Vic Socotra

18 February 2009

The Stack

(CAD View of the Taepodong Missile Stack)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton- I said it out loud a few times to get used to the sound of it- will visit Indonesia today before heading on to the Republic of Korea, not to be confused with the Democratic Peoples Republic to the North, before completing the Asian jaunt to discuss the global financial crisis and climate change.

I listen to the BBC in the morning, thanks to the miracle of satellite radio, and I heard some commentary and person-on-the-street interviews about what the US has to do to earn the respect of the largest Muslim-majority country. There was steam coming out of my ears by the end of the segment, which raised the temperature measurably in Tunnel Eight.

I could not tell if it was a passing change, or something permanent. I run hot and cold on that, just like the earth. I was pretty well committed to the apocalypse, which is why I bought a unit on the fourth floor at Big Pink to stay above the rising sea level. They had me going there for quite a while. Now I don't know. There apparently has been a cooling trend over the last decade, even as the rhetoric has heated up and the polar ice thickens again.

I do know that the Climate Change thing is going to be big on the Administration’s list of things to-do, right after fixing the economy. The President signed the stimulus bill in Denver yesterday, returning to the city that hosted the Democratic national Convention that produced his breathtaking nomination last August.

Everything that passes for news these days is political theater, so the location was important to highlight the commitment to green technology that is in the bill. I’ll get to that in a minute, since theater being what it is, those North Koreans have been assembling a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile and could launch it as early as next week.

This version of the Taepodong is a three-stage “integrated” missile, consisting of a solid-fuel booster strapped atop a SCUD missile, which in turn is duct-taped on the top of a short-range Nodong missile. If it all sounds a little haphazard, you have to remember that this is not exactly rocket science.

I had a passing immersion in space-launch technology when I was in graduate school, and it is pretty cool. There are two theories about how to build a rocket, just like there are about Global Warming. Some people assemble their rockets horizontally, and then pull the thing into the vertical when everything is taped together. Other people assemble their rockets like they are going to be launched “on the stack.”

There are arguments for both approaches, and I say whatever works is the way to go, provided nothing falls over at a critical moment. The American approach has been to use “the stack,” like constructing a top-quality deli sandwich with pastrami, pickles and provolone on rye.

The last time the North fired a long-range missile was back on the 4th of July weekend in 2006. It was great theater, providing a visual quote of the “Rockets Red Glare,” and threw in a demonstration of five shorter-range rockets as a bonus. The big rocket failed within a minute, possibly related to the poor quality of the indigenously produced duct-tape in the North.

The Taepodong-2 missile, when it works, is believed by some optimists to be capable of hitting targets in the Western United States. That could include Denver. The President will be long gone, of course, but that is just another thing to add to the growing things to worry about.

Secretary Clinton announced that the missile launch would “not be helpful,” which is pretty stern, like when I would threaten the kids that I would stop the car if they didn’t stop acting up in the back seat. At least I didn’t have to worry about rockets falling on my head when I said it.

Financial analysts have said that if the North goes ahead with the launch, it will add further downward pressure to the already depressed regional markets.

In New York, the markets reacted to the signing of the stimulus package by slumping another 300 points. The net effect of that must be larger now that the base is so much smaller than it used to be. The President noted that he didn’t expect anything to happen overnight, though I feel oddly stimulated this morning.

He seemed to be channeling Churchill, even if he returned the bust of the bulldog Prime Minister that used to be in the Bush Oval Office.

I loved the quote that Winston growled at the end of the Battle of Egypt, when Field Marshals Alexander and Montgomery turned back Rommel’s Afrika Corps, and there was finally a real victory: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

President Obama said it this way: “Now,” he said, “I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems. Nor does it constitute all of what we’re going to have to do to turn our economy around. But today does mark the beginning of the end…”

That is absurd. The Administration may have an idea of where this is all going, but if they do, they have not shared the whole vision. It would be too scary. I think Winston said it better, but this is apparently a time for haste, not precision. It is more a matter of theater, anyway.

Inside the monster stimulus package is about $80 billion in spending, loan guarantees and tax incentives targeted as precisely as a Taepodong 2 at the energy sector. If this chunk of the bill had been a stand-alone piece of legislation, it would have been the biggest energy bill in history, something like the Moon Shot in scope.

There is all kinds of great stuff to promote energy efficiency, stimulate renewable energy sources, build higher-mileage cars and burn coal in a way that is truly clean. Is there anyone who could disagree with any of that?

Of course, at almost very same moment, Chrysler and General stacked their business cases on the desk of Congress to say how much it will cost to stay in business. The number is breathtaking. GM announced it would need another $16.6 billion dollars to keep going. With the initial duct-tape amount already spent, that will bring the total requirement to around $30 billion dollars by 2011. Even with that, another 47,000 jobs are on the block this year.

The New York Times says that even though this is a pretty astonishing amount of money, it should not be confused with a global warming bill. They are on the way to going out of business themselves, but they say we need a much broader strategy and “even larger federal investments in clean-energy technologies and an effort to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions to unlock private investment on an enormous scale.”

I should think it might be advisable to construct this thing on the horizontal, so we can get to all the parts before we put it on the launch pad, but that is not how we do things. We will stack it all on top, in the vertical, and hope it stays upright.

This is definitely not the beginning of the end. I am with Winston on that score; it is, in fact, only the end of the beginning of the biggest change we have seen since the end of Winston’s War. I hope we are up for it.

That being the case, I am happy to report that the Bluesmobile is a Ford. And, what’s more, it is paid for.

Close Window