The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)
But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

Now what?

The easy milestones have been hit - gold at $1,000; oil at $100. Stocks have gone down (though the Dow is still about where it was; in nominal terms stocks have gone nowhere). And the dollar has gone down decisively against the euro.

What is ahead now? We don't know. But our view of things has not changed. Nor has it played it itself out.

In our view, markets make opinions, not the other way around. In other words, people come to think what they must think in order to play their roles in the great drama. America has become a huge empire. All empires are extraordinary things...fragile and doomed to failure. When the Soviet Union threw in the towel, America was left without any major competition. Since empires cannot last, and since she had no competitors worthy of the name, the Empire of Debt had to find a way to destroy herself.

In that sense, it was no accident that the financial industry invented subprime debt...and then put it in its own coffers. Nor was it any accident that households spent more than they could afford. Nor that Congress went on the biggest spending spree in history. Nor that George W. Bush took the nation into an unbelievably pointless and expensive war, effectively squandering not only the nation's credit...but also its military advantage.

Meanwhile, Americans' eagerness to spend money they didn't have on things they didn't need caused a huge boom in places they'd never been. Asians built factories, roads and entire cities with money gotten from selling gadgets to Americans. Arabs built ski-slopes in the desert...and constructed towns on manmade islands. And even their former enemies - the Russians - created one of the world's largest piles of U.S. dollar reserves, and saw their own wages rise 6 times in the last eight years. These foreign competitors have been adding to their skills, their savings, and their capital bases - just while the United States has been running its own down.

This drama is far from over. We are only at the beginning of it. The next scenes should be even more interesting. The dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency (possibly with episodes of hyper-inflation)...China and Russia will greatly increase military spending (with some dangerous moments, as the US still tries to throw its weight around)...U.S. stocks will work their way down to real values - with P/Es below 10...and the average American household will find itself no better off, financially, than the average family in, say, Latvia or Malaysia. Then, Asian manufacturers will outsource production to an area where wages are low and productivity is high - Arkansas, maybe?

Bill Bonner

William H. Critch II

I was not always “Bill Critch”. After birth I quickly became Bunny, Billy, Billy Brown Bear, then ‘Critch’, Master Critch, Critchey, Private Critch, Aviation Cadet Critch, Captain Critch, Pop, Benjamin Pink, Mr. Bill and finally, Bill.

Baby Billy’s Recollections

I see bright sunshine.
I hear a phonograph playing “Me and My Shadow”, and I am throwing my toys down a long flight of stairs.
I am riding a ‘kiddy car’, on broad but not busy streets. It is hot.
I'm in a car with other people somewhere in the mountains on a hot, narrow, dusty road. I am playing with a silver ashtray. I throw it out the car window. We stop at a place that is green and someone's climbing on a stone that's larger than I am.
A soft-spoken and gentle woman tells me not to go in the swampy lake. There are insects flying around my head.
The second floor of a sparsely furnished, wood-frame apartment. From high on the back steps I see gray freight trains close by.

The California Fog Begins to Clear.

I am holding a streamlined, black toy train. It smells of lubricating oil and the On/Off switch is very large especially now that I have taken it apart and the body is removed. I hand the clockwork innards to a big man who puts it down and begins to read the ‘funnies’ section of the Sunday newspaper. My favorite strip is Buck Rogers. Black Barney, Doctor Huer, Buck and his young protégés, Buddy and Alura excite me with their adventures fighting the Martian cat people and the Mongol hordes, the evil Killer Kane and his ‘squeeze’, Ardala Valmar. In the minds of the authors Philip Nowlan and the illustrator, Army Air Corps Lt. Dick Calkins they represent the foreign aggressors who will soon throw the world into war.

We are in a very busy outdoors place with many people. The people I am used to seeing every day do not say the usual softly spoken words to me. They are concerned with the other big people. I cannot understand what's happening. It's not frightening but it's not the usual routine of being washed, dressed and fed. A large, noisy moving machine is very close and my mother is talking loudly. My father is talking loudly and quickly. My sister is on the ground, but she gets up.

We are in a small space with the steamer trunks - large trunks that I shall remember for the rest of my life. I see suitcases, I feel secure. The smell around me is a ‘new’ smell like the paint on the black; toy train but there is no train. But I can and see Dutchie, the girl doll I have undressed. I hold Teddy out of a round window smell my teddy bear and I hold him tight or he will fall down into the water.

The Voyage to Australia, 1934

While the voyage to Australia was great fun for a four-year-old, my sister Mary tells me it was embarrassing for my mother. She was all too aware that we were not allowed to leave the ship until we arrived in Sydney. My father, an accountant with a serious drinking problem, had surrendered the family passport in return for free repatriation to Australia. We were ‘charity’ cases of the Great Depression with our passage paid by the U.S. government to ease the drain on the economy that was paying foreigners unemployment benefits. But for me, it was my first adventure. En route to Pearl Harbor, ‘white hat’ US Navy sailors took me on their backs in the swimming pool and the bar tenders gave me root beers. Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were just names. I knew nothing of the rest of the world and the coming war. The boat was a happy place for me. People were friendly, let me talk or sit with them on the deck chairs.

My sister’s Memoirs describe our landing in Sydney:

“While we waited for port clearance, we anchored for several hours out in the stream near Fort Denison, known as Pinchgut, a bare knob of rock with a miniature stone fort. The sky was clear blue, the water sparkled, and on this Saturday afternoon the harbor was dotted with sailboats and ferries. While deep enough for ocean-going liners, the harbor is narrow and the shoreline is indented with scores of sheltered coves, all edged in lush parks and gardens and houses with red-tiled roofs.
Leaning on the rail, we watched the tugboats with their thick hawsers nuzzling the Mariposa toward the pier. The ship made a slow turn to port, helped by four tugboats. Soon we were going down the starboard gangplank and the pleasure trip was over
After Customs clearance the agent returned Father’s passport, shook hands, and said, “Welcome home.” Father then turned to mother and said: “Addie, we’re home.” Mother said nothing. He was not at all concerned that he had only £3 (about $15) to feed and house the family.…
Father called a cab; we loaded it with our three large steamer trunks, and asked the driver to suggest a suburb where we might find an apartment. Near the docks we drove through streets of terrace houses welded into one mass from corner to corner; houses with strings of gray washing hanging on the lacy iron balconies. Then up busy William Street with Darlinghurst on the right and infamous Kings Cross on the left. After a discussion with the driver, this area was deemed too expensive. At his suggestion, we drove on for another ten minutes to Bondi Beach and its acres of cookie-cutter brick houses with red tiled roofs and meager front yards, enclosed by low wire fences. Neither a garage nor a tree in sight...

Driving slowly, we saw a “To Let” sign on a decrepit apartment building next to the Royal Hotel opposite the beach boardwalk known as Campbell Parade, the fish and chip belt of Bondi Beach. The narrow, dead-end lane separating the apartments from the hotel was littered with orange peel, lolly wrappers and old newspapers. We waited in the cab while Father went inside. He soon returned and paid off the driver, who said, “Good luck, mate.” Typical of Father, he had talked the manager into waiving a deposit for the first week’s rent!”

Growing Up in Bondi

For me however, it was a fun place - vacant lots, kids to play with and a ‘sleep-out’ of my own on the front balcony. It was here on the back stairs that I found a cardboard carton of toys including a small train set and a Russian Cossack doll we named “von Skirtz”. I was never told where they came from but as it was Christmas I believed it to be a gift from Jesus. It was in Bondi Beach that I formed an attachment to our bread knife that accompanied mother and I wherever we moved. It was the family’s general-purpose tool used for cutting string, paper, vegetables, meat and in the near future as a potential weapon. We ‘shifted’ (moved) frequently in 1939 but it was within a small radius and I kept the same friends. They had toys - new to me but associated with my heroes: Buck Rogers Disintegrators and Rocket Pistols.

We moved to North Bondi near Ben Buckler, close to the cliffs. I stood on the bluff and watched the waves and the surf fisherman hundreds of feet below - Ocker Aussies - Iron Men. Down the road on Bondi Beach I discovered Peter’s Ice Cream and Minties – the white, sweet, chewy lolly wrapped in a red, white and green paper. The tram terminus nearby was my first sight of the ‘toast rack’ trams that would provide our usual means of transportation for many years. Trams filled with smokers and steamy, sweaty bodies, conductors on the running boards saying, “Fez Pleeze” loom large in my memory. Those men earned their wages clinging in the cold and rain to the swaying tram on the 12-inch footboard. Frequently newspaper boys would cling to and work the other side of the tram’s footboard pressing close when another tram passed at their back. “Getcher latest Telly, Laaay-up.” When they had canvassed the entire tram and it was clear, they would ‘dismount’ by stretching their arm to full extent still grasping the door railing. They would then let go landing on one foot and pivoting 180 degrees to lean forward facing the rear so that their bodies were angled to absorb the forward motion of the departing tram. In later years, I too was a newsboy, but never on trams.

And Bronte

I was six years old when we moved to the suburb of Bronte Beach. It was the last time we lived together as a family. Our rental house across from what is now Bronte Park was still standing at the corner of Alfred and Hewlett Streets when I visited Bronte in 1970. The park was the ‘gully’ inhabited by the fierce “Gully Gang” whom we never saw. There were some ‘big kids’, but if we saw them in the gully, we’d run off. We did discover some depressions in the brush-covered areas. These I suspect, were ‘pozzies’ for the local blokes and their compliant sheilas. Sexual consciousness was now raising its delightful head, and my neighbor girl, Betty Dietcham, attempted to give me an introduction. It was lost on me but she was a great ‘mate’. We walked the fences behind our houses, made mixtures of anything to be found in the kitchen, played ‘hidings’ under the street light till our parents called us, went to the flicks on Bondi Road and pretended we were the actors. We dug a hole in the back yard to make a ‘fort’ or ‘cubby-hole’. An old canvas awning pole was our cannon and the pit was lined with cast off clothing. We scrounged corrugated iron for the roof and supported it with scrap lumber from the gully. After all, we had to defend our house - this was World War 2 and the Japanese had captured Singapore. Mary’s bedroom windows were taped to preclude any bomb driven, flying glass.

Following a late evening ambulance trip to the Children’s Hospital in Camperdown for suspected diphtheria, my sexual awakening occurred. The wards were crowded with iron cots filled with boys and girls. The nurses wore either stiff veils with the point in the center of their back, or small starched caps on the front of their head. I looked down the ward and saw a large, high-ceilinged room full of beds with white covers. Mine was covered with a transparent tent and when Mum came to visit, they lifted the side. Mum looked inside and held my hand, which was unusual for we were not a visibly affectionate family. The warmth was there, but it was not expressed in a tactile way. Even when I was older, I cannot recall many kisses or touches. The same was true of my father, but I recall times when he put his arm on my shoulder. I suspect we were never a touchy-feely, ‘lovey-dovey’ kind of family.

It was at the Children’s Hospital that my sexual awakening finally occurred. Excited by an urgent need to micturate, I persuaded the girl in the bed adjoining mine to allow me to join her and conduct an exploration of her lower parts. Penetration seemed appropriate, but like all boys of my age, the ejaculation was not semen. I persuaded her that she had wet the bed and to call for the nurse to change the sheets. The nurse scolded her while I covered myself with the blanket and pretended I was fast asleep. What a bomb-out at age seven!

My father however, gave me a real bomb. It was an unloaded Mills bomb, a hand grenade, which he had liberated as a souvenir from his employer, The Ministry of Munitions. From the pathway at the side of the house he pulled the pin and threw it across the road to the park across the street. I don’t know how I knew, but then as now I realize that he had done this before many times. I kept the bomb until the day following my own similar demonstration at school. The Army representatives were quite nice. All they wanted to know was where it came from. By this time, Dad had departed to the Army repatriation Hospital.

Surf’s Up!

Bronte is on the Tasman Sea and has big waves. Not a great surfing beach and somewhat dangerous because of the undertow. There was a Surf Lifesaving club who stood watch on weekends. I learned to swim in a bogey hole. The Bronte Bogey Hole is protected from the ocean by a ring of rocks and at high tide is open to the surf. You learned to swim and loved it, or had a lifetime fear of the water. I love the surf. Either my sister or I, were given a rubber ‘Surf-O-Plane’, a small inflatable raft about a body wide and a yard long. Surfing on the raft was terrifyingly exciting, but as safe as you wanted to be. You could skim the baby waves, get outside the first line of breakers, or float between the lines. Great for the lungs, too. We had no tire pump to inflate the raft, so if you deflated it to walk home, the next time you and your mate would blow it up again. Body surfing could be tackled in stages. The first thing I learned was that if a wave ‘dumps’ you turning you over and over, swim for the bottom. The turbulence was less and other than collecting a lot of sand in your ‘cozzie’ you were pretty safe. The next thing I learned was to dive through a breaking wave; basic survival in the ocean for a six year old.

And survival it was. Even at this tender age we knew that to surf was to be alive and to be able at some distant time, to enter a man’s world. We quickly learned the lingo: “How’re the shoots?” (Never ‘waves’). Responses would be short and to the uninitiated, cryptic. “Great,” “Ar - Bluebottles”, “Bit sharky.” Waves were judged with the same precision as Eskimos judge the quality of snow. “Too much water”, “Dumper! (everybody off.) or for good shoots" Everybody on!” I was never a great surfer even in my teens, but was always ready to “Give it a go!”

By climbing down the cliffs, one of my mates and I learned how to avoid paying the tuppence admission fee and sneak into the ‘big’ pool at the end of the beach. This was ‘big kid’ stuff. Now, in my 60s, looking up at the route we took down the cliffs gives me a very nervous feeling in my anal sphincter. The pool is still there and it is still open to the ocean. Quite refreshing - particularly when the surf is up. The green water crashes against the bath’s gray cement and quickly rises vertically to spill a small part into the pool. If the tide was high I was frightened that sharks would be waiting for me when I swam. The baths were made of cement that was very rough on the body, but the surrounding sunbathing decks were full of splinters.

Sunday mornings at the baths were a ritual; it was men’s country. No one considered why women were excluded—Australia in their minds was a man’s world. How wrong we were. The backbone of Australia was the Aussie Mum

My mother once noticed a boy limping up the Alfred Street hill. Ever the compassionate nurse, she removed a long splinter and gave him what she could ill afford, the bus fare up the hill. I’m sure that it came for the small housekeeping money she had saved. I now suspect that my dad drank much of his salary although unlike other countries, children could NOT enter the Public Bar. On the rare times he took me out, I would sometimes stand outside the pub and wait for him to finish drinking. But Dad was never mean – just a quiet drunk. I suspect, his experiences in France during the First War would now have qualified him for some kind of treatment or counseling for post traumatic stress disorder.

You have to know my daughter Tammy to appreciate this..

Forty years ago I got both my daughters their Social Security numbers. Don’t ask me what was on my mind that day, but I not only gave the wrong name for Tamara, but I gave the wrong birth date. She was listed as Tammy and her birth date was five days off.

Several months ago, she was subjected to an I.R.S. audit and her accountant noticed the discrepancy in her records.

“I think you should fix this Social Security data” he said, “and soon!”

At her request and seeing it was my screw-up, I looked up the requirements on the web. Seems as ‘tho all she needed was a current passport and maybe a birth certificate. She collected the documents and checked in by drawing a number at the Downtown Seattle Social Security Office on 8th and Lenora.

Ever been in a Social security Office? Well, I have been there several times in the last five years and the customers are not all savory folk; actually there’s a lot of low-lifes and why they gather there I can only imagine.

Seen Tammy lately? She dresses in Escada, Hermes, Chanel, David Yurman and in her Jimmy Choo’s, she’s almost 6 feet of gorgeous womanhood. Very impressive and she keeps up with her clientele of high-end restaurateurs, local celebrities and the Seattle ‘in’ crowd. Sitting in the Social Security Waiting Room she was definitely out of place catching up on her Blackberry e-mail. But she took a number, was cool and waited her turn.

When it came, she put her documents on the shelf in front of the window and faced a large lady who no doubt had put up with a lot of crap that morning and was in no mood to be trifled with.

“Watcher need, girl,” she asked looking up at her antithesis who was probably about the same age but definitely not from her ‘hood’.

“I need a new Social Security card. My name’s not correct and my birth date is in error. My dad got it wrong when he registered me about 40 years ago,” said Tammy.

“Whaddya mean, got it wrong?”

“Well, for some reason he forgot.”

At this, the large, very Southern woman began to laugh very loudly and slap her large, larded sides and thighs and immediately called out to the other ‘ladies’ in the office, “Get a load of this will ya. This girl’s father didn’t remember her name or her birth date! Ha, ha, ha!”

The rest of the office of large women gathered around the window and joined in the laughter.

“He didn’t even remember her birthday” continued the woman, “or her proper name.”

Now Tammy, or should I correctly say Tamara, has inherited many of our better qualities. She has her mother’s memory, her calm charm, but alas she has her father’s smart mouth.

“Well,” said Tammy. “At least I knew who he was!”

The laughter immediately stopped. The dark faces turned red with anger. This was not a multi-cultural group. No sir!

“Get out of here, girl. Next time you come in you’ll need.....” and the woman reeled off a list of unnecessary documents.

Tammy exited as gracefully as possible and licked her wounds in her large, red, Mercedes convertible. Then she laughed and laughed. I guess she did inherit my sense of humor after all.

DITLIP
or
A Day In the Life of an Instructor Pilot

The instructor pilots in this story are not the usual ones that hang around your local airport trying to build up time to get a ‘real job’ flying for an airline or a corporation. No, these instructors have many thousands of hours and mostly flew in the United States military, or for an airline that went ‘belly-up’. They are true professionals who would look great in a full-page advertisement for an airplane manufacturer. These instructors in this story flew for what was at the time, the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. The story is set in the mid Nineties and is a composite of many of the situations that they found themselves in: at home, on a foreign ‘Line Assist’ or instructing in the simulator in a non-U.S. country.

To their wives (and girl friends), their supervisor and their stock broker, they are often a will-o-the-wisp frequently seen only at Oh-dark thirty hours. This gives rise to the belief that they are closely related the North American sasquatch.

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz Rrrrring!!!!!!

4.00 a.m.

Wife: “Honey, would you catch that alarm before it wakes the baby! Who do you have this morning? Same class? Well, I’ll see you around five. And DON’T FORGET OUR DATE TOMORROW NIGHT. It’s been weeks since we went out together.”

Arrgh! Friday morning, way to go! Nearly finished with this bunch and it’s been an interesting class, or maybe I should say, challenging. First time I’ve had a compressed schedule in a long time and it sure was a short night. Well, Monday they get their check rides. My captain is really sharp but the FO is slow. Hope he improves today. Hmmm. I wonder if he is someone the airline customer wants Boeing to pass judgment on. Just my good fortune to be Program Lead and no one to lean on.

INSTRUCTOR B

In Flight over the South China Sea

Who was it said that ‘the dawn comes up like thunder out of China ‘cross the bay?’ This dawn is right in my eyeballs and I’ve been fighting sleep all night in the right seat of this little bitty jet. The newly checked-out captain is really catching on fast to the ‘glass cockpit’ and the Flight Management System. He’s using concepts rather than rules. Line Assist can be fun, but sunrise in the eyes is the same the whole world over.

I think I’ll celebrate by rinsing out my mouth with some Vee-Eight. We’ve got a very light load; I hope the airline’s Sales and Marketing Department can drum up some more passengers, then with luck they’ll buy a few more Boeings. Hmm, I’ll better drop a note to Boeing Sales and let them know more about this operation.

Lessee, next stop we’ll have Customs and Immigration. I hope they’ll have the proper forms. The last Line Assist I was on bogged down on arrival because the official form had only shown boxes for three models of the 737. They insisted that the airplane couldn’t be a 737-800; as far as they were concerned if it wasn’t on their form it didn’t exist.

Ahh. The smell of the islands. Salt air, clear skies – not too many contrails in this part of the Pacific. This island looks like a throwback to the Fifties – motor scooters and litter and still relatively undeveloped. Well, not for long. Breakfast! Fresh fruit and what IS that stuff? Better get some ‘tho. It’s going to be a long day.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

Boy, sometimes you get lucky. A late sleep-in and a limo pickup. The high tech Orient has some advantages I don’t get at home - a nice room on the fourteenth floor and still fairly quiet at 7.30 AM. Funny but I don’t hear the birds at this elevation but the ‘flavor’ of the Orient surely rises with the humidity. Fruit for breakfast. The Flight Surgeon would definitely approve of that and with the customer picking up the tab - what the hell!

Down to the lobby for pickup. No graffiti in these elevators. Very nice place. (Thanks Boeing Travel Department! Better take them a bottle on the way home.)
And a limo – a Mercedes? Smooothe, and the driver’s taking the scenic route; this must be the tourist road. I wonder where the poor people live? What’s this? The Training Center? The driver opens my door in the training center porte cochere and the students are there to greet their new simulator instructor.

We brief for the lesson and, Omigawd! they are letter perfect – let’s hope they understand the concepts. And that’s my job to make sure they do because there’s several different ways to work a Flight Management System and all of them are correct.

Who are these guys? The captain is just off an older, short-range Boeing with no ‘glass cockpit’ experience. The First Officer is transitioning from the Airbus A-320. Wonder why he’s going on the Boeing? Maybe he likes our airplanes. Did his A-320 have a side stick? Have to watch he doesn’t try to outsmart the captain and show him how clever he is. Crew management is a key concept that is sometimes difficult to get across to Asian crews. Ah well, as long as he can type 40 words a minute on the keypad……..

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

10.00 a.m. and it looks like my day is just beginning. The First Officer needs more than additional training - the captain has been ‘carrying’ him and saying nothing about it. It’s hard for me to tell when there is a language difference. We do have a Standard Operating Procedure for slow students. Let’s see. What did the boss say?

“Work ‘em, guide ‘em, but don’t baby ‘em. My family may be on their flight someday.”

First the paperwork. Gotta be objective. “The FO could not find the correct page in the Quick Reference Handbook.” Maybe he doesn’t read English as well as he can speak English. That’s unusual, it’s usually the other way round. “FO gets lost in the middle of the Hydraulic Leak or Loss procedure.” Is this language or logic? Or maybe the procedure isn’t clearly written. Y’know, the captain is being very quiet about this guy which may confirm my suspicion that the airline has some doubts and is looking for us to pass judgment. Perhaps he’s politically connected and they can’t pull out the rug?

O.K. Paperwork’s done. Now, let me get a hold of the class leader. One thing’s sure, I’ll miss my day off on Saturday. Let’s check Saturday’s schedule. Gotta time slot for an extra simulator schedule? Yep. Call the leader.

“Hello Captain. I’d like to discuss the FO’s performance today. Can I come to your hotel? Sure. See you in thirty minutes.” Oh boy. Up and down the superslab to his hotel.

INSTRUCTOR B

Kuala Lumpur

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

INSTRUCTOR C

Indonesia

These guys are sharp! Nice contrast to the last program I had. Some classes are just smoother than others. The Captain must’ve burned the midnight oil, or maybe spent time with his buddies. He’s sure got flying experience. All it takes is hangin’ new stuff on the old hooks he has in his head….. and he’s doin’ it! The FO has that great quality I see in so many Asian youth - smart, energetic, coordinated and a mind like a sponge. Guess they aren’t as coddled as many of their U.S. contemporaries.

Nice afternoon. Think I’ll take the captain up on his invitation to play a short nine at his club. Sounds exclusive and very ritzy. Such is life for the rich Asian.

Back to the hotel. Fill out the paperwork. Hmm. Looks like the Ground Training Department back home could use a little help in smoothing out the flight profile. Better redline this puppy. Then I’ve got an article to write for the Ops Review Board. Paper, paper, paper. If I was a real airline pilot, all I’d do is collect a bigger paycheck and the heck with the paperwork!

Life ain’t too bad in the tropics, sometimes!



INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

Well, my guess was correct. The F.O. can’t hack it without extra time. I gotta be a diplomat here, but maybe I’ve got to ‘let him out gracefully’. The airline knew he was a ‘slo mo’ but wanted an outside opinion. Hmmm, I’ll have to find some extra time for him in the simulator tomorrow and see if that helps. If not, I’ll have to let him go. But, who’ll be his simulator captain? It can’t be one of their guys and his real Captain doesn’t need the time nor does he want to miss his weekend off in Seattle. Lessee, what does our Black Book say….. Nada. That’s what I get paid for – decisions that make everybody look good.

Wait a minute, we have some up-and-coming Ground School instructors that are fully qualified in real airplanes and just longing to be upgraded. That new guy is really sharp, I think he is in the Reserve. Maybe he’ll work on Saturday. Better call the ground School Supervisor and get his O.K.

Now the hard part, what am I going to tell the wife about to-morrow night?



Instructor B

At the Hotel.

Well it IS better than the Da Nang BOQ – no bugs, no drugs, less noise and the air conditioning doesn’t smell of cigar smoke. A hurried sleep at best with the 5 AM alert. Well, it’s a short ride to Operations. Breakfast? Oh yeah. Wonder what the in-flight meal will be? Not Asian, I hope. I can handle just about anything but sushi. Still, it’s a no-fat diet.

At the airport.

Lookin’ good, just like we left it and it still SMELLS new. Boy, these cabin attendants are really attentive. I believe that if they had a real kitchen, I could have a real breakfast of steak and eggs.

The captain is very much in command during the briefing. If all their pilots are like him, they’ll make it on the Ops side for sure. This sure is a funny little island. Japanese War graves and still some rusted stuff in the lagoon. No American graves ‘tho. Guess the Commission must’ve moved ‘em after The War. Lots of Japanese tourists ‘tho making offerings at the gravesites. Beautiful beaches. Pity I didn’t have time to swim and snorkel. Guess this is a pretty good Line Assist trip after all.

Not like the one I had in Europe several years ago before the EU spread its influence. The customer airline was assisting in the deportation of two foreign nationals whose travels had originated from a third country, not their homeland. On arrival back at the third country where they were being returned, the Immigration Department wouldn’t let them off the ramp and the guards on the customer airline wouldn’t let ‘em back on my airplane. Impasse!

After lots of hard stares and stiff jaws, the customer airline captain said, “Well, if they return to XXX, there is no food for them to eat and they’ll starve!” This loss of face by the locals was sufficient to satisfy any backpedaling by the officials who replied, “Well, of course they can stay.” I wonder whatever happened to those guys?

In Flight

At least the sun ain’t gonna burn my eyeballs on the way home.

Instructor C.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

A typical day in the life of a commercial airplane manufacturer’s IP?

Yep, they’ve got to be diplomats, psychologists, philosophers, proficient pilots and good human beings. And oh yes, have an encyclopedic memory.

In the early Autumn evening, we gather in the Continental Airlines departure area at San Francisco International Airport, 10 young men who may become USAF pilots or navigators. Outside on the ramp are the four engined, propeller powered airliners I have worked on as a mechanic and hope someday to fly as a pilot. I watch the flight engineers in their airline uniforms perform the pre-flight ‘walk arounds’ checking the plane’s exterior and I envy them their knowledge and skill. In less than ten years, I shall be one of them, but the reciprocating engines will have been replaced by jet turbines.

Most of us are accompanied by family members, a few from the outer Bay Area towns are alone.

The Recruiting Sergeant takes me aside and tells me, “You’re in charge here, Critch! Be sure they all make it on to the flight.” I wonder why, but suspect it’s because I’m the oldest and am dressed a cut above the others. “Yes, sir,” I say. “Thank you, sergeant.” I feel as though I’m already a commissioned officer and fully in charge of lesser beings.

We have been instructed to bring very little to our first phase of training which is called “Pre-Flight.” What we don’t fully appreciate is that, it’s the beginning of a process which will not only teach us to fly, but will eliminate 50% of us from earning our wings and commission. It is truly as Brown, the mechanic on my United Airlines graveyard shift has said, “It’s a real tiger program!”

My bag is stuffed with what I consider essentials: ‘hip’ narrow cut ties, loafers, slacks, a dress shirt and aftershave. What I shall shortly discover, is that these items are totally unessential – the United States Air Force will provide me with everything I need to complete my training. Civilian clothing will not be permitted on Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, for the next four months.

Our flight is called and having been involved in talking to my older sister, I have forgotten to round up the other newly sworn-in recruits. The sergeant has left long ago for the nearest tavern and I count the heads as they pass through the boarding gate – only seven! I panic! Where did the other two disappear to? As I wait at the entrance, the final boarding is announced and I climb the ramp into the Continental Airlines DC-6. What if they miss the flight? Will I be held responsible? Will the Air Force sergeant report me to someone? Who?

I enter the airplane without glancing at the smiling stewardess, and frantically look for the missing men. I relax, they have boarded early and before I took up my post at the gate. I feel stupid and learn a first lesson in military manners. You may be in charge, but to be officious is an admission of insecurity and ignorance.

We arrive in San Antonio and are shepherded onto a blue Air Force bus. Not having yet learned the lesson we quickly learn in the future, to stay in the background and become inconspicuous, I push to the head of the line and announce, “All present and accounted for.” The driver looks at me with his large white eyes and says in a bored and deep southern voice, “Yes suh, I ‘spose y’all are.” We are wired and tired after such a long flight and the burning Texas mid morning sun, is right in our face as we emerge from the bus. Looking out of the window, we see our greeters in starched khaki uniforms, large blue garrison hats, gleaming shoes and white gloves. If the Recruiting poster is to be believed, these are our buddies, “the best crowd of guys you’ll ever meet.”

I’m the last off the bus. I look down to be sure I don’t miss the step and as I look up, I am eyeball-to-eyeball with a fierce looking Aviation Cadet Upperclassman.

“Hit one, mister,” he screams.

I think, “Hit what? Him?”

What he means is that I should come to a rigid position of military ‘attention’.

“Mister, you are a spastic, a poor excuse for humanity!” he screams again.

“What is going on,” I wonder.

“Are you a pilot, mister!” Again the loud voice

“Yes!”

“Yes, SIR, spastic. When you speak to me, it’s sir. Ya got that?”

“Yes sir.”

“And, spaz, you are not a pilot and by the look of you, you never will be. What’s all that crap in your side pocket?”

Crap in my side pocket? Handkerchief, RayBan case, change, a packet of M & M’s.

“Take it out,” he yells. “Put it in your back pocket. Crap in the side pocket spoils the crease in your pants.”

I comply, but it’s difficult. The pocket isn’t built to carry much more than a wallet.
Meanwhile, the rest of the recruits have been lined up in a loose marching formation and are being harassed in much the same way as I.

There is no evidence of physical abuse; it’s all shouting and provocative questions to which there is no correct answer.

“Cage those eyeballs, mister!”

“You’ll never make it, mister!”

“Mister, mister, mister.” Yes, we are cadets, not enlisted recruits, not “Airmen” and we will conform to this discipline and quickly, or be given demerits and forced to march in starched uniforms in the hot sun.

One of the Upper Classmen takes a look at my highly polished jump boots I purchased when discharged from the California Army National Guard in which I was a Private First Class, and assumes that I know something about marching.

“You, with the jump boots, get out there and be the road guard.”

“What’s a road guard?” I wonder.

I’m confused and show it. I look left, then right. The Upperclassman assumes that I’m as stunned as the rest of the guys and quickly reverses his order. I fall into line and we are marched toward a distant barracks, my back pocket bulging from the unexpected surplus of contents. One of the Upperclassmen, joins me in the formation and says, “Take that stuff and put it back in your side pockets, you look ridiculous.” I sense he is not enjoying this any more than I am, and I realize that it’s all part of a game, but a game that will continue for the next 18 months.

After Bainbridge Air Base, which had been a 'country club' existence, Reese Air Force Base, Texas comes as a shock. We are in World War 2 style barracks, albeit three to a room with an adjacent small, common room with three metal desks and chairs. We have our own shower and toilet which when compared to the cadets' living quarters 10 years before, is luxury. But, as Under Class we are always ready for 'spot' inspections by the TAC Officers or our Upper Classmen. We keep everything in white glove condition - except on Friday nights when we are exempt and the beer is 'on' at the Cadet Club.

It is a mixed class - half the students are aviation cadets and the others are commissioned officers from either ROTC (a college commissioning program at 'land grant' universities), a U.S. military academy, or perhaps Officer Candidate School or even some who have been navigators. They live in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters (BOQ) or with their spouses in off-base in private rentals. We are all expected to attend the same classes and compete for class standing which, when it comes time to be given our assignments, will determine the order in which we chose them.

Reese is no 'country club'. It is strictly military - gate guards 24 hours a day, salutes for the incoming officers' cars which have special stickers, and inspections for the cars piled full of soon-to-graduate, sometimes inebriated, Upper Class Aviation Cadets. As Lubbock is a 'dry' Texas town with a church on almost every corner and no bars, we drive to the next county which allows us to imbibe of Texas hospitality.

As before, the flight schedule alternates between a five o'clock reville for morning flying, with afternoon academics and physical training, and a six o'clock bugle if the schedule is reversed. We have begun our last phase in September 1957 and the Texas autumn weather is excellent to begin our training in the twin engine, Mitchell medium bomber.

The B-25 'Mitchell' had been the star of the 1st bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942 led by Jimmy Doolittle from the deck of the aircraft carrier 'Hornet'. (It was also the star of the Hollywood movie, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" which I saw as a nine year old at the Bondi Junction Regal Threatre.) Our base commander at Reese, Colonel Travis Hoover, who is nearing retirement, had been on the Doolittle raid and while we see little of him, it gives us a warrior's link with an historic moment in U.S. history. On Saturday mornings, we pass in review under the watchful eye of our training officers, the Colonel and his staff. They stand, we march to the cadet Drum and Bugle Corps.

Each instructor has four students and I have been fortunate enough to pick my instructor before we were assigned. A close friend at Bainbridge told me to 'look up' one of his friends, Bob Applebaugh, who was newly fledged and as luck would have it, I am in his flight. We bond from the beginning, and under his gentle hand, I transition into the 'Mitchell' with no problems. My barracks roommate Henry, No Middle Initial (MNI), Brown and I team together for our dual instruction and for our first day and night solo flights.

Just like most modern twins today, the B-25 has two pilot seats - one on the left designated for the captain and one on the right for the co-pilot. Why? Well, the left seat has the nose-wheel steering control and as the captain usually makes the landing, he can steer the airplane when it slows down. Besides, it's been the tradition for many years and the military is not one to break with tradition.

Solo night flying in Basic Flying School is a very controlled exercise. Think for a moment about 20 or 30 very low time pilots flying a bomber around a traffic pattern and exercising their own judgment based on a small amount of experience. Scary! We have seven or eight airplanes in layers at different altitudes with each layer vertically separated by 2,000 feet. The bottom layer lands first, and the two higher layers space themselves to avoid collisions - I had come close to a collision in Primary training and had no desire to repeat another near miss.

Henry No Middle Initial and I are in the middle layer and I am in the left seat 'playing' captain. It's my ship, I'm in command. You've seen the anti collision lights on modern aircraft - strobe lights on the tail and on the wing tips in addition to the standard red and green lights. The B-25 had no strobe lights, just the wing tips and a rotating anti-collision light under the belly. Planes follow the same rules as boats: green for the starboard (right) side and red for the port (left). Imagine 16 sets of red and green lights in the upper two layers, all flying in a clockwise direction, and four scared eyes in each cockpit hoping to avoid every other set of scared eyes.

We are both tired from physical training that afternoon and of course the usual 6 a.m. reville. Henry is looking out to the right side, I'm looking straight ahead and I think I see a bifurcating red and green light - the gap is growing wider and I assume someone's going the wrong way and heading straight for us. What I really see are two airplanes at our level but the green light on one is obscured by its wing as is the red light on the other. I immediately roll into an almost vertical bank to avoid what I believe will be a mid air collision and Henry thinks I've lost it. Before he can decide what to do I realize my error and begin to right the airplane from what has developed into a most unusual attitude.

Recovery from 'unusual attitudes' is on the flight curriculum and we have practiced several already, but we are not yet proficient in that exercise. After this night solo, I am more than proficient in determining what the lights mean.

We make it to the bottom layer, I shoot three landings, we park with the engines running and swap seats. Henry has no trouble in telling me to watch for other aircraft and I sense he's glad he's driving.

This is a 'guy' story, and if you're not interested in aviation or rites of passage, give it a miss.

Bainbridge Air Base, Georgia. June 1957

I taxi into the takeoff position and hold the brakes on with my feet pressed against the brakes on the rudder pedals. Today, it's a solo flight to practice coordination maneuvers and aerobatics.

The plane in front of me has lifted off, so I slowly apply full power. The big radial engine has a comforting sound as I feel the propeller torque try to turn me to the left and I apply right rudder and keep the Trojan headed straight down the runway. The prop seems to be turning very s-l-o-w-l-y, but it’s a typical illusion of the T-28’s paddle-bladed propeller after flying the smaller T-34. The airspeed is increasing normally and I lift off at around 85 knots. “Gear Up”, and I climb straight ahead to 500 feet, raise the flaps then make a right, then a left climbing turn and I’m clear of the traffic pattern. I check the cowl flaps closed and set the power for Climb.

A beautiful spring day with big woolly clouds against a clear, blue Georgia sky. But I don’t day dream – I’ve work to do. I clear the sky to my left to see if anyone else is close and continue climbing and turning to 8,000 feet. The Georgia farmland, as indeed all of the land in the U.S., is laid out in sections with the boundaries running north, south, east and west. As I climb, I practice staying lined up with the section lines. Today, the fields are irrigated, the section lines less prominent and are replaced by the circles made by the watering systems.

Using an imaginary line across the windshield, I begin to practice steep turns. We have not been taught to fly on instruments yet, and I refer to them only to check my ability to fly while looking outside.

I talk to myself. “Throttle up a bit. More back pressure on the stick. Keep that imaginary spot on the horizon. Oops, I can feel I’m losing altitude! Add power. Raise the nose a bit. I’m skidding. Ease out some bank and use a little top rudder – keep the ball centered, keep it coordinated. Now, more bank again, back to 60 degrees. Fly the plane, don’t let it fly you!” I work at turns for about 15 minutes till I’m tired of it.

Now for some chandelles. This maneuver, that I seem to have little trouble performing, feels like flying is meant to: a rapid change in altitude, pitch angle, speed, and the sense of a rapid climb out of some dangerous situation. I imagine myself flying into a fjord or into a box canyon and finding that I must immediately reverse direction and climb back out. This is a situation that can easily happen and indeed, several later, I put this maneuver to good use when flying in Greenland.

Next snap rolls, horizontal reverses and the exhilarating Cuban Eight. I don’t know why it’s called a Cuban Eight but it is two loops joined together like an infinity sign.

I try to remember what the acrobatic section of the flight manual says as I talk myself through the maneuver:

“Mixture..Rich.
Prop Full - Forward
Airspeed - Descend to increase to 220 Knots.”

I begin to dive and enter a loop. Easing in the back pressure, I feel the g’s as I begin the loop. I arch my back to look straight up and keep the North/South section lines fore and aft. At the top of the loop, I ease back on the throttle and dive upside down at a 45 degree angle until the nose passes through the horizon. Then I half-roll till I’m ‘blue side up’ and commence another loop all the time keeping the plane properly aligned. Over top again, down at 45 degrees and roll out at my original entry altitude. Wow! Fun, fun, fun. Oops, lost a thousand feet or so – better do another, and another. I’m charged!

Before I realize it, my two hour solo is almost over and I’m going to be cutting it pretty fine to land in time so that the next student can have the plane.

I can see Bainbridge Airbase from this altitude and also can see that the line of trainers preparing to land is stretched out by five or six miles. Yikes! How will I squeeze in? Like the ‘tiger’ I’d like to be, I make a high speed descent and parallel the 45 degree entry for the south east runway. I see a gap and whip into a steep 180 degree turn and bully my way in front of another T-28 who has left a bit wider spacing than usual. What I don’t know is that the ship I have pushed in front of has a student AND an instructor.

I turn right 45 degrees on to ‘initial’ and can see I’m too close to the plane in front, so I extend my pitch-out point a bit further down the runway. What I don’t hear is the mobile control van say to me, “Solo T-28 on initial, go around.” They can see I’m extending the pattern too far, but my attention is already divided with spacing and landing. For all intents, I’m deaf to their request and I begin my 60 degree ‘pitch-out’ to the right.

“Throttle back until the horn sounds, Gear Down, Horn silent…..” I say as I turn.

Suddenly I become instantly aware of a blur ten or fifteen feet above my canopy. I can almost count the rivets in the underside of another trainer’s fuselage.

I have barely survived a near miss at less than 1,000 feet. If he’d hit me, nobody would have survived; we would both be a pile of burning metal at the end of the runway.

I continue my descending turn towards the runway, but something doesn’t feel right. I’m descending too fast. I add power, and the descent slows. I touch down much faster than usual and do not make the first turn off but taxi further down the runway causing the next T-28 to go-around.

While ‘cleaning up’ after landing, I realize why I landed long and fast. After the near miss, my train of thought was interrupted and I forget to put down ‘landing flaps’. What a ‘tiger’ I am. More like a scared pussy cat.

Entering the line shack, I decide to say nothing about the near-miss to Earl Wederbrook, my instructor. Glancing out of the window, I see an old nemesis, P.D. Bridges, my ex-instructor, the southern boy who doesn’t like slow Yankees with an Australian accent. Earl sees him coming, flicks his eyes towards the parachute loft and I beat a hasty retreat. I put it together! P.D. was the guy I cut out of the pattern and with whom I almost shared a common pile of burning rubble.

Five minutes later having checked in my parachute, I look inside the line shack. P.D. and Earl are nose to nose, except that my instructor is about six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and who is looking down on a red faced Bridges who is obviously yelling. My protector is saying nothing, and shortly P.D. turns on his heel and leaves.

Earl has a wry smile during the debriefing and after I discuss my maneuvers, Earl says, “By the way, next time you cut someone out of the landing pattern, be sure he’s shorter than me. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Back in the barracks before supper, I look at my log book and realize that I have just passed 100 hours of flight time and in an airplane which 15 years ago would have been considered a high performance machine.

And I am sad knowing that neither my mother nor father will ever know their grown up son.

The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,” and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”)
But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.

Now what?

The easy milestones have been hit - gold at $1,000; oil at $100. Stocks have gone down (though the Dow is still about where it was; in nominal terms stocks have gone nowhere). And the dollar has gone down decisively against the euro.

What is ahead now? We don't know. But our view of things has not changed. Nor has it played it itself out.

In our view, markets make opinions, not the other way around. In other words, people come to think what they must think in order to play their roles in the great drama. America has become a huge empire. All empires are extraordinary things...fragile and doomed to failure. When the Soviet Union threw in the towel, America was left without any major competition. Since empires cannot last, and since she had no competitors worthy of the name, the Empire of Debt had to find a way to destroy herself.

In that sense, it was no accident that the financial industry invented subprime debt...and then put it in its own coffers. Nor was it any accident that households spent more than they could afford. Nor that Congress went on the biggest spending spree in history. Nor that George W. Bush took the nation into an unbelievably pointless and expensive war, effectively squandering not only the nation's credit...but also its military advantage.

Meanwhile, Americans' eagerness to spend money they didn't have on things they didn't need caused a huge boom in places they'd never been. Asians built factories, roads and entire cities with money gotten from selling gadgets to Americans. Arabs built ski-slopes in the desert...and constructed towns on manmade islands. And even their former enemies - the Russians - created one of the world's largest piles of U.S. dollar reserves, and saw their own wages rise 6 times in the last eight years. These foreign competitors have been adding to their skills, their savings, and their capital bases - just while the United States has been running its own down.

This drama is far from over. We are only at the beginning of it. The next scenes should be even more interesting. The dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency (possibly with episodes of hyper-inflation)...China and Russia will greatly increase military spending (with some dangerous moments, as the US still tries to throw its weight around)...U.S. stocks will work their way down to real values - with P/Es below 10...and the average American household will find itself no better off, financially, than the average family in, say, Latvia or Malaysia. Then, Asian manufacturers will outsource production to an area where wages are low and productivity is high - Arkansas, maybe?

Bill Bonner

William H. Critch II

I was not always “Bill Critch”. After birth I quickly became Bunny, Billy, Billy Brown Bear, then ‘Critch’, Master Critch, Critchey, Private Critch, Aviation Cadet Critch, Captain Critch, Pop, Benjamin Pink, Mr. Bill and finally, Bill.

Baby Billy’s Recollections

I see bright sunshine.
I hear a phonograph playing “Me and My Shadow”, and I am throwing my toys down a long flight of stairs.
I am riding a ‘kiddy car’, on broad but not busy streets. It is hot.
I'm in a car with other people somewhere in the mountains on a hot, narrow, dusty road. I am playing with a silver ashtray. I throw it out the car window. We stop at a place that is green and someone's climbing on a stone that's larger than I am.
A soft-spoken and gentle woman tells me not to go in the swampy lake. There are insects flying around my head.
The second floor of a sparsely furnished, wood-frame apartment. From high on the back steps I see gray freight trains close by.

The California Fog Begins to Clear.

I am holding a streamlined, black toy train. It smells of lubricating oil and the On/Off switch is very large especially now that I have taken it apart and the body is removed. I hand the clockwork innards to a big man who puts it down and begins to read the ‘funnies’ section of the Sunday newspaper. My favorite strip is Buck Rogers. Black Barney, Doctor Huer, Buck and his young protégés, Buddy and Alura excite me with their adventures fighting the Martian cat people and the Mongol hordes, the evil Killer Kane and his ‘squeeze’, Ardala Valmar. In the minds of the authors Philip Nowlan and the illustrator, Army Air Corps Lt. Dick Calkins they represent the foreign aggressors who will soon throw the world into war.

We are in a very busy outdoors place with many people. The people I am used to seeing every day do not say the usual softly spoken words to me. They are concerned with the other big people. I cannot understand what's happening. It's not frightening but it's not the usual routine of being washed, dressed and fed. A large, noisy moving machine is very close and my mother is talking loudly. My father is talking loudly and quickly. My sister is on the ground, but she gets up.

We are in a small space with the steamer trunks - large trunks that I shall remember for the rest of my life. I see suitcases, I feel secure. The smell around me is a ‘new’ smell like the paint on the black; toy train but there is no train. But I can and see Dutchie, the girl doll I have undressed. I hold Teddy out of a round window smell my teddy bear and I hold him tight or he will fall down into the water.

The Voyage to Australia, 1934

While the voyage to Australia was great fun for a four-year-old, my sister Mary tells me it was embarrassing for my mother. She was all too aware that we were not allowed to leave the ship until we arrived in Sydney. My father, an accountant with a serious drinking problem, had surrendered the family passport in return for free repatriation to Australia. We were ‘charity’ cases of the Great Depression with our passage paid by the U.S. government to ease the drain on the economy that was paying foreigners unemployment benefits. But for me, it was my first adventure. En route to Pearl Harbor, ‘white hat’ US Navy sailors took me on their backs in the swimming pool and the bar tenders gave me root beers. Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were just names. I knew nothing of the rest of the world and the coming war. The boat was a happy place for me. People were friendly, let me talk or sit with them on the deck chairs.

My sister’s Memoirs describe our landing in Sydney:

“While we waited for port clearance, we anchored for several hours out in the stream near Fort Denison, known as Pinchgut, a bare knob of rock with a miniature stone fort. The sky was clear blue, the water sparkled, and on this Saturday afternoon the harbor was dotted with sailboats and ferries. While deep enough for ocean-going liners, the harbor is narrow and the shoreline is indented with scores of sheltered coves, all edged in lush parks and gardens and houses with red-tiled roofs.
Leaning on the rail, we watched the tugboats with their thick hawsers nuzzling the Mariposa toward the pier. The ship made a slow turn to port, helped by four tugboats. Soon we were going down the starboard gangplank and the pleasure trip was over
After Customs clearance the agent returned Father’s passport, shook hands, and said, “Welcome home.” Father then turned to mother and said: “Addie, we’re home.” Mother said nothing. He was not at all concerned that he had only £3 (about $15) to feed and house the family.…
Father called a cab; we loaded it with our three large steamer trunks, and asked the driver to suggest a suburb where we might find an apartment. Near the docks we drove through streets of terrace houses welded into one mass from corner to corner; houses with strings of gray washing hanging on the lacy iron balconies. Then up busy William Street with Darlinghurst on the right and infamous Kings Cross on the left. After a discussion with the driver, this area was deemed too expensive. At his suggestion, we drove on for another ten minutes to Bondi Beach and its acres of cookie-cutter brick houses with red tiled roofs and meager front yards, enclosed by low wire fences. Neither a garage nor a tree in sight...

Driving slowly, we saw a “To Let” sign on a decrepit apartment building next to the Royal Hotel opposite the beach boardwalk known as Campbell Parade, the fish and chip belt of Bondi Beach. The narrow, dead-end lane separating the apartments from the hotel was littered with orange peel, lolly wrappers and old newspapers. We waited in the cab while Father went inside. He soon returned and paid off the driver, who said, “Good luck, mate.” Typical of Father, he had talked the manager into waiving a deposit for the first week’s rent!”

Growing Up in Bondi

For me however, it was a fun place - vacant lots, kids to play with and a ‘sleep-out’ of my own on the front balcony. It was here on the back stairs that I found a cardboard carton of toys including a small train set and a Russian Cossack doll we named “von Skirtz”. I was never told where they came from but as it was Christmas I believed it to be a gift from Jesus. It was in Bondi Beach that I formed an attachment to our bread knife that accompanied mother and I wherever we moved. It was the family’s general-purpose tool used for cutting string, paper, vegetables, meat and in the near future as a potential weapon. We ‘shifted’ (moved) frequently in 1939 but it was within a small radius and I kept the same friends. They had toys - new to me but associated with my heroes: Buck Rogers Disintegrators and Rocket Pistols.

We moved to North Bondi near Ben Buckler, close to the cliffs. I stood on the bluff and watched the waves and the surf fisherman hundreds of feet below - Ocker Aussies - Iron Men. Down the road on Bondi Beach I discovered Peter’s Ice Cream and Minties – the white, sweet, chewy lolly wrapped in a red, white and green paper. The tram terminus nearby was my first sight of the ‘toast rack’ trams that would provide our usual means of transportation for many years. Trams filled with smokers and steamy, sweaty bodies, conductors on the running boards saying, “Fez Pleeze” loom large in my memory. Those men earned their wages clinging in the cold and rain to the swaying tram on the 12-inch footboard. Frequently newspaper boys would cling to and work the other side of the tram’s footboard pressing close when another tram passed at their back. “Getcher latest Telly, Laaay-up.” When they had canvassed the entire tram and it was clear, they would ‘dismount’ by stretching their arm to full extent still grasping the door railing. They would then let go landing on one foot and pivoting 180 degrees to lean forward facing the rear so that their bodies were angled to absorb the forward motion of the departing tram. In later years, I too was a newsboy, but never on trams.

And Bronte

I was six years old when we moved to the suburb of Bronte Beach. It was the last time we lived together as a family. Our rental house across from what is now Bronte Park was still standing at the corner of Alfred and Hewlett Streets when I visited Bronte in 1970. The park was the ‘gully’ inhabited by the fierce “Gully Gang” whom we never saw. There were some ‘big kids’, but if we saw them in the gully, we’d run off. We did discover some depressions in the brush-covered areas. These I suspect, were ‘pozzies’ for the local blokes and their compliant sheilas. Sexual consciousness was now raising its delightful head, and my neighbor girl, Betty Dietcham, attempted to give me an introduction. It was lost on me but she was a great ‘mate’. We walked the fences behind our houses, made mixtures of anything to be found in the kitchen, played ‘hidings’ under the street light till our parents called us, went to the flicks on Bondi Road and pretended we were the actors. We dug a hole in the back yard to make a ‘fort’ or ‘cubby-hole’. An old canvas awning pole was our cannon and the pit was lined with cast off clothing. We scrounged corrugated iron for the roof and supported it with scrap lumber from the gully. After all, we had to defend our house - this was World War 2 and the Japanese had captured Singapore. Mary’s bedroom windows were taped to preclude any bomb driven, flying glass.

Following a late evening ambulance trip to the Children’s Hospital in Camperdown for suspected diphtheria, my sexual awakening occurred. The wards were crowded with iron cots filled with boys and girls. The nurses wore either stiff veils with the point in the center of their back, or small starched caps on the front of their head. I looked down the ward and saw a large, high-ceilinged room full of beds with white covers. Mine was covered with a transparent tent and when Mum came to visit, they lifted the side. Mum looked inside and held my hand, which was unusual for we were not a visibly affectionate family. The warmth was there, but it was not expressed in a tactile way. Even when I was older, I cannot recall many kisses or touches. The same was true of my father, but I recall times when he put his arm on my shoulder. I suspect we were never a touchy-feely, ‘lovey-dovey’ kind of family.

It was at the Children’s Hospital that my sexual awakening finally occurred. Excited by an urgent need to micturate, I persuaded the girl in the bed adjoining mine to allow me to join her and conduct an exploration of her lower parts. Penetration seemed appropriate, but like all boys of my age, the ejaculation was not semen. I persuaded her that she had wet the bed and to call for the nurse to change the sheets. The nurse scolded her while I covered myself with the blanket and pretended I was fast asleep. What a bomb-out at age seven!

My father however, gave me a real bomb. It was an unloaded Mills bomb, a hand grenade, which he had liberated as a souvenir from his employer, The Ministry of Munitions. From the pathway at the side of the house he pulled the pin and threw it across the road to the park across the street. I don’t know how I knew, but then as now I realize that he had done this before many times. I kept the bomb until the day following my own similar demonstration at school. The Army representatives were quite nice. All they wanted to know was where it came from. By this time, Dad had departed to the Army repatriation Hospital.

Surf’s Up!

Bronte is on the Tasman Sea and has big waves. Not a great surfing beach and somewhat dangerous because of the undertow. There was a Surf Lifesaving club who stood watch on weekends. I learned to swim in a bogey hole. The Bronte Bogey Hole is protected from the ocean by a ring of rocks and at high tide is open to the surf. You learned to swim and loved it, or had a lifetime fear of the water. I love the surf. Either my sister or I, were given a rubber ‘Surf-O-Plane’, a small inflatable raft about a body wide and a yard long. Surfing on the raft was terrifyingly exciting, but as safe as you wanted to be. You could skim the baby waves, get outside the first line of breakers, or float between the lines. Great for the lungs, too. We had no tire pump to inflate the raft, so if you deflated it to walk home, the next time you and your mate would blow it up again. Body surfing could be tackled in stages. The first thing I learned was that if a wave ‘dumps’ you turning you over and over, swim for the bottom. The turbulence was less and other than collecting a lot of sand in your ‘cozzie’ you were pretty safe. The next thing I learned was to dive through a breaking wave; basic survival in the ocean for a six year old.

And survival it was. Even at this tender age we knew that to surf was to be alive and to be able at some distant time, to enter a man’s world. We quickly learned the lingo: “How’re the shoots?” (Never ‘waves’). Responses would be short and to the uninitiated, cryptic. “Great,” “Ar - Bluebottles”, “Bit sharky.” Waves were judged with the same precision as Eskimos judge the quality of snow. “Too much water”, “Dumper! (everybody off.) or for good shoots" Everybody on!” I was never a great surfer even in my teens, but was always ready to “Give it a go!”

By climbing down the cliffs, one of my mates and I learned how to avoid paying the tuppence admission fee and sneak into the ‘big’ pool at the end of the beach. This was ‘big kid’ stuff. Now, in my 60s, looking up at the route we took down the cliffs gives me a very nervous feeling in my anal sphincter. The pool is still there and it is still open to the ocean. Quite refreshing - particularly when the surf is up. The green water crashes against the bath’s gray cement and quickly rises vertically to spill a small part into the pool. If the tide was high I was frightened that sharks would be waiting for me when I swam. The baths were made of cement that was very rough on the body, but the surrounding sunbathing decks were full of splinters.

Sunday mornings at the baths were a ritual; it was men’s country. No one considered why women were excluded—Australia in their minds was a man’s world. How wrong we were. The backbone of Australia was the Aussie Mum

My mother once noticed a boy limping up the Alfred Street hill. Ever the compassionate nurse, she removed a long splinter and gave him what she could ill afford, the bus fare up the hill. I’m sure that it came for the small housekeeping money she had saved. I now suspect that my dad drank much of his salary although unlike other countries, children could NOT enter the Public Bar. On the rare times he took me out, I would sometimes stand outside the pub and wait for him to finish drinking. But Dad was never mean – just a quiet drunk. I suspect, his experiences in France during the First War would now have qualified him for some kind of treatment or counseling for post traumatic stress disorder.

You have to know my daughter Tammy to appreciate this..

Forty years ago I got both my daughters their Social Security numbers. Don’t ask me what was on my mind that day, but I not only gave the wrong name for Tamara, but I gave the wrong birth date. She was listed as Tammy and her birth date was five days off.

Several months ago, she was subjected to an I.R.S. audit and her accountant noticed the discrepancy in her records.

“I think you should fix this Social Security data” he said, “and soon!”

At her request and seeing it was my screw-up, I looked up the requirements on the web. Seems as ‘tho all she needed was a current passport and maybe a birth certificate. She collected the documents and checked in by drawing a number at the Downtown Seattle Social Security Office on 8th and Lenora.

Ever been in a Social security Office? Well, I have been there several times in the last five years and the customers are not all savory folk; actually there’s a lot of low-lifes and why they gather there I can only imagine.

Seen Tammy lately? She dresses in Escada, Hermes, Chanel, David Yurman and in her Jimmy Choo’s, she’s almost 6 feet of gorgeous womanhood. Very impressive and she keeps up with her clientele of high-end restaurateurs, local celebrities and the Seattle ‘in’ crowd. Sitting in the Social Security Waiting Room she was definitely out of place catching up on her Blackberry e-mail. But she took a number, was cool and waited her turn.

When it came, she put her documents on the shelf in front of the window and faced a large lady who no doubt had put up with a lot of crap that morning and was in no mood to be trifled with.

“Watcher need, girl,” she asked looking up at her antithesis who was probably about the same age but definitely not from her ‘hood’.

“I need a new Social Security card. My name’s not correct and my birth date is in error. My dad got it wrong when he registered me about 40 years ago,” said Tammy.

“Whaddya mean, got it wrong?”

“Well, for some reason he forgot.”

At this, the large, very Southern woman began to laugh very loudly and slap her large, larded sides and thighs and immediately called out to the other ‘ladies’ in the office, “Get a load of this will ya. This girl’s father didn’t remember her name or her birth date! Ha, ha, ha!”

The rest of the office of large women gathered around the window and joined in the laughter.

“He didn’t even remember her birthday” continued the woman, “or her proper name.”

Now Tammy, or should I correctly say Tamara, has inherited many of our better qualities. She has her mother’s memory, her calm charm, but alas she has her father’s smart mouth.

“Well,” said Tammy. “At least I knew who he was!”

The laughter immediately stopped. The dark faces turned red with anger. This was not a multi-cultural group. No sir!

“Get out of here, girl. Next time you come in you’ll need.....” and the woman reeled off a list of unnecessary documents.

Tammy exited as gracefully as possible and licked her wounds in her large, red, Mercedes convertible. Then she laughed and laughed. I guess she did inherit my sense of humor after all.

DITLIP
or
A Day In the Life of an Instructor Pilot

The instructor pilots in this story are not the usual ones that hang around your local airport trying to build up time to get a ‘real job’ flying for an airline or a corporation. No, these instructors have many thousands of hours and mostly flew in the United States military, or for an airline that went ‘belly-up’. They are true professionals who would look great in a full-page advertisement for an airplane manufacturer. These instructors in this story flew for what was at the time, the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. The story is set in the mid Nineties and is a composite of many of the situations that they found themselves in: at home, on a foreign ‘Line Assist’ or instructing in the simulator in a non-U.S. country.

To their wives (and girl friends), their supervisor and their stock broker, they are often a will-o-the-wisp frequently seen only at Oh-dark thirty hours. This gives rise to the belief that they are closely related the North American sasquatch.

INSTRUCTOR A

Seattle

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz Rrrrring!!!!!!

4.00 a.m.

Wife: “Honey, would you catch that alarm before it wakes the baby! Who do you have this morning? Same class? Well, I’ll see you around five. And DON’T FORGET OUR DATE TOMORROW NIGHT. It’s been weeks since we went out together.”

Arrgh! Friday morning, way to go! Nearly finished with this bunch and it’s been an interesting class, or maybe I should say, challenging. First time I’ve had a compressed schedule in a long time and it sure was a short night. Well, Monday they get their check rides. My captain is really sharp but the FO is slow. Ho