H&I* Fires, 15 JAN 2007

Maybe if one of Sen Boxer's kids were re-located to one of the ships they would be able to train?? Just a thought....

FbL - Ed Begley Jr.'s a chip off the old block. Ed Senior was five yards left of Lenin and bragged about it. Ry - The Joisey Legislature (mostly Liberal Dems, whatta surprise...) tried to slip the bill through quietly, buried beneath a bunch of legislation authorizing local schools to observe --now get this -- *Muslim* holidays, if they so desire and the number of registered students (any number in excess of zero) so warrants. The various 'Murrican Legion, VFW and Marine Corps League chapters are steamed. My Viet Vet group has collected a whole bunch of IOUs from various civic groups over the years and we may decide it's time to collect...

It sounds like the Navy is quite willing to work on this issue. "After consulting with biologists from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Navy agreed to implement 29 procedures it considers appropriate for protecting marine mammals during sonar maneuvers." And as this is clearly an international economic (marine fisheries), I wonder if the jump to Barbra Boxer being personally responsible if someone dies because of a sub attack is well, unnecessarily inflammatory. I mean, without trying to be inflammatory myself, A Navy sailor is far more likely to die in a car accident on base than a sub attack. Meanwhile, do you have any idea how devastated our Marine Fisheries have become for entirely solvable problems? Not just American fishing families, but whole American towns are suffering. Perhaps we can find a fisherman/Navy vet to weigh in on this issue. Very many independent fisherman served in the Navy.

Well...she can always leave the lout. Or smack him one with her curling iron. If she really was oppressed, she can go on Oprah and have a public handholding session with other American women who have bullies like him for husbands. If she didn't like it or the money she wouldn't put up with it. My husband bugs me about stuff all the time. I claim to not be an expert, but marriage is what you both agree to make it and adjustments are common when both parties work at it. I don't see him calling her names, slapping her around, belittling her achievements or anything abusive. He times her shower? He grouses about the curling iron? They cook on a solar stove? Oh the humanity. There is the admission in the article that they play up the nitpicking.

"I wonder if the jump to Barbra Boxer being personally responsible if someone dies because of a sub attack is well, unnecessarily inflammatory." Uh, did you miss the sarcasm warning? Rather blatantly pointed out with '(sarcasm off)'? I'm totally lampooning her. That's not inflammatory. That's being Alfred E. Newman---who I happen to resemble at times, ask the Chief. Let's be reasonable here. Is there ecological damage to marine life occuring, from whatever causes? Sure. No doubt. Is it reacing a point where Japan may have to rethink being dedicated culinarily to seafood? Absolutely. But we don't eat dolphins and whales---which the CCC et al have repeatedly said is the major sufferer. Aside: I'm from California originally, near Long BEach and Seal Beach, Seal Beach NWS was in my backyard. This saga is actually nearly a decade old. And is old news to me. That there actually was a legal conclusion to this was news to me. I may even KNOW some of these vet fishermen. I proll'y drove some of them home from the same dives my flesh and blood older brother frequented. 14 exercises over a span of two years is unlikely, really unlikely, to cause a major disruption of the economic life of fisherman, unlike commercial fishing and int'l trade(with all of the pollution trade creates), given the primacy the CCC has placed on whales. Let's weigh the effect of over fishing on this too, shall we? What effect has over fishing had on hurting the LB fishing community? Proll'y a whole lot more than a frigate traling its "tail" during an exercise. Populism only gets you so far. It is not a trump card. You may have a different rhubric, but yours doesn't simply supercede mine becuase it has a different element of populism in it. We can argue whose rhubric should take the lead, but don't assume yours is The One. True, Naval personel are more likely to die in car wrecks on any given day. But that isn't 'cases' is it? That's not facing nautical mines and submarines, their job when it comes down to cases, now is it? The skill sets for conducting warfare, particularly ASW seeing how hard it is to do, are something you need at time zero and not six months into the conflict. Well, not if you want to keep casualties low that is---which is one of my major goals, dontcha know. The Navy needs to practice this skill set IF it is ever to be used before the Navy is deployed. Otherwise you're sending, knowingly, people to their death. That's a rather uncontestable fact(care to peruse the area/entry to battlespace doctrine of some nations with me? I know of two that are of high importance right about now---thanks Chief, I never did thank you properly for the advice.). This is a necessary skill set that cannot simply be gotten in simulators. Simulators can limit the amount of time the ASW school and the Navy at large needs to send people to sea to test the gear but does not eliminate it. Zero impact is impossible. Give me a plan that is not zero impact and I'll listen--but nobody, and I've been following this for almost its entire length, has proposed a non-zero impact plan. Which is why I call the opponents zealots. That's how they act.

Cricket - One of the largest townships in NJ is making a serious effort to go eco-friendly. The county has major heartburn with its planned solar grid, the state won't let it build a wind farm and the NJDEP is in an uproar because one of the local farmers is "encroaching on a wetland" by putting up a photography blind next to a large pond that *he dug* to give feathered migrants a place to chill on their trip South. There's a local outfit that makes solar roofing tiles -- but they're only allowed to sell 'em overseas. And I've got my back yard registered as a semi-natural wildlife sanctuary (semi-natural means I feed everybody in the winter) to protect it from seizure under Eminent Domain. Just in case...