A Great Memory: What it Was Like to Fly the Concorde

Believe it or not, I do read things that don't relate to politics or LGBT rights and activism.  And I came across a piece in CNN yesterday that was fun for me because it looked at something that I actually did back in my days as in-house counsel for an oil company: I flew the Concorde.  It was in August, 1981, after a 10 day negotiating trip to Morocco.   I was already in Morocco with three other company representatives when the air traffic controller strike hit and air travel became a chaotic nightmare to and from and within the USA.  We generally flew first class on overseas trips at company, but the Concorde was off limits under normal circumstances.  Under the circumstances, the Concorde offered the assured way to be sure we got back to America.  The Moroccan government made the reservations for our party and few flew from Casablanca to Paris, spent the night at the always fabulous Plaza Athenee - perhaps my favorite hotel in the world - and then took Concord to New York City, leaving Paris at 12:00 noon and arriving in New York around 8:30 am.  We maintained Mach 2 all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.  As the CNN piece notes, it truly was something special (I still my boarding pass holder and the menu - each flight had a unique menu).  Here are some article highlights (check out the 28 photos in the article): 

In 1976 -- over 40 years ago -- elite passengers were crossing the Atlantic in under three and a half hours, flying at twice the speed of sound in the Anglo-French Concorde.

Only 20 of the sleek, delta-winged SSTs were built, and just 14 were delivered to two airlines -- seven each to Air France and British Airways.

With superlative service and cuisine, exclusive airport lounges and stratospherically high airfares, Concorde passengers flew far above other flights, and cruised faster than fighter jets to their destinations.

But what was it really like to rub shoulders with the rich and famous on a Concorde flight? CNN Travel asked some former passengers.

"The flight attendants loved being on it; the passengers loved being on it," says CNN's Richard Quest, who flew Concorde five times. "You were aware of being part of a very small group of people that were privileged enough to be on Concorde.

With an interior fuselage width of about eight and a half feet (2.63 meters), Concorde's cabin was just wider than that of today's Bombardier Regional Jet. The SST had a single aisle, with a two-two seating configuration.

"The quality and style of food service was exceptional, . . . . "I felt more strongly that I had entered a private club. It was a brief glimpse into a life I had not known, polite, considerate, and beautifully detailed. It was impossible to not feel spoiled, and valued," says Ford.

Concorde was the first -- and still only -- passenger aircraft that had turbojet engines with afterburners. Called "reheat" by the British, raw fuel was introduced into the exhaust of the plane's four engines, immediately increasing the engines' thrust by almost 20%.

"Each takeoff was a phenomenal experience, the performance such that we had to warn the passengers in advance what to expect. The roar of the Rolls-Royce Olympus engines, combined with being pushed back into your seat, was like no other civilian aeroplane."

Reheat was also used to push the plane from subsonic to supersonic speeds.

Cruising at Mach 2 -- or 1,350 mph -- at 60,000 feet, Concorde flew five miles above and 800 mph faster than the subsonic 747s plodding across the Atlantic.

While Concorde no longer takes to the skies, it can be visited at a number of aviation museums around the world.

It truly was an experience that I will never forget.  I can still close my eyes and recall the takeoff and the steep pitch of the plane as it gained altitude with the afterburners fully engaged.  

My boarding pass holder

The menu cover

The Plaza Athenee - Paris

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Will Trump Tariff/Trade War Harm Republicans in Midterms?

The delusional narcissist in the White House likes to "win" and "punch back" but many Republicans believe that his threatened tariffs and a possible trade war will leave them being the ones against whom the punches is landed.  Especially in the 2018 midterm elections.  Tariffs will likely raise cost for American manufacturers and consumers and, at least in the case of consumers, wipe out or exceed the meager benefits - if any - realized from the GOP/Trump tax cuts.  Most impacted may be some of the states where Republicans are most vulnerable.  Trump's base may be thrilled by their "dear leader" attacking foreign business interest but failed to see - as is almost always the case with GOP policies - that they will be the ones picking up the costs through lost jobs or rising prices.  A piece in Politico looks at Republican fears and the intra-party rancor Trump is fueling.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump’s threatened trade war has opened a rift within the Republican Party that some lawmakers and strategists believe could undermine their effort to keep their majorities in Congress.

Republicans plan to brag about the economy in midterm campaigns in hopes of countering Trump’s unpopularity, touting a strong stock market, low unemployment rate and — most importantly — their increasingly popular tax legislation. But Trump’s suggestion Saturday that he might slap penalties on European cars, in addition to the tariffs on aluminum and steel he already promised, could upend that strategy completely, Republicans say.

"American manufacturers, businesses and consumers would be forced to bear the brunt, paying more for steel and steel products,” said Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), . . . . “Such action could very well undercut the benefits of the pro-growth tax reform we fought to get on the books.”

“It’s a real simple frame for the [midterm] election: Republicans want to run on issues,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former Congressional Budget Office director. “This threatens that because it … goes against our economic message.”

While narrow action directed at China alone might be well received, two top Republican congressional campaign sources said any broader trade actions — such as what Trump is floating now — could be devastating.

The back and forth comes just days after Trump said he would slap a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum as soon as this week. Trump tweeted Friday that “trade wars are good” and “easy to win.” And by Saturday, Trump doubled down by threatening to retaliate against countries seeking to punish the U.S. for its protectionism.

Most of the party flat-out disagrees. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called Trump’s proposed tariffs a "huge job-killing tax hike.” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said it will “kill American jobs.” And even Trump allies Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore argued in a Saturday CNBC op-ed that “even if tariffs save every one of the 140,000 or so steel jobs in America, it puts at risk 5 million manufacturing and related jobs in industries that use steel.”

Republicans have seen “this movie before, and they know it ends poorly,” said Holtz-Eakin, who worked in the George W. Bush administration. “I was at the White House for steel tariffs, and in the end, there was a lot of retaliation against the U.S.”

[A] trade war, Republicans say, would complicate their central pitch to voters that the GOP is good for business and Democrats will tank the economy.

Already, the EU has suggested it could retaliate against orange growers in the swing state of Florida, motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson in Wisconsin and other industries that could hurt toss-up areas that Republicans need to win if they're going to keep the House and Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), appearing Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” listed several South Carolina industries that he said would suffer, including tire and car manufacturers. And he directed his message to Trump personally: “You’re letting China off the hook and punishing the American consumer and our allies. You're making a huge mistake here.”

“Just a terrible decision, advocated by Assistant to the President for Losing Elections Peter Navarro,” tweeted conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.

Republicans know they’re powerless to stop Trump. While they’re relatively accustomed to a president whose views don’t always align with their own, they don’t usually panic because they can simply refuse to pass legislation to make most significant policy changes. On trade, however, Trump can do as he pleases — sans Congress.

“When it comes to trade, that’s an executive power. There’s very little we can do,” said a senior Republican aide who is alarmed at the Trump administration’s trade policy.

Trump’s Know-Nothing Science Budget

The GOP and evangelical Christians have a common requirement to further their toxic agendas: ignorant, objective truth denying followers. A heavy dose of racially and homophobic bigotry and a belief in conspiracy theories, of course are similarly helpful ingredients.  Hence why knowledge and scientific knowledge of almost any sort is the enemy of fundamentalists and evangelicals and the political party that they now largely control.  Evolution is denied, climate change is denied, objective facts and figures are replaced with untrue "alternate facts," etc.   Indeed, anything that challenges the political and religious orthodoxy of these people is denied and attacked.  Donald Trump, the leading purveyor of alternate facts - read lies - is aiding in the effort by proposing dangerous and potentially deadly cuts i, science funding.  A piece in the New Yorker looks at Donald Trump's dangerous budget cuts to science and medical research.  Here are excerpts: 

Donald Trump’s disregard for science has never been much of a secret. Well before he became President, he tweeted that light bulbs can cause cancer, that wind farms are unhealthy, that fracking “poses ZERO health risks,” and that Ebola “is much easier to transmit” than the government lets on. As a candidate, he regularly called global warming a hoax, repeated the false notion that vaccines can cause autism, and stated confidently that spraying hair spray in one’s apartment does not harm the ozone layer. . . . He avoids exercise, proudly fears germs, and, in Mike Pence, has chosen a Vice-President who, when pointedly asked, won’t say whether he believes in evolution.

It’s been downhill ever since. Under Trump, the United States has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, and the phrases “climate change” and “evidence-based” have been scrubbed from federal Web sites—in the very same year that three once-in-a-century hurricanes and two major drought-fuelled wildfires ravaged parts of the nation. . . . . the Environmental Protection Agency has banned E.P.A.-funded scientists, but not industry representatives, from serving on its advisory boards; and the Centers for Disease Control, facing steep budget cuts, will soon all but shut down a vital program that helps more than three dozen developing countries detect and control the spread of infectious diseases.

Trump’s newly proposed federal budget for 2019 continues the assault on knowledge and reason. Funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the E.P.A. would each be cut by eighteen per cent or more, compared with the final 2017 budget, which was drafted by the Obama Administration and amended by Trump.

The National Institute of Mental Health would see its budget slashed by thirty per cent, despite Trump’s recent avowals that better mental-health treatment is the solution to gun violence. NASA’s budget would stay roughly the same, but a number of important Earth-science missions would be eliminated, and Trump would attempt to defund and privatize the International Space Station by 2025.

 

The few increases, to the budgets of the Energy and Interior Departments, are designed to fund fossil-fuel research, offshore drilling, and surface mining. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management and the Oil Spill Research Program would be cut by at least fifteen per cent; Interior’s Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses earnings from offshore oil and gas drilling to protect and restore federal public lands, would be cut by two-thirds; and research on clean energy would be cut by more than seventy per cent.

 

Other cuts would simply obfuscate. The 2019 proposal, like the 2018 budget, eliminates five satellite missions that study aspects of Earth’s surface and atmosphere—carbon-dioxide levels, the reflectivity of clouds and snow—specifically in order to monitor the dynamics of climate. According to Trump’s moral calculus, it is better to know nothing than to learn something that may conflict with what you think you know. Even the education departments of NASA and NOAA would be cut; should those agencies actually learn something, they’ll have a harder time sharing the information.

 

Thirteen months into his first term, key posts at numerous federal agencies remain unfilled, including the administrator positions for NASA and NOAA. The Department of the Interior lacks eleven of its seventeen senior officials, and Trump has yet to propose nominees for six of them, including the directors of the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Needless to say, it’s easier to ransack a store when no one is officially minding it.

 

And many of the candidates whom Trump has nominated for science-oriented roles are woefully underqualified.

 

It feels almost quaint to talk of “truth” and “facts” anymore, but, as an endeavor, science at least strives to honestly approach them. Which is why it’s all the more dispiriting that, for a full year now, Trump has operated without a Presidential science adviser—the longest the Oval Office has gone without one since the position was created, decades ago.onald 

 

[Trump] trusts no one; he can’t abide to read even his intelligence reports. Science thrives on curiosity, investigation, vigorous discourse, and flexibility of thought. Donald Trump is a party of one, interested solely in hearing the sound of his own voice, regardless of the veracity of what it has to say. For now, the interim science adviser is Michael Kratsios, the deputy assistant in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kratsios, who is thirty-one, worked previously as chief of staff to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and Trump supporter, and has a bachelor’s degree in political science—the only kind of science, perhaps, that Trump can understand.

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Retired General: Trump’s Judgment is Fundamentally Flawed

Trump and Emperor Nero - two of a kind?

Some likely think my comparisons of Donald Trump to mentally deranged Roman emperors of the past are off target, but this past week and stories coming out of the White House suggest that the comparisons are all to appropriate.  Worse yet, they suggest that dangerous actions could come from an emotionally and - in my view and that of others - mentally ill occupant of the White House.  A piece in the Washington Post based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies suggests that thinking Americans - which excludes Fox News viewers and evangelical Christians - should be very worried if not truly frightened.  Here are story excerpts:

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center. . . . As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. 

Still, Trump’s friends are increasingly concerned about his well-being, worried that the president’s obsession with cable commentary and perceived slights is taking a toll on the 71-year-old. “Pure madness,” lamented one exasperated ally.

Retired four-star Army general Barry McCaffrey said the American people — and Congress especially — should be alarmed.

“I think the president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability and this is not going to end well,” McCaffrey said. “Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed, and the more pressure put on him and the more isolated he becomes, I think, his ability to do harm is going to increase.”

This portrait of Trump at a moment of crisis just over a year after taking office is based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Trump’s state of mind.

The tumult comes as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference and the president’s possible obstruction of justice has intensified. Meanwhile, Kushner, a White House senior adviser, was stripped last week of his access to the nation’s top secrets amid increasing public scrutiny of his foreign contacts and of his mixing of business and government work.
 Trump seethed with anger last Wednesday night over cable news coverage of a photo, obtained by Axios, showing Sessions at dinner with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, and another top Justice Department prosecutor. The outing was described in news reports as amounting to an act of solidarity after Trump had attacked Sessions in a tweet that morning.

The next morning, Trump was still raging about the photo, venting to friends and allies about a dinner he viewed as an intentional show of disloyalty.

“Trump’s fundamentally distorted personality — which at its core is chaotic, volatile and transgressive — when combined with the powers of the presidency had to end poorly,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of the three previous Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “What we’re now seeing is the radiating effects of that, and it’s enveloped him, his White House, his family and his friends.”
 Trump is testing the patience of his own staff, some of whom think he is not listening to their advice. White House counsel Donald McGahn and national economic council director Gary Cohn have been especially frustrated, according to other advisers.
 “Morale is the worst it’s ever been,” said a Republican strategist in frequent contact with White House staff. “Nobody knows what to expect.”

 I definitely do not sleep well know that we have in essence a mad man in the White House.

The Right Cannot Stop the Future

If one looks at the agenda of the Republican Party and its current base of white supremacists, Christian extremists, and other misogynists it ultimately resolves down to an effort to oppose modernity and social and demographic change.  Basically, it's a fight against the future. Hence the denial of evolution, the denial of climate change, desperate efforts to maintain the white privilege of the 1950's, and denial about modern knowledge about sexual orientation and gender identity.  The list of what is rejected and/or denied is lengthy.  Under this mindset, anything that challenges archaic and bigoted beliefs - especially those that challenge the false claim that the Bible id inerrant - must be resisted.  The problem is that even if short term rear guard battles are won, in the age of the Internet and easy access to accurate information, the long term war will be lost.  A day of reckoning will come despite the most hate-filled and discriminatory efforts and the embrace of ignorance by the core of the GOP base and evangelical Christians.  A long piece in The Daily Beast looks at this ultimate exercise in futility that is no different than when the Catholic Church attacked those who said the earth wasn't flat and wasn't the center of the universe.  Here are highlights:

It seems axiomatic that the past and the future cannot exist at the same time. Thanks to the space-time continuum, people from different centuries cannot live simultaneously. The same goes for a nation, which cannot survive pulling toward the future and toward the past at once.

The United States is at a fulcrum. We are two countries—one lurching for the future, one yearning for the past—that cannot live together, because we can’t be both things. Donald Trump may have brought on the breaking point, but he didn’t create the schism. It was already there for him to exploit.

Today, Trump is speeding us toward decline—the very decline his supporters so feared. His imperious leadership; his family’s grubby pretense at royalty and the apparent mad dash among members of his cabinet and White House team to hawk their positions for cash and luxuries have the feel of a decrepit regime looting the palace in its final days; stuffing the silver in their coats as they flee into exile.

Trump’s announcement of anachronistic trade tariffs this week was portrayed as out of the blue, but it was no such thing. Trump ran on ending multilateral trade agreements and recreating an America of the distant past that culls every human and material resource from within. Republicans who are now in full blown freakout over a potential trade war voted for exactly what they’re getting.

In every way, Donald Trump is a president built for the past; a benighted, late 19th Century figure who spun his supporters a tale that he could restore a bygone era when coal fires burned, factories hummed, steel mills belched out soot and opportunity and a (white) man with a sturdy back, a high school diploma and a song in his heart could buy a little house, marry a little wife and have 3 cherry-cheeked kids he didn’t ever have to cook or clean for, plus if he can afford it, a hot mistress on the side. Trump is the slovenly but brash, gold-plated emblem of a time when in the imagination of his followers, black women hummed a tune while they cleaned your house or did the washing, black men tipped their hat on the street but didn’t dare look you in the eye, and neither would dream of moving in next door. A time when women asked their husbands for an allowance, not their boss for a promotion, men were “allowed to be men” complete with ribald jokes and a slap on the fanny for the pretty secretary at work, and there were no gays, no trans people, no birth control …
 Going backward, to a world without ambiguity on race, gender and work is a powerfully attractive idea, particularly for those who fear losing their cultural and social hegemony as the nation browns, and their economic ascendancy as technology creates new industries they scarcely understand.

But here’s the thing: the past really is past. Coal is still a dying industry and America will never again have an industrial revolution. It’s other countries’ turn to do that now. Black and brown people aren’t giving up our dignity, including the right to protest and to survive mundane encounters with police. Immigrants aren’t going away (and in fact we need them to keep the economy and the safety net flush). LGBT people aren’t going back into the closet.

There is indeed a sizable minority of Americans who want to go back to the old times. But we aren’t going back.  Neither is the world.
 While we regress, the rest of the planet will go right on trading without us. Tariffs on other countries will invite tariffs on us (Europe is already considering levying them on everything from Levi’s to Kentucky bourbon to Harley Davidson motorcycles). And protectionism will protect zero American jobs, while hiking the prices of everything we buy that’s made with aluminum and steel, from cars to washing machines to pots and pans.
 [Trump] only cares about the show. And he always gives his people a good show. But the economy does care. And America will pay a price for their P.T. Barnum president and his temper tantrums.

Meanwhile, there is another America, which is busy concerning itself with the future. It’s the America that produces two-thirds of this country’s economic output, though it represents just hundreds of counties versus Trump’s thousands. It’s the America that objects to Russian interference in our elections, that welcomes immigrants and their economic contributions, that recognizes that even ancient institutions like marriage can modernize, that views women’s full equality as a boon not a threat to civilization, that doesn’t want to be ruled from Biblical texts or by a savage gun lobby, and that wants America to be a part of the world, not it’s creaky, cranky, lonely adversary.

In particular, young Americans—Millennials and post-Millennials, have had enough of our tired wrangling. They’re sick of the Baby Boomers’ social agonies and the clenched grip of the World War II generation on American social and political life. They want an end to throwback rigidity on guns, gays, and religion. And they neither respect nor revere the current president of the United States.

Far from becoming more conservative with time, young Americans are staying right where they were when Barack Obama was first elected—on the left of center—if not growing more progressive. It’s why Republicans are so keen to suppress their votes. . . . They are the most racially diverse generation in modern American history. And by next year, Millennials will be the single largest generational group in America, with their ranks swelled by immigrants (which explains the urgent right wing push for mass deportation.)
 Does anyone really believe they will somehow morph en-masse into NRA-obedient, Fox News-zombie, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, maniacal healthcare destroyers who’ll vote for serial sexual predators?
 With its broad and seemingly absolute power over the country, the Republican Party may not feel like it is dying, but it is dying nonetheless, at the hands of youth and multiracial population growth. The GOP can rush to install voter suppression traps and other restraints on change to try and keep the tide from coming in. But it will come anyway.
 Perhaps the biggest challenge future-facing America faces is that past-craving America has a dogmatic and consistent voting base and a determined and persistent ally: Russia, which alongside its embedded mercenaries from the so-called “alt right” are harnessing maturing modern tools like social media to keep the futurists at bay. But we won’t have a president who cuddles up to Russia and neo-fascists forever. Eventually, the fight against them and their propaganda will be joined in earnest and won.

The future is coming. It cannot live alongside the past. And in the end, it cannot be stopped. 

The Republican Party of today and Trump has no long term plan for the future.  Indeed, it is guaranteeing that sooner or later it will be obliterated at the polls.  The more it tries to stop the future, the more hash the reckoning will be.  It cannot happen soon enough to suit me.  Millennials need to understand that they can kill the GOP.  All they need to do is register and vote against Republicans in every election cycle at every level.  The monster that the GOP and its base has become can be killed.  Let's kill it.

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