Sunday Battleship Blogging: USS Utah

USS Utah (BB-31) was the sixth dreadnought battleship commissioned by the US Navy. She entered service in August of 1911. Utah and her sister Florida were the first two US battleships to use steam turbines, although some later battleships (New York, Texas, and Oklahoma) would revert to reciprocating engines. Utah displaced 22000 tons, carried 10 12″ guns, and could make 21 knots.

The battle squadron constructed by the United States between 1910 and 1921 avoided many of the problems of the Royal Navy, the High Seas Fleet, and the Imperial Japanese Navy. From Delaware on, the ships were all relatively heavily armed, armored, and consistent in speed. It was not difficult, therefore, for the fleet to operate as a unit. In contrast, the Royal Navy included battlecruisers, which, while useful for many operations, could not operate safely in the battle line. Also, the dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy varied widely in speed; this could be a handicap in battle, as faster ships could get separated from slower. The same problems existed in the High Seas Fleet and the IJN.

Utah, like many US ships of the period, engaged in her first combat action off Vera Cruz in April 1914. A contingent of sailors and marines were supported by offshore gunnery, and the men of Utah apparently distinguished themselves. Utah did not play much of a role in World War I, as she was not included in the squadron allocated to the Grand Fleet in 1917. Utah didn’t arrive in Great Britain until September 1918, acting as a convoy escort. Like all other US battleships, she saw no combat.

The interwar period was relatively eventful for Utah. Twice, Utah served as the flagship of a squadron engaged in a goodwill cruise of South America. The second cruise included President-elect Herbert Hoover. Utah underwent modernization in 1925, losing her aft cage mast and receiving more anti-aircraft guns. Most of the rest of the period before 1930 was spent as a training ship.

The 1930 London Naval Treaty moved a step beyond the 1922 Washington Treaty. The latter was intended to forestall a naval arms race, which many, especially in Great Britain, blamed for World War I. The massive battleship building programs of the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom were suspended in favor of a naval construction freeze and strict limits on the size of battlefleets. The United States was allowed to keep 18 battleships, including Utah. The London Naval Treaty sought to reduce the number of battleships in each fleet. The new limit for the US and the UK was 15, as opposed to 9 for Japan. This necessitated the elimination of several units from each fleet. Utah found herself on the chopping block. Rather than scrap Utah, however, it was decided to disarm and convert her into a target ship.

Utah served in this capacity for eleven years. On December 7, 1941, Utah was moored some distance to the northwest of Battleship Row. The Japanese torpedo bomber pilots were rather less than interested in Utah’s demilitarized status, and at 801am she was hit forward port by a single torpedo. Eleven minutes later, Utah rolled over and sank. Remarkably, only 64 of a crew of 471 died, with some sailors being rescued after their blowtorch-armed comrades cut through the bottom of the hull.

Utah was the oldest battleship to serve in World War II, but not the oldest to serve as a battleship, an honor which goes to USS Arkansas. Utah’s service in the war lasted about fifteen minutes. However, the service was not wholly irrelevant; the torpedo that hit Utah might have hit another US battleship, resulting in the deaths of more sailors. Utah remains at the bottom of Pearl Harbor today, although she is visted far less frequently than Arizona.

Trivia: What was the first battleship sunk by the Allies during World War II? Hint: The Graf Spee was not a battleship.

Wow

Congratulations to frequent commenter gmack and the Steelers. I was meeting someone for lunch and had to leave after halftime, but decided to record the rest just in case it remained close, and it was an amazing finish. I don’t have a detailed enough sense of history to know where this ranks among the upsets in NFL history, but is has to be high on the list.

While I used to think that they got a bad rap, you do have to seriously question Manning and Dungy. That’s a brutal loss, and Cowher’s a fine coach but he ain’t Bellechick (although this game has to ratchet up his reputation enormously.) The other thing to note is that there is some discussion in New York about whether Roethlisberger or Eli Manning (who the Giants traded up to draft instead) is better, as if it’s some sort of real debate. It’s like arguing about who’s more conservative, Clarence Thomas or William Brennan. As you can see, despite playing several games with a bad thumb Roethlisberger (and the other genuinely outstanding young QB, Palmer) ranks with guys like Peyton and Hasselbeck–at the top of the league, in other words, although Palmer is better–while Eli ranks amongst Trent Dilfer and Josh McCown. And it’s not like Manning is in a weak offense–he has a tremendous running back, fine receivers and an outstanding tight end to work with. He’s just not very good at this point. Eli will get better than that, of course, and he has talent–some guys with his arm become excellent QBs, some don’t, and whether he will is an open question. But as of now, there’s no debate; Roethlisberger is in a whole other league, and his performance today on the road (compared with Eli’s dismal performance at home) just underlines that.

Fred Hiatt: The Man With A "Kick Me" Sign Gorilla-Glued To His Back

Eventheliberal Washington Post op-ed page has come out in favor of the confirmation of Sam Alito. And, also unsurprisingly but even more annoyingly, it does so in classic Fox News Democrat fashion, swallowing obviously incorrect Republican talking points wholesale:

His record on the bench is that of a thoughtful conservative, not a raging ideologue. He pays careful attention to the record and doesn’t reach for the political outcomes he desires.

This, of course, is the obvious fallacy that because Alito writes in dry, technical terms rather than in the acerbic manner of a Scalia, he therefore must be less conservative. Alas, this is completely false. Alito pushed the law in a consistently conservative direction, and will no longer be bound by upper court precedents. As is true of all of the claims that Alito is a moderate and not a staunch conservative in the Scalia/Thomas mold, no evidence is presented, not a single area where he’s likely to cast less conservative votes is cited, and the civil liberties areas where he’s likely to be more conservative are ignored.

And then there’s this:

But it’s fair to guess that Judge Alito will favor a judiciary that exercises restraint and does not substitute its judgment for that of the political branches in areas of their competence. That’s not all bad. The Supreme Court sports a great range of ideological diversity but less disagreement about the scope of proper judicial power. The institutional self-discipline and modesty that both Judge Alito and Chief Justice Roberts profess could do the court good if taken seriously and applied apolitically.

No, no, no, no. There is no evidence that Alito practices a consistent “judicial restraint.” Where is this “not substituting judgment for the political branches” in his embrace of the “new federalism,” up to and including the ridiculous “sovereign immunity” doctrine? How does favoring the executive branch over the legislative branch, or reading civil rights statutes to give less protection than Congress intended, constitute “judicial restraint,” let alone a theory of judicial restraint that is “applied apolitically?” As Dahlia Lithwick noted:

Best of all for Bush’s base, Alito is the kind of “restrained” jurist who isn’t above striking down acts of Congress whenever they offend him. Bush noted this morning: “He has a deep understanding of the proper role of judges in our society. He understands that judges are to interpret the laws, not to impose their preferences or priorities on the people.”

Except, of course, that Alito doesn’t think Congress has the power to regulate machine-gun possession, or to broadly enforce the Family and Medical Leave Act, or to enact race or gender discrimination laws that might be effective in remedying race and gender discrimination, or to tackle monopolists. Alito thus neatly joins the ranks of right-wing activists in the battle to limit the power of Congress and diminish the efficacy of the judiciary. In that sense Bush has pulled off the perfect Halloween maneuver: He’s managed the trick of getting his sticky scandals off the front pages, and the treat of a right-wing activist dressed up as a constitutional minimalist.

But the really nice touch is the claim that because Roberts and Alito have “professed “a commitment to “judicial restraint,” is must be true. (Really, Hiatt’s contempt for the intelligence of his readers is positively Althousian.) We can perhaps call this the “but I thought she was going to marry that rich snob!” defense. Wow, I thought that Alito was going to say that he was a rabid activist ideologue who would completely ignore all legal restraints! But since counterintuitively he came out in favor of “judicial restraint,” well, now we have to vote for him. What an embarrassingly unserious editorial.

More Taxpayer Money+Less Coverage=Republican Policy

I was pleased to discover via iocaste that the WSJ has made this outstanding article available online. Make sure to click through–there’s a detailed explanation with a handy chart, but some choice grafs:

Programs that provide free or deeply discounted drugs for the elderly and the disabled are being eliminated by a number of pharmaceutical companies as the new Medicare drug benefit takes effect, in a move that could cut off many seniors from their medicine.

The drug industry is blaming the federal government for the move. Drug companies cite recent government guidance that says the plans violate laws that bar companies from providing inducements to patients to use their drugs while the government is helping to pay for them. But the government says it never ruled the plans to be illegal, and the companies are ejecting seniors from assistance programs of their own accord.

What is clear is that the new Medicare drug benefit, created to make prescription drugs more affordable for the elderly, is having the unintended effect of making it more expensive, or prohibitive, for some poor older Americans to get their medications.

At least one million people who would have qualified for the industry programs make too much money to get any government assistance to help with the out-of-pocket costs under the new Medicare plan, according to Verispan LLC, a health-care-research company in Yardley, Pa.

[...]

One patient affected by the moves is Bob Stemer, a disabled Medicare participant in Eastpointe, Mich., who has had two kidney transplants. He takes 15 pills at breakfast and seven more at dinner to control his diabetes, poor circulation, high blood pressure and other conditions. Mr. Stemer, who is 54 years old, says his income consists of $14,500 a year in disability payments. He says five drug companies provide him with free drugs that would cost $650 a month otherwise. Recently, three of them notified him that he would no longer be eligible for their programs and recommended he sign up for the Medicare drug plan.

As a result, Mr. Stemer is considering going without some prescriptions because he can’t afford Medicare’s out-of-pocket costs. “I could just either take a little extra insulin or try to watch my blood pressure. … I guess I could live without my blood pressure medication,” he says.

“There are patients who are worse off” under the Medicare plan, says Tracy J. Sims, an Eli Lilly executive who oversees the company’s free-drug programs. Lilly is doing away with the program for poor seniors and disabled patients — also covered under the new plan — that provided $191 million in drugs to 200,000 patients last year. Mr. Sims estimates that about half of those patients will be charged significant out-of-pocket costs for drugs under the new Medicare program.

GlaxoSmithKline says it has notified 200,000 patients in its drug-assistance program that they can’t continue in the program after May 15.

I would call this “inept,” except that this might imply that trying to improve drug coverage for seniors was the primary purpose of the Republican legislation. (And, of course, the complaints from drug companies are also a little problematic–they certainly didn’t seem to be complaining about this legislation in real time, for obvious reasons.)

Originalism Explained

Sam Alito has given a very helpful interview to the fine folks at Fafblog!:

FB: Now back around then you also wrote a memo saying the Attorney General can’t be sued for illegally wiretapping people.
ALITO: I did? Are you sure? Because to be perfectly honest I don’t remember a lot of what I did during the Reagan administration. You know how it is when you’re serving in the White House, Fafnir – the wild nights, the drunken partying, the granting of absolute power to members of the executive branch… it’s hard to keep track.
FB: Oh man, tell me about it! This one time I was hangin out with Dick Cheney an Al Gonzales an they were all hopped up on horse tranquilizers an Cheney’s all “let’s grant the president the ability to violate civil law during wartime” an Gonzales was like “dude!” an I was all “you guys are crazy!”
ALITO: You know, people are focusing way too much on the triviality of things I’ve said or done or repeatedly expressed a strident ideological commitment to. I don’t let my legal opinions affect my legal decisions – I just follow the law, the Constitution, and the original intent of the Founding Fathers.
FB: So you don’t want to strip-search ten-year-old girls without a warrant. James Madison wants to strip-search ten-year-old girls without a warrant!
ALITO: Exactly!
FB: That bastard! Why’d we let im write the Constitution anyway?
ALITO: Dunno! I guess we’re just stuck now.
FB: Now what do you use to check for the Founders’ original intent? I know some like to use a federally-funded time machine an some just read from the giant stone tablets George Washington carved into the living rock at Mount Sinai.
ALITO: There are many different techniques and methodologies, Fafnir. For example, Antonin Scalia’s approach involves reading the will of the founding fathers through the power of the ouija, while Clarence Thomas scries for original intent within the innards of a sacrificial law clerk. I simply channel the spirits of the Framers through an old-fashioned seance.
FB: So what happens if you summon up the ghosts of the founding fathers and the spectral aura of Thomas Jefferson gets in a fight with the ectoplasmic residue of Alexander Hamilton?
ALITO: In the event of an intra-framer fight, the Chief Justice may settle the matter by invoking the doctrine of eenius meenius.
FB: What if Hamilton’s ghost gets shot by the ghost of Aaron Burr?
ALITO: It depends. Was Hamilton’s name on Aaron Burr’s warrant?

Hmm, I thought it was Scalia who sacrificed his clerks…

More Treasonous Leaks!

Mahablog is on the case.

NRO News Flash: There Are Guilty People in Prison!

According to the John Miller, guilty people behind bars claiming they’re innocent is a “much bigger problem” than innocent people being convicted. I know I just said that I have more respect for conservatives who wear their contempt for civil liberties proudly, but maybe I should be giving phony lip service another look…

The End of "Anti-Idiotarianism"

I very much enjoyed Glenn Greenwald’s merciless dismantling of Jonah “Search warrant? Scope requirements? Who cares?” Goldberg. And yet, in a perverse way, I have a certain respect for the candor of the Goldbergs and Bobos. Their support of Alito is, at least, explicit and logically consistent. They think that we should just pretend that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist where the War (On Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs is concerned, and they make no bones about it. (The “some classes” is crucial, of course: Goldberg’s tradeoff is about giving up other people’s civil liberties. His daughter isn’t going to be subject to warrantless strip searches. The sanctity of David Brooks’ nice exurban home isn’t going to be violated.) It’s a bad position, but at least it’s honest.

Much worse is that of the Yoosta-Bees who are even more annoying than their “anti-idiotarian” moniker. The Alito nomination–where the Iraq War in taken off the table, and where issues of civil liberties are paramount–really gives away the show. You would think that a reactionary-across-the-board Supreme Court nominee would be where you might see some separation between the GOP and people who allegedly vote Republican because of foreign policy but are still good civil libertarians (which has happened with some small-government conservatives.) But, of course, this hasn’t happened. “Liberal hawk” Roger Simon can think of nothing bad to say about Alito, but can make Ted Kennedy jokes that passed their sell-by date during the Carter administration. “Libertarian” Glenn Reynolds not only supports the hyper-statist reactionary Alito, but finds Alito’s rejected-by-the-Supreme-Court support of husband notification laws a soothing balm for his misogynist ressentiment. “Classical liberal” (if the liberal tradition is conceived of as beginning and ending with Hobbes, maybe) Jeff Goldstein also is a strong Alito supporter, but despite his oft-cited nominal pro-choice credentials finds the idea of women losing reproductive rights a laff riot (ha ha, see, the state’s dominion over the fetus isn’t really a physical dominion, so it doesn’t really feel intrusive to have the coercive apparatus of the state force you to bear a child. And it will just be those silly women in Mississippi and Alabama and Texas and Tennessee and…seriously, who cares? If nobody I know is affected, I’m still pro-choice! ROTFL!!!!!!) It would be one thing if these conservertarians were making a “I don’t approve of his overturning Roe policy, but I do approve of his employers should be protected from oppressive civil rights lawsuits policy” argument. That’s not it; they just don’t care about his opposition to Roe. The “pro-choice” cites are, of course, just meaningless window-dressing. And, of course “feminist” “liberal hawk” Ann Althouse takes the grand prize. Not only does she still unreservedly support Coathanger Sammy (which she felt so strongly about as to take her condescending, entirely devoid of evidence case to the pages of the New York Times) she argues that he “deserves a yes vote” even from liberal Senators. It is a remarkably vacuous form of feminism indeed that Althouse is propounding–she is utterly indifferent about the prospect of countless women losing their reproductive rights, can’t find anything bad to say about a prospective Supreme Court justice who proudly touted his membership–in 1985!–in an organization that felt that the belated admitting of women to Princeton was a disastrous mistake and who would make it almost impossible to advance gender discrimination claims in court, but she can summon feminist outrage about…a clumsy mother-in-law joke by Chuck Schumer. After all, Alito was appointed by President Bush, and criticizing a nominee because he seems to be in conflict with your alleged principles would be so partisan!

Frankly, I prefer my reactionary Republican authoritarianism straight, no meaningless “socially liberal” chaser. It ends up the same place either way, and the former leaves a less unpleasant aftertaste.

Absurd Counterfactual Department: The Plains of Abraham

Last night while drinking heavily, a Bloquiste and I mused about a few decisive moments in Quebec history. The discussion boiled down to two major counte-factuals. In the first, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham goes the other way and Quebec remains part of the French Empire. In the second, the US war effort in 1812 is less inept, and the United States manages to seize Canada from the British.

The first is interesting in the context of the American and French Revolutions. I am curious as to how a French controlled Canada would have affected British and French policy during the American Revolution. I wonder if the continued possession of a North American colony would have made the French more reluctant to support American independence; I doubt that French absence would have reversed the course of the war, but it probably would have extended its length by several years. The question would then become the disposition of Canada during the Napoleonic Wars. Would Napoleon have sold Canada to the US along with the Louisiana Purchase? Would the British have invaded Canada? If so, what would the reaction of the United States have been? I’m inclined to think that the latter, at least, is quite likely, given that Great Britain rolled up most of France’s other colonies during the wars. Such an action might well have served to bring France and the US closer together, perhaps bringing the US into the war before 1812.

The second counterfactual is interesting in terms of its effect on American domestic politics. The Bloquiste I was speaking with seemed to believe that Quebec would have done better in the United States than in Canada, which is a line of thinking that I found odd. I really have no idea how the United States would have dealt with the presence of a large French speaking minority within its borders. I doubt that Quebec would have been accorded the privileges that it currently holds under the Canadian system, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a significant degree of political tension developed between Quebec and the rest of the US. The impact on US domestic and foreign policy is also interesting. I suspect that Quebec’s presence in the US would have strengthened the hand of the North in the various struggles over slavery between 1820 and 1860. I have no idea what the actual impact of that would have been, though. On the foreign policy front, I wonder if James K. Polk would have felt as compelled to steal a third of Mexico if Canada had been freely available. The answer to that is probably yes…

Friday Cat Blogging… Edgar

Blair Slaps His Kids Around

Although I was mildly surprised that Tony Blair admitted on BBC 2 that he smacked his older children, that statement was hardly, to me, the most interesting part of the program. The most interesting thing to me about the conversation was that it happened at all.

In the United States, we are not conditioned to think of Presidents as people who speak off the cuff. George W. Bush may simply be incapable of doing so in a mixed audience; I don’t know. Bill Clinton certainly could have handled a difficult studio audience, but no one would ever ask him to do so. The night before last, while flipping between my six channels at Wiston Park, I came across a discussion program featuring Tony Blair, a tough audience of casually dressed Britons, and a fairly aggressive host. Blair was answering questions about legislation that allowed the eviction of “problem families” from certain homes. The questions from the audience were clearly unscripted, and Blairwas forced to answer questions about the program on the fly, including very detailed aspects of execution. The questions were not all friendly, with some of the audience members clearly blaming Blair for details of the program that he could not possibly have been in control of.

The question here isn’t whether Blair is smarter than Bush, although he probably is. I suspect that even Bush could handle SOME hostile questions, given that he has been in politics for a number of years and must have faced such situations. The questions is why Americans tend to expect so much less from their executives in terms of public discourse than Britons seem to expect from theirs. I’m inclined to think that the important difference may lie with the British monarchy; the monarch is a figure of national acclaim who, whether we like him/her or not, ought not to be forced to answer certain kinds of questions in particular contexts. In the American context, there is no such divide. The actual executive and the symbolic executive are the same. Putting the symbolic executive in a potentially embarassing situation with a group of common folk is simply not to be done.

This suggests to me an idea that I hadn’t really thought through before, which is that the monarchy really does serve an important purpose in a democracy. There certainly would be some value, in our current political context, to being able to separate a symbolic figure of leadership and patriotism from an actual figure of leadership. Undermining the argument that opposition to the current government equals opposition to the state is certainly a valuable project.

New Blogs

The expansion of the blogosphere continues unabated. Check out The Reaction with Michael Stickings, and Blue Force, a defense blog including Armchair Generalist, Stygius, and others.