Cujoronimo IV: The Early Years

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have long been worried about the possibility of a Saint Bernard hurtling down from the sky on our collective carapace, so to speak. This is not all that unusual an occurrence as we have documented here, here and here. But it is with shock and outrage that we report that it was none other than the United States government that taught large dogs how to skydive.

The Allied airmen and women of World War II were certainly brave and skilled in battle, but even they couldn't win the war on their own.

Plagued in the early, low-tech years of the war by dangerous afflictions such as altitude and decompression sickness, pilots got some help behind the front lines from a team of American physiologists who studied the effects on the body of flying.

Their research, which involved at least one parachuting dog, and the technology it initiated was a key to the Allied victory in the air, says Jay B. Dean of the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

"[Pilots] had two enemies — they had the enemy shooting at them and they had the unseen enemy, which was the environment," he said. "The physiologists knew that they had to do something to learn to protect the health of the war fighter."

Dean presented his research at a recent Experimental Biology conference in San Diego and is working on a book about Allied advances in aviation physiology……

…..One doctor made a high-altitude jump himself to experience the strain on the body, nearly killing himself, and was able to calculate exactly when an airman's parachute should be opened to limit the impact of the g-forces, said Dean. And "Major," a 145-pound St. Bernard dog, was also tossed from a plane at 26,000 feet to test parachute straps at a high altitude.

Sporting his own custom oxygen mask, Major dog-paddled all the way down and landed safely, witnesses said.

While we applaud the scientists who helped win the war, we are also mightily dismayed by this. The next time you find yourself laid low by a skydiving Saint Bernard, a paragliding poodle or even a free-falling fox terrier, you know who to blame.

Up To Two Feet Of Epicycles

As Rich pointed out, the true believers have no postulated a new cooling trend that is all part of carbon-forced global warming. The fancy dance steps provide them with a ten year long cooling trend, after which another explanation will be forthcoming to explain the advancing glaciers, apparently. Thank heavens for epicycles. Meanwhile, back in the real world folks in the Black Hills region of South Dakota should rush out and stock up on bread and milk. They are about to get hit with another foot of epicycle on top of the 12-18 inches they got yesterday and today.

Through noon Thursday, 17 inches of snow had fallen near Hulett, Wyo., more than a foot fell in the Wasatch Range in Utah, and 12 inches was on the ground in parts of South Dakota.

The snow in Colorado Thursday led to numerous accidents on Interstate 70 in the foothills west of Denver, forcing the closure of the westbound lanes. Several state highways in the mountains had been closed due to icy conditions.

The heaviest snow will fall through Friday across the western High Plains. Two feet or more of snow is forecast in the Black Hills of South Dakota, while lesser amounts spread across eastern Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and the western Dakotas.

Even better, high winds will accompany the newest epicycle, causing blizzard conditions and extremely dangerous driving conditions.

Misplayed

Robert Novak has a column that may partially explain the silence of the pols that Daniel Henninger pointed out (see previous post). It seems that strong Obama supporters were more than a little dismayed at Obama's tepid response to Jeremiah Wright's vitriolic, conspiracy theory-laden rhetoric.

"That is just terrible, absolutely dreadful," a prominent supporter of Barack Obama said Monday morning after listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's screed at the National Press Club. He proposed to me that the presidential candidate at long last must denounce his former pastor, unequivocally and immediately. It took 28 hours after a tepid early reaction Monday, but Obama finally did it Tuesday afternoon.

Did that solve Obama's pastor problem? Leading Democrats certainly hope so, but they are not sure. His vulnerability transcends relations with a radical preacher. If Obama comes to be seen not as a presidential candidate who happens to be black but as a black candidate in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he will face a difficult struggle in the general election against John McCain even if he bests Hillary Clinton.

The problem goes back to the reaction Obama and his strategist David Axelrod crafted about two months ago, when videos of Wright's racist sermons first circulated. Insisting that Wright's incendiary remarks had been taken out of context, Obama took the high road in delivering a widely praised speech on race March 18 in Philadelphia. The issue surfaced again, however, at the widely criticized April 16 Democratic debate, leading Obama to rule out further debates with Clinton. The Obama campaign thought the pastor problem had been put to bed until Wright went on his little road tour.

Obama's danger is being perceived by white voters as representing a hostile, separate culture……..

According to Novak, Obama should have thrown Wright overboard two months ago rather than wait until Wright's virulence went on full display coast-to-coast. I suspect that's correct. I pointed out on Tuesday that I thought the damage was already done.  

My guess is that a lot of big-name Democrats sensed the same problem in Obama's misplay of the situation. That would explain why they stayed away in droves rather than rushing to Obama's defense.

Is There An Echo In Here?

Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal makes a point that didn't occur to me until he wrote about it. Once he did, it is rather obvious. As Barack Obama was being bloodied by the Wright controversy this week, Henninger wonders where his friends were.

This week we learned the limit of a dream in American politics. At Barack Obama's darkest hour, not one prominent ally came forward to support him. Everyone abandoned Everyman.

No prominent black clergyman came forth to make even the simple point that Jeremiah Wright's notion of the "black church" is but one point on a spectrum of faith. Rev. Wright, now written off as a virtual nut case, got more support from black clergymen than did Obama.

Barack Obama was bleeding by Monday and needed cover. Where, when he could have used them, were Obama's oh-so-famous endorsers: Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?

Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp: Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon?

It isn't hard for big names to get on talk TV to make a point. Any major op-ed page would have stopped the presses to print a statement of support from Ted Kennedy or such for the senator. None appeared. Call it profiles in gopher-holing.

There has been a lot of noise in the blogosphere but very few big-name Democrats have surfaced of late. Certainly none rushed to defend Obama when he needed it most. I actually think that's true to some extent in Hillary Clinton's case, as well. It really does look like the big names are hiding in a hole rather than go on the record defending either candidate.