The Opinionator

Kos and His Military Utopia

Powerline links to an essay by Kos, of Daily Kos fame, regarding his military service. I think they describe it fairly well, "Kos yearns for the army of his youth -- the one that helped him "bulk" up, learn German, and see Europe without making him fight." That pretty much sums it up. And while I usually refrain from commenting on those that have served, he is full of crap in a few places.

Kos talks about carrying a 100lb rucksack while in Basic Training at Ft. Sill to become a MLRS specialist. Well, we did not carry 100lb rucks at Ft. Benning and we were training to become infantryman, not rocket launcher specialists. They just felt that way! We were carrying approximately that much weight when we carried the tube or base plate for the 81mm mortar. Even in Alaska, home of some of the heaviest ruck around, we did not have a 100lb rucks. We did carry that much weight, once you added in the 90mm Recoiless Rifle (42lbs), M-16 and .45 pistol I carried as a "90" gunner. Just a little bit of exaggeration there Markos.

Kos also seems to long for all the benefits without having to answer the call. It is a good thing that he would not enlist today. The military does not need those looking for a free lunch. I used the military to pay for school and get my shit together as well. But I never lost track of the fact that the military is not a social services agency, it exists to kill people and break their things, and I was ready and willing to answer the call.

He also points out that the military made him a democrat and takes a jab at the fact that all the vets that he knows of that are running for office are dem's as well. Never does he consider that those that many of those that agree with the war in Iraq are still fighting it, staying in to do so or are fine with the status quo. It is the disaffected that are running for office. And as far as the Republicans not being willing to wear combat boots, perhaps he should look at the way military members voted in 2004.

If he had his way, the military would be a big welfare program...or our society would have all the benefits of the military without the obligation. In either case, that would be a disaster.

Firefox is Back!

Just a quick note, Mozilla just released a new version of Firefox; 1.5.02. Included is Universal Binary support for the Intel Macs. As I use an Intel iMac with Firefox, I am ecstatic. The performance of Firefox has been barely usable on my machine when being emulated using Rosetta. It was so bad that I only used it when blogging as Safari does not support all the Typepad features such as spell check. However, this new version is fast and stable. I am now able to use Firefox for all my browsing.  Yes!

Thanks For Hanging In There!

It has been far too long since I have posted. Recently, I have been balancing the job hunt with work and family. The result is a spectacular success; a new job with more money, more responsibility and more potential. For the last two weeks I have been transitioning my old job and trying to prepare to start my new one so I have been much too busy to post. I start my new position on Monday and hope to make an immediate impact at my new organization. That combined with the additional travel that my new position entails means that posting may still be less frequent than I would like but it should be fairly regular.

To those that have stopped by during my absence, thank you. I hope to repay your loyalty with some decent posts.