Afghanistan and the eye of the Tiger, oh my

December 2, 2009

 Today I have a few words — fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing — on sub­jects of which I could dis­cuss with thou­sands of words. How­ever, I don’t want that and if you read this blog, you surely don’t want that.

 First off, Afghanistan and the upshot of Pres­i­dent Obama order­ing 30,000 addi­tional troops into what­ever it is we are fight­ing over there.

 Flip a coin. Heads, you approve of the addi­tional troops. Tails, you dis­ap­prove. That is how I look at the announce­ment of addi­tional forces. I ini­tially thought we should have gone into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Today, I’m not so sure. The only thing I am sure of is that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq. That war is what one might call unjust, not to men­tion ille­gal. I haven’t heard it called “Bush’s Folly” or “Shrub’s Folly,” but it should go down in his­tory that way.

 If the search and destroy mis­sion for Osama bin Laden and gang should  not have been a fed­eral crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion — with help from the mil­i­tary and CIA — many of the troops and mate­r­ial poured into Iraq (not to men­tion the bil­lions of dol­lars) could have went to Afghanistan.

 I guess the Amer­i­can in me believes that we should find some kind of vic­tory both in Iraq and Afghanistan and leave. We need to fig­ure out what it is we are there to do because I am not sure what our goals are now in those countries.

 As for Obama send­ing more trooops to aug­ment the more than 70,000 already there — and the allies send­ing 5,000 more to help the almost 40,000 NATO and other for­eign forces in Afghanistan — I say: “Let’s see if it works out.” He has offered a timetable, albeit a seem­ingly short one.  So if the sit­u­a­tion doesn’t improve by when­ever it is Obama wants a with­drawal to begin, then we get mad and jump up and down and say: “Bad Obama. Bad, bad Obama.” This seems as good as any­thing else I can imagine.

********************************************************

 Next sub­ject. Le Tigre. El Tigre.  Ang Tigre. The Tiger.

 Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.

 Why is the main­stream media doing sto­ries on what was, initially, a rather odd car crash involv­ing Tiger Woods?  Do view­ers and read­ers of the media have such unin­ter­est­ing lives that they MUST know the details of all the indis­cre­tions of this sports (sports?) star? I have the most unin­ter­est­ing life  imag­in­able, at least at the moment, and I don’t care about Tiger Woods” inti­mate moments. Let me be a bit more spe­cific. I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S RECTUM ABOUT THE TIGER WOODS SCANDAL.

 Tiger Woods has not been elected to great­est golfer in the world or highest-paid sports star in the world. We do not own Tiger Woods. He has no oblig­a­tion to tell the pub­lic zip. Sure, every star of every kind blames the media when things start to go South. But if any­one has a case against the media, this time it is Tiger Woods.

 It makes me both angry and sad to see great news­pa­per and broad­cast­ing out­lets report the lat­est on this scan­dal. Why don’t they report some­thing really earth-shaking, like this?

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Happy Veterans Day: I’m no hero

November 11, 2009

veteran

 

I am a veteran.

I didn’t fight in any war when I joined the Navy in 1974 but because our nation’s involve­ment offi­cially ended after the events sur­round­ing the fall of South Viet­nam in 1975 I am called a “Viet­nam Era Veteran.”

That doesn’t mean a lot, espe­cially to those who actu­ally fought and endured the unimag­in­able in Viet­nam. But we couldn’t stop hav­ing a Navy after Viet­nam and some­body had to steer those ships and swab those decks and, in my case, push and type those papers. Some­one had to do it dur­ing a time when being in the mil­i­tary wasn’t the coolest thing a young per­son could do.

Although my par­ents had a Navy sticker on their pickup — I was the third son to join the Navy — you didn’t see rib­bons on cars with the names of their sol­dier boys who were serv­ing listed on it. You didn’t see every sun­shine patriot and vote-needy politi­cian call­ing those of us  who served “heroes.”

 It wasn’t the best of times to be in the ser­vice. And it wasn’t the worst, by a long shot. It was, after all, the 1970s.

 You can bet your ass that I bitched and moaned through­out my tour of duty. It’s what ser­vice mem­bers do. There were petty, lit­tle reg­u­la­tions that seemed absolutely stu­pid. You could often find your­self fol­low­ing your orders from a tyrant, but unlike in the civil­ian world you couldn’t talk back or couldn’t quit because you could end up end trou­ble. The worst case sce­nario would be the brig, or jail. Those Marine guards in the brigs didn’t exactly play nice, at least that’s what I heard. Remark­ably, I never — offi­cially — got in trou­ble and wound up with an Hon­or­able Dis­charge and a Navy Good Con­duct Medal. The last I fig­ure was quite an achieve­ment con­sid­er­ing all the hell-raising I did both on and off duty.

 So I am no hero. I was just a kid out of high school who needed a job, wanted badly to attend col­lege but couldn’t afford it, the Navy needed some­one who did their job and did it very well. After fin­ish­ing my job, the gov­ern­ment paid me a nice lit­tle stipend under the GI Bill that made it most help­ful to become a col­lege grad­u­ate. And the rest is history.

 That’s my vet­eran story. It isn’t a heroic tale but it’s my own and I’m stick­ing to it.

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Free meals for vets; Pick your fave Texans goat.

November 9, 2009

 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

September 17, 2009

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.

September 14, 2009

 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

August 4, 2009

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?

July 31, 2009

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.

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