the balloon festival’s tuning up.  Whoopteeedooo.

Have a great one, blogsters.

Jack

I owe you blog readers an apology for the last blog entry.  It was inexcusable, and I’m sorry.

That blog entry was a symptom of a pent-up fury I thought I had successfully obliterated.

I sincerely apologize.

For many years I’ve watched the deserts of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona ripped to shreds by strip mines for coal fired power plants to supply energy to satisfy the needs of Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and elsewhere on the grid.

They’ve torn up a piece of country dear to my heart, and the people who are responsible, city residents, haven’t any idea what’s being sacrificed for their hair dryers and air conditioners.  They wouldn’t care, if they knew.

It’s just empty country anyway.

I suppose what bothers me most is that the same people who find nothing objectionable about making molehills out of my desert mountains to serve their energy needs are so often frenzied in their objections to nuclear power plants near them, or anywhere.  They fear the cost of their energy indulgence might fall on their own heads.

But I’ve intended this as an apology, and I’m trying.  But now I feel my gorge rising again.

So, I’ll quit with my original statement.  I’m sorry.

Jack

America’s had a fetish with avoiding risk-taking for a couple of generations now. They don’t want to take any, no matter how minuscule, and they want to go into hysterics when they discover one out there they hadn’t thought of.

I’m sorry, bloggers, but Americans are (selectively) pure, yellow, lily-livered cowards about doing things that might shorten their attention spans this lifetime.  Those red-white-and blue ribbons you’ve got sticking to your fender ought to be pure yellow, not because you support your troops, but because you are a disgusting, craven, sniveling coward.

They destroyed an entire Washington apple crop once because there was a one in 500 buzzillion chance the red dye used on the fruit might give someone cancer (turned out it didn’t)

They indulged in hysterics, first over people smoking in work places, then restaurants, and now almost anywhere because of the risk of cancer from second-hand smoke.

They put airbags on the steering wheels and hired men with guns to make certain everyone fastened his seat belt to keep him safe and reduce risk and run the price up on cars so high a steadily decreasing number of Americans can afford one.

Fretted something awful about motorcycles ridden by guys they hated the looks of (me) riding around without helmets. Even tried to force motorcycle riders to wear seat belts, knowing that would be a sure killer. Finally they all got old and affluent enough to buy full dress Harley’s themselves, and really didn’t care for the idea of being handcuffed to a scooter in the event of laying it over.

And so, ad infinitum.

Somewhere, lost in all that trying to live forever and create a zero risk reality for, not just themselves, but for everyone, they shut down the only near-zero-risk, cheap source of energy this country had.

Nuclear power plants.

If you wet your pants at the thought of nuclear power of the US variety you might find you’re more frightened of the consequences of gasoline at $5 a gallon.

One’s only about a zillion-to-one risk, whereas the other’s a lead-pipe cinch.

Jack

Jack wrote this in October, 2005:

Morning blogsters:

Several thousand balloonsters from all over the world are twiddling their thumbs this morning.  This was to be the morning for the ‘Special Shapes’ liftoff….. hundreds of balloons in the shapes of everything from Smokey the Bear to the Yellow Submaroon, to the good ship Santa Maria, to a two-hundred foot tall parrot, to a milque-cow-holstein heifer with an udder the size of a barn have lifted off during these events, drifted thither hither and yon across the city or countryside, and occasionally tangled themselves in highline wires.

All the events of the balloon festival hinge on the special shapes.  At least for the spectators.

But not this morning.  Nature said, you puff up those balloons this morning, I’magonna blow you off to Texas before you even leave the ground.  I’m not gonna let this happen, balloonsters.

So the balloonsters are probably sitting in coffee-shops in ABQ and the surrounding towns telling one another balloon stories, recovering from the last-night partying, and hoping it’s better tomorrow.

No mention of wind there, but those bags can be unfriendly if you don’t treat them with respect.

Even on a good day those big ones can rear  up on their hind legs and whinny despite the best efforts of humans with all their planning and designing and thinking up ways to get up in the air without dying.

We’re smart, but not THAT smart.

Ah well.

Trying to make up my mind here whether to talk about numbers, or civility.

Maybe civility would be best to touch on.

Some of you blogsters might have noticed long ago that there appears to be a middling amount of competition between forum users over whether this or that system’s best, particularly on Pick 3 games.

Lately the focus has been on a particular one method of trying to win, which evidently diminished the focus on the one that was drawing the cheers a few weeks ago.  All of which is interesting in its own right, but not nearly so much as the human interactions and strong feelings involved, along with a certain amount of bluster in both camps.

Before the most recent hopeful system emerged the next-most-recent method threads were worth keeping an eye on just to watch the preening, sulking, and down-talking to the folks who were trying to figure it out.

However, I’ll confess it usually stops short of name-calling.  When the leader of one pack gives the best imitation of a shout, calling the leader of the other pack a stale loser and stupid fluck, demanding that the other pack members stay off the new-pack threads, you gotta admit things have degenerated to lows rarely seen here.

It’s sometimes surprising how much a person, completely anonymous in the beginning ends up revealing about all manner of personal traits on a bulletin board made up of electrons on a computer screen, just by having the ability to let it all hang out without fear of consequences.

Civility and civilization emerge from the same root in language.  They’re both the result of an agreement we humans, some of us, have made with ourselves and others about how we’re going to treat one another.

But there’s every reason to believe both run contrary to human nature, that both are more a matter of how we’d prefer our fellow-humans treat us, as opposed to how we’d treat them if we could do so without there being any cost, except the internal rot of the soul that commences when we allow ourselves to do so.

That’s a small price to pay for the tension release that comes with just doing what comes natural.

Jack

Someone’s asked me to define ‘unlucky’ as it pertains to a US President. A legitimate question.

In general, I’d call a ‘lucky’ prez one who doesn’t have to take the historical rap for his mistakes and misjudgments. I’d call an ‘unlucky’ one a prez who does what other prezes have done, but gets caught, or takes the rap for historical processes already moving along when he took office.

Probably it’s best to use examples from history.

Herbert Hoover .. awfully unlucky

Was probably a middling good prez. But the Great Depression, a worldwide event, took place on his watch. The result was that Hoover was remembered during the lifetimes of the citizens who experienced the Great Depression, as a curse. Then he vanished from the national consciousness.

Franklin Roosevelt lucky

Made some of the most devastating errors a prez could make during his three-plus-some-change terms in office, but he managed to hide some of the worst ones behind the veil of national security. He successfully mobilized the population for a war it thought it didn’t want, and when that war brought the country out of Economic Depression, Roosevelt got to ride high in history and living memory as having presided during a ‘good’ war and ending the depression. A lucky prez.

Truman probably qualities as lucky.

He inherited the baggage left by Roosevelt, agreements with the USSR allowing them to occupy Eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan, agreeing to rebuild the industrial capacities of Japan and West Germany. General Douglas MacArthur hanging around as a popular hero with time on his hands. A Communist revolution in China, French Colonial war in Indo-China, and the dust not yet settled on WWII. He made a lot of mistakes, engaged in an undeclared war in Korea, which lost the 1956 election for the Democrats, but all in all, he came out okay, unvilified by the history books. A lucky prez.

Eisenhower, I’d consider neither lucky, nor unlucky. He was a prudent gambler, never pushed his luck, which didn’t give him much opportunity to be declared unlucky in any meaningful way.

JFK, luckyluckylucky

I’d consider the luckiest prez of the 20^th Century. Despite his best efforts, he didn’t get us into a nuclear war, didn’t get called for his incorrigible tactics for the 1960 Presidential Campaign, kept the Bay of Pigs invasion debacle generally out of the public eye, didn’t make the headlines for his womanizing, and got himself dead without having to face any consequences for being one of the sorriest, most arrogant, most self-serving presidents in the history of the US. Made love to the woman almost every adult male in America fantasized about. Came away a legend and a hero. Lucky prez.

Lyndon Johnson.  Unlucky, generally

He inherited a presidency he’d never have occupied without the death of JFK. Lucky. He inherited the urban wars of the late 1960s. Unlucky. He initiated the War on Poverty, which most Americans, including me, believed would immortalize him, but which became the Welfare State. Lousy judgment. We all should have known better, including LBJ. He cranked up Vietnam without asking Congress for a Declaration of War. Bad choice combined with bad luck. Created the Gulf of Tonkin incident under wraps of National Security, which seeped out and was unveiled for the fraud it was. Bad luck. Had to face the choice of a probable loss of the presidency and Congress, because of the Vietnam War, or not running for another term. Unlucky, overall.

Tricky Dixon.  Bullgoose unlucky

Maybe the unluckiest prez in the history of the US. Not nearly so bad as JFK and Johnson, but couldn’t do anything they did without getting caught at it. Rode into his first term with a promise of peace with honor in the war he inherited, Vietnam. Didn’t succeed, because it couldn’t happen without a formal declaration of war against North Vietnam by Congress and making it a war of military strategy, which it was already too late to do. Even though he was a flawed man who was dealt a lousy hand and played it poorly, I have a warm place in my heart for Tricky Dixon. Unlike JFK and Johnson, he wasn’t incorrigible, but he got cashiered from office in their stead because he assumed if they did it, he could do less and get by with it.

Gerald Ford, neither lucky, nor unlucky.

Jimmy Carter. Unlucky

Good man, good intentions. Squeaky clean, blessed with the protracted Iran Hostage affair. A really lousy piece of luck that cost Carter his place in history as a good prez.

Ronald Reagan. Not particularly lucky, nor unlucky

I’d have to put Reagan in a class all his own, a prez with a lot of the attributes of Franklin Roosevelt, but minus the guile, wearing a Republican hat. He might have been wrong on many occasions, but he did what he did because he believed it was the right thing to do. A rare trait among presidents. I disagree with many things Reagan did, consider some of them paramount to a National Disaster, but I tip my hat to him with respect. Not particularly lucky, nor unlucky. Just a flawed man like the rest of us, muddling along doing the best he could do and sometimes doing it badly.

George Bush I. Luckylucky

Almost as lucky as JFK. Rode in on the popular legacy of Reagan. Indulged in an amazingly popular presidential war with Iraq, utilized overwhelming military force, lightning strategy, acceptable casualties. Then stopped short of victory. Never had to take the rap. It’s impossible to fathom such ineptitude, but his luck is even more incomprehensible. Never had to stand up against the wall for what he did. If he’s alive today, people aren’t blowing raspberries at him, yelling jibes, calling him what he is, the way people used to treat the village idiot. We’ve grown more tolerant these days.

I ain’t going into wossname, the guy before this one.

In a later blog entry I’ll tell you why I believe this prez has the makings to be the unluckiest prez since Tricky Dixon, (other than being his father’s son) along with the near certain whys, potential hows, and unfortunate for all of us outcomes.

Jack