Quick, hide the food!
I finished a writing project today and just got it sent out. In the midst of all that is aggravation with Time Warner over problems with my Internet service. The so-called “customer service” people at these large companies sure know how to screw up your day.
The photo? I have no idea. It just appeared, kind of like the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich only with less butter and more lard.
Al-Quida has claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at the USS Ashland (foreground in this picture)and another U.S. warship on Friday in Jordan.
It was quite fortunate that the Al-Quida bastards missed striking with missiles the warships USS Ashland and USS Kearsarge in the port of Aquaba, Jordan. A U.S. 5th Fleet statement said:
“At approximately 8:44 a.m. local time, a suspected mortar rocket flew over the USS Ashland’s bow and impacted in a warehouse on the pier in the vicinity of the Ashland and the USS Kearsarge. The warehouse sustained an approximate 8-foot hole in the roof of the building.”
A Jordanian soldier was killed and another was severely wounded when the rocket hit the warehouse, according to news reports. No casualties were reported from two other rockets fired from the same area.
Such attacks, along with the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, point to how our warships can be sitting ducks while in port. I’m sure the military is doing everything it can to reduce the vulnerability of its ships, but unfortunately, no guarantees exist that our warships won’t be hit.
I can see a day when port visits by U.S. warships could practically be a thing of the past. The Navy and Marine Corps is currently pushing “sea-basing.” The concept is pretty much how it sounds. A mobile, seagoing force of logistical and warfighting assets would operate from wherever might be a hotspot. A brigade of 16,000 Marines transported by the seagoing platform could be deployed and landed within 10-to-14 days rather than the 17-to-20 days it now takes.
The U.S. military also would not have to worry about foreign countries being reluctant to allow our forces to launch an operation on their soil. We rule the seas and will continue to for the immediate future. So this certainly seems safer than using ports in hostile areas.
On the human and sentimental side, it’s a shame because a lot of sailors will lose out on experiencing a lot of different ports of call. Visiting 13 ports in six foreign countries during the year I spent on a destroyer operating in the South and Western Pacific was clearly one of the best parts of my four years in the Navy. Port visits are also beneficial for the ports-of-call themselves because those “rich” American sailors and Marines spend their money.
I hope that the Navy of the future will still get the chance to make port visits. Because you surely can get sick of seeing your shipmates and your ship.
I wanted to clarify something about what I posted previously on there being no guarantee I would post your comments. The primary reason was because I think it is sleazy for someone to write into your blog, says it looks cool and then say: “check out my commercial Web site for mortgage loans!, etc.”
Also, I have no problem with instant comments from my friends or other thoughtful people after reading something I write. That said, I have become very disturbed these days with the knee-jerk commentary that the Internet has spawn. You see it most markedly in places such as on the Yahoo news pages. The comments are a steady stream of barely literate individuals who react more because of what propaganda they have been fed from one side of the political spectrum or the other than of any intellectual analysis of an argument.
As much as I think people who write letters to the editors of newspapers are sometimes assholes, (hey I’ve written letters too, so I guess that makes me one) I feel it gives a little time and distance in order to properly frame and reason a response to an opinion. I’m sorry, I just don’t think “you suck” makes a very compelling argument. Hey, I’m guilty as the rest. But someone has to make a stand.
It has been a full week since I have introduced a comment blog and I have yet to have anyone e-mail me their comments. I suppose it is much easier to post an anonymous comment like in the past. The thing is, the ones who left comments were mainly the regulars and mainly my friends. Anyone who leaves a comment via my e-mail address above the saline soldier may request anonymity and I don’t see any reason why not to honor that request. I am not going to guarantee your comment will get on the page. That is just the way it is. You ought to check out the comment page anyway because someone posted some strange photos. — Thomas Jefferson
Texas legislators adjourned their second special session today sine die. That’s Europekingnese for “drop dead.”
How many millions did the legislature spend on these two special sessions? $4 million? More? Certainly not less. Gov. Rick “Pompadour” Perry called the Lege back twice after the 2005 regular session and they responded by passing no laws related to the main reasons for those sessions. That would be bills to change the ways public schools are financed along with a tax bill (raising taxes or lowering taxes — it’s all in the eye of the beholder).
But by jiminy they did manage to pass a telecommunications bill favorable to SBC Communications and other companies such as Verizon during this special session. And why shouldn’t the Lege pass such a bill? Good ol’ Andrew Wheat and the others at the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice, based in Austin, gives this analysis of the telecommunication lobby’s bountiful givings to Texas lawmakers:
“Lobby records filed by the end of this year’s regular session tag SBC as Austin’s leading lobby force by far. Its army of 123 lobbyists—who reported up to $6.8 million in SBC fees—gave this giant well over twice the lobby clout of runner-up TXU (TXU paid 47 lobbyists $2.7 million.) Verizon, the next-largest beneficiary of the new telecommunications bill, paid 38 lobbyists another $1.8 million. As such, SBC and Verizon lobbyists outnumbered the 150-member Texas House.”
And what will we get in return for it? Well, SBC and the proponents of the telecom bill promise us the moon, stars, the outer rings of Saturn, and may throw in a new toaster oven. But what we really will get, I predict, is what is known in Costa Rica as “squat.”
The bill, which Gov. Hairball has yet to sign, paves the way for phone companies to compete with traditional cable TV companies. The worst of both worlds. SBC and Verizon are planning to spend a gazillion dollars for technology known as IPTV or Internet Protocol Television. It is billed as the next generation of technology that can provide video and Internet service to consumers through upgraded fiber optic telephone lines. A recent “USA Today” article about SBC’s quest for an IPTV kingdom explains a few bugs have to be worked out:
“IPTV works fine in the lab, where conditions are pristine. But throw IPTV into a live, working network with millions of paying customers, and all bets are off. Indeed, nobody knows how IPTV will behave once it is “scaled,” or rolled out, to millions of paying customers. One of the largest IPTV installations in the world is in China, and that one has only about 500,000 customers.”Scaling is clearly an issue,” says Jeff Weber, an SBC vice president in charge of IPTV. “And anybody who tells you otherwise isn’t just dumb — they’re lying.”
Hey, it’s only money.
It may be just as well that the Texas Lege did not pass any kind of tax reform because what had been proposed didn’t look like it was the kind of reform that benefits me. And after all, when you are talking about tax reform, who is more important than No. 1, eh?
I just wish the legislature hadn’t spent so damned much of the taxpayer’s money to do nothing. Of course, I’m sure SBC doesn’t see it that way.
