Friday, March 21, 2014

It is not even a slap on the wrist. It's a lash with a wet noodle.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair has learned his punishment.  He will suffer a written reprimand, be fined $20,000 but serve no jail time.  It's a travesty of justice.  Even with the almost certain reduction in rank he will face prior to retiring, the fact is he will be allowed to retire and keep his pension.  He wasn't dismissed from the service (the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for officers).

William Gurney wasn't as fortunate as General Sinclair.  Air Force Chief Master Sergeant William Gurney was convicted of similar charges.  He was sentenced to 20 months in prison, reduction in rank from E-9 (the top) to E-1 (the bottom), ordered to be dishonorably discharged (loss of all benefits) and lost any hope of retirement benefits.  He got a partial break, with 16 months of jail time removed from his sentence and his discharge changed from dishonorable to bad conduct.

Why the disparity?  Because generals take care of their own.  Always have, always will.  This is precisely why the prosecution of sexual offenses, including fraternization, needs to be taken out of the responsibility and oversight of the chain of command.  Whatever officer is at the top of that chain can't be impartial enough when it comes to other senior ranking officers.

Why?  Why can't we depend on these men and women to be impartial.  One reason is that the supervisor/subordinate relationship can flip-flop for high ranking military officers.  Alexander Haig was a two-star general, subordinate to every three and four star general in the Army in 1972.  In 1973 he was promoted directly to the rank of four-star general when he was made Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.  With the stroke of a pen, all of those three star generals were immediately subordinate to him.  That kind of thing is rare, but the instance of one officer climbing the ladder above someone who was once their commander isn't all that rare.  In 1978, the full colonel who was the commander of the fighter wing I was assigned to at Homestead AFB was the boss of another full colonel who was the director of wing operations.  Seven years later, that wing commander was a two-star general while the director of operations was having his third star pinned on him.

However the primary reason that we cannot trust high ranking officers to police their own ranks is because it remains an "old-boys club" where they cover for one another.  When enlisted personnel fraternize, the book is thrown at them.  When junior officers do it, they get hammered.  When high ranking officers do it, they get slapped with that wet noodle.  The only way to stop this from happening is to remove their ability to influence court-martials and punishments in cases that involve sexual offenses.

* * *

In 2009, Charla Nash was visiting her friend Sandy Herrold.  Sandy had a pet chimp, Travis.  Travis attacked Charla and tore off her face and hands.  Travis was shot dead by a police officer.  Ms Nash sued the estate of Ms Herrold and reached a settlement of $4 million.  That's a woefully inadequate amount to cover the medical expenses and emotional pain she's suffered since the attack (or so says her attempt to sue the state of Connecticut for $150 million).

Every single article I've read on this case makes reference to Travis as "...illegally owned."   But was he owned illegally?  Travis had gotten free in 2003 and caused a commotion that led to a new law in the state of Connecticut.  It required state residents to register any primate they wished to own that was more than 50 pounds with the state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).  A state biologist had written a report to DEEP in 2008 that the chimp was illegally owned, had a propensity for violence, and that the DEEP officers that should be dispatched to seize Travis were in danger.  The state obviously knew there was a problem.

But, the claim submitted on Ms Nash's behalf for damages from the state was denied.  Now she is appealing to the state legislature  to pass a bill that would give her permission to sue the state.  Not to award her money, but give her the day in court that she is due.

I hope she gets that court date and wins.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

Does anyone really care if Madonna does or doesn't shave her armpits?  I don't care.

Did Johnny Weir really beg his now estranged husband to not damage his Birkin bags?

The only downside to the NCAA basketball tournament is that some of the shows I like to watch won't air until after the Final Four is over.  The fact that the cable news networks are all plane crash, all the time isn't helping.

The biggest news in pro tennis is that Ivan Lendl will no longer coach Andy Murray.  You'd think they were married, not player and coach.

I would not be surprised if Warren Buffett made a big donation to Duke University, after their defeat in that NCAA tournament eliminated all but 16 entries from having a chance to win the $1 billion for a perfect bracket.

Now that Phil Jackson is President of the Knicks and his fiancée Jeanne Buss is President of the Lakers, does basketball make strange bedfellows?  Is this the first time two NBA club presidents have gone to bed together?

The 1974 Ford Mustang as 2nd worst car of all time?  Maybe.  But the Pontiac Aztek shouldn't be the worst car of all time (according to a new list).  It should be the Renault Le Car, which as I've noted before, should have come with the standard Le Tow Rope.

Time-Warner CEO Robert Marcus will get $80 million in compensation when his golden parachute deploys due to his firm's purchase by Charter Communications.  That's more than a bit excessive.

I guess one advantage of bitcoins over traditional currencies is that if you lose them and they are found, no one can steal them without the right encryption.  I'll stick to real money though.

Who will be the next celebrity to be asked to be someone's date to the prom?  If I were a high school boy these days, I'd ask Jennifer Lawrence.  If the internet had existed when I really had a prom, back in 1977, I'd have probably asked Annette O'Toole, Carrie Fisher or Lindsay Crouse.  All three were looking good in films that year.

Someone with a lot of money should give Oscar Pistorius a leg up by loaning him money on his house to pay his legal bills (sorry, couldn't resist the pun, if he's guilty he should rot in hell).

If the pilots of Flight MH-370 chose this area to crash into the ocean, they couldn't have picked a better spot to make finding them difficult.  That is one remote place.

I've decided to be a better person than he was and therefore won't be going to protest at the funeral of Fred Phelps, Sr (maybe if he had died after April 16th...).

If I pay to get my internet connection to be a specific high speed, I shouldn't get less throughput just because I'm watching something on Netflix.

* * *

March 21st in History:

537 – Siege of Rome: King Vitiges attempts to assault the northern and eastern city walls, but is repulsed at the Praenestine Gate, known as the Vivarium, by the defenders under the Byzantine generals Bessas and Peranius.
630 – Emperor Heraclius returns the True Cross, one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem.
717 – Battle of Vincy between Charles Martel and Ragenfrid.
1152 – Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1188 – Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan.
1413 – Henry V becomes King of England.
1556 – In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.
1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins.
1800 – With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché.
1801 – The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt.
1804 – Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law.
1814 – Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube.
1821 – Greek War of Independence: First revolutionary act in the monastery of Agia Lavra, Kalavryta.
1844 – The Bahá'í calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Bahá'í calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Bahá'í Faith as the Bahá'í New Year or Náw-Rúz.
1857 – An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000.
1861 – Alexander Stephens gives the Cornerstone Speech.
1871 – Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire.
1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone.
1913 – Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio.
1918 – World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins.
1919 – The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.
1921 – The New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of War Communism.
1925 – The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee.
1925 – Syngman Rhee is removed from office after being impeached as the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.
1928 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.
1933 – Construction of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed.
1935 – Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, meaning "Land of the Aryans".
1937 – Ponce Massacre: Nineteen people in Ponce, Puerto Rico, are gunned down by a police squad acting under orders of US-appointed Governor, Blanton C. Winship.
1943 – Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through. Von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.
1945 – World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.
1945 – World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also hit a school and 125 civilians are killed.
1945 – World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.
1946 – The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in the American football since 1933.
1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
1960 – Apartheid in South Africa: Massacre in Sharpeville, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.
1963 – Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes.
1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes.
1965 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1968 – Battle of Karameh in Jordan between Israeli Defense Forces and Fatah.
1970 – The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Mayor of San Francisco Joseph Alioto.
1980 – US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
1980 – Dallas aired its "A House Divided" episode, which led to eight months of international intrigue regarding Who shot J.R.? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSC-weecv38)
1989 – Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling.
1990 – Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule.
1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.
2000 – Pope John Paul II makes his first ever pontifical visit to Israel.

Famous Folk Born On March 21st:

Maria Theresa of Austria
Benito Juarez
Modest Mussorgsky
Major General George Owen Squier (creator of Muzak)
Flo Ziegfeld
Walter Tewksbury
Forrest Mars, Sr.
John D. Rockefeller, III
Julio Gallo (you just saw one of their ads)
Yigael Yadin
Russ Meyer
Philip Abbott (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm4FISH1wTY)
James Coco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLGc6K38XAs)
Toyonobori (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_2f6EZpTCk)
Al Freeman, Jr.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywObx0DjOnM)
Kathleen Widdoes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjLh9fNSQyI)
Solomon Burke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OKAlBC-XWQ)
Timothy Dalton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZUGoa3JHc not a Bond clip)
Ray Dorset (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvUQcnfwUUM)
Eddie Money (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYEgYVyBDuM)
Roger Hodgson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfApBz4_XQk)
Russell Thompkins, Jr. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvOiKLpJoLA)
Ingrid Kristiansen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_fnpE3-H-M)
Brad Hall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq05CXTI3vE)
Sabrina Le Beauf (I couldn't find a good clip other than Cosby show stuff)
Gary Oldman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=991MgBfyxsI)
Slim Jim Phantom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZynIhCs27Xs)
Matthew Broderick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djNweAkiOkI)
Rosie O'Donnell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUGrli6PMbI)
Jonah Goldberg
Cenk Uygur (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrKKkGl3TnY)
Vanessa Branch
Jerry Supiran (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwJQNb8EPTc)
Rachael MacFarlane
Kevin Federline (formerly Mr. Spears)