The Observation Deck:  Lest we forget….

If you Google “Did the Republicans want to get rid of FEMA?” you will find they have been rather hostile to the agency that provides federal help when natural disasters strike.  Romney wanted to privatize it; Rand Paul wanted to eliminate it; Republicans in Congress wanted to drastically cut its budget; Trump considered cuts to the Coast Guard and FEMA to spend money on the Mexican border.  Well, you can call me an old softy but I consider government money and resources provided to help Americans caught up in a disastrous situation as well spent.  Money to fund the exceedingly stupid idea of building a wall with Mexico is not.

Another U.S. destroyer has collided with a merchant ship and the fault of the Fitzgerald collision has been adjudged incompetence on the part of the crew.  I wrote my Fitzgerald assessment back in June but never posted it awaiting the Navy’s judgment.  Here it is now.

Since the USS Fitzgerald and the container ship ACX Crystal collided on June 17 in the Sea of Japan, I have avidly followed the news reports but refrained from making any comment

I intentionally ignored stupid remarks by mainstream tv commentators noting that the ACX Crystal made an “abrupt” or “sharp” u-turn.  A huge 40.000-ton container ship cannot make “abrupt” nor “sharp” turns—they take a long time and a lot of space to turn and can easily be tracked on radar.  The other stupid remark echoed on all the tv networks was “this is a high traffic merchant shipping route.”  Well, yes, it is, but it is not like a metropolitan freeway at rush hour and you can easily track everything on radar since ships are relatively rather show moving.

In matters of destroyers and life at sea, I can claim some expertise.  in the 1960s I was a qualified Officer Of the Deck (OOD) aboard the USS Samuel N. Moore (DD747) a destroyer patrolling the exact same waters where the Fitzgerald and ACX Crystal collided.

The very idea that a slow moving container ship could intentionally ram an American destroyer is beyond ludicrous.  The most probable explanation is extraordinary incompetence on the part of the Fitzgerald crew.

Here is why I believe the Fitzgerald crew screwed up.  Radar today is far more sophisticated and precise than the vacuum tube stuff we had back in the 1960s but we were perfectly capable of tracking any vessels in our vicinity—including fleets of small Japanese fishing boats.  Not only do our Naval ships have radar repeaters on the bridge so the OOD can track traffic in the vicinity, every American combat ship has a Combat Information Center (CIC) below decks, where several skilled radarmen constantly monitor the radar screens and advise the bridge (OOD) of any potential collision threats.

In addition, and this has been mentioned on tv by naval experts including an admiral, the fact that the Fitzgerald got rammed on the starboard (right) side indicates it violated the “rules of the road” which are international rules all ships must follow to avoid collisions.  The rules state that if ships are crossing at or near a 90 degree angle, the ship with the other to starboard must change course to avoid collision.  That means, if the Fitzgerald had the ACX Crystal to starboard, which it must have since it got hit on its starboard side, it should have altered course to pass behind the container ship to avoid a collision.

Now my final point is one of those conventional wisdom things that got drummed into the heads of us officers learning to be OODs.  I will never forget my mentor telling me, “Always, always give merchant vessels a very wide berth.  Most of time there is no one on the bridge, especially at night, and the ship is set on the ‘iron mike’( which is essentially a merchant ship’s auto pilot that just sets course and speed).”

The ACX Crystal had a crew of only 20 men so it is highly likely the ship had no one on the bridge and the whole crew was sleeping at the time of the collision.

The Observation Deck:  What’s in a name?

Trumpists have often praised their leader by saying, “He tells it like it is,” except, perhaps, when what is happens to be Nazis demonstrating and killing people in an American city.

Make no mistake, the people who prepared and organized the demonstration in Charlottesville were Nazis.  Applying verbal deodorants like White Nationalists, Alt-Right and White Supremacists does not alter their underlying beliefs and intentions.

 

It is not “fake news” that the participants chanted explicit anti-Semitic slogans, shouted “hail Trump” with their right arms extended and espouse total white supremacy.  Those are all as Nazi as it gets.

The optimists wave it off as just a distasteful fringe element that will never amount to anything.  Perhaps the cancer analogy is a bit too obvious, unfortunately it’s accurate. If you don’t cut it out immediately, it spreads

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare, “A Nazi is a Nazi is a Nazi” and “A Nazi by any other name would smell as foul.”

The Observation Deck: Sunday funday

If you have never watched the Sunday morning tv talk shows, you should try it. They are very entertaining. Every week, Trump’s chumps go on Meet the Press, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Face the Nation and Fox News and declare that the Trumpster did not say what he said, that the dumb, fake media did not understand what he really said, that you should not take him literally or some other cockamamie excuse for the stuff he actually said but they say he didn’t.

I am looking forward to this Sunday. I really want to see which creepy sycophant—Conway, Miller or Gorka—will step forward to chastise the press for not understanding that Trump’s remarks on the Charlottesville tragedy were just wonderful and not intended to please his core supporters—you know, the neo-Nazis, the KKK and White Supremacists
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Of course, the former KKK leader David Duke and various other American Nazis heaped praised on Trump and thanked him for his endorsement and most of the gutless Republican Congresspeople just grumbled and mumbled and fell back in line behind their Supreme Leader or kept silent.

Most Americans, myself included, could not believe how disgustingly The Trump reacted to the Charlottesville tragedy. Callous, unfeeling, declaring both sides were at fault, and neo-Nazis included some “good people.”

The Sunday morning talk shows this week will be very interesting. So if you are not going to spend Sunday morning thanking your god for Trump and how he appointed a devout evangelical conservative to the Supreme Court, stay home and watch the talk shows. You might learn something.

The mouse that roars or Mickey Mouse scares the crap out of Superman

Have you noticed that the North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has several things in common with the United States Supreme Leader Donald Trump?  First, they both have really goofy haircuts.  They both have enormous egos and demand absolute adoration and they both have a unique way of drawing attention to themselves.

When Donald Trump wants attention, he tweets.  When Kim Jong-un, wants attention he fires off a missile.  Now we have these two dropping bombasts on each other like two school boys in the schoolyard shouting “Oh yeah, my dad can beat up your dad! So there!”

Kim  Johg-Un said America would “pay the price” for U.N. sanctions.  O yeah?  Donald smacks back exhibiting  one of his really menacing scowls, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States, or they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Oh yeah?   Kim Jong-un counters with a threat that he would strike the U.S. Territory Guam.

So it has gone for the last few months.  How about the story that Hawaii should prepare for a nuclear attack? Or, oh my god, maybe Kim’s missiles could reach Chicago or Washington D.C.!   I lived during the entire cold war when people were building bomb shelters in their back yards because the Soviet Union was going to attack us any minute.  It’s like déjà vu all over again.

Every time America has its doomsday reaction to one of Kim’s missile launches or verbal threats I can imagine him laughing his butt off.  Kim is getting exactly the result he wants.  It shows how tough he is standing up to a super power thus cementing his position within his country, and he makes Trump look foolish by stooping to his level.  Not to mention all the attention Kim is getting on the world stage. Every time Kim shoots off a missile, America starts pooping its pants. It’s like a comic book episode:  “Mickey Mouse scares the crap out of Superman!”  And I am sure Kim just loves it.

Amid all the sound and the fury there is a shred of reason.  Rex Tillerson is attempting to apply diplomacy despite Trump’s unhelpful provocative statements.  Military analysts point out that North Korea is still far away from having a functional ICBM with a nuclear warhead capable of reaching the United States.  Others have totally rejected the foolish notion that the minute North Korea has that capability it will immediately launch a pre-emptive attack on America.   They note, correctly I believe, that all Kim’s bluster and posturing, and his refusal to back off his nuclear program, are primarily to bolster his support at home, become a member of the world nuclear community for prestige and use it as a bargaining chip against sanctions.

 

The hope is that Kim is not so dumb as to start a nuclear war.  The fear is that Trump is dumb enough to do it.

The Observation Deck:  Rex who?

Whatever happened to Rex Tillerson?  Wasn’t he supposed to be Secretary of State?

  Let’s see…Trump has been entertaining a string of foreign heads of state in Washington, making many trips abroad to high level conferences and low level countries like Poland, VP Pence represented Trump in Estonia, Russia is reacting to sanctions, North Korea is popping off ballistic missiles and the last mention I remember of Tillerson in the news (before Scaramucci upstaged everyone) was he was taking a vacation to spend time with his family.

Oh yes, Trump has declared he will cut the State Department’s budget and has been involving himself in the department’s staffing choices.  Is Tillerson next on the Trump hit list? Could this be Trump’s latest tactic—just ignore the person rather than insult and denigrate him in public?  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of the country’s favorite reality tv show, Swamp Survivors.