My Amazon Review of Robert Harris' "V2"

 

Rocket Science: Offense and Defense

 

Historical novelist Robert Harris tells the story of the German V2 program and the British attempts to defeat it through the eyes of a German propulsion engineer Rudi Graf and a female British air force officer Kay Caton Walsh working to defeat it through photography and algebra. The novel opens with Walsh in bed with her married lover in London about to be hit by a V2.

 

The story goes back and forth between her studying the photographs of the German rocket center at Peenemunde and her calculating the rocket trajectories from a base in Belgium to  Holland where Graf is a civilian scientific officer in charge of the launches. Graf’s boss Wernher von Braun has a few walk-on roles in the drama.

 

Through it all we learn of the magnitude of the German rocket program that produced a functional weapon that was extraordinarily inaccurate. The technical brilliance is evident, but the program was done at the cost of thousands of slave laborers and it took 30 tons of potatoes in starving Germany to make enough alcohol to fuel one rocket. Graf is a good person caught up in the nightmare of Nazi aggression.

 

Walsh’s job in Belgium with her fellow female officers is utilize radar data taken from the German launches to its ultimate rocket landing in England. The rocket follows the path of a parabola and from that it was possible to calculate the point of launch. With that data British fighter bombers would target that site. However, the rocket’s guidance and control system was not impervious to the high winds it would face and thus would invariably blow off course. As a result, instead of hitting military and political targets the rockets destroyed housing.

 

This is the third Harris book I have reviewed with the first two being “An Officer and a Spy” ( Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert Harris', "An Officer and A Spy: A Novel" ) and “Munich.” (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert Harris' "Munich: A Novel") Though not as good V2 remains a good read.

For the full Amazon URL see: Rocket Science: Offense and Defense (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Dana Mills' "Rosa Luxemburg"

 

Red Rosa

 

Dana Mills, a self-proclaimed socialist feminist, has written a very hagiographic biography of the early 20^th Century socialist intellectual and revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. At least to me, she has grafted her 21^st century politics of enviro-feminism on to Luxemburg’s world view. Luxemburg was a one of a kind rising from a middle-class Jewish family in Poland to become one of the leading socialist intellectuals overcoming the sexism of the day. However, Mills is practically silent on what made Rosa a socialist, a real failure of the book. Another failure is that the book is over-loaded with socialist jargon that tries even the most stout-hearted.

 

At a very young age she wrote a critique of Eduard Bernstein’s reformism which was to become the basis of European social democracy. She takes a no compromise position with capitalism. And nearly unprecedented for the times Luxemburg received a doctorate in law in Switzerland. From Switzerland she moves to Germany and becomes a member of the Social Democratic Party and takes up with one of its leaders, Leo Jogiches. Because of Jogiches family wealth Luxemburg acquires a taste for bourgeois lifestyle, not atypical.  Along the way she writes here opus “The Accumulation of Capital” on Marxist economics.

 

Mills rightly portrays Luxemburg as an internationalist. She opposes Polish nationalism and is a firm believer in proletarian internationalism. That belief falters as most of the working-class parties join hands in supporting their respective nations at the start of World War I.  Her internationalism puts her athwart the leading political force of the 20^th century, nationalism. In this sense she is more Trotsky then Lenin.

 

Luxemburg was a critic of the Leninism in Russia. She believed in a bottom up socialism, not the top down dictatorship of Lenin.  The problem is that full blown socialism can only be accomplished at the point of a gun.

 

After being released from jail in 1918 she joins up with Karl Liebknecht and others to form the German Communist Party. The antecedent of which was formed a few years early in opposition to World War I. She is part of the Spartakist faction that would lead a revolt against the nascent social democratic government. The Spartakists were brutally suppressed leading to her murder at the hands of the Freicorps. Here there is no criticism of the revolt. Why would any serious leftist oppose the first and very fragile social democratic government in Germany? That government had enough problems dealing with the Right that it had to face off against the Left. It reinforces my view that the worst thing that happened to the Left in the 20^th century was the Bolshevik Revolution which split the Left and hardened the Right.

 

Mills notes one of Luxemburg’s famous sayings: “freedom is the freedom for one who thinks different.” I only wish that were true of today’s Left with its odious cancel culture.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2SSCGZ7DTIJSQ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Chris Whipple's "The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future"

 

Inside the CIA

 

I am an avid reader of spy fiction and nonfiction. As a result, I looked forward to reading Chris Whipple’s history of the CIA through its directors from Richard Helms in the 1960’s through Gina Haspel of today. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Simply put his words do not come off the page and at times I was reluctant to pick up the book. The drama is not there.

 

The book is an outgrowth of a Showtime documentary written by Whipple with the same title. To be sure he covers the history highlighting the CIA’s initial success in Afghanistan and its massive failure to predict the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the disclosure of the “family jewels” during the congressional hearings of the 1970s. He interviews directors George Tenet of “slam dunk” fame, John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and David Petraeus along with numerous high-level staffers.

 

A strength of the book is that he highlights the tension between the CIA with its masters in the White House and the Congress. In my opinion the two directors that successfully navigated those shoals were George H.W. Bush and Leon Panetta, both master politicians. Thus aside from being a master spy the CIA director has to be a master politician.

 

My problem with Whipple is that I believe he does not fully understand the how difficult the job is. There is so much information, much of it bad, coming at a CIA director making it extraordinarily difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. It would have been a far better book for him to sit in the shoes of a director during a period of crisis trying to evaluate the incoming information and then to deal with the process of presenting it to the president.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R27PBIIBLHD4J8/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Some Out of the Box Ideas for a Biden Unity Cabinet

 With the election behind us my thoughts now turn to what a Biden cabinet would look like, especially if he holds true to the unity theme he elucidated in his victory speech. The announced make up of the cabinet will be especially crucial in determining the winners in the Georgia Senate run-off where a decided move to the Left would all but elect the two Republican candidates.  Politico has just published their ideas as to who the front runners are for the major cabinet slots.  (See:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/07/joe-biden-cabinet-picks-possible-choices-433431) I would be very comfortable with Michele Flournoy at Defense, Lael Brainard at Treasury, Ernest Moniz at Energy, Tom Udall at Interior, and Heidi Heitkamp at Agriculture.

Now here are my out of the box choices for several cabinet positions.

Attorney General - Merrick Garland. He is a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge who was Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court that failed to get a Senate vote. He worked in the Clinton justice department and prosecuted the Oklahoma City bomber. His appointment would remove the stench left by the current administration.

Labor - Mary Daly. She is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and trained a labor economist. Before that she was research director at the bank. She started her academic career with a high school GED and thus she will have much to teach us about workforce development.

Health and Human Services - David Feinberg, M.D. He currently heads up Google's efforts in healthcare. Before that he was CEO of Geisinger Health Systems in Pennsylvania and the UCLA Hospital and Clinics. He has the perfect background for dealing with congress in that he was trained as a child psychiatrist. 

Education - Andrew Yang. He is a former presidential candidate with a background in technology and understand the needs of a 21st century workforce. If anyone can shakeup a stultified education system, it is he.

Housing and Urban Development - Keisha Lance Bottoms. She is currently mayor of Atlanta and showed great stamina during the civil disturbances of last summers. She has first hand knowledge on the needs of diverse and growing cities.

Commerce - John Kasich. He is a former Republican congressman and governor of Ohio who actively supported Biden. He would  have the support of the business community.

Transportation - Charlie Baker. He is the extraordinarily popular Republican governor of Massachusetts which has had more than its fair share of transportation issues. He gets results.

National Security Advisor - Fiona Hill. She was formerly a high staffer on the National Security Council who testified at Trump's impeachment trial. She literally wrote the book on Putin. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-amazon-review-of-fiona-hill-and.html)

Director of National Intelligence - Adam Schiff. He currently chairs the House Intelligence Committee.

National Economic Council - Greg Ip. He is The Wall Street Journal's lead economic commentator. He is knowledgeable on macro and micro issues and knows all of the players. He would truly be an honest broker. 

After Action Report on the 2020 Elections

While Shulmaven got Joe Biden winning right, I largely blew it everywhere else. Like too many, I got sucked into believing that the pollsters corrected for their mistakes in the 2016 election. Never again will I make that mistake.

 

I had Biden winning the popular vote by 7 points when it now looks like he will win it by 3 points. I had Biden winning Florida and North Carolina; wrong! I had him winning Arizona and Nevada, likely. And I had him winning Georgia, still too close to call.

 

With respect to the Senate I had the Democrats gaining a net of 5 seats. As of today, the Democrats are up one seat with two seats to be determined in a January runoff in Georgia. Shulmaven would sure like to own a TV station in Atlanta. It is my guess today that the Republicans are likely to hold both seats.

 

In the House I had the Democrats picking up 8-10 seats; it now looks like they will lose 8-10 seats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will soon find out what it was like for her Republican predecessors Ryan and Boehner to run an unruly caucus. It will not be pretty for her. 

To me the big takeaways from the election are:

1.     The Trump tactic of tagging the Democrats as radical leftists worked. Defunding the police and talking about socialism might work in New York, but not too many places elsewhere. Instead of being a plus, “the Squad” turned out to be a huge negative.

 

2.     The notion of a monolithic bloc of “people of color” crashed and burned. There are more differences than commonalities among African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asians. For example, it certainly did not help when Black Lives Matter protestors in Miami carried a flag with Che Guevara’s picture on it. To them it may have been a symbol of liberation, but to Miami’s Cuban and Venezuelan populations it was a symbol of totalitarian oppression.  Outside of Florida Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas shifted markedly towards Trump.

 

3.     Biden’s position on fracking cost the Democrats two rising stars in the House, Kendra Horn from Oklahoma and Xochitl Torres-Small from New Mexico. *

 

4.     California, a state which voted for Biden by a 2-1 majority rallied against liberalism in three key ballot propositions and likely a fourth one. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2020/10/some-thoughts-on-four-controversial.html) Specifically the voters opposed a measure allowing for racial preferences in university admissions and state employment, opposed a measure that would allow for stricter rent control, supported a measure that treats gig workers as contractors rather than employees and thus far the opposition to amending Proposition 13 to allow for much higher taxes on commercial property is heading for defeat.

 

What the election seems to represent is that 2016 was not a fluke. America remains a very divided country and with Donald Trump acting like the world’s worst sore loser is certainly not helping things. We are  a country in a great need of spiritual healing. We must listen to one another, and I pray that Joe Biden will find the strength in him to lead us in that task.

 

*I financially supported her re-election efforts.

2020 Elections: A Good Night for Biden and the Democrats, a Bad Night for Trump

 

At last the election is just two days away. The way it looks to me, consistent with the recent polling data, is that Joe Biden will win the popular vote by a margin of 52-45-3 percent and it now looks like he will decisively win the battle for the electoral college by a margin of 350-188. I have Biden winning all the Clinton states of 2016 and adding Arizona, Florida, Georgia (yes), North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska’s 2^nd congressional district. His majority will be based on the votes of suburban women with the biggest gender gap ever, Blacks, seniors and the young. In House races, the Democrats are likely to pick up a net of between 8-10 seats. This will largely replicate the strength in the suburbs that occurred 2018 with a few seats coming from North Carolina’s redistricting.

 

The call for the Senate is much trickier. Put bluntly there are way too many extremely close races that can go either way. My best guess is that will pick up a net gain of five seats bringing their majority to 52-47 with one seat awaiting a Georgia runoff in January. I have the Democrats losing the Jones seat in Alabama while picking up Cunningham in North Carolina, Kelly in Arizona, Ossoff in Georgia, Bullock in Montana (an upset), Hickenlooper in Colorado and Gideon in Maine. In case of Gideon we probably will not know until next week to allow for Maine’s ranked choice voting tabulation.

 

HEALTH WARNING: The Senate races will be really close and as result there will be a high margin of error. If I am roughly right on the presidential race and if the Republicans do much better than I have predicted my explanation would be that enough Republican crossover voters and independents voted Republican fearing that a Democratic Senate would lead to packing the Supreme Court and runaway liberal legislation.