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Free meals for vets; Pick your fave Texans goat.

 Some national corporation are thanking veterans this year by putting their money where the veterans’ mouths are.

 But showing appreciation for those who are serving or who have served this year will not be limited to free dinners from Golden Corral on Monday,  November 16, and Applebee’s on Wednesday evening (Veterans Day).

 Lowe’s is offering a 10 percent discount on in-store merchandise up to purchases of $5,000 from Nov. 6 through Veterans Day. This is according to media reports I have seen. I saw nothing on their Web site about it. I would call first and ask if interested. Home Depot is likewise offering a 10 percent discount through Veterans Day. Check the Web site article for lists of limitations.

 I am unsure how long any of these corporations have shown their appreciation for veterans other than Golden Corral. The buffet and grill restaurant has held the Veterans feast for the past eight years. Their Web site notes they have served more than 2.1 million meals to active duty military and veterans during these occasions.

 Applebee’s requires some kind of proof of service such as a picture of the veteran in uniform, military or retired military ID card, DD-214 or veterans organization card. Their list doesn’t include a VA patient ID card, so I wouldn’t count on that getting you a free dinner. Applebee’s is also offering a limited number of items on their menu for the gratis meal — six to be exact — but they all look pretty good.

 Golden Corral does not require proof of ID. I still would take some though. You never know if your waiter understands the rules and having your papers in order might avoid having to get a manager and making a scene. I have been only once for Golden Corral’s meal, a couple of years ago, and I wasn’t asked for an ID.

 A number of other restaurants and businesses are giving free or discounted meals or merchandise across the country including, or did so over the weekend. Some of these also honor those uniformed folks serving in public safety such as police, fire and EMS. You just need to check around and see, I suppose, because I don’t have a full list. I wish I did.

WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT

  Disappointing would be an appropriate word to describe yesterday’s Houston-Indianapolis game.

  The Texans came in with a respectable 5-3 record for the first time in their history against the undefeated Colts. Still, there was no way the Texans could beat Indianapolis, right? Well, even though they weren’t throwing hand grenades or playing horseshoes, they almost pulled off an upset. Even more, the Texans should have won this one.

  A big examination was taking place on Beaumont-Houston’s ESPN Radio, the Ticket, this afternoon, as to the blame for the Texans 20-17 loss to the Colts. It was a controversial fumble at the Colt’s one-yard line by Houston running back Ryan Moats, said some. It was flat out turnovers and stupid penalties, said others. It was kicker Kris Brown, still others said while you could almost see heads nodding through the many radio receivers throughout the Houston-Beaumont area.

 Brown could easily be seen as the goat that ate the chance to knock off the Big Dog Colts. The Colts saw their lead cut to a narrow margin at the end of the first half when the Texans’ kicker perfectly nailed a 56-yard field goal. Brown, coming into the game, had a perfect extra point record and he left with that intact at 25-for-25 upon leaving Indy. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Automatic with 9-for-13 coming into the game but neither was he Mr. Aromatic. That path to Mr. Smelly quickly changed in the estimation of some Texans fans when Brown had a chance to send the game into overtime. 

 But just as plane crashes hardly ever have one cause, neither do lost football games. Somehow the clock quickly ticked off until it was stopped at one second — amazing in itself that Houston didn’t lose because of poor time management. Brown seemed like a sure shot for a 42-yarder to tie after kicking one a very respectable 56 yards. However, the ball went up and up and just freaking missed the goal with a veer to the left.

  Well, Coach Dan Kubiak thought his team did okay considering they were playing Peyton Manning’s Colts. I have to say I feel the same way although, as I mentioned before, I am very disappointed.

 As for one goat. It wasn’t Kris Brown. It wasn’t one play. It wasn’t the refs. It wasn’t Moats’ fumble. It was all of those wrapped up with penalties that were just dumb, though as I have noted  here before I sure as hell couldn’t have done better.

 The Texans now are neither down nor are they out. They have to play the Colts again at the end of this month and beat them. They have to beat the Titans again the week after next week’s bye. That theoretically should be easy against a now 2-6 team that only picked up its second win just yesterday by beating the equally lackluster 49ers. But theories are like a**holes, everybody’s got one and every once in awhile something goes wrong with them. Then you got your Rams, Seahawks, Jaguars and Dolphins in no particular order followed at the end by the Patriots. The Patriots. Yes.  Uh-huh.

 So the Texans can still make the playoffs. Hell, they could go to the Super Bowl. I mean anything can happen and does happen in football, just look at Terrell Owens or John “Sandy Baby” Riggins — remember the latter’s drunken encounter with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor? Perhaps those aren’t the best examples.

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A new hero

Yes, I have been playing around with a new WordPress theme this afternoon. It is much easier than the one I have used for awhile. We shall see how it goes.

President Obama made his first Medal of Honor presentation today. It was to the family of Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti. He died in June 2006 after heroic action in Afghanistan.

The Army has improved its Web site that hosts the information on all of the almost 3,500 service members (from all services, not just the Army) who have received this honor in the wars of our country. I read, including viewing a multimedia presentation on Sgt. 1st Class Monti, through some of the citations this morning, especially of a few whose name rang a bell for me. For example:

PFC Harold C. Agerholm, USMCR, who was killed in action July 7, 1944 on Saipan. Under a heavy Japanese attack, Agerholm single-handedly evacuated about 45 casualties over a three-hour period. He was killed trying to reach two more casualties he believed were Marines. The U.S. Navy destroyer on which I served from 1977-78 in the Pacific was named after Agerholm. The ship was sunk in a missile test off the Southern California coast several years after its decommissioning in 1978.

Army Staff Sgt. Lucian Adams killed nine German soldiers and knocked out three enemy machine guns during a fierce attack on Oct. 28, 1944, near St. Die, France. Adams helped eliminate hostile forces and reopened supply lines for his unit. Adams grew up in a large Hispanic family in Port Arthur, Texas. He died in 1983 after retiring from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Most every time I drive to Port Arthur on U.S. Hwy. 69/96/287 I pass by the road named for Staff Sgt. Lucian Adams, which just this year became home to the newly opened Port Arthur Memorial High School.

There are many more stories of those who were awarded the Medal of Honor. Some of those stories you may recognize and others you won’t. But one will find in those citations some true tales of inspiration. We may wish that we didn’t have to fight wars, but we need be glad we have those like Adams and Agerholm who have whatever that spark of courage is that makes them do what they do.

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This is a drill. This is a drill.

 Five of the scariest words a sailor can ever hear when at sea are “This is not a drill,” followed by “General quarters. General quarters all hands man your battle stations.”

 That only happened once to me during the year I spent on board a destroyer in the Western and Southern Pacific. We were somewhere out in the middle of the WestPac during the early evening. I was sitting on the mess decks watching some movie when I began hearing this weak, persistent sound.

 I told some guy sitting next to me: “That sounds like the general alarm.” Sure enough it was. The alarm sounded and those scary words were followed by an even scarier scene. My battle station was a couple of decks aloft in Combat Information Center. As I made it to the main deck I could see thick, black smoke coming from below decks in the engine spaces.

 We weren’t in combat conditions nor were we headed into such a scenario. I knew from the smoke that there was fire — hey, think I discovered something that day? — and that was the reason for GQ. My buddies in the Hull Technician gang,  the main damage control guys, quickly extinguished the fire and all was soon well again. But that little incident showed it is good to be trained for emergencies and know what is and what isn’t an emergency.

 I bring up this anecdote as I think of the drill that apparently scared some folks Schickless last week in Washington. By now most of you have heard about what turned out to be a Coast Guard drill on the Potomac River just about the time President Obama was to have given his remarks on Sept. 11, 2009, honoring those who were killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 exactly eight years before at the Pentagon.

 The story about the Coast Guard drill in a nutshell is that, well, they were drilling with small boats on the Potomac. Some radio traffic became mixed up with the reality of what was going on. Some of the media — most notably CNN — went with what little they had and apparently caused a bit of hysteria. Then everyone began running with both hands on their asses for cover.

 I am not a big fan of CNN these days. My falling out with the cable network has nothing to do with politics as much as it does with their falling standards of excellence. They have lost many good news people. Some of the people whom I used to like have joined the “Let’s do melodrama” bandwagon which is running news into the ground.

 I have also mostly stayed quiet about the Obama administration until now. Specifically, I think Obama needs to send some of the people who run his communication shop off to somewhere less visible, like perhaps Antarctica. I would include among them Chief of Staff, Mr. Personality Himself, Rahm Emmanuel and that teddy-bear-of-a-guy Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

 While Emmanuel did nothing in particular that I know of in this specific debacle with the Coast Guard, Gibbs came out in a snit that day blaming the entire shebang on the media and specifically CNN.

 From my experience in both public safety and as a journalist, I cannot find any major mistake made by CNN. They jumped ahead on something that could have been major, but they were handed the opportunity on a brass serving platter by the Coast Guard.

 What was the Coast Guard thinking? Or, what were they thinking that particular day and time? Or, what were they not thinking?

 News people have to perform all kind of balancing acts, but in this particular instance I think the ones who erred on the side of something major  that was given to them by the Coast Guard came out all even. In other words, CNN. 

 The Coasties who came up the idea to run a drill when they did where they did perhaps have been inside the Beltway too long. Perhaps a nice cruise somewhere will clear their heads.

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Don't tweet as I say and don't tweet as I do

The Marine Corps has issued orders for its folks to stay clear of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  CNN reports that the Marines apparently are worried that a slip of a lip might sink a ship which would mean Marines would have to swim from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Never mind that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has his own Twitter feed. He had 4,551 followers as of this afternoon. The latest feed says:

“Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet.”

RHIP ?(Rank hath its privileges). YBYA (You bet your ass).

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New GI Bill a positive step, but bargain?

The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin processing payments tomorrow for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. The new veterans bill was designed to augment current veterans benefits such as those found in the Montgomery GI Bill, which was a de facto post-Vietnam era bill. Veterans will also have the ability to transfer benefits to family members under the legislation.

The improved benefits are expected to help nearly a half-million veterans and their families attend college next year alone. Almost $80 billion for these benefits will be paid out during the next decade.

I am happy to see an improved GI Bill to help the younger veterans and their families. Still, I can’t help but think this crop of veterans are getting shafted compared with what I had for the GI Bill and the economic situation of the times that I used them to attend college.

When I started college in 1980 I was under the post-Korea and Vietnam era GI Bill. I got a check every month I attended school. Since I was single the amount I received was $327 per month for a full load of 12 hours. That amount increased to $376 by the time I graduated in 1984. That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that tuition at state universities in Texas was $4 per semester hour during that time period, plus the fact that I worked full-time as a fireman, and one can see how I made out.

I remember on at least one occasion and perhaps maybe it happened more often than that but I received my monthly check and was able to pay tuition, fees and books for that semester just by using my monthly stipend.

A year after I graduated I returned to my alma mater, Stephen F. Austin State University, with thoughts of getting a graduate degree. Since I had only a minor in political science, which was the field I had locked onto for a possible master’s, I had to first take a few more hours to get my second bachelor’s in that field. By that time tuition had jumped to a whopping $12 per semester hour.

Looking at my old school’s Web page with its tuition calculator I see that for a full load during the upcoming fall semester the tuition is $50 per semester hour, then you start looking at fees, room and board if you live on campus, etc., and the numbers start increasing.

Even adjusting for inflation what I spent back then for various costs were a steal. In today’s dollars I would be paying $196 a month for the one-bedroom apartment I rented when I started college.

It is no wonder that when I look back on the days I went to college that I felt somewhat rich. Little wonder I feel that way since the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator shows that the amount I was making in combined salary and GI Bill would be more than $39,000 in today’s dollars. That’s pretty good buying power for a college guy.

So today’s veteran, when someone tells you the college they are selling is bargain then perhaps it might be. But it certainly isn’t the bargain that I had when starting school almost 30 years ago.