Why Jim is a Jerk

I am nothing if not helpful.

So, in order to help inaugurate the new www.jimwrightisanasshole.com site I'm opening the post up to comments regarding why I am indeed an asshole.

I'll start:

- Jim Wright does not tolerate dissent on his blog, it's his way or the highway.

- Jim Wright hates the First Amendment, he deliberately stifles free speech on his blog. He doesn't know the difference between trolls and a polite difference of opinion.

- Jim Wright hates born again bunnies who fart rainbows and sunshine and fly when they think happy thoughts of Jesus. Everybody likes bunnies, but not Jim. (This actually is not true, Jim likes bunnies, deep fried with spicy rainbow sauce, and he especially likes flying bunnies because they're better for skeet shooting - which, of course, makes him a big fat jerk).

And like that.

Now you try.

Dúnedains of the week - Sandy Childers and Bill Baird

Last week I posted about the 201st Engineering Battalion of the Kentucky National Guard. In the post I railed against Yellow Ribbon Patriots who talk about supporting the troops - and really just end up making themselves feel a little less guilty.

The 201st has been training in Wisconsin for the last couple of months and are shipping out for Afghanistan very soon. Due to regulation and red tape, in order to get a final couple of days leave at home with their families, they had to raise $60,000 of their own money by the 15th of April.

The United Way of Kentucky took up the their cause, established a fund and put out a call for donations. By the end of last week they had raised about 10% of their goal, and frankly it was looking pretty iffy.

Then a guy named Bill Baird got involved. Bill owns Saturn Machine and Welding in Sturgis, Kentucky. He contacted Sandy Childers at the United Way, determined the remaining balance necessary to get the 201st home - and then wrote a check.

The 450 members of the 201st will get 6 days home with their families at the end of this month.

When I spoke to Sandy this morning, she was still in shock and very, very happy. See Sandy not only works at the United Way, she has somebody close, very close, to her in the 201st. She and her associates not only established the fund, they did it, including all the legal hoopla, in just three hours. Then they started beating the drums and got the story out - and Bill Baird answered the call to the tune of $49,000.

And that, my friends, is supporting the troops.

I've said it before in other posts - what matters is what you do in the moment. Believe in this war or not, what matters is how we take care of our own in their hour of need. Hell of a job Sandy and Bill and the rest who donated their time and money.

Hell of a job. You make me proud to be an American. Your efforts changed the lives of 450 of your fellow citizens and their families. Whatever comes, you can always be proud of your actions today. Well, done.


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Note: the United Way Fund remains open. Further donations will go to support the 201st, and other members of the Kentucky National Guard, while deployed. Information if you're interested can be found by following the link above.

Hey, I'm on TV!

USS Valley Forge at sea in the Arabian Gulf

I dropped my wife off at the Anchorage International Airport last night, she's off on a business trip for the next week. Argh! I don't sleep well when she's not here, but, hey, what can you do, right? For twenty years, she waited at home alone for months, while I was deployed in the field or at sea, so I shouldn't complain (not that I won't, mind you). The one advantage of her being gone is that I can watch Modern Marvels and the Military Channel at night without hearing complaints (What? Another special on WWII?).

So this morning I came downstairs and flipped on the TV like I usually do, to watch the news while the kid gets ready for school, and it was still on the Military Channel from last night. And what were they showing? Operation Iraqi Freedom (yeah, yeah, there's an operational title that will haunt us for years). The special contained about five minutes of Infra-red video from the Mina Al Bakr Oil Terminal take down (a massive Iraqi off-shore oil loading terminal). In fact, the video was labeled "VFG FLIR" (USS Valley Forge, Forward Looking Infra-Red). I took that video. I and my team designed, procured, and installed a high resolution video capture system on Valley Forge when everybody in San Diego told us that it couldn't be done, and wasn't necessary in the first place. In fact, we ended up with two systems for less than the original cost estimate for one. We ended up using the information collected from that system on a daily basis, and six years later a small bit of it is on TV. And it looks good.

How cool is that?

I had a hand in the oil terminal missions. Most of what I did I can't talk about, but as Valley Forge's Intelligence Officer, my team and I did most of the scouting missions and intelligence work for the off-shore oil platform missions in the months leading up to the war. Some of it was under pretty hairy conditions. But that intelligence was spot on the money, the SEALs took down that platform without a shot being fired or a life lost on either side. There are dammed few other missions that went as smoothly. Despite how this war is turning out now, I'm still more than a little proud of my part in that operation.

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The picture is my last ship, the Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser, USS Valley Forge, CG-50, in heavy seas in the Northern Arabian Gulf. I took the picture from one of the ship's RHIB's (rigid hull, inflatable boat) returning from a scouting mission, about three days before the start of the war. I loved that ship, I miss her. Valley Forge is gone now, decommissioned and sunk as a target off Hawaii, because of a bunch of short sighted fools in the Pentagon.

You can click on the picture for a much larger image.