The Space Powers

As of now, only three countries are capable of putting astronauts in space: USA, Russia, and China.  For the last 20 years, the USA and Russia have been more or less allies in space, jointly maintaining the International Space Station (ISS) and providing rides for astronauts of other countries to that station.  Fron the retirement of the Space Shuttle (2011) until the introduction of the SpaceX Crew Dragon (2020), Russia launched all crews to the station.  China is the newcomer in space and has made impressive progress.  While the ISS is nearing retirement (perhaps sooner than expected considering current politics), China has begun assembling a competing space station.

That brings us to Ukraine.  Is it in the best interest of the United States to drive Russia toward an alliance with China?  With both an economy and a population that is ten times the size of Russia's, China is the greater challenge in the future.  Space dominance will be very important sooner than we realize.  If two of the three space powers align against the 3rd, that could be decisive.  This is especially so when one looks at the lack of alternatives the US currently has: SpaceX or Bust.

As noted in an earlier blog, NATO has been pressing Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.  The US has trained Ukrainians and provided weapons.  This constant encroachment signaled that the Cold War was still being fought and NATO was stealing marches on the Russians by annexing more and more of the former Warsaw Pact, ever diminishing the sphere of influence of the once great power.  If the roles were reversed and the Warsaw Pact was training Mexican troops, providing them with arms, and calling for Mexico to join the Pact, it is a certainty that the US would invade and give Mexico a smackdown; we've done it more than once already.

We have pursued a foreign policy that is not in our interests.  Though a nation should have the option of choosing its allies, that doesn't always work in a multipolar world.  Hong Kong would surely have preferred to remain in the British Empire and Cuba wanted to be a Soviet satellite.  Each was denied.  Though we may argue that Ukraine should have the right to join NATO, the result is conflict that could escalate to World War III.  That is certainly not in anyone's interest.

It should be noted that World War II was triggered when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.  Britain and France declared war to free Poland.  At the conclusion of the war, Russia retained the whole of Poland.  Everyone was war weary and abandoned Poland - and most of Eastern Europe - to a half century of tyranny.  Yes, it was absolutely unfair to those nations, but the alternative was considered worse.  Is defending Ukraine worth the costs?  We didn't intervene to this degree when Russia invaded Chechnya.  We didn't do much when Russia carved out a chunk of Georgia.  We didn't risk war when Russia claimed Crimea.  Why now?

If we could abandon Ukraine in order to keep Russia out of an alliance with China, would that be a good trade?  Would it be appeasement or realpolitik?  I tend toward the later position.

Field of Honor (1986)

Sergeant "Sire" De Koning (Everett McGill) is a soldier in the Dutch Army during the Korean War.  He is a profane man, constantly drinking, smoking, and whoring.  When his unit is moved to the front lines, Sire arranges a party for a soldier leaving for home in 2 weeks.  Sire provides a couple of Korean women (mother and daughter) for sex (young son hands out condoms) and plenty of alcohol.  Unfortunately, a Chinese offensive breaks up the party and sends survivors into a mad retreat.  The sergeant is left for dead on the field of battle.  When he awakens, he finds himself mostly alone, the other survivors mortally wounded and begging for death.  Here follows his efforts to avoid detection by wandering Chinese soldiers while also protecting the Korean girl and her younger brother who he exposed to the dangers of the front lines.

Though set during the Korean War, this is a character study of De Koning.  When the Chinese overwhelmed his position, he cried out, "Every man for himself!"  Clearly, not the team player one would prefer.  However, when he finds himself in dire straits behind enemy lines, he goes to the aid of others and seeks to make amends to Sun Yi and Kim.

Overall, weak.  It is hard to like Sire.  He goes from thoroughly dislikeable to mostly unlikeable.  As this is a Canon production, they spared every expense.  The overwhelming Chinese attack was maybe 40 soldiers, which was about twice the size of the Dutch unit.  A column of Chinese reinforcements was 2 trucks of men.  When the Americans retake the position, there are 3 tanks and a column of men.  

Skip.

White Lightning (1973)

Bobby "Gator" McKlusky (Burt Reynolds) is in prison for running moonshine, AKA white lightning, when he is told that his brother has been murdered.  The killer is the sheriff of Bogan County, J. C. Connors (Ned Beatty).  Instantly determined to avenge his brother, he fails in an escape attempt.  Desperate, he agrees to help the Feds make a case against Sheriff Connors.  Provided a souped-up 1971 Ford Galaxie, he wrangles a job with the local moonshiners in Bogan County.  However, Sheriff Connors connections in Washington warn him that someone has been sent to expose his corruption.  Can Gator get the goods on the sheriff before the sheriff lays hands on him?

This reminded me a lot of Smokey and the Bandit, only taken seriously.  Burt can be charming and a smart aleck, but he's as often serious and moody.  His interactions with the ladies call to mind the Bandit.  Ned Beatty is surprisingly intimidating for a short, pudgy fellow who seems outwardly genial.  Matt Clark, who I recognized immediately but couldn't name a single film in which I saw him, plays Dude, a harried mechanic and Gator's first contact for infiltrating the moonshine ring.  Diane Ladd plays Dude's wife and, to my surprise, Diane's daughter, a very young Laura Dern, plays her on-screen daughter.

The big draw of the movie is the wild driving, complete with hairpin turns, fender-crunching collisions, racing in front of a train, driving blindly through a cornfield, and crazy car jumps that clearly inspired the Dukes of Hazzard.

Generally entertaining but nothing special.  Worth a look for a Burt Reynolds fan.

The Gas Price

In the early 1990s, I started recording when I bought gas on road trips.  Around 2000, that habit expanded to every time I filled the tank.  Thus, I have a long record of gas prices on hand.  Obviously, it only represents the price where I happened to be, not the average price across the nation.  Still, it is a useful metric to see how the price ebbs and flows.  Here is a graph that represents my Honda Civic, purchased in December of 2010.

The prices was on the high side for much of Obama's presidency, but it fell during his last two years in office.  Trump saw a rise for a couple years before a dip in his last year.  Biden has mostly seen an increase in gas prices.  Based on my chart, who oversaw the lowest gas price?

I paid $3.90 just this week and expect I will pay more in the weeks to come.  This chart may give an overall figure, but it isn't entirely fair.  The gas price in Obama's last couple of years could be presumed to carry-on.  Let's break it down by year.

Obama's last two years were better than most of Trump's years.  On the other hand, Trump did achieve energy independence by his final year and it shows.  Trump was a proponent of American energy production, approving pipelines, cheerleading fracking and drilling, and hyping domestic sources.  The US became an energy exporter for the first time in my lifetime during the Trump Administration.  As such, it is not surprising that he had the lowest average cost per gallon during his tenure.  Of course, 78 cents a gallon isn't a lot, is it?  What was my average cost per tank of gas?

Biden has repeatedly announced his hostility toward fossil fuels and, as one of his first acts as president, he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  Yes, the Ukraine mess is responsible for some of the recent rise in gas prices, but, as the 2021 average price shows, it had increased dramatically (47%) in 2021, before Putin invaded.

Clearly, the policies in place from 2015 through 2020 provided the best prices for gas.  Let's return to those policies.

DARVO

I had never heard the term DARVO, but find it insightful.  It stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.  In this article, DARVO is discussed as it relates to Lia Thomas breaking women's college records.  Lia is a trans-athlete who retains male genitalia.  Nonetheless, she shares a locker room with women who are vilified if they object to this situation.  They are the intolerant bigots while Lia is the victim of their narrowmindedness.  Thus, we have Denied the reality that Lia retains her biological maleness, Attacked those who object to a biological male competing with biological females, and Reversed the roles of Offender and Victim.  Lia is the victim and the entirety of Ivy League female swimmers are the offenders.

If Lia wants to be a woman, great.  Go for it.  However, it is rather suspicious that a college swimmer who did not win while male chose to transition to female and then won regularly and broke records.

Fighting Caravans (1931)

Clint Belmet (Gary Cooper) is a scout on the frontier during the Civil War. He is something of a hellion and the sheriff of Independence, Missouri plans to put him in jail for a month. His mentors, Bill Jackson and Jim Bridger, spin a yarn about how he was just married and it would be wrong to jail him now that he is reforming his wild ways. They trick Felice (Lili Damita), a French woman bound for Sacramento, to pose as his new wife. The sheriff relents and Clint escapes Independence with Bill, Jim, and Felice. No sooner has the caravan left for California than Clint and Felice breakup when the trick played on her is exposed. Throughout the long journey, Clint and Felice are repeatedly drawn together and then split. Bill and Jim engineer most of the breakups, fearing that they might lose their young apprentice to a domestic life. Added to the stresses of the trail, it is clear that a combined band of Kiowa and Comanche are trailing the caravan and will certainly attack at some point. This is especially threatening because most of the US Cavalry stationed in the West has been recalled for service in the Civil War.

Adapted from a Zane Grey novel, the story is by the numbers and rather predictable. Ernest Torrence is a standout as Bill Jackson, the grizzled scout with a gift for gab. Tully Marshall as Jim Bridger fades into the background, though he has the more stereotypical mountain man appearance. There is a famous Jim Bridger who was a mountain man and scout, but he was in military service during the Civil War. The best thing about the movie are the scenes of the caravan crossing vast prairies, snowy mountains, and wide rivers. The setting is far more impressive than the story.

Good popcorn fun.

Turnabout is Fair Play

In 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba.  This was viewed as grounds for risking World War III, a nuclear Armagedon.  If not for Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine B-59 would have launched a nuclear strike on October 27, 1962.  It was the Cold War and tensions were high.  Of course, Cuba was an independent country.  What business did we have in denying them missiles, especially considering US involvement in the Bay of Pigs disaster the previous year?

Beginning in 1979, the United States and Russia fought a proxy war in Nicaragua.  The US supported the Contras while the Soviets supported the Sandinistas.  The US Monroe Doctrine had essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the US, foreign powers not welcome.

In 1983, the US invaded Grenada.  It had been communist-friendly since a 1979 bloodless coup, trading with Cuba and the USSR.  However, when a coup by hardline Marxists murdered the milquetoast Prime Minister, the US sent in the Marines. 

Let us consider the current situation in that light.  During the Cold War, the NATO states were on one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other.  When the Soviet Union crumbled, many Warsaw Pact countries sought membership in NATO.  In much the same way that the US considered Cuba to be encroaching, Russia has reason to view such NATO expansion as an encroachment.  How far have we encroached?  Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Croatia, and Hungary were all in the Soviet Bloc but are now members of NATO.  That's a lot of encroachment that Russia has tolerated.  Of course, most of these countries had only been 'acquired' during World War II.  Sure, it stings, but it's not like they had been part of Russia for centuries.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent for the first time in centuries.  It had long been swapped among empires: Ottoman, Polish, Russian, Soviet Union.  It had been part of Russia/USSR since the 17th century and still has a large Russian minority (17%).  It is closer to Russia than Cuba is to the United States.  If Russia had something similar to the Monroe Doctrine, offering NATO membership would be a clear violation.  NATO is a military organization created to oppose Soviet expansion, but now it has been expanding toward Russia for 30 years.  Now it proposes to annex a region that has been in the Russian Empire for centuries.

It is argued that World War II was caused by the mismanagement of the peace in the wake of World War I.  The Treaty of Versailles was as much about assigning blame to Germany as to providing for peace.  How likely is it that the current conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of the mishandling of the peace in the aftermath of the Cold War?