And The First Topic Is Aviation...
I guess that I've mentioned before that I'm an aviation fanatic.
For my 8th Birthday, my father took me out to the local airport and bought me an hour ride in a Cessna 172. He was a pilot himself, but since he wasn't current on that airplane he rode in the back seat and let me sit up front in the right seat with our pilot.
We flew over our house and our neighborhood, and I even got to take a shot at keeping the nose on the horizon and the wings level (with the pilot doing some serious trim adjustments without my knowledge.)
When I was in junior high school, I got my first ride in a helicopter, a UH-1 "Huey", out at Ft. Rucker, Alabama with my Aviation Explorers Group.
My very first trip on a commercial airliner was in the summer of 1978, when I climbed onto a Douglas DC-9 in Dothan, Alabama, then flew to Atlanta to meet a Lockheed L1011 for a flight to San Francisco. After a bus trip to Travis AFB, I then boarded a MAC flight (a Lockheed C-141 cargo plane with paratrooper jump seats) for a 23 hour saga to Alaska (I forget the base); Yokota AFB, Japan; then on to Subic Bay Phillipines for a tour on the USS New Orleans, LPH-11.
My Duffel Bag and suitcase arrived two days later.
Christmas of 1979 found me at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, riding the "Dilbert Dunker" (the thing shown in the movie "Officer & a Gentleman that slid down a track and turned upside down in a swimming pool) and getting orientation flights in Jet Ranger helicopters.
About then I found out that my vision had deteriorated to about 20/40 in one eye, and you had to have at least 20/25 uncorrected in both eyes to fly F-14's.
Thus ended my career in naval aviation.
At the same time, for about 30 of the first thirty five years of my life I spent much of my free time and much of my extra money building and flying model airplanes.
Since I was about age five, if you gave me a pile of balsa wood and some tissue paper or "Monocoat" I could make a structure that would fly, much of the time from scratch (no kit.)
Gliders, rubber bands, gas engines...it was all great fun to me.
My model airplane career sort of ended when I started flying the real thing in 1990, and after my house fire in 2001 I hate to admit that I only own two model airplanes right now--a simple Radio Shack RC model with twin electric motors, and a paper model I downloaded and cut out of the Airbus A-380 Super Jumbo that sits on top of my TV in the living room.
That said, just take my word for it when I say that you can make me stop talking and pay attention if you show me anything related to aviation in video form.
Take a look at my introductory video from the popular site Youtube.com
(Turn up the volume on your PC speakers, and click on the arrow on the lower left corner to play the video without leaving my site):
I can't say that I could ever fly like that, but I do appreciate the idea of trying...
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Friday, September 08, 2006
Hah--They Published My Letter!!!
I Knew That They Would...
Oops, I just found out that unfortunately our localfishwrapper newspaper now requires a subscription fee to read the on-line editorials and reader comments.
Dang it...
Just in case you missed it, here's my words again for your enjoyment:
The Wednesday headline in this newspaper stating “Commissioner balks at fee” caught my eye, and upon reading further into the article, I was almost ready to personally visit Commissioner’s Thaw and Keller to give them a simple, short answer to their questions about the renovated Casino “being for public use and not a commercial enterprise.”
We’re not talking rocket science here ladies and gentlemen, because all our good commissioners have to do is pick up the phone and call the Ritz Theater in downtown Brunswick to find out that the proposed $75 per hour rental rates for the renovated Theater space are quite acceptable.
Auditoriums in Savannah and Jacksonville cost even more.
Further, I believe that meeting rooms made available at a rate of $25 per hour compare favorably—in fact they are a bargain—when compared with other similar facilities here on the island.
I, personally, resent our elected officials spending over $3,000,000 of hard earned taxpayer funds on a building, and then not expecting to operate the renovated facility in a fiscally responsible manner.
Remember a building called “The New Casino” that was torn down a few years ago because of the inept maintenance and management practices of previous county administrations?
Maintenance and utilities cost money—at least at my house they do—and I don’t care if The Island Players or the Jamaican Bob Sled team is allowed to use the building, as long as the Glynn County taxpayers at least break even in the process.
Commissioner Keller actually responed to my E-mail correspondence, but I've yet to hear from Mr. Thaw & Senior Fendig.
Gentlemen...I'm still waiting...
Oops, I just found out that unfortunately our local
Dang it...
Just in case you missed it, here's my words again for your enjoyment:
The Wednesday headline in this newspaper stating “Commissioner balks at fee” caught my eye, and upon reading further into the article, I was almost ready to personally visit Commissioner’s Thaw and Keller to give them a simple, short answer to their questions about the renovated Casino “being for public use and not a commercial enterprise.”
We’re not talking rocket science here ladies and gentlemen, because all our good commissioners have to do is pick up the phone and call the Ritz Theater in downtown Brunswick to find out that the proposed $75 per hour rental rates for the renovated Theater space are quite acceptable.
Auditoriums in Savannah and Jacksonville cost even more.
Further, I believe that meeting rooms made available at a rate of $25 per hour compare favorably—in fact they are a bargain—when compared with other similar facilities here on the island.
I, personally, resent our elected officials spending over $3,000,000 of hard earned taxpayer funds on a building, and then not expecting to operate the renovated facility in a fiscally responsible manner.
Remember a building called “The New Casino” that was torn down a few years ago because of the inept maintenance and management practices of previous county administrations?
Maintenance and utilities cost money—at least at my house they do—and I don’t care if The Island Players or the Jamaican Bob Sled team is allowed to use the building, as long as the Glynn County taxpayers at least break even in the process.
Commissioner Keller actually responed to my E-mail correspondence, but I've yet to hear from Mr. Thaw & Senior Fendig.
Gentlemen...I'm still waiting...
Waaaaah...Waaaaah...Booo Hoooo Hoooo
If The Shoe Fits...Buy TWO Pair
It seems that former president Bill Clinton and all of the "Clintonites" have theirpanties in a wad boxers in a bunch this morning.
Why don't you click on the above link and go take a gander at ABC's current delimma.
(I'mbeating on the computers doing computer system maintenance this morning, transfering files and backing up to our 200 Gb external drive, defraging the internal disk...things like that...so posting will be light until I'm done...)
It seems that former president Bill Clinton and all of the "Clintonites" have their
Why don't you click on the above link and go take a gander at ABC's current delimma.
(I'm
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Local Politics
They Can’t See The Forrest For The Trees
As I’ve said many, many times before here on the ole’ blog…I’m really just a simple southern boy—I even call myself a “Redneck.”
I make self effacing statements like this in part to remind myself of where I come from, not where I’ve been in the world or even where I might be going.
The past couple of years of my life have been spent doing things which I never even really thought about doing in the years prior to moving to our little island here on the Georgia coast.
Acting and working behind the scenes in the local community theaters; writing thousands of words for public consumption each day, and even more words for my books that I’m working on; and finally these two dirty words:
POLITICAL ACTIVISM
I love to give the politicians Hell, both local and national, in a polite, rational, reasoned sort of way.
Last week it was a letter to US Senator Saxby Chambliss, and this week it’s our local Glynn County commissioners Cap Fendig, Uli Keller, and Tony Thaw which have come into my crosshairs.
Two of these three suspects are life long residents of the Golden Isles, and apparently for that reason they, like many other local government officials and some residents, take what we have here for granted.
They want to CHANGE everything.
They want to SPRUCE THINGS UP more than just a little.
Heck, they want to TEAR HALF OF EVERYTHING DOWN, no matter how beloved and historic it might be, and replace it with new bricks and mortar.
Then they want to pave over what’s left with asphalt, and plant a few new trees along the edges just to make people like me feel a little better.
Case in point, the waterfront area down by what we call “The Village” here on the island.
“The Village” was originally all there was here on St. Simons Island. Up until the 1960’s it contained the only hardware store, pharmacy, grocer, and other retail shops on the entire island. Today it has mostly been relegated to a collection of little shops selling trinkets and T-shirts to tourists.
Adjacent to “The Village” is a place called the Old Casino, and adjacent to that is an Olympic sized swimming pool sitting less than twenty yards from the Atlantic Ocean, with a beautiful view of Jekyll Island.
I bet we have the only public swimming pool between Key West, Florida and Auburn, Maine sitting in a position like that. I also KNOW that where pools exist in other similar venues that people are paying big bucks to join swanky private beach clubs in order to get access, and dodging their way through interviews with snobby membership committees and having to wear designer clothes and valet park their Volvo’s while waiting in line to get in on Saturday afternoon.
Not so here in Georgia.
Our elected idiots want to close the pool, fill it in with dirt and concrete, and build a park on top of the area. The excuse is that the pool isn’t used very much, and it costs too much to operate.
No WONDER, the dang thing is hardly ever open, and they refuse to generate any revenue with it because the county recreation department is only in the business of mowing the grass on soccer and softball fields. Apparently no one can swim down at the administration building or something.
Our scuba dive club in Atlanta was BEGGING to rent facilities like the one we have here to conduct training and classes, and all we could ever get was the use of shallow moldy facilities in a defunct health club.
This pool is 15’ deep for God’s sake, but NooooooOOOOOO, you don’t think that the county could rent it out for swimming and scuba classes rather than letting it sit idle for most of the year?
This year they opened it in JUNE, and closed it LABOR DAY, and then it was only open something like Tuesday through Saturday for about four hours each day.
It makes my head want to start spinning…
Next we come to this morning’s real topic of concern…the so called “Old Casino.”
The Old Casino is not really a casino in the gambling sense, what it was built as was a library, county offices, a visitor’s center, and a movie theater. Again, it’s a late 1940’s vintage structure which sits adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean (about 50 yards away.)
After having to tear down the adjacent New Casino building three years ago because of poor maintenance and neglect, the county recently decided to get off of their butts and spend a little over $3,000,000 on a total renovation and enlargement of the facility.
The movie theater had been long ago outdated and converted into a space used for plays and concerts, with the addition of two dressing rooms on the backstage area sometime in the 60’s or 70’s. In recent years the space had been rented by the local theater company for a ridiculously low price of $3,000 per year, and they agreed to manage the building and pay the annual utilities.
By manage the building, it might be better said DOMINATE the building—locking it up and refusing to let any other entity use “their “ stage.
I personally spent a miserable 15 months dealing with the self important ingrates that called themselves "a theater company," so I know what I'm talking about here, and when I retired I resolved to make sure that their dominance of a facility owned by the public would not continue in the future
(It might be fair to say that I have a very large axe to grind here...heck, I've got a trunk load of axes....)
Any way...This latest renovation using SPLOST tax dollars saw a massive expansion of the backstage area, additional room in the wings of the stage for actors and handling of set pieces, new seating, an orchestra pit, and state of the art lighting and sound systems.
So good so far.
The problem is, as I said earlier, I know the politics and personalities behind the theater company which is expecting to march back into the renovated building and once again sit astride the stage after a 14 month absence, and it was just made public that they’re yet again expecting to negotiate a sweetheart deal on the lease.
I did a little checking around in anticipation of this situation developing, and here’s the text to the letter I wrote this morning to The Brunswick News, with similar wording being directed by E-mail to the three county Commissioners:
The Wednesday headline in this newspaper stating “Commissioner balks at fee” caught my eye, and upon reading further into the article, I was almost ready to personally visit Commissioner’s Thaw and Keller to give them a simple, short answer to their questions about the renovated Casino “being for public use and not a commercial enterprise.”
We’re not talking rocket science here ladies and gentlemen, because all our good commissioners have to do is pick up the phone and call the Ritz Theater in downtown Brunswick to find out that the proposed $75 per hour rental rates for the renovated Theater space are quite acceptable.
Auditoriums in Savannah and Jacksonville cost even more.
Further, I believe that meeting rooms made available at a rate of $25 per hour compare favorably—in fact they are a bargain—when compared with other similar facilities here on the island.
I, personally, resent our elected officials spending over $3,000,000 of hard earned taxpayer funds on a building, and then not expecting to operate the renovated facility in a fiscally responsible manner.
Remember a building called “The New Casino” that was torn down a few years ago because of the inept maintenance and management practices of previous county administrations?
Maintenance and utilities cost money—at least at my house they do—and I don’t care if The Island Players or the Jamaican Bob Sled team is allowed to use the building, as long as the Glynn County taxpayers at least break even in the process.
As I’ve said many, many times before here on the ole’ blog…I’m really just a simple southern boy—I even call myself a “Redneck.”
I make self effacing statements like this in part to remind myself of where I come from, not where I’ve been in the world or even where I might be going.
The past couple of years of my life have been spent doing things which I never even really thought about doing in the years prior to moving to our little island here on the Georgia coast.
Acting and working behind the scenes in the local community theaters; writing thousands of words for public consumption each day, and even more words for my books that I’m working on; and finally these two dirty words:
POLITICAL ACTIVISM
I love to give the politicians Hell, both local and national, in a polite, rational, reasoned sort of way.
Last week it was a letter to US Senator Saxby Chambliss, and this week it’s our local Glynn County commissioners Cap Fendig, Uli Keller, and Tony Thaw which have come into my crosshairs.
Two of these three suspects are life long residents of the Golden Isles, and apparently for that reason they, like many other local government officials and some residents, take what we have here for granted.
They want to CHANGE everything.
They want to SPRUCE THINGS UP more than just a little.
Heck, they want to TEAR HALF OF EVERYTHING DOWN, no matter how beloved and historic it might be, and replace it with new bricks and mortar.
Then they want to pave over what’s left with asphalt, and plant a few new trees along the edges just to make people like me feel a little better.
Case in point, the waterfront area down by what we call “The Village” here on the island.
“The Village” was originally all there was here on St. Simons Island. Up until the 1960’s it contained the only hardware store, pharmacy, grocer, and other retail shops on the entire island. Today it has mostly been relegated to a collection of little shops selling trinkets and T-shirts to tourists.
Adjacent to “The Village” is a place called the Old Casino, and adjacent to that is an Olympic sized swimming pool sitting less than twenty yards from the Atlantic Ocean, with a beautiful view of Jekyll Island.
I bet we have the only public swimming pool between Key West, Florida and Auburn, Maine sitting in a position like that. I also KNOW that where pools exist in other similar venues that people are paying big bucks to join swanky private beach clubs in order to get access, and dodging their way through interviews with snobby membership committees and having to wear designer clothes and valet park their Volvo’s while waiting in line to get in on Saturday afternoon.
Not so here in Georgia.
Our elected idiots want to close the pool, fill it in with dirt and concrete, and build a park on top of the area. The excuse is that the pool isn’t used very much, and it costs too much to operate.
No WONDER, the dang thing is hardly ever open, and they refuse to generate any revenue with it because the county recreation department is only in the business of mowing the grass on soccer and softball fields. Apparently no one can swim down at the administration building or something.
Our scuba dive club in Atlanta was BEGGING to rent facilities like the one we have here to conduct training and classes, and all we could ever get was the use of shallow moldy facilities in a defunct health club.
This pool is 15’ deep for God’s sake, but NooooooOOOOOO, you don’t think that the county could rent it out for swimming and scuba classes rather than letting it sit idle for most of the year?
This year they opened it in JUNE, and closed it LABOR DAY, and then it was only open something like Tuesday through Saturday for about four hours each day.
It makes my head want to start spinning…
Next we come to this morning’s real topic of concern…the so called “Old Casino.”
The Old Casino is not really a casino in the gambling sense, what it was built as was a library, county offices, a visitor’s center, and a movie theater. Again, it’s a late 1940’s vintage structure which sits adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean (about 50 yards away.)
After having to tear down the adjacent New Casino building three years ago because of poor maintenance and neglect, the county recently decided to get off of their butts and spend a little over $3,000,000 on a total renovation and enlargement of the facility.
The movie theater had been long ago outdated and converted into a space used for plays and concerts, with the addition of two dressing rooms on the backstage area sometime in the 60’s or 70’s. In recent years the space had been rented by the local theater company for a ridiculously low price of $3,000 per year, and they agreed to manage the building and pay the annual utilities.
By manage the building, it might be better said DOMINATE the building—locking it up and refusing to let any other entity use “their “ stage.
I personally spent a miserable 15 months dealing with the self important ingrates that called themselves "a theater company," so I know what I'm talking about here, and when I retired I resolved to make sure that their dominance of a facility owned by the public would not continue in the future
(It might be fair to say that I have a very large axe to grind here...heck, I've got a trunk load of axes....)
Any way...This latest renovation using SPLOST tax dollars saw a massive expansion of the backstage area, additional room in the wings of the stage for actors and handling of set pieces, new seating, an orchestra pit, and state of the art lighting and sound systems.
So good so far.
The problem is, as I said earlier, I know the politics and personalities behind the theater company which is expecting to march back into the renovated building and once again sit astride the stage after a 14 month absence, and it was just made public that they’re yet again expecting to negotiate a sweetheart deal on the lease.
I did a little checking around in anticipation of this situation developing, and here’s the text to the letter I wrote this morning to The Brunswick News, with similar wording being directed by E-mail to the three county Commissioners:
The Wednesday headline in this newspaper stating “Commissioner balks at fee” caught my eye, and upon reading further into the article, I was almost ready to personally visit Commissioner’s Thaw and Keller to give them a simple, short answer to their questions about the renovated Casino “being for public use and not a commercial enterprise.”
We’re not talking rocket science here ladies and gentlemen, because all our good commissioners have to do is pick up the phone and call the Ritz Theater in downtown Brunswick to find out that the proposed $75 per hour rental rates for the renovated Theater space are quite acceptable.
Auditoriums in Savannah and Jacksonville cost even more.
Further, I believe that meeting rooms made available at a rate of $25 per hour compare favorably—in fact they are a bargain—when compared with other similar facilities here on the island.
I, personally, resent our elected officials spending over $3,000,000 of hard earned taxpayer funds on a building, and then not expecting to operate the renovated facility in a fiscally responsible manner.
Remember a building called “The New Casino” that was torn down a few years ago because of the inept maintenance and management practices of previous county administrations?
Maintenance and utilities cost money—at least at my house they do—and I don’t care if The Island Players or the Jamaican Bob Sled team is allowed to use the building, as long as the Glynn County taxpayers at least break even in the process.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I'm doing Injuneerin’
Sometimes I Forget That Am One…
Sorry folks, but in between being useless and lazy over the Labor Day Holiday weekend and in addition to writing my blogs, I’ve also been busy the past few weeks working on some nerdy research for some consulting engineering work that I’m doing with my friend Wayne Kirsner, the “Water Hammer Guru.”
Wayne and I go back about 17 years or so, to a time when I worked with him as an “Energy Consultant” at a now defunct consulting engineering firm in Atlanta. Since then we’ve kept in touch socially, and occasionally he employs me in his forensic engineering investigations because of my practical experience building giant things out of steel pipes and beams.
Can you imagine going into a courtroom to testify as to why a man died being “cooked” by 500 degree F steam and condensate in a manhole after a giant valve failed during the startup of a boiler plant?
Gruesome stuff, but somebody’s got to know how to figure out what happened so another life won’t be lost, and Wayne’s recognized as one of the best expert witnesses out there in the world today.
Any way, we’re currently working on some stuff relating to what’s commonly called “water hammer” in piping systems. Almost everyone has heard the audible effects of water hammer at one time or the other in a house or apartment.
Water hammer is that “thunk” that you hear when the dishwasher, washing machine, or even a toilet stops filling with water. It doesn’t happen every time, in every residence, and there are ways to prevent it from happening or reduce it’s effects if you have a water hammer problem.
We’re not really worrying about making money fixing restrooms, we’re more interested in talking about what happens when you have a water hammer in a 24” diameter pipe full of water or steam. In those situations it’s not just a annoyance, but, as I said before, it can be DEADLY in an industrial setting.
The technical name which the pointy headed PHD types use for water hammer is a “transient in a hydronic system.” Not taking MYSELF too seriously, I love being irreverent and picking on anyone that has spent money paying to torture themselves with six or more years of college education, so I do things like this with Photoshop:
Sorry folks, but in between being useless and lazy over the Labor Day Holiday weekend and in addition to writing my blogs, I’ve also been busy the past few weeks working on some nerdy research for some consulting engineering work that I’m doing with my friend Wayne Kirsner, the “Water Hammer Guru.”
Wayne and I go back about 17 years or so, to a time when I worked with him as an “Energy Consultant” at a now defunct consulting engineering firm in Atlanta. Since then we’ve kept in touch socially, and occasionally he employs me in his forensic engineering investigations because of my practical experience building giant things out of steel pipes and beams.
Can you imagine going into a courtroom to testify as to why a man died being “cooked” by 500 degree F steam and condensate in a manhole after a giant valve failed during the startup of a boiler plant?
Gruesome stuff, but somebody’s got to know how to figure out what happened so another life won’t be lost, and Wayne’s recognized as one of the best expert witnesses out there in the world today.
Any way, we’re currently working on some stuff relating to what’s commonly called “water hammer” in piping systems. Almost everyone has heard the audible effects of water hammer at one time or the other in a house or apartment.
Water hammer is that “thunk” that you hear when the dishwasher, washing machine, or even a toilet stops filling with water. It doesn’t happen every time, in every residence, and there are ways to prevent it from happening or reduce it’s effects if you have a water hammer problem.
We’re not really worrying about making money fixing restrooms, we’re more interested in talking about what happens when you have a water hammer in a 24” diameter pipe full of water or steam. In those situations it’s not just a annoyance, but, as I said before, it can be DEADLY in an industrial setting.
The technical name which the pointy headed PHD types use for water hammer is a “transient in a hydronic system.” Not taking MYSELF too seriously, I love being irreverent and picking on anyone that has spent money paying to torture themselves with six or more years of college education, so I do things like this with Photoshop:
No it's not actually the same as Hobos in your bath tubs, but I find it funny. You’ll have to excuse me now, but I’ve got to go check out our “hydronic systems”…
we might have some problems I need to solve…
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
What Really Went On In Lebanon
Stuff The US Media Doesn't Show Or Tell Us About...
It has been pointed out to me by my blog idols over at Powerline that Itai Anghel, an Israeli photo journalist, spent a mind boggling evening last month following a group of IDF soldiers on a mission from Israel into a Lebanese border village known to be a Hezbollah stronghold.
Here's a link to the 25 minute video:
http://switch248-01.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ClipMediaID=209947&ak=63628786
I posted the entire link so that if you click on it and it doesn't play, you can cut and paste it into your browser address window and watch it.
You really need to watch it.
Seriously…YOU really need to watch the entire thing…it’s not fake drama…
It’s REAL LIFE military action.
I know that a number of my readers read my rantings at work and don't have time to watch 25 minutes of video, but I suggest that you go home, pour yourself a drink, and sit down at your home computer and be prepared to have the crap scared out of you.
I’m pretty sure that our own military has been going through the exact same scenarios for the past three plus years in Afghanistan and Iraq, and until you have been there like Cameraman Itai has you really have no idea what it is really like to be in close quarters night combat.
I really can’t believe that a journalist could be so brave, or that he would ever go back after that experience.
Another thing that struck me was how young everyone was in the video, even the company commander.
The point which I'd like to make in this reference is the ridiculous complaints of the various piecenicks and Democrats that the training of the new Iraqi Army is taking so long to accomplish.
What total idiotic crap, I say, and I’m surprised that no one in the current administration has had the intellectual or intestinal fortitude to point out the problems encountered in trying to produce an “Instant Army.”
Being the intellectual giant that I am, I want you to think about that idea (an instant army) with me for a minute.
Here in the United States, since the elimination of the draft, there are basically two ways of joining the military. You can either (a) walk into a recruiting station and sign your name on the dotted line, or (b) attend college in an ROTC program or one of the Service Academies like West Point and paste Ensigns or Lieutenants bars on your collar when you graduate and march into active duty.
Then every year or two, IF you learn everything you are supposed to learn and keep your “nose clean” (i.e. leave the commanders’ wife alone and don’t get into fights or get convicted of DUI), you get a promotion of rank.
In the process you also learn something about fighting wars and leading other soldiers, along with the opportunity to see some of the rest of the world east of NY City and West of San Francisco.
After ten years, you might make the rank of Major, at fifteen years Bird Colonel, and at twenty years, if you did everything absolutely perfect and kissed all of the correct rear ends, you might have one star on your cap (Brigadier General)
Ten Years…Fifteen Years…Twenty Years…it takes a good deal of TIME to make an Army, because it takes TIME to train fighting soldiers and LEADERS.
You just can’t snap your fingers and have them appear our of thin air like John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi would have you believe.
Next you say…”but Iraq already had an Army before we invaded, what about those officers?”
Is there anyone out there really stupid enough to want us to attempt to trust the animals that were employed under Sadam’s regime? Yes, I agree that some were probably just going along with the program to protect their own wallets and health, but seriously—how do we know which ones to employ?
All I do know is that even if I was a healthy 21 year old again, I would sure hate having to run around holding a pair of night vision goggles while snipers wearing their own goggles (thanks to Russia, Germany, and France) took pot shots at my butt.
Watch that video, DAMMIT.
It has been pointed out to me by my blog idols over at Powerline that Itai Anghel, an Israeli photo journalist, spent a mind boggling evening last month following a group of IDF soldiers on a mission from Israel into a Lebanese border village known to be a Hezbollah stronghold.
Here's a link to the 25 minute video:
http://switch248-01.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ClipMediaID=209947&ak=63628786
I posted the entire link so that if you click on it and it doesn't play, you can cut and paste it into your browser address window and watch it.
You really need to watch it.
Seriously…YOU really need to watch the entire thing…it’s not fake drama…
It’s REAL LIFE military action.
I know that a number of my readers read my rantings at work and don't have time to watch 25 minutes of video, but I suggest that you go home, pour yourself a drink, and sit down at your home computer and be prepared to have the crap scared out of you.
I’m pretty sure that our own military has been going through the exact same scenarios for the past three plus years in Afghanistan and Iraq, and until you have been there like Cameraman Itai has you really have no idea what it is really like to be in close quarters night combat.
I really can’t believe that a journalist could be so brave, or that he would ever go back after that experience.
Another thing that struck me was how young everyone was in the video, even the company commander.
The point which I'd like to make in this reference is the ridiculous complaints of the various piecenicks and Democrats that the training of the new Iraqi Army is taking so long to accomplish.
What total idiotic crap, I say, and I’m surprised that no one in the current administration has had the intellectual or intestinal fortitude to point out the problems encountered in trying to produce an “Instant Army.”
Being the intellectual giant that I am, I want you to think about that idea (an instant army) with me for a minute.
Here in the United States, since the elimination of the draft, there are basically two ways of joining the military. You can either (a) walk into a recruiting station and sign your name on the dotted line, or (b) attend college in an ROTC program or one of the Service Academies like West Point and paste Ensigns or Lieutenants bars on your collar when you graduate and march into active duty.
Then every year or two, IF you learn everything you are supposed to learn and keep your “nose clean” (i.e. leave the commanders’ wife alone and don’t get into fights or get convicted of DUI), you get a promotion of rank.
In the process you also learn something about fighting wars and leading other soldiers, along with the opportunity to see some of the rest of the world east of NY City and West of San Francisco.
After ten years, you might make the rank of Major, at fifteen years Bird Colonel, and at twenty years, if you did everything absolutely perfect and kissed all of the correct rear ends, you might have one star on your cap (Brigadier General)
Ten Years…Fifteen Years…Twenty Years…it takes a good deal of TIME to make an Army, because it takes TIME to train fighting soldiers and LEADERS.
You just can’t snap your fingers and have them appear our of thin air like John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi would have you believe.
Next you say…”but Iraq already had an Army before we invaded, what about those officers?”
Is there anyone out there really stupid enough to want us to attempt to trust the animals that were employed under Sadam’s regime? Yes, I agree that some were probably just going along with the program to protect their own wallets and health, but seriously—how do we know which ones to employ?
All I do know is that even if I was a healthy 21 year old again, I would sure hate having to run around holding a pair of night vision goggles while snipers wearing their own goggles (thanks to Russia, Germany, and France) took pot shots at my butt.
Watch that video, DAMMIT.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Birthday Successful
World Still Crazy...
Well Folks, I'm rested, I'm lazy, and I still feel quite full at this early morning hour.
I did exactly what I wanted to do almost every minute of the day yesterday--and that would be...
VIRTUALLY NOTHING.
(I'm getting pretty good at it also)
My goal was for us to hide from the vacationers and tourists on our little island the entire weekend, and we were quite successful at it in retrospect.
I had Pat make sure that I was awake from my midday nap by 4 PM, then I ran to the grocery for some fresh baked bread in anticipation of cooking Chicken Piccata for dinner.
Then, after a couple of hours of conversation, antipasta, and dinner with our guests, I was asleep on the sofa by 9 PM.
I'm thinking about hiring a limo and some tugboats to move my bloated carcass around the island, and this year I'll just eat and gain weight and soon I'll probably look like Jabba the Hutt in the movie "Star Wars."
Here's a preview:
Then again...maybe not...I don't want to look too much like Ted Kennedy...
Well Folks, I'm rested, I'm lazy, and I still feel quite full at this early morning hour.
I did exactly what I wanted to do almost every minute of the day yesterday--and that would be...
VIRTUALLY NOTHING.
(I'm getting pretty good at it also)
My goal was for us to hide from the vacationers and tourists on our little island the entire weekend, and we were quite successful at it in retrospect.
I had Pat make sure that I was awake from my midday nap by 4 PM, then I ran to the grocery for some fresh baked bread in anticipation of cooking Chicken Piccata for dinner.
Then, after a couple of hours of conversation, antipasta, and dinner with our guests, I was asleep on the sofa by 9 PM.
I'm thinking about hiring a limo and some tugboats to move my bloated carcass around the island, and this year I'll just eat and gain weight and soon I'll probably look like Jabba the Hutt in the movie "Star Wars."
Here's a preview:
Then again...maybe not...I don't want to look too much like Ted Kennedy...
