Who Fights Our Wars: Soldiers Swept into War After 9-11

 I met Chris at a protest in Philadelphia. I saw his digital camouflage raincoat in the crowd and introduced myself. I was wearing a shirt of the same camo pattern, so we started talking about where we served in Iraq and when.  

Chris deployed to Iraq shortly after the U.S. invasion in late 2003. He went to Camp Bucca in the far east of Iraq just over the border with Kuwait. 

In 2000, Chris wanted to go to college and didn't have the money, so he enlisted in the Army National Guard as an administrative specialist. He completed training and was settling in to the routine of Guard life when 9-11 happened.  Chris had five years to go on his enlistment.  

The Army National Guard Chris joined was not part of the front line fighting force of the American Army. It had the oldest and worst equipment often cast off from active and reserve units.  Many Guard units had a long history of fighting in America's major wars, but not the Vietnam War.  Nearly all National Guard soldiers stayed home during the Vietnam War, to the point where it was clear that joining the Guard was almost as good as getting a deferment.  

But after 9-11 sweeping changes made the Guard part of the fighting force. In the preparation for the invasion of Iraq, Chris was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and retrained as an artilleryman.  After that he was reassigned to a unit preparing for deployment in late 2003.  

When he got to Iraq, he found, as I did later, that active duty units had not changed their minds about Guardsman no matter what the command said. "The active units took all of our guns and equipment. We became an admin unit. It was great for me. That's what I knew." 

His brother joined the active Army after 9-11. On the first of his deployments he passed through Camp Bucca on the way to combat service near Baghdad. Chris moved to Philadelphia after he left the Guard and his brother left active duty. He cared for his brother as injuries both in the military and after his service eventually ended his life. 

______

Talking to Chris reminded me of Sarah, the first Global War on Terror veteran I knew personally. In 1999, Sarah was a mother of two who just bought a bakery. She wanted to learn more about accounting and eventually get a degree in management. She decided to enlist in the Army National Guard and train as a payroll specialist.  

What could go wrong?

Shortly after September 11, 2001, Sarah's life was upended. She got orders to report to a training base after which she was headed for Kuwait.  In the time after the invasion of Afghanistan and before the invasion of Iraq, Sarah was part of a team that set up the American bases across the Middle East and prepared to bring in people from all over the world as cooks and maintenance workers. Sarah worked on the payroll section.

Sarah flew all over the Persian Gulf region and beyond as the U.S. and other countries were beginning to plan for the Iraq invasion. She had done little traveling and had never expected to visit a place in so far from her Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home.  

Amtrak Finally Allows Bikes--And Charges More for Them Than for Passengers

 

For 25 years I have ridden the Amtrak's Keystone trains between Lancaster and Philadelphia, as well as regional trains between Washington DC and Boston.  Several times in those 25 years I have written to Amtrak to ask that bicycles be allowed on the trains. 

Amtrak refused.  Sure, they allowed bikes on a few regional trains with baggage cars, but No! was the main answer to "Can I take my bike."

Today, Amtrak began allowing bikes on the train: for a price.

In my case, the price for taking my bike with me on a train to Philadelphia from Lancaster is double the price for me!  My ticket, with the senior discount is $10.40. The bike cost is $20!  

That means I can visit Philadelphia for $20.80 round trip or I can bring my bike at a total cost of $60.80.  A bike with a normal adult fare makes the round trip $82.  

That's crazy.  Why should the bike cost $20 each way? Weight? My bikes weight 17 and 19 pounds each. A five-car passenger train with an electric locomotive weighs 2 million pounds.  Is the addition of 19 pounds a problem?

Space? Keystone trains have seats for 400 passengers and lately have had 20 or 30 passengers per train.  If one or two people per train take a bike, will it cause overcrowding? 

If I take a bike on New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Railroad, SEPTA, the Boston MTA, the Baltimore DC MARC system or any other regional train the cost for a bike is ZERO.  

Why is it $20 per trip on Amtrak?

Defenders of God Want Theocracy and Death

Defenders of God always have a good reason to kill

In eight weeks, millions of American Evangelicals and Catholics will vote to re-elect the most despicable person ever elected to public office in America. They will vote for a draft-dodging, lying criminal because they want to stop abortion in America completely and forever.  

They say they are doing this to defend life, but they really are defending God.  And nothing in the history of the world is more dangerous. 

They believe that life begins at conception and once the Chosen Sperm breaks into the Egg-of-the-Month the resulting zygote is a human life that must be protected. And to disrupt cell division is to end a human life. There can be no discussion, even a morning after pill is murder. 

If the abortion-is-murder militants were actually Pro-Life, they would cherish every child. But Pro-Life religious people who want to impose a theocracy in America to stop abortion hold every possible anti-life in regard to post-partum people. Pro-Life voters are against:

--Medical care for all

--Regulating guns used for mass murder, even of children in schools

--Environmental regulations that keep lead out of water and therefore out of children

--Air and water pollution regulations of all kinds

--Action on the effects of climate change

--Keeping together families of those begging for asylum at the border. Defenders of God take the Bible literally except for troublesome passages like "welcoming the stranger in your midst" and "caring for widows and orphans in their need."  

--Most sadly, they are worshipping a despicable liar who inverts the Beatitudes every day of his disgusting life. The Apostle Paul asked with Jewish sarcasm if we should sin more so we could get more grace.  But the pathetic Trump cultists cheer Trump's lies as long as he is "owning the libs." What a disgusting inversion of every every word of the Beatitudes. 

It is as if Paul wrote a second Book of Romans and urged the citizens of the eternal city to worship Nero--the Trump of the first century. 

MAGA looks back. Always back.  How far back?  Before Civil Rights. Before Voting Rights. Before Women's Rights. Before Gay Rights. In the mouth of Republican child molester Roy Moore and apostate pastor Doug Wilson, all the way back to slavery. The view of MAGA exalts denying rights to more and more and more people.

When the MAGA cult looks back before the Civil Rights Act, they want a time when lynching was acceptable, when people sent postcards from lynchings, when they cheered lynchings in groups of hundreds.  Jim Crow America killed thousands of innocent men by mob hanging and mutilation.  

The Evangelical Church in the American South endorsed Jim Crow and provided the Biblical justification for chattel slavery before that. There is nothing Pro-Life about slavery, Jim Crow and racism.  

A Defender of God can tell you life begins at sperm collision and vote to protect life for the entire nine months in the womb, but at the same time they do "God's will" with the unborn, they will do nothing to prevent the slaughter of first graders in school, nothing to protect poor kids from preventable disease and death, wave the Confederate flag, the flag of the failed state that enslaved millions, and worship a fat coward who lies every time his lips move. 

The only way to have a democratic country is to take power from the Defenders of God. If they have power, they will take away rights and eventually they will take human life without remorse.  

Choppers: MAGA on Two Wheels

 

I love motorcycles.  I love sleek, fast machines that can track a perfect line through a high-speed turn and have power-to-weight ratios that make Porsches perform like Plymouths by comparison.  Since I love all that is high-tech in two-wheeled transportation, I don’t love Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  They are the two-wheeled equivalent of NASCAR, freezing technology in the twentieth century to satisfy a market for nostalgia.

But at least a brand new Hog has modern tires and brakes and safety equipment, even if it is saddled with an engine design from 1909: that was the year Harley Davidson first produced the 45-degree V-twin.  The design gives the Harley a sound like no other motorcycle, the asymmetric fart of cylinders that fire unevenly.  

Take the already retro technology of a Harley and erase a century of performance and safety improvements and you have a Chopper:  MAGA on two wheels. 

 

Harley-Davidson motorcycles are heavier, slower and will not handle as well any bike on the road with a similar engine size.  And when compared to bikes made by Italian, British and Japanese manufacturers, Harleys have less than half the power for a given engine size—and cost twice as much.  

But nothing else sounds like a Harley, according to the gourmets of growl.  It’s an audible designer label: putt-putt sound over substance.  The difference in handling and performance between a Honda, Ducati or any other modern motorcycle and a full-size Harley is the difference between a Ferrari and an Escalade—the Escalade may have style and just as much horsepower, but on a twisty road or an autobahn, the Italian sports car is going to disappear up the road faster than a steak tossed in a kennel. 

Honda CBR 1000

Ducati Panigale

If Harleys can’t keep up with Ducatis as they are shipped from the factory, they are at least safe and as fast as computer-aided design can make a bike that uses a century-old drivetrain.  But turn that Harley into a chopper, and even the mediocre turning and braking of the original drops to new lows.  

The most radical choppers have front ends extended so far that the bike has the turning radius of a school bus.  And to complement their terrible turning, they use a hard-tail rear suspension.  As the name suggests, the hard-tail has neither springs nor shocks in the rear.  The tire is suspension.  It’s the same handling and braking you would get with an 800-pound bicycle. 

The most extreme choppers eliminate the front brakes for styling. As with a car, 80 percent of the stopping power is in the front brakes. With no front brake, these bikes take hundreds of feet to stop. And the back brake has to be used with care to avoid locking it up and sliding.  

Decades ago some motorcycles were built with hand shifters and foot clutches.  The clutches became known as suicide clutches. Other designs put the hand clutch on the shit lever.  Either way, the ride has to let go of the handlebars to shift.  It was a real safety improvement to allow the rider to shift with both hands on the handlebars.  But for several hundred dollars the Widowmaker Company (no kidding) makes a Jockey shifter for Harleys with a hand clutch. 

Widomaker Jockey Shifter

Use an engine design from 1909, reverse a century of improvements in shifting, braking and control and you have a chopper--the bike that is MAGA. 

Russian Escort Service: My volunteer job at the Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

I am an Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony volunteer. My job at the annual ceremony each year is to escort Russian Channel One (Первей Канал).

Here is the video of me explaining my job:

https://www.improbable.com/2020/09/02/reputation-for-not-following-rules-an-ig-nobel-prize-favorite-moment/

Bike Racing Embarrassment: “What a big one!”

 

 

At most bicycle races, we deal with pre-race nervousness by riding to a tree and facing away from the road or waiting in line at a Port-A-Potty.  At one of the most difficult races on the schedule in the late 90s, we had indoor plumbing. 

 

The Mount Nebo Road Race was a nine-mile lap with a more than a thousand feet of climbing per lap. Race distances were three laps for Cat 5 to nine laps for Cat 1&2 on this very hilly course in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

 

The race began and ended at the Marticville Elementary School.  As start times approached, racers clicked down the hallway on their cleats to a boy’s room with three old-fashioned, full-length urinals. 

 

Three urinals were bolted to the north wall. Morning light streamed in through the high windows on the east wall above the sinks. I stood in the line on the left side. There was a half-dozen men at each urinal. When my turn came, I looked down as I pulled at my bib shorts and saw a huge cockroach running around the drain. 

 

Surprised, I blurted out, “What a big one!” I had spent 11 years in the Army earlier in my life. In a millisecond I knew how dumb my remark was. I finished what I was doing and walked out. In the hallway, one of my earnest master’s racer friends said, “Neil, you shouldn’t say that.” As if that was news to me.

 

It was nearly the end of the season and I was overseas every month for work back then, so I got less kidding about my gaffe than I expected.  But I certainly know not to do running commentary on roaches in my urinal!

Vote Trump to Support Israel? Not This American Jew!

 

 

I know Jews in America and Israel who support re-electing the current President based in part on his support for Israel.  I can understand how an Israeli could have that opinion. Although I supported President Obama, I did not support his foreign policy in general and his relationship with Israel in particular.

While I understand Israeli support for Trump, I knew it was bad for America. Here is one of many Israeli rabbis who support Trump. 

 

Then I read an article by a Taiwanese American justifying his plan to vote for Trump.  He pointed out, correctly, that Trump has supported Taiwan more than any other recent President.  And stood up to China more than any other recent President.  He sounded very much like a Jew supporting Trump based on Israel.  The article by Eric Chang begins:

“If you asked me to put money down on whether or not Donald Trump could point Taiwan out on a map, I would say you are out of your mind. However, if you asked me whether or not the Trump presidency has been good for Taiwan, I would be lying if I said it has not. To be clear, I am not talking about what might be better for the United States; I am strictly talking in terms of Taiwan’s geopolitics and from my personal opinion.

Growing up in the U.S. when I was younger, I never really understood why my progressive parents would sometimes vote Republican. But now, after living in Taiwan for more than 19 years, I can see the method behind the madness. The GOP has traditionally been more vocal in their support of Taiwan. And of course, a lot of that has to do with the massive arms purchases, but it is tangible, effective support nonetheless.”

As I read, I realized that the short-term benefits to Taiwan and Israel of a Trump re-election were based on the America continuing to be the richest and strongest country in the world, and on Trump keeping his word.  It was a clear “Oh shit!” moment that was belied by everything that Trump has done in his life and particularly what he has done as President. 

Trump’s deep concern for Israel came from his Evangelical advisors telling him how much the flocks they fleece love Israel.  Trump needs Evangelical votes to be re-elected, but on November 4^th, he will have no further need the religious rubes he scorns in private. 

Taiwan will be useful to Trump until he trades away protection for the island nation in a deal with President Xi of China. He will sell out Taiwan and the island nation will follow Hong Kong into Chinese control and loss of independence. 

Part of Trump caving in to Xi will be the real ruin of the American economy that will follow Trump’s re-election.  Trump’s central failure of 2020 is his pathetic response to COVID-19.  The United States is the plague nation of the world with the most infection and death in the world in absolute numbers and even worse relative to population.  The debt and death we have accumulated in 2020 will leave China on top of the global economy as early as next year if we collapse suddenly. 

 

Reading Eric Chang has made it clearer to me how important it is for Americans to vote as Americans.

Chang’s essay is, in part a response to an article a week before that began:

“A strong United States is crucial for a more secure and democratic Taiwan. Contrary to popular perception among the first generation in the Taiwanese American community, the Trump administration has weakened the United States’ economic, diplomatic, and moral standing in the world. This is detrimental to Taiwan’s long-term security and democracy. The authoritarian government of China continues to threaten military intervention, claim sovereignty over democratic Taiwan, and expand China’s military and economic power throughout the Asia Pacific region.

The November 2020 election is the Taiwanese American community’s opportunity to vote Trump out of office and support the election of former Vice President Joseph Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. The Biden-Harris administration will take actions to strengthen the U.S.’s relationships with our allies rather than continue our unilateralism.”

Trump is a vile liar who wants to be a dictator and re-election will grant him and his family the ability to plunder America and ruin the 240-year experiment in democracy that America is. Supporting Trump in or out of America means trusting the man of 20,000 lies to keep his word.

Israel and Taiwan are vastly outnumbered by foes who would destroy them. A strong and stable United States is the best chance for both countries to be safe in a dangerous world.

But for Americans of whatever background there is no choice. Every American should be a one-issue voter and that issue is “Defeat Trump.” We are currently the leading plague state in the world because of his failures and four more years will be beyond dismal.  I plan to express my support for Israel and America and free people around the world by voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to replace the worst President in American history.

While advocates for Israel and Taiwan point to current reasons to support Trump, the long-term direction of a Trump presidency is to support dictators and betray democracies.  At the time Trump betrayed the Kurds after one phone call from Turkey, Israelis expressed concern Trump could do the same to them. I said, "Will not Could."  Whatever the weaknesses of Democratic foreign policy in the past, Biden and Harris are pro-democracy and believe America should support democracy around the world. That in itself is an infinite improvement over the dictator-wannabe we have now.