Saturday Bag o’ Brewskis

beer bagI mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been sober for a while. I’ve had it easier than many alcoholics: in seven years I haven’t experienced any cravings or temptations, even when I’m surrounded by people who are drinking. I would have said I’m over the hump, but then I read that Philip Seymour Hoffman, before he relapsed, was sober for 23 years!

That’s frightening. Also, too … I wonder how many alcoholics are using PSH as an excuse to start again?

But hey, if I last 23 years I’ll be well into my 80s, and if I take a tipple in the nursing home who’ll care? Probably not me! So there’s that.

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There are a couple of other things I wanted to comment on before I forget:

Some subjects are so radioactive whoever touches them throws up, goes bald, and dies. One such is the glowing lump of fissile material that is the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow/Dylan Farrow/Moses Farrow drama. Sorry, I don’t want to link to any of it. You can Google it. The only possible person who will benefit from any of this is Nancy Grace.

Years ago I presided over the court martial of a senior USAF NCO accused of molesting two adopted teenaged daughters. The evidence presented was unpersuasive and we let the fellow go with a recommendation that the daughters live with an aunt until they were 18, just in case. The “just in case” aspect is something you just can’t get away from when it comes to child molestation: even if the evidence shows no abuse took place, you always wonder afterward. As one of the court martial board members said to me, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

All I know is someone’s lying.

Oy, Bill Cosby too? WTF?

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I don’t want to live in a paranoid security state with police and surveillance cameras watching everything I do, so I’m trying not to wet the bed over the power station attack in San Jose last April. But damn, isn’t it just possible it was practice for a future, perhaps more serious attack? Apparently a number of people think it was just that.

In 1995 a bomb went off prematurely in a Manila apartment and Philippine authorities uncovered what came to be known as the Bojinka Plot. An Islamist terrorist named Ramzi Yousef, assisted by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, planned to kill the Pope during a visit to the Philippines, plant bombs on 11 jet airliners, and hijack a 12th airliner in order to fly it into CIA headquarters in Virginia.

It’s not like the Bojinka Plot wasn’t in the news. I knew about it at the time; so did everyone who was paying attention. The part that got my attention was the terrorists’ plan to hijack an airliner and use it as a flying bomb against a ground target in the USA. That was a new and scary terrorist tactic. My first thought was “What if they try that flying-airliners-into-buildings trick again some day?”

That was in 1995, and I was just some dumb shit reading about Bojinka in the papers. We pay people to watch for plots like this and take action to prevent their execution. But just a few years later terrorists led by the very same Khalid Sheikh Mohammed hijacked four airliners in the USA and carried out the 9/11 attacks. What did President George W. Bush have to say afterward? C’mon, repeat it with me:

“It’s hard to envision a plot so devious as the one that they pulled off on 9/11,” Bush said in a January interview with NBC’s Tom Brokaw. “Never did we realize that the enemy was so well organized.”

Well, some of us envisioned it. Some of us realized it. Someone in your own goddamn administration even tried to bring it to your attention. You just didn’t want to listen. I’m not a 9/11 truther, but all this is verifiable fact. We did know. We were warned. And we did nothing.

Is that what’s going to happen here? I wonder.

A friend and I were exchanging email about this the other day. Here’s what he said:

Regarding the SJ substation…  Something like that happened on a smaller, more remote scale – a development or small town – last year.
Folks in the industry – and some policymakers – are aware of the liability, but unfortunately, there’s not much we can do to protect against it.  There are actually a couple of worst case scenarios that could have dramatic impacts on major U.S. cities and it’s just one of those things where people are collectively holding their breaths hoping it doesn’t happen.
Should be a no-brainer to shore up physical security a bit, but even doing that: I’m not sure it’s preventable against professionals.
Scary shit.  As I often tell folks: we are profoundly lucky that we have not experienced more attacks to our nation. It’s actually a testament to our society that we don’t.  Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

Here’s my reply:

I remember as a kid thinking how easy it would be to stop society in its tracks by taking out power lines, or kill a lot of people by poisoning the water supply. I don’t think I even knew the word “terrorism” back then.

Look at all these school shootings and such: there are ALWAYS copycats, and if some assholes were in fact running a dress rehearsal for a serious attack on the electrical grid, it’s inevitable that copycat assholes will now start doing the same thing … not to mention the original terrorists who were practicing last April, who will come back and try it again sooner or later.

One good thing, we don’t really have a national electrical grid, just a haphazard mess that happens to work when there’s not too much stress on it. And witness the chemical spill in WV, it’s really hard to poison a water supply enough to actually kill people. Also, remember Aum Shin Rikeo? They used one of the deadliest poisons, sarin, in the heart of one of the most densely-populated cities on earth, and managed to kill all of 12 people (granted, they injured hundreds more).

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I think the Winter Olympics Russia-bashing is getting out of hand. All these journalists bitching about the crummy hotels in Sochi? Clearly they’ve never experienced the off-base hotels in Songtan, South Korea (my Air Force friends should appreciate this reference).

I have only one complaint, and it’s the same one I have every time an Olympics airs on American television: we always allow one network to have a monopoly on Olympic broadcasting, and whichever network that is always censors and slants the coverage.

I followed yesterday’s opening ceremonies on Twitter, where people who were at the actual event posted photos and YouTube links to all sorts of stuff NBC decided we didn’t need to see during last night’s time-delayed broadcast. Stuff like the Russian Police Chorus singing pop songs, the stray dog who darted out just as the torchbearer was about to light the Olympic flame, the fact that said torchbearer posted racist photoshopped pictures of our president and first lady last year.

Once again, we won’t be able to watch the events we want to watch and we won’t be able to escape the jingoistic adulation of entitled little American shits who destroy their rooms in the Olympic Village.

Vladimir Putin, there are many things about you I don’t like, but I admire your patience and I hope the rest of the games live up to the impressive opening ceremony you put on last night. Just wish you’d found a different torchbearer, though.

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p.s. Do your Facebook friends critique your appearance in profile photos? I would never dream of saying anything about someone’s selfie unless they’re actually drooling or something, but maybe I’m out of touch with the kids today.

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