Far East Cynic

Of the FEDEX crash at Narita:

Warning notice! Unhinged rant follows.
Profanity alert!

I’ve watched the uproar concerning the decision by outgoing SECNAV Winter to give an award with some interest. The flurry of activity on the blogosphere and on e-mail lists has been interesting to say the least.

Why Winter felt compelled  to give an award to a man who is a lightning rod for negativity is totally beyond me. How many ships are built in Johnstown,  PA anyway?

Oh wait,  Secretary Winter did a fine job of screwing up Navy Shipbuilding all by himself.

This is just the last in a long line of boneheaded Navy decisions, but it is just the kind of fluff issue that dickheads like this guy can sink their teeth into. And in so doing accomplish about as much as the tea party idiots are doing in their respective communities.

In other words,  nothing.

You want to get mad at the Navy about something?  I’ll give you something a lot more important to get mad at the Navy about.

Rather than sign a petition to get the Navy to withdraw an award it was within its right to do      ( whether it was smart to do or not is not the issue)  I’d rather sign a petition advocating criminal negligence charges for Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Winter, “CNO for life” Admiral Vern Clark,  and a whole host of lesser criminals. They are the ones who made Navy shipbuilding and aircraft procurement the train wreck that it is today.

Want to get mad about something? Get mad about the fact that we spending billions on the Little Crappy Ship and it can’t do a damn thing. Or that we are building a DDG that’s is the size of a WWII cruiser-while our NATO allies and our Korean and Japanese allies are building very nice designs that we could build under license for half the money. Get mad that the wings are falling off your P-3 fleet, because the Navy could not or would not make a decision to field a replacement when it could have 8 years ago. Same fact is true for ( Fill in the name of every Naval Aircraft except the F-18). Or how we retired perfectly good Spruance Destroyers and Oliver Hazard Perry FFG’s and did not build more Arleigh Burke class ships-the most successful ship design we have had in years. Get mad that the Navy-not the administration-is slow rolling procurement of the advanced Hawkeye so it can continue to pour money down the other aforementioned sinkholes.

Get mad about how the Navy has given itself over to the “Diversity Bullies” and that the words “best qualified” have become just a meaningless platitude. Get mad about the fact that the Navy-my Navy that I loved even if I did not always like it-has more admirals than it does ships right now. That in spite of losing almost 70,000 Sailors in the last 9 years, NOT ONE FLAG OFFICER BILLET has been lost. Get really angry that there are more Sailors ashore in CENTCOM than are afloat-a lot of whom are doing jobs they were never trained for. This while Navy at sea time and personnel operations tempo is the worst it has been in many years. There are ships making 9 month turnarounds between cruises.  For AEGIS BMD ships it is the norm now-not the exception.

Get white hot angry over flag officers who blindly accept lies, statements they know to be lies, so they could help out another flag officer create a billet for himself-at the expense of requiring 200 personnel to move 800 miles.  As a result of that one decision the Navy incurred a bill of over 2 million extra dollars a year in increased expenses for that one little group of personnel.

Get really angry over the fact that the Navy-my Navy-destroyed its overseas maintenance capability with the stroke of a pen, all so it could create a new stateside bureaucracy-and is now realizing that it has made a big mistake.

There’s a lot more on the list. If you want to be mad at your Navy, there are a lot better reasons than giving an award to John Murtha.

I had to get that off my chest.

Lovingly stolen from John Cole because its so true:

“The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders – people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground – and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people’s money would make his dick bigger.”

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If Sarah Palin is upset-then Obama talking about the Special Olympics is probably a good thing.

Seems she  is in a snit today:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate for vice president in 2008 and the mother of an infant with Down syndrome, said in a statement on Friday, “This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world.”

Maybe the President should talk about forced teen marriages and how successful abstinence only education is then? You know-something she is familiar with? By the way, maybe she would like to explain why she turned down money to help special needs children while she’s at it. Since she loves them so much and all.

(NOTE: I am aware that her daughter did not go through with the marriage. Smart boy not to marry into that family).

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You know, the same people who are so up in arms about Obama saying his bowling was lousy, are just as quick to say something stupid themselves.  Its a sad commentary in general on the level of public discourse in this country. That’s what happens sometimes. We should all just lighten up.

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Sam Kinison used to do a routine about how there was no substitute for women. But as he said, ” I guarantee you there are some scientist somewhere working on the artificial p**sy.”

He may have been right:

Think of the business from truck drivers alone!

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Seeing her made me think of the last BSG episode that I watched tonight. See the part with all the robots at the end? Maybe the Cylons are closer than we thought……

Oh boy, there is still hope!

Norika Fujiwara is single again:

Norika Fujiwara and Tomonori Jinnai, who married only two years ago, have announced they will be getting divorced. According to the Asahi, Fujiwara is currently working in Kenya and will return to Japan next week. The divorce is expected to be finalized shortly.

I’ve been lusting after admiring Norika since I first went to Japan. She was on TV a lot when I first got there-and in a bunch of TV advertisements for Japanese beer. Even today she is still quite beautiful-even if some mileage has accumulated. She did voice-over for Princess Fiona in Shrek 2 for the Japanese release.

And now she is wealthy-and free for me.

On the campus of the The Citadel, in front of McAllister field house, there is this statue of a brass bulldog:

The Bulldog Monument is a memorial dedicated to Maj. Sam M. Savas, Jr., Class of 1951, who died in Vietnam in October 1965. He also served as a Citadel tactical officer from 1962 to 1965.  The Bulldog Monument is made from brass belt buckles, waist plates and breast plates collected from cadets.

His son Sam, was a class mate of mine. The second bronze plaque on the statue is dedicated to him. As with all things there is a great and sad story that goes along with it.

During my time at the Citadel, many times before a big weekend such as Parents day-Sam would go out in his PT gear and a bag full of Brasso with him-and polish up the Bulldog.  He did not have to do it-but he knew darn well that the college maintenance folks would probably not do a very good job, if they even did it at all. Thus, as a way to pay tribute to his father, he would make the statue gleam-even if just for a short while.

After graduation, Sam joined the herd of us who trotted off to Pensacola-and naval aviation schools command. He earned his wings as a helicopter pilot, flying H-46′s out of Norfolk. Along the way he picked up a wife. As he was over in the HC squadron and I was in an E-2 squadron-on opposite schedules of deployments, we did not get to see each other a lot. However we did some things together and also his wife became a friend of my ex-wife. When the time came to go to shore duty-he transferred down to Corpus Christi, TX. There he flew Huey’s as one of the station SAR pilots.

In October of 1985-twenty years to the month since his father was killed, Sam was killed in an aircraft accident near Padre Island in Texas. I can still remember answering the phone that night-on the other end of the line was Sam’s wife, telling us the news. She had only been notified herself a few hours before. Why she called me, I’ve never been exactly sure.  Soon after we got the word out to our classmates-many of whom were in the Norfolk area.

Sam was a great guy-and whenever I have returned to the campus, I make it a point to stop at the statue and linger a while. In the day, I used to walk past that statue every day on my way to practice with the crew team. I quite often-as a young man of 19, 20 and  21-did not give the statue a second glance. Now when I see it, the stark reality of father and son, memorialized so-haunts me. What must it have been like for Sam,  to see that just about every day of his four year stint as a cadet. I cannot imagine it.

While writing this post, I tried to find summaries of the mishap. They cannot be found-so rapidly is the record fading. They probably are on some data base at the Naval Safety Center.  Whenever I go to the Vietnam memorial in DC, I make it a point to look up his father’s name. Today’s new breed may know the place on campus and the names-but they do not know the real story. At least I think they do not. I would ask them to treasure their time there-when its gone, its gone.

But I will remember Sam-both father and son-and the destinies that have linked them now eternally together.

I went out tonight to celebrate the day. It was nice to see some small glimmering of night life in this sad little town:

Usually, I don’t have a taste for Guiness. Tonight I did.

Of course I always have a taste for this:

“Where’s me fortune?”

Wonder how long before Bill Kristol picks up on it?

TOKYO (AFP) – A Japanese doctor has apologised after saying that people should smoke themselves to an early death to save the country money on elderly care, according to his hospital.

“It is clear that medical costs will increase if non-smoking spreads,” the doctor said last week, according to Ida Hospital in Kawasaki City. “It’s better that people smoke a lot and die early.”

The man, whose name has been withheld, made the comment at a gathering of doctors, the hospital said.

Welcome back to the 30′s:

Mostly, it was spent in wistful remembrance of what it was like to be one of these guys….

(Select full screen mode-it looks better that way!)

God, they look so young! I don’t recall looking that young-sexy and mature was more my style .

Next few days will be some picture posts from our trip. I wish I could take credit for this video, but it was done by a very talented member of the Class of 97. For more videos from the Fortress of Learning-go here.

By the way, this song was quite appropriate in my day-before every one  became such a candy ass about drinking. Saturday night of a big weekend like Corps Day entailed a Senior Party-where your ticket money paid for the hall and the band-and you brought all your own booze. It was a great chance to watch your date from this event the night before:

get wild and crazy on the dance floor ( and if you were lucky later on at a select motel in the greater Charleston area!) ( Photo taken at the 2009 Corps Day Hop by another wearer of the ring).

Spike has the whole interview up with John Stewart and Jim Cramer. Both men make great points and Cramer to his credit-allows that if you dish it out, you got to be able to take it. Stewart hammers home some good points about how obscene some of the money making was just a year or so ago by certain worker unfriendly executives. Go watch the whole thing!

Greetings from the Holy City…………..

( Although I think Shopping Mall has a whole lot of churches too).

Taking a weekend trip here to show the S.O. some of my roots. And to properly celebrate the 166th birthday a proper military education. Posting will be light.

How to take a perfectly normal JO and turn him into a prima donna in just six short weeks:

When men were men-and women were ashore.

Don’t say “Littoral” to me-Say Blue Water Navy!

Say what you want about it-at least kicking Libyan ass did not come with General Order #1 and port visits to fun Mediterranean ports were the order of the day.

I’m in this video-I’m the guy in his rack on the smaller carrier you see. The one with no Tomcats, A-7′s or S-3′s.

Power projection and presence were words with meaning. H/T to Phib!

A few years back, while writing about the Japan World Series, I posted about the “Curse of the Colonel”-the one Col Sanders put on the Hanshin Tigers.

In 1985, the Tigers took the CL pennant and won the Japan Series. After they clinched the flag, a statue of Colonel Sanders was uprooted from its home in front of an Osaka KFC restaurant by celebrating fans and was joyously dumped in the river. The Colonel hasn’t been seen since and Hanshin has never won another Japan Series.

The drought may finally be over:

Divers looking for unexploded bombs found the missing Colonel on Tuesday, and returned him to the surface world, forever ending the Hanshin Tiger’s curse? They most recently won the league pennant in 2005, after losing their second trip to the Japan series in 2003.

From Mainichi Daily News, 3/11/09

The upper body of the statue was discovered at around 4 p.m. about 200 meters away from where it plunged into the water in 1985. When the figure was being pulled up by the crane on a salvage barge, construction workers could be heard to say, “It looks like a corpse.” However, when Tigers fans such as the riverside project foreman saw the statue, they exclaimed, “It’s the Colonel!” Passersby also stopped in their tracks to take in the scene.

With the media and locals looking on, divers began their search for the lower body at around 8:50 Wednesday morning, and discovered the right hand some minutes later. About 10 minutes after that, the diver’s voice burst from a speaker on the salvage barge, saying, “It’s the lower body. There’s no mistake about it,” bringing on a cheer from reporters and workers alike.

The statue sections are covered in river mud and badly stained, and the figure’s feet, left hand and glasses have yet to be uncovered. The Osaka Municipal Government, which is responsible for the riverside, is holding the statue and will consult with Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan on how to handle it.

And what do Hanshin Tigers fans believe the Colonel’s discovery portends?

“We’ll be number one in Japan this year for sure,” they say.

Go Tigers!

I awoke in a somber mood this morning, slightly groggy, and not wanting to shed the blanket for the shower. The little voice inside me thought told it was time to get up. It also reminded me that today was the 52nd anniversary of my birth………

There once was a time when I looked upon someone in their 50′s as positively ancient. That was not me. I was young, thin, spry and full of energy. The world was going to be mine for the taking! By the time the 21′st century was going to roll around, I would be independently wealthy, and when I returned from a business trip to one of the orbiting space stations-my private jet was going to be waiting to whisk me back to my stately mansion. There, my svelte little blond sex bomb of a wife was going to be waiting to greet me, martini in hand. On the wall’s of our stately mansion were pictures from my days of flying A-7′s in the Navy, and how that successful flying career had laid the basis for my wealth of the day.

Real life? Suffice it to say it turned out more than slightly different than that.

I gave serious thought to calling in sick-but realized there were things that needed to be done today, especially since the S.O. and I are going away this weekend. So, haltingly-with a sigh- I stumbled into the room of rest and into the shower. In the evening , the S.O. was to take me out to dinner and perhaps hopefully a romantic ending to the day might yet ensue. ( We’ll see about that last item…). She would endeavor to be good company-and a card was sure to be waiting for me when I returned home. ( There was).

Truth be told though, if I had my druthers I would have spent this day here-by myself-doing a variety of things that I like to do. The day would have ended with me sitting here-watching the sun set and pondering the time that had passed and whatever time was left-as I consumed mass quantities of liquors, allowing the my thoughts to swirl me into my own private oblivion.

That’s not be-yet. Soon though, I will break away to make that pilgrimage-by myself. For today though it was not in the cards. So cleaned, dressed, and shaved-off I went to work.

When I arrived at my building, I noticed that the flag was at half mast- I did not take it as a good sign. ( I still do not know why it was at half mast, unless it was to honor a soldier who had died).

The day passed uneventfully-my co-worker and I took advantage of the day to take lunch at that famous French restaurant, Le Hooters. It seemed most of Shopping Mall had the same idea-the place was packed.

I did do something a little out of the ordinary though- I departed work with sufficient time, to stop here for a little while. To have a drink or two and think a little.

It occurred to me that at the age I am now-my mother was dealing with an 11 year old boy.( Me). Dragging me to Boy Scouts, baseball, and other various and sundry things. How she did that at the age I am today-is pretty amazing. She had to be sick of it, I am sure.

I thought t0o of all of the wrong turns I had made in my life-most of them centered around women and the inability to use-then lose them. How different things might have been if I had turned around and walked out a door at the age of 21, to go down a path to build a single life. Instead of a married one with children on the way before I had crossed the threshold of my 23rd year.

I also came to the realization that my elders had been speaking the truth, when they told me to branch out, get some qualifications, build “other” professional skills besides the basic ones of flying an being a naval officer. The part they never explained very well was that , the windows to do that are limited to do that. If you do not find the “Y” in the road early enough-you may never find it. The thrill of adventure and the pull of the fun that went with it was perhaps too strong. Over 5000 hours and trips to all the continents but two-but at what price?

“Bring me another”, I signaled to the young barmaid, as I turned my head around to gaze out the glass windows to the street. Not watch so much, but more to ponder and turn my thoughts inward.

As she set the glass down, I thought about all the ups and downs of my life. About how small and, at the time, seemingly insignificant decisions can rise up and become your fate. There are more “Y”s in the road behind me than are probably in front of me. The question is-how to make the best use of the ones in front to achieve my goals, my dreams, and secure my contentment-and not live someone else’s half -assed vision of what my life should or should not be.

And it occurred to me then, that I don’t have a lot to complain about really. Sure I’d like not to fork over money I’ve earned to someone who didn’t, every month. But that is what it is. The last nine years of liberation from that misery have counted for me more than you could imagine. To have gotten to spend them where I spent them-is a gift of great proportion.

I’m a cup is half full kind of guy. And today is a day to count my blessings, for they are many-and I am grateful for them. Things could be a heck of a lot worse. That they are not, is a gift too, for which I am grateful. Especially in this world we are living in now.

Bills? There are a few. Not nearly as many as once there was. Savings? not enough-but again more than their was once. I have a job, not a job like I once had, but its Ok. It pays the bills and buys me time to seek opportunities that are more in tune with my geographical preferences.

I really can’t complain-and it wouldn’t change anything if I did. It is a sin to get to have as much fun as I have gotten to have, or to live the adventures I have gotten to experience. I’m quite grateful for them. Because of my experiences-my horizons are broader now, and I think I have a clarity of thought and insight that did not exist in the earlier time. The time when I walked in lockstep with the rest of the herd, mouthing the same shibboleths that they did. Thank God, I was able to break free from them! I’ve literally seen the world, and been to a lot of nations and all the continents (not counting Antarctica) save for South America. And its on my “to do” list.

I’m a lucky man, to tell the truth. Very lucky. Nobody has to tell me that.

Regrets-yep I’ve got some pretty big ones. So what?

As I see it, there are two really big things to worry about: 1) not having a job and 2) any of those pesky health issues that, disturbingly, seem to crop up in men in their 50′s. Knock on wood-things are good today, tomorrow is always the great unknown. I’ve seen too many men my age get destroyed-if not literally, then financially by the costs associated with those “health issues”.

About that time a girl jogger came ripping by-good looking one too- and reminded me I need to crank it up in terms of an exercise regimen.

However it seems to me, that the rest of the stuff-that we all worry about-it’s just noise. Keep steady employment of some kind and keep healthy, there is room to live. The last 10 years have taught me that. Its not how much money you have-its how you use what you have. Even no money can be dealt with if you have your health.

My frustrations with my current location? A mild annoyance that I will deal with. I will return to Asia. Why do I like Asia so much? I’ll tell you again sometime-for now suffice it to say, I just do. My goal remains before me and like MacArthur, God willing, I will return.

Big house? Not required.

Nice car? Nice to have-but I can live with less.

Relationships? Nice-but splendid isolation can be nice too. I just have to find a balance that gives me a little of both. I do need some time to myself.

However, on balance, thanks be to God for the blessings I have. Which is a pretty nice birthday present if you ask me. The best present I could ever wish for.

Lucky me.

And before anyone goes off on an ” Obama is Carter” style rant- I will remind you that another new president was more than willing to offer up a carrier or two to the QDR……9-11 intervened and saved us then. What will save carrier aviation now?

NAVY WILL OFFER UP CARRIER & AIR WING IN QUADRENNIAL REVIEW

There’s only one problem with all this. It reduces the nation’s capacity to
project power from the sea at the same time access to foreign bases is
becoming doubtful. And why is such a move necessary? Because the Obama
Administration has decided to stick with Bush-era plans to grow the size of
ground forces by 92,000 personnel, and the Navy must pay part of the bill
for that. Yet the administration is getting ready to depart Iraq, which was
the main reason for increasing the size of ground forces in the first place.
There are precious few other places where the warfighting scenarios for the
next QDR suggest a big ground force will be needed. Most of the scenarios
envision reliance on air power for the big fights of the future — the kind
of air power delivered by carriers. So cutting carriers to build a bigger
ground force doesn’t make much sense.

A personal opinion. The Navy has always coupled Carriers and Air wings in terms of force structure-I would submit that recent events make that coupling prohibitively expensive to the Navy. The Navy might be able to live with 10 carriers, but it can’t live with 9 air wings-if for no other reason, maintaining sufficient inventory of aircraft.
The Navy today, actually needs more carrier air wings and perhaps less carriers. E.G. 12 Air Wings and may be 10 carriers. Now there are some who may say that without carriers, the Navy is no different than the Air Force. I disagree. It still takes Naval Aviators to land on carriers and the training that Naval Aviation produces cannot be replaced by the USAF.

However, in today’s world, the aircraft carrier has become just that-a transport carrier of aircraft. Thanks to some really boneheaded decisions about surface ships-LCS being a prime example- the battle group is no longer as important as it used to be. Damn shame too, since the Navy can and should be training as a battle group-just in case it has to fight for Taiwan. But its not.

So that means that carrier based aircraft could actually operate ashore more than we wish to think about. I submit that with less carriers, the Navy should-in my humble opinion-look at overseas home porting of an additional air wing. A few years ago, when the debate of Guam was raging, CNAF was adamantly opposed to putting a carrier there because of the high cost of a maintenance infrastructure for the ship. They were probably right about the carrier.

An air wing however-could plug into an already existing maintenance infrastructure in Guam and Japan, and the airfield is more than sufficient to host an air wing: dual runways, lots of ramp space, and the USAF uses too much space there anyway.

Plus-11-12 Air wings would allow the Navy to meet some of the “in country” CAS requirements and EW requirements without robbing the whole piggy bank. Or pulling squadrons off the ship mid- deployment.

Just my .02,

Where is John Lehman when you need him? Or better yet, just think what we could buy if we were not wasting so much money in Iraq?