Up Too Late...

I just now poured my second cup…up too late (with not much to show for it) and too long abed this morning. So…in what is rapidly becoming my signature blogging move, here’s a placeholder post.

From “An Open Letter to Lou Dobbs” by Donald J. Boudreaux (Chairman, Department of Economics, George Mason University) published in The Christian Science Monitor:

FAIRFAX, VA. – Dear Mr. Dobbs, Congratulations on having a large new bloc of voters bear your name! Politicians ignore the "Lou Dobbs Democrats" at their peril.

Every night on CNN you claim to speak for these people. They are America's middle class: decent folks who work hard and play by the rules but who, you insist, are abused by the powerful elite. Free trade is one of the policies allegedly supported by the elite and for which you reserve special vitriol. You thunder that imports destroy American jobs, reduce wages, and make the economy perilously "unbalanced."

But you are mistaken.

Ol’ Lou is another of those CNN pundits that put my teeth on edge (right up there with Blitzer and Amanpour), so much so that I refuse to watch him. At all. His jingoistic rants and raves are just SO wrong. I’m glad someone has finally called him out. Read the whole thing.

Lex posted some great plane pr0n yesterday; a short (5 min 12 sec) video of P-47s blowing stuff up during Big Bang Two. In color!

Today’s Pics: In keeping with that WW II plane pr0n theme, here are three shots of the front end of the B-17 Texas Raiders, one of which is inside the cockpit. Imagine spending eight to ten hours in that small space, most of that time spent trying to stay in formation, with a few hours worth of sheer terror in the form of flak and German interceptors thrown in just for good measure. The attrition rate for these bombers was horrendous, especially during the early phases of the bombing campaign against Germany. The Army Air Corps suffered 54,700 killed or missing during WW II, at a rate of 16.1 casualties per 1,000 served. Only the Marine Corps had a higher casualty rate.

Photos taken in March of 2000 in Brownsville, Texas.