Archive for April, 2009

At last…at last.  I was really beginning to think the stuff Army guys say about the Navy were all true!  Fantastically good shots guys!  Thank you all!

And now, because elsewhere I was accused of being a “shock and awe” fan and it is assumed I hate Somalians in general and want everyone killed, just let me say….anyone who has read this blog for more than five minutes knows that is not the case.

But, feeling pity for a people immersed in misery does not equate to acceptance of any sort of brutal and criminal activity by members of that people.  Piracy has ALWAYS been unacceptable and punished with death almost universally.  If we live in a world where most nations decry negotiation and giving into terrorist demands, I, for one, fail to see how making piracy profitable by paying ransoms to regain ships and crews is any different.  To suggest that suffering and need justify ANY sort of behavior at all is welcoming anarchy with open arms.

Now, if that stance is still going to be equated with the “blast them ALL into the stone age” mentality I HAVE seen suggested elsewhere…then I must say, someone needs to go back to reading class. As that is NOT what I said.  I said shoot pirates in the act of piracy.  Very different thing.

How hard is it, guys?  I mean, holy shit, have you never seen a movie?

Don’t you have any Marine snipers aboard?

Don’t you have any Seals?

Four Somalian pirates sitting in a lifeboat with one American Captain.  How fucking hard can it be?  I mean that poor bastard jumped overboard to try swimming TO YOU, and you still couldn’t move fast enough to save him.

Now, they are sending a captive ship with more of their ilk to take the Capt Phillips to SHORE.  DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN!

Even the FRENCH have attacked pirates this week and taken back their prize.

WTF is YOUR problem?

And if this is a governmental wussy issue, for Gods’ sake grow some balls!  Kick some ass.  Get back our guy.  If we don’t “negotiate with terrorists” why do we make nice with pirates and send them snacks and drinking water?  You Frakking Ball-busting Imbeciles this is NOT a kidnapping, stop negotiating and SHOOT them!

We all know the economy is sucking, right?  So, how does the business community seek to keep us happy and spending whatever money we can to keep them solvent?

Well, if you are the Bank of America, you piss off people who CAN pay their credit card bills.  Yes, I got a letter from them yesterday and will be canceling my card today.  First, change my card to a variable rate, so you can jack the interest any time you feel like it.  Then, make it worse!  You see, even though I pay an amount ten times larger than the bill asks for every month, always on time and never over my limit, they are “changing business practices” and this includes raising the interest rate on my platinum Visa to 24.9%.  You know, the word my brain uses to classify that interest rate is “usurous” —and it should be illegal.

I am a good credit risk.  My card will have zero balance by October, but it will be cut to ribbons and mailed back with the next payment TODAY.  Bankers ARE greedy imbeciles.  They don’t think they can make enough money off people who still DO have jobs so they hike the rates?  Yes, you bet your Brooks Brothers clad asses I will “refuse” this rate increase.

Oh, and other merchants, like fabric stores and grocery markets?  STOP insulting me by calling me a “guest”.  (1) If I don’t sleep on your premises I am not a guest.  (2) I HOST guests occasionally and they don’t PAY for their food and such.  So let’s keep our relationship professional, alright?  You call me a CUSTOMER, remember I am always right and I won’t find it necessary to leave my purchase on a shelf and leave because you keep me waiting in line for ten minutes.

Grrrrr…..is it the weekend yet?

America has seen more caskets coming home—but at last, at least, we do see them on the news that so chooses to cover their last homecoming.  (As always, photographs of the fallen and other information can be found by going to the Main Page(walkofthefallen.com) and hitting the “Links” button)

U.S. Army Sgt. Devin C. Poche, 25, of Jacksonville, N.C., died in Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip A Myers, 30, of Hopewell Va, died  in Afghanistan of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.

Cpt. Vasile-Iuliu Ungaras, 32, of Romania, died in Afghanistan of an IED attack.

Cpt. Tiberius Petre, 33, of Romania, died in Afghanistan of an IED attack

U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel J. Beard, 24, of Buffalo, N.Y., died  in Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

U.S. Army Spc. Israel Candelaria Mejias, 28, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, died in Iraq, of wounds sustained when a mine detonated near him during combat operations.

U.S. Army Spc. Adam M. Kuligowski, 21, of Arlington, Va., died  in  Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Stephen F. Dearmon, 21, of Crossville, Tenn., died  as a result of a non-hostile incident in  Iraq

PFC Azdin Chadli, 20, of the Netherlands, died in Afghanistan from the wounds caused by a rocket attack.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Blaise A. Oleski, 22, of Holland Patent, N.Y., while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan

I caught just a small bit of Keith Olbermann’s show the other night.  The bit with film of a U.S. service member’s casket coming home—the first to be legally filmed since the first Bush Presidency.  The determination of whether to allow press coverage is now left up to the family of the deceased and the widow said “Yes.”

I recall the nightly news back during Viet Nam days, how workmanlike the film made it look—big planes with their tailgates down and casket after casket unloaded.  This seemed so different:  a single casket on a big lift from the high door of the modern jet.

But then, after the flag draped box was loaded into a vehicle, and as it drove away the camera ran over the face of a saluting female soldier.  And then rushed back to her face and zoomed in upon her windblown hair.  And the tear that ran down her face.

A tear.  Was it grief, for yet another fellow service member gone?  Or was it relief that now, she and her co-workers,who must have unloaded many a hidden-from-the-public casket, need not bear that weight of grief all alone?  Now the country can see the cost, feel that moment of hush in conversation—feel at least an instant of recognition of sacrifice and suffering.

I take a rather old fashioned Hellenic view of those who die in war: they MUST be given the proper respect and burial they deserve.  To me, it violates that requirement to hide the very sight of their home-coming caskets from the Americans they were told they were dying for in that war.  After all, if America is to be pumped up on the “they die serving us” lie (because mind you, Iraq was NOT threatening us), should not all of America pause to note their loss?

I wait to see if the ordinary news bothers to show us these final homecomings.  Or will the networks cycnically decide that the war is old news now?  I will be asking our local network outlets why so…especially since I live within spitting distance of an Army post, an Airforce base, and several Navy installations.  Tell me it is irrelevant here?  Right.

When my husband was in the military and big exercises loomed, I remember helping him pack his “Alice”….the name taken from the acronym for the rucksack.  The goal was to get as much good and necessary stuff into it as possible, but with as little weight as possible.  Because you would be carrying this around on your back like some kind of militant snail for the foreseeable future.  No matter how hard we worked, it always tended to weigh well over a hundred pounds.  Even my buff and bull-shouldered mate found it tiresome.  His knees protested a good deal.

Well, there are engineers now with a mind to fixing that.  They have the technology and the will to HULC you up.  No, they don’t intend to turn you into a cartoon-green character; but Robo-soldier, maybe.  The HULC is the Human Universal Load Carrier designed by Lockheed Martin to help a person hoist and move at 10 mph under a load of up to 200 pounds.  Yes, the military is drooling, of course.

While my sympathy for every man and woman in uniform humping along under a full ruck makes me applaud this device, part of my shudders a bit because of one paragraph in the descriptive article: “U.S. Army reports show that 20,000 soldiers are classified as “non-deployable.” ……….half cannot be deployed because of physical problems, such as an inability to haul heavy loads.”  What the article does not openly say is that a goodly number of those are men and women injured in battle and THAT is why tehy cannot hoist the heavy loads—sometimes even the body armor they need is too heavy.

So, this device could send medically profiled troops back to the war zone augmented by this “exoskeleton” to help them bear the load.  They can still be severely crippled and troubled in their private time with family and post-military life, of course.  Nobody has figured out how to fix THAT…..but the best and brightest have been at work making sure they can hump weapons, radios, bombs and all the other accouterments of destruction to continue making war.  One step beyond the old military saw about “use and abuse”….I fear that this new device will simply ensure the military can use them completely UP!

We can’t cure cancer, and we can’t stop children from starving or dying of simple diseases, but the beat of war drums will go on and on and on.  What if the best and brightest minds were paid to solve the issues of inequity and need that cause wars instead of working on the way to move more firepower?  What if HULC could be on the ground in Abruzzo Italy today…to lift rubble off earthquake survivors awaiting rescue?

Yeah, the beat goes on…..all I need is my tambourine.

I spent hands-on time with the geese this morning.  Carried them up to the back yard, and then kept Alba, the female to gentle her a bit.  She had not been handled much as a gosling and still is less friendly than her mate, Mith.  He came up close to comfort her and allowed himself to be stroked.

Another moon phase, another list.  (For those of you who find your way here looking for moon phase information—look up the Farmer’s Almanac page)

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Raphael A. Futrell, 26, of Anderson, S.C., died in  Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

U.S. Navy  Lt. Florence B. Choe, 35, of El Cajon, Calif., and
Lt. j.g. Francis L. Toner IV, 26, of Narragansett, R.I., were killed in Afghanistan when an insurgent posing as an Afghan National Army soldier opened fire on personnel.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Nelson M. Lantigua, 20,  Fla., died  as a result of a non-hostile incident in Iraq.  (This man was found shot to death in his bunk.  It is under investigation and classed as a non-hostile incident.  This sounds very oxymoronic—being shot IS hostile, after all, right?  But for military purposes “hostile” means the enemy.  This man was not shot by the enemy.)