A couple of days ago, there was a horrible accident in the local (Norfolk, VA) news. Two high school girls were sitting in their car waiting for a red light when they were hit from behind by a speeding car. The car was driven by an inebrated illegal alien with a list of DUI and alcohol offenses as long as your arm. Both of the girls were killed. The news has been full of the families and friends and the heartbreaking story.

Yesterday, Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera had a very vocal discussion of the incident (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264526,00.html). I felt sorry for Geraldo, a lot of typical O'Reilly attack and bullying. Lots of ranting and raving by O'Reilly. He accused Geraldo and the Mayor of the City of Virginia Beach of being unAmerican, terrorists, and negligent in allowing this to happen. O'Reilly has a list of “sanctuary cities”. Virginia Beach was not on the list but probably will be now. I sort of agree with the general immigration idea, that more needs to be done by a lot of levels of government (mostly the Federal level). Geraldo and the Mayor and Virginia Beach certainly do not deserve the blunt of O'Reilly's vituperations, however. Well, Geraldo, maybe.

We think of news media - papers, magazines, TV – as there to tell us the news. Bull hockey, I tell you, bull hockey! They are a commercial venture whose goal is to make money, mostly by increasing their viewership so they can up their advertising prices. See my 22 March, 2007, entry. CNN leans pretty much toward actually giving us news. That is what their viewers watch for. Fox leans defintely in the entertainment direction, however. That is what they do for their viewers. Like 24 hours a day of Anna Nicole? Incidently, I refuse to watch Fox “News”. And I refuse to recognize O'Reilly as a contributor to a news channel.

There has been a rash of ranting and raving on TV recently. Rosie O'Donnell, Donald Trump, and now Bill O'Reilly. On O'Reilly's web page (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264526,00.html), his feud with O'Donnell is one of the headline links. And, of course, these vociferous battles make lots of news (And blogs. Here am I caving in to their efforts to get publicity.). Are we watching reality or are we just being manipulated for these buzzards to pick apart our wallets? I, for one, refuse to put these entertainers into any category other than that. They are not giving me any information that I need or want. Nor any entertainment I want or need.

I had a recent communication with another blogger (http://watchingtheparade.blogstream.com/) in which I mentioned my first duty in the U.S. Navy. Those formative years when we are wild and wooly seem to loom large in our memories. That first duty in 1958 was a WWII Fletcher Class destroyer, the USS Cony, DDE 508 (http://www.usscony.com) that had been refitted for Cold War anti-submarine warfare(ASW). Roger Rieman has done a great job with that Cony website. Everyone ought to surf through it. Cony was part of a lot of history and Roger has anecdotes for all of it. At 377 feet and 2000 tons, Fletcher Class destroyers are dwarfed by modern ships. Modern Coontz Class destroyers are 512 feet long and 6000 tons.

The Cony was part of what in the late 1950's was called Task Force Alpha. Our squadron would go out to Point Pete in the Atlantic with a carrier and some of our subs (that was Task Force Alpha), winter and summer, calm or storm. We would be on station for two weeks and then be replaced by Task Force Bravo, and then back again to replace them. The point was that we would be in position to intercept Russian submarines should they try to approach. No boomers yet. The early Cold War. We spent our time doing ASW exercises, plane guarding the carrier aircraft, and just plain survivng in the North Atlantic. At that point, we had a couple of nuclear boats but most submarines were diesel pig-boats.

Survivng in the North Atlantic in a smallish sort of ship is an event in itself. I can remember the Cony crawling up one side of a wave. The screws straining to push it up the mountain of water. At the top, the sonar would be out of water and we could hear it scream. Then down the other side. The flat bottom of the bow would slam against the water as she fell forward. As the screws came up out of the water, they would race in the air. And then at the bottom, green water looming overhead and washing over the bridge. We ate sandwiches and drank coffee. Eating at a table was impossible. Normal sleeping meant ending up on the floor. I spread myself out face down on my bunk with my arms and legs spread-eagled as much as I could to keep my center of gravity as low as possible and to hold on in my sleep as best I could. No one ventured outside unless there was an emergency and then only with safety lines. And we survived. Cony did not lose anyone. Mother Nature is a cruel, mean bitch and we beat her.

Plane guarding meant being stationed close in front of and behind the carrier in case an aircraft had to go down in takeoff or landing.

We would replenish our fuel and supplies by high-lining. That meant steaming about ten or twenty feet beside the carrier or a huge transport and pass oil, supplies, people across suspended by a rope. And the ships had to go fast for better stability. Water would race and boil between the ships. I highlined to the carrier one time to go home when our Dan was born. It is a memorable event. The Bos'n thought it amusing to almost dunk the new JG. Great seamanship, no spills and no accidents.

And the ASW. Today's blog is already long. Come back in a day or so.

According to my Yahoo home page and the link to Britannica's “This Day in History”, “On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed into law George C. Marshall's post World War II plan to revive the economies of western and southern European countries so as to foster democracy in the region.” The birth of the Marshall Plan.

Truman is one of my heroes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman). It used to be (they are redoing it) that when you go to the American History Museum, you could vote for your favorite President. I always voted for Harry. The end of WWII, the atom bomb, integration of the Armed Forces, the United Nations, the Cold War (which we won), the Berlin Airlift, doing what he thought best despite political pressures, lots of momentous decisions. “The buck stops here.” But most of all, the Marshall Plan.

And another of the things that defines our world, the differences between the end of World War I (The War to End All Wars) and the end of WWII. In a lot of aspects, WWI did not end, it just continued on to erupt twenty years later. The end of WWI in the Treaty of Versailles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles) and, for the Germans, the train car in Compeigne Forest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compi%C3%A8gne_Forest) was a 19th Century dinosaur used to get revenge in a 20th Century civilization. It did not work.

It has been fifty years and WWII seems to be pretty well settled. President Truman and General Marshall seem to have gotten it right. They may have had fighting Communism as one of their motives but they ended up making the best (lasting peace) of a bad situation (a horrible and devastating war – 70 nations involved and 71 million deaths - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II).

I was born in 1936 and I remember it all. How many folks of the generations born after WWII know of this momentous undertaking that has affected their lives so much? How many citizens of those countries that we poured so much of our treasure into know of all of this?

On the news last night, there was a bit on the pharmaceutical companies' lobbyists in the House of Representatives. They said that there are two pharmaceutical lobbyists for each Representative. And a lot of theose lobbyists are ex-Congressmen. See: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=PhRMA%2C+lobbyists&btnG=Search. A Google search for PhRMA, lobbyists got 39,400 hits.

The first question is: why? If our pharmaceutical industry is doing the job they advertise, why do they need to do this? Can't the products stand on their own? And, of course, the obvious reason is that they make money by doing it. The trouble is that the money for all that lobbying – can you imagine what it costs that industry? - and all of those advertisements (see my 22 June, 2006 entry), comes at the expense of pricing in the U.S. From my tax dollars and my prescriptions. To hell with bargaining, fair market value, the American Way! To hell with middle income America being able to afford the medicines that keep them healthy and alive! Let's murder them all!

The next question is that if the pharmaceutical industries have their voice in American government, why can't I. But wait, I do. My Senators and Representative, of course! But wait again, those Senators and Congressmen are taking all that money that the lobbyists are handing out. Alas, alas, alas. What to do? What to do? What to do?

One alternative, of course, is to socialize the pharmaceutical industry and medical law, if not all of medicine. Good Lord, what would Congress do with that? Can you imagine? Norway can do it but the U.S. of A.?

A couple of my favorite quotes. Winston Churchill said words to the effect that democracy is a dismal failure, except that everything else has already been tried. And Will Rogers said that the greatest benefit of Congress is that it takes the five hundred biggest crooks (liars) and puts them all in one place.