"Super Cooper in a 22 Looper"

My son-in-law and I began watching When We Left Earth - The NASA Missions, a DVD set from Discovery Channel, last night.

We watched the better part of the first two episodes which cover the run-up to and experience of the Mercury (single-man) and Gemini (two-man) space flights. There is lots of footage similar to what I recall seeing on TV, but a whole lot more, including fascinating interviews with the men who were involved in the events of those days--from flight controllers to astronauts--as well as footage from inside the space capsules--things we never saw on TV at the time.

And Discover knows how to tell the story with emotion. When ground control loses radio contact with the space capsule--even though the event occurred 45 years ago or more--and even though I thought I knew the final outcome of the story, my heart was in my throat.

So there I was watching these historical archives and being astonished at what I was seeing: Major space flights going up every three months; astronauts' names I remember; even a couple of flights--like the one I referenced in the title of this post: As we watched the program, as soon as Gordon Cooper's name was mentioned in association with the Mercury 7 flight, I blurted out the headline I remembered from our local newspaper. Yep: "Super Cooper in a 22-Looper."

What shocked me: the mission's date--May 15 to 16, 1963. I was 7 years old!

I had thought the flight had come three or four years later, after I had become a paperboy.

That memory, then, inspired me to think of what other headlines or news events I remember from my early childhood.

Only two stand out in my mind.

1) The day Kennedy was shot (I had to look it up): November 22, 1963. I was in 3rd grade. In our school, all the kids in the class were brought to the bathroom at the same time to "do their business."

I remember filing back down the hall toward the classroom when one of the teachers came down the hall, crying: "The president has been shot!"

We were in Upstate New York at the time, so it would have had to have been about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. (I looked it up: Kennedy was shot at 12:30 p.m. Central Time; he was declared dead at 1:00 p.m.)

I remember just a bit about the funeral, though I wonder how much of that memory was actually shaped by newsreels since.

2) I remember watching Winston Churchill's funeral cortège. A very solemn, black affair. Again, I looked it up: it occurred in late January 1965.

3) One other very specific newscast I remember: the day they played taps on the hippie movement in San Francisco.

Our family was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time. And hippies would be a major social force for many years to come. But I remember the San Francisco news station declaring the death of the hippie culture. Very unnerving, because I was just getting used to the idea, and I was attracted to the general freewheeling, fun-loving, live-and-let-live approach to life that the hippies seemed to advocate.

I looked this one up, too. And there is the date: October 6, 1967--the tail end of the "Summer of Love," not even five months after Scott McKenzie's song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" was first released and, honestly, years before the movement would truly die.

--Strange. Why is it all the sad stories that most caught my attention?

One last story and then I'll quit. Actually two.

Story #4: I rode my bike through the middle of an anti-war protest in Palo Alto--the Stanford Industrial Park. It was a regular school day morning. (Maybe 7:30?) I was riding from our apartment in Escondido Village on the Stanford Campus, to Terman Junior High over on Arastradero Rd. I would ride down Hanover Street, through the Hewlett Packard parking lot, across the railroad tracks and through the neighborhood till I could cross Arastradero into the school parking lot.

Some demonstrators had turned over a school bus in the middle of the intersection at Hanover Street and Page Mill Road. As I rode down Hanover toward the intersection from the campus, I could see darkly-clad figures darting in and out among the buildings on either side of the road. Some were police in full riot gear, others were civilians (anti-war protesters). . . . --A very surreal experience.

And then, lastly: #5: Kent State. May 4, 1970. By this point my family was back in upstate New York. I was in ninth grade. The news of the students having been killed shocked, sickened, and disgusted me. I had seen too many protests "close up" while on the Stanford campus. I had seen the anger and hatred and seething violence just below the surface. After all, this was post Martin Luther King's assassination. This was post Bobby Kennedy's assassination. This was post the 1968 Democratic National Convention at which there was so much violence.

I wrote a poem to express my grief:

Where’s our reason?
People shout and incite
Riots while men with rifles
Stand by.

After order is asked
And warnings are given,
The riotous crowd
Throws hate.

Insults freely flow
From snarling lips. . . .
The rifles fire.
More hate comes back. . . .
Smoke of battle
Jerks around.
(Violence protests war.
Hate burns worse than Napalm.)

Around the States
Radios hurtle their message:
“Four Students Killed—
More Injured.”

Need a Churchill for our age?

Mike Larson of the Money and Markets newsletter wrote what I thought was a perceptive article about the United States' financial difficulties . . . not to mention the financial difficulties of the world at large.

The publisher gave permission to reprint this article as long as I include the following paragraph:

This investment news is brought to you by Money and Markets. Money and Markets is a free daily investment newsletter from Martin D. Weiss and Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, including tips and advice on investing in gold, energy and oil. Dr. Weiss is a leader in the fields of investing, interest rates, financial safety and economic forecasting. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.

--Let me say: I include that paragraph with joy. I have found Weiss and his associates insightful and, though clearly hopeful of acquiring business, far less . . . ummm . . . hysterical and manipulative . . . than some of their competitors.

Mike begins his article with a brief description of a recent trip he took to Europe in late January. He said probably the biggest highlight of the trip for him was the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms in London. They got him thinking about what a statesman Churchill was. . . .

Tucked away in the basement of the U.K. Treasury, the [museum] allows you to experience what it was like during the Nazi "Blitz" of World War II.

Beginning in the mid-1940s and continuing for months on end, successive waves of Nazi fighters and bombers began pummeling the British coastline. They struck the British airfields next before moving on to British towns and cities, including London.

You can eyeball the cramped, low-ceilinged meeting rooms where Churchill and staff pondered the course of the war amid thick, acrid clouds of cigar and cigarette smoke.

You get to see the Spartan sleeping quarters they made do with, and the musty old maps of Europe, the U.K., and the North Atlantic they used to track troop movements and convoys.

Churchill didn't pull any punches when he gave his regular radio speeches.

You can listen to the speeches Churchill delivered even as the bombs fell — never lying to the British public about the dire straits they were in ... but also never failing to inspire.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, you can view the yellowed casualty lists they used to track the dead and wounded from the Nazi bombardment. More than 20,000 ultimately perished in London alone.

Then and Now . . .

Not much has changed in the nearly 64 years since the facility was mothballed. But I still couldn't help but be inspired from my visit. After all, Londoners persevered during the Blitz. Churchill didn't back down. The Brits "kept calm and carried on." And ultimately, the Allies won the great war.

Why do I bring this all up? Because I feel like we've lost that ability for politicians to level with us, especially when it comes to financial matters. There's no Churchill on the airwaves willing to tell it like it is, and asking for personal sacrifice.

Instead, politicians keep promising the sun, the moon, and the stars — even though we simply can't afford it. We're SPENDING like there's a massive world war going on even though there isn't! And no one seems to want to change this course we're on.

You can already see "budget bombs" scoring direct hits in Athens. And they're landing on the outskirts of Lisbon. If we don't do something about it soon, one of 'em is going to land squarely in Washington — with bond prices plunging and interest rates soaring!

CBO Warns of Never-Ending Budget Woes ...

Just a few short days ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) became the first official D.C. source to open its bomb bay doors and let loose on all of us. The CBO's projections: Instead of falling substantially from $1.4 trillion in 2009 (9.9 percent of GDP), the 2010 deficit would essentially hold steady at $1.35 trillion (9.2 percent of GDP).

The massive 2010 deficit would be followed by another $980 billion deficit in 2011 ... $650 billion in 2012 ... and $539 billion in 2013. Total red ink through 2020: $7,400,000,000,000!

As stunning as those figures are, long-term projections usually UNDERESTIMATE the deficit. Roughly 80 percent of the four-year deficit forecasts issued in the past three decades ultimately proved too optimistic, according to The New York Times.

Politicians love spending what isn't theirs.

Why?

Those forecasts rely on growth, revenue, and spending projections that don't pass the test of time. Politicians just can't help themselves — pandering, over-borrowing, and overspending is in their nature.

Just consider this: Two years ago, the CBO forecast the 2010 deficit would be $241 billion. Now the CBO is throwing that projection out the window and saying it'll be more than FIVE AND A HALF TIMES AS BIG

Obama Unleashes Carpet-Bombing Campaign of Red Ink ...

But if you thought the CBO numbers were bad, you should read through the Obama administration's latest budget. It forecasts a whopping $1.6 trillion deficit this year — more than $200 billion above and beyond the CBO's numbers. That would come to 10.6 percent of GDP, the worst in modern time.

What about 2011?

Another $1.3 trillion. And the years after that? More of the same. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is now expecting $8.5 trillion in red ink over the next decade, with the annual deficit NEVER falling below the 3 percent-of-GDP threshold considered fiscally responsible.

It gets worse ...

Those projections assume relatively rosy growth — 3.8 percent next year, and more than 4 percent over the following three years. We've only seen a string of 4 percent+ growth readings twice in the past three decades.

The projections also include assumptions about taxes and spending discipline that won't pass the test of time. One example: The OMB projects $250 billion in savings from a proposed three-year freeze on a significant chunk of domestic spending. Increases thereafter would be limited to the inflation rate.

I don't know about you, but I think the chance of that happening is somewhere between slim and none! Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have shown any real spending discipline. There's no reason to assume they'll have a "Eureka!" moment in the middle of the decade.

And I'm not even getting into the Social Security- and Medicare-related problems. We've promised trillions in benefits over the coming years that also threaten to blow our nation's balance sheet to smithereens.

Debt, Debt, Debt. And Did I Mention Debt?

U.S. public debt is expected to double in 10 years.

Bottom line: A never-ending wave of budget bombs is headed our way in the coming years. That will drive the total U.S. public debt load inexorably higher — from about $9.3 trillion in 2010 to $18.6 trillion by 2020. And the cost of servicing all that debt? It's projected to more than QUADRUPLE from $188 billion to $840 billion!

I'm at a loss for words, folks. These figures are horrendous ... outrageous ... infuriating ... and terrifying all in one. They paint a picture of a country that's on a collision course with financial catastrophe.

We CAN still turn things around. We can pull our nation out of this fiscal tail spin. Heck, if the average Londoner could pick himself out of the rubble of his home, brush himself off, and head to work in the middle of the Blitz, then we can show the same stoic resolve here.

But that will take real political courage and real sacrifices. There is no easy way out.

May God raise a Churchill for our day.

Why is it, however, that the few truth-tellers (Ron Paul?) seem to get so little press . . . or, if they do get press, it seems almost universally derisive?