EARTH TO NASA

Why on earth doesn’t NASA repair the shuttles while they are on the ground? Better yet, why not build a new one and save all the money they spend on repairs?

How many times has something happened to the shuttle on lift-off? The Endeavour was built in 1991 and has had 20 flights. It is getting old. Most people don’t keep their cars that long and they certainly don’t travel that many miles.

The orbiters are subjected to many different forces on lift-off and tremendous heat on re-entry.

Now the recently launched Endeavour has a deep gouge in its belly which to my mind threatens a safe re-entry for the astronauts on board. NASA says the exposed area is relatively small and poses no real danger.

From what I have read, it penetrated through the protective thermal tiles and is down to a thin layer of coated felt over the shuttle’s aluminum frame. I find it hard to believe that a thin piece of coated felt and an aluminum frame is going to shield the astronauts from the more than 2,000 degree heat of re-entry

NASA says there are four options, none of which has been tested in space. The spacewalking astronauts can apply a black paint to the gouge, screw on a protective plate, squirt in goo or forgedaboudit .

"This is not a catastrophic-loss-of-orbiter case at all. This is a case where you want to do the prudent thing for the vehicle," said John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team.

Well folks, I just heard on the news that NASA has decided on the forgedaboudit method of repair.

I would hate to be an astronaut and have my life riding on what these scientists on the ground decide.

Did they forget that there are real, live people inside The Endeavour?

The California Curmudgeon

CALIFORNIA’S BUDGET

In 13 out of the last 20 years, California’s Legislature has missed the June 30 deadline for the annual budget. Does the deadline come as a surprise to them every year? Why do they wait until the last moment to start working on it?

Back in the days when I belonged to a union we had five-year contracts and even though the negotiators had five years to begin work on the next contract, they would wait until the final week to even start talking to each other. We would end up working without a contract for as long as it took for both sides to agree and have the contract ratified by the members.

However, we did keep working, so this didn’t really have any adverse effect on our paychecks.

But when the state does this, it has huge ramifications. There are millions of children, elderly, poor and disabled Californians who are affected because Medi-Cal funds are frozen, child care providers, adult daycare centers, medical transport services and hundreds of hospitals are not receiving any state support.

Before 1978 the California Legislature was out of control with new taxation running rampant. To help put an end to this, the people came up with the infamous proposition 13 which added the two-thirds majority rule for the passage of any tax increase.

Perhaps it isn’t fair that California (along with Rhode Island and Arkansas) are the only states that need a two-thirds majority to pass the budget. Some say this makes the one-third the real majority.

However, the Legislature always does eventually come to an agreement, even in those 13 out of 20 years, so why not start a little earlier with a more alert eye to the deadline and the people who will be negatively impacted by its non-passage?

And just to make certain that the legislature keeps focused on the best interest of the public, I would suggest that they forfeit one day’s pay (and per diem) for each day the budget is late. That way they can actually feel some of the pain the people most affected by the lack of an on-time budget feel.

The California Curmudgeon

ROVE RAGE

I just can’t seem to get on the bandwagon in the marching parade and rejoice about Karl Rove resigning because somewhere in the back of my mind is a little alarm that is telling me that he is not out of the picture yet and this is just another sneaky move on the part of the administration.

He has been the mastermind of the ugliness, misdeeds and lawbreaking of this administration since he signed on and you can bet that just because he resigned from the administration, that he hasn’t given up his place in the Bush Crime Family.

If I knew more about football, I might think that this could be an end run around Congress and the American people.

Then again, I might be wrong and he just found out that “Turd Blossom” is a flower that grows in cow shit.

The California Curmudgeon

THE FOX IN THE HEN HOUSE

In an example of what happens when a body investigates itself, the Army announced that it was disciplining a number of officers for critical errors in the shooting death of Pat Tillman.

The military laid most of the blame on Philip Kensinger, a retired three-star general who led Army special operations after September 11, 2001. He was censured for “a failure of leadership” and accused of lying to investigators. A disciplinary letter recommending his demotion was added to his files.

But the official reprimands issued to three other high-ranking Army officers by Army Commanding General William Wallace are only mildly critical of their mistakes and sometimes darn near praiseworthy of them.

One letter said that retired Brigadier General Gary Jones used “due vigor, diligence and professionalism” in his handling of the case.

A half-ass apology was included in the other two letters, the first to Brigadier General Gina Farrisee “I know that all of this is much clearer with the benefit of hindsight. I suspect that, upon reflection, you wished you had done more to act on the medical examiners concerns”.

And the second to Brigadier General James Nixon “I am mindful that you never intended to deprive the Tillman family of the truth and only intended to delay notification until you had the facts”.

General Wallace also added to each letter “You should not consider this as an adverse action. This document will not be filed in any system of records maintained by the Army”.

I imagine you noticed that none of this has anything to do with the actual shooting of Tillman, but only the cover-up. The Army knew within hours that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, but this information was kept from the public and his family for five weeks.

And there you have the governments system of taking care of their own.

The California Curmudgeon

NOW IT’S OFFICIAL

Chevron Corporation wants a cut of Iraq’s oil fields.

Chevron, the San Ramon oil giant and Total SA of France have agreed to split up the oil on Majnoon fields in Iraq. The only problem is that Iraq doesn’t want to let them do that.

The take-over and development of these oil reserves by Chevron can’t happen until Iraq passes a law governing foreign investment in its oil industry. And even though Chevron has been bribing them since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 with technical assistance, nothing can be done without this new law being passed.

Despite intense pressure from Washington the Iraqi leaders have resisted being led down the golden path before they agree on a framework for sharing the country's vast oil wealth.

The oil fields of Majnoon are estimated to be either the second or third largest in the world. A lot of the country has not yet been thoroughly explored so there might be lots more oil and natural gas hidden there.

Before we invaded Iraq, Majnoon was putting out and average of 2.5 million barrels per day. This past June, the most recent month with available data, 1.98 million barrels a day was produced.

"Majnoon would be a real prize," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy research fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute. "People do not find that many million-barrel-a-day fields."

"This is an extremely sensitive issue for the Iraqi people, and it unites the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds,” said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange. “They don't want the oil controlled by foreign companies".

The Iraqi public is very suspicious of any foreign involvement in their oil industry. Many view the war as an attempt by the United States and its allies to gain control of the country's oil. Sixty-three percent of Iraqis surveyed in a recent poll want to retain control of their oil fields.

Global Exchange, one of the groups that commissioned the poll, said that the Iraqi invasion was little more than an oil grab.

The California Curmudgeon

WARTIME AND VACATION TIME

There has been much talk recently about the Iraqi government taking a month off for vacation in time of war, but there is hardly ever any mention of our Congress taking the entire month of August off during the same time of war.

If I read this right, both the Iraqi government and the US Congress will be on vacation at the same time.

I think neither government should be taking any time off while there is so much for them to do. But my biggest gripe is that I can’t see how it is so wrong for one side and not the other.

The California Curmudgeon

JUST WHAT I NEED, ANOTHER GEORGE

Since he was first elected to the House, I have voted for our California representative, George Miller. I have agreed with him on most things and have shown it with my backing and support.

But recently he has made what I believe is a huge mistake. In answer to questions at two town meetings, he said he was not in favor of starting impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney. The reason for this he said was because there was not enough time left in this administration to do it and that he didn’t want to take time out of his schedule to go down a road leading nowhere.

Suppose we took this same attitude on other things:

• We shouldn’t wash the car today because they are predicting rain for tonight.
• No sense in looking for those trapped miners because they will probably be dead before we find them.
• Don’t use CPR on anyone because only 15% of hospitalized patients on general medical or surgical floors on whom CPR is attempted survive.

Congress George should take another look around and listen to what the people want, and right now most of them want impeachment. Even if it can’t be done within the time frame, I want Bush and Cheney to leave office with a big cloud of guilt hanging over them.

And about that time frame, I don’t remember it taking that long to put Bill Clinton on that slippery slide to impeachment.

The California Curmudgeon

IT’S ALL ABOUT MONEY

All elections are about money I guess, but this 2008 election seems particularly so. It doesn’t seem to matter how the candidate stands on any issue as much as how much money is in their war chest.

Hillary has this much money and Obama has this much and Edwards is in third place so it looks like Hillary will be the nominee for the Democrats.

The 2008 candidates have already collected over $277 million. They collected more in the first six months of this year than candidates in the last presidential election gathered during all of 2003.

To increase their lead, the candidates are now searching for new sources of money. The White House hopefuls have shifted their attention from the merely wealthy to the well-connected. They shower attention on those who have networking skills to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in increments of $2,300, the legal limit.

They are also pitching more to the average working-man. Fund-raising events are now catering to people with $15 to $50 to donate.

I know the candidates can and will tell you anything you want to hear just to get your donation, but I really miss the old days when you thought the election was about issues and the candidates were not afraid to tell you how they felt about each one of them.

Maybe that’s one reason they are called “The Good Old Days”.

The California Curmudgeon

THE DUMMYCRATS STRIKE AGAIN

What in the hell were the democrats thinking when they voted in the new surveillance bill? They not only allowed Bush to trample all over the Constitution and rape the fourth amendment, they helped him do it by giving him more than he asked for.

Can you imagine 16 democratic senators and 41 democratic House members voting in favor of a bill that will give Bush even more freedom to trash our rights. By a vote of 60 to 28 the Senate passed a measure that enhanced his powers of warrantless wiretapping.

This new bill is not supposed to cover calls made within the US, but we only have Bush’s word that he will act with restraint and we all know how good his word is.

Also our lying attorney general, Alberto Gonzales is in charge of the oversight of this project. He gets to pick and chose who gets tapped. The wire taps are permitted to be reviewed only after the fact and the FISA court is restricted to a generic review of the warrants and has no power to inquire into individual cases.

Why would these democrats vote in favor of this bill? It could be one of several reasons or a bunch of them lumped together, but fear played a big part in the vote. The congressmen couldn’t allow themselves to be seen as soft of terror and they couldn’t risk voting it down and then being blamed for everything that might happen while they were on vacation.

They could have gone along for fear of dividing the county and they could just be plain-ass afraid to stand up to Bush.

Whatever the reason, the vote is in and we a stuck with this law for six months and you know how easily it can be made permanent. It is a bad law. It is a rights-fighting law and it is a law passed out of fear and the Cheney-Bush campaign of fear is relentless.

The California Curmudgeon

THREE HOLES MAKES IT MURDER

Murder is not friendly fire.

I have been slow in my comments about Pat Tillman and his killing because it is so hard for me to believe that even this corrupt government could do this to a brave American who put the country’s need before his own; a man who was willing to give up a multi-million dollar career to serve in Iraq where he thought he was needed more.

When he enlisted, the government saw this as a great propaganda opportunity and Rumsfeld sent him a personal letter of congratulations.

Tillman became the poster boy of the war and everyone was happy, but It wasn’t long before he saw the war for what it was: an opportunity for the war profiteers to steal the lives of soldiers in exchange for high profits. And he let his feelings be known. Apparently the government couldn’t have their poster boy going around saying bad things about the war, so enters “friendly fire”.

Although, at first the story was that he had been killed by enemy combatants it was quickly changed to one where he was killed by “friendly fire”. That might have remained the story except his parents were not happy with the answers they were getting and started digging deeper and they discovered that after the medical examiners found three closely grouped bullet holes in Tillman’s forehead that had been made by an M-16 fired no more than 10 yards away, they had requested an investigation.

Their request was denied and It wasn't until reporters filed a Freedom of Information Act that the following information became public.

Military records show that dozens of officers knew of the truth of the Tillman's death within days, yet senior officers and Pentagon officials still maintain they didn't know for weeks.

"I have not been involved in any cover-up whatsoever, and I don't believe there's an individual at this table - who I know well and observed at close quarters and in very difficult situations - who had any role in a cover-up on this matter," former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a House committee.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., grilled Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the delay in the notification of Tillman’s “friendly fire” death.

"You knew this for a month before ... why did you not come forward and tell the family and tell the public the truth?" Maloney said. "You sat on your hands and you didn't say anything about it. And I find that hard to understand."

The former top Pentagon general said it was the Army's responsibility to inform the family, and he assumed it would.

"I don't think there's any regulation that would require me to do anything," Myers said. "This is the responsibility of the United States Army, not the office of the chairman, so I regret that the Army did not do their duty here and follow their own policy."

After the facts were known and after a number of clues suggesting the entire command structure, from the White House on down, had concealed a murder from the public, no investigation was imitated.

They continued to pay tribute to Tillman as if he had died in combat even after learning the truth neither Rumsfeld nor the President felt the need to correct the record publicly.

Much, much more could be said of this, but the main thing is that starting at the bottom and going straight to the top, the government covered up a murder of a young American hero who thought he was doing the right thing.

Those three closely placed bullet holes does indeed make it murder.

The California Curmudgeon