The Life of Robin Williams

I've often wondered what it would be like to be in the profession of making people laugh.  This thought process comes, normally, in a burst of inspiration after watching a Robin Williams performance in one of his many films.

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Two of my favorite movies, "Dead Poets Society" and "Good Morning Vietnam" had #RobinWilliams portraying what I would conclude were self portraits as a mentor and a motivation to the troops and students.

He is missed, and not just by a few thousand, but by millions of faithful Williams fans.  If at the end of life, people speak about me and my accomplishments in life for a week after my death, I would think that I made a difference and an impact on something bigger than myself, and that is how I personify #RobinWilliams life as a comedian/actor/father.

The Extended Lunch Peace Treaty

90 minutes.  That is all the peace treaty that was brokered to last 72 hours, actually lasted before Hamas continued to attack the Israelis.  90 minutes.  My questions for the brokering party would have to start with the likelihood that a Internationally known Terrorist group, Hamas, is going to abide by a treaty brokered by nobody that is in their corner, not one.   The Palestinian Liberation Organization does not endorse nor support Hamas.  The Palestinian people don't endorse Hamas nor support them, as they continue to be used as human shields for an organization that believes in their mission as a mission from god on a fanatical level.

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The argument that Israel is hitting the Hamas too hard, is in my opinion, ludicrous.  The Hamas use the same tactics as Al Quaeda in Iraq did during Operation Iraqi Freedom with putting mortar tubes and rocket launchers on top of schools and in the middle of grocery markets, why?  Because if it bleeds, it leads in the International news world, and the videos of dead civilians outside of Israel draws sympathy, and sympathy draws attention.  The attention of dead people on television, which is shown to the American public, is then harvested by sympathizers to the Hamas mission, and a phone call is made.  The phone call is for a representative of a state to ask the question on a public forum as to why Israel has to defend itself by firing rockets and missiles into Gaza, killing civilians.  The state representative never asks for the bolts to the story, just the result, and this is why John Kerry is sent to Gaza to broker a peace treaty between two factions that could give a worn down boot heel about what he has to say or the peace treaty he is brokering for them.  This treaty was doomed from the beginning, and lasted long enough for the Israeli soldiers to grab a quick sandwich before it was over and the fighting commenced.

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The Magical El Paso Floating Podium

In Berlin, you have the Brandenburg Gate, in Athens, the Coliseum, and in New York, the Statue of Liberty, but, what all of the places don't have, and could never have to the degree that El Paso, TX has, is.....A Magical Floating Podium.  That's right folks, a magical floating podium, the kind that jumps right out at you, gets in your way as your walking, and slams itself into you on your way to the baggage claim area.  

I have been sitting across from where the Magical Floating Podium starts it's day for the past two days, and the very sight of its floating ability is astounding, simply amazing.  The rundown of events involving this podium is too many to list, so I will spare the very best for this blog.

1.  As people are getting off their planes, making their way down the escalators enroute  to the baggage claim area, the cell phone and tablets begin to emerge, forcing the eyes to move down to the screen and amaze the onlookers with scenes never seen before.  Just as these people begin to get close to the baggage area, WHAM!!! from out of nowhere comes this 6 foot tall, 3 foot wide podium slamming itself into the cellphone attention deficit patrons of this fine airport.

2.  It is a fight every good magical floating podium finds itself in at random times of the duty day, the angry podium bouncer.  This is the person that, while engaged with his/her tablet, doesn't see the floating podium,  and without warning WHAM!!! slams into the side of it.  The Magical Floating Podium does what any good podium does, it stands erect, and looks down the nose at the individual without eyes on the top of the head.  This individual is now steaming mad, with smoke coming out of his ears, and fireballs shooting from his eyes.  He/she looks around wildly, to see who could have put this podium in their way!  Once the area has been cleared of any possible wrongdoers, the person then starts to swear, in unpure language, at the Magical Floating Podium, threatening it with physical abuse, if it ever got in their way again.  

More to follow with The Magical El Paso Floating Podium, as my time at the airport, and in full view of the sheer magical power of such a under empowered object of focus becomes more important to all that lay eyes on it.

The Israel Dilemma

I  call this article, "The Israel Dilemma" because the battle that rages in American politics, which can be  found at the barbershop as well as the White  House.  It seems that Americans are split where Israeli's  are not, right down the middle, on what the U.S. involvement should be, as allies, or peace brokers.  In  my honest opinion, we should be there in  Israel, helping them fight the Arab countries that surround them, kick them in the teeth on a daily basis, and then cry foul when the Israelis shoot back. It isn't fair, but then again, it was never designed to be fair.

In the United States, we have our  fair share of Israeli constituents, and with that, the people of Israel have made a very good living in the United States, with a hand in just about every capitalism aspect of this country, from Hollywood to Wall Street, Israel is supported in every way, shape, and form.  Elected officials are supported solely from these officials for one cause, to lobby the  support of Israel to the White House, and to badger every living soul until assistance is sent.

The fight between Israelis and Palestinians goes back to biblical days, and it will never end.  The war between Arabs and Jews will never end, even with the idea that Isaac and Ishmael are brothers by blood, but hate each other by birthright.  So, in the end, you have a country that nobody wants in the region fighting against a people that haven't a country of their own, but are unofficially supported by powerful friends.  Peace will be brokered, the missiles and rockets will subside, and then in a blink of an eye, it will start  all over again with new tunnels, and more lives lost.

A Soldier's Perspective on the Army of 2030

LEADERSHIP

Today's leaders come out of College with a four degree, are sent to various leadership development schools and then are given specific instruction on their field of focus, before setting foot on the ground with soldiers.  For the past 100 years of the Army this has existed and worked well, but to fully acquire an operational environment that meets and exceeds the future combat environments in the battle spaces that we, as a nation, will be engaging, the education and training needs to transform.

AMERICA'S SOLDIER

Family's from across our country have been sending their sons and daughters to the Armed Forces to train and then protect our National interests for longer than I can remember, but, basically, since 1775.  The understanding is that the soldier will learn a skill set and either take that skill set outside of the military and further their education in the private sector, or become a career soldier.  Either way, the individual has the opportunity to find their niche and propel into a future.  That was then, and this is now.  

The current soldier can no longer fully qualify for the employment in the Armed Forces unless they further engage themselves in professional and personal development, through Military and Civilian education, and by utilizing the multitude of College courses offered on each and every post in each of the Posts, Bases, and Detachments.  

THE S.F. PHENOMENA

Since the beginning of the Special Forces mission, the ability to insert small group fighters into indigenous populations with the ability to move within the population with stealth and knowledge management, has had an amazing effect on the current battle spaces, and with lethal/non-lethal antidotes.  The effective placement of these small groups has in large part been due to the specific area training required of the personnel conducting these missions.  A group of soldiers is trained for the specific area that they will be operating in, instead of getting a broad set of training skills, relative to the conventional Armed Forces.  If the soldier qualifies to learn a certain language, then that soldier is sent to a specific group of operators that are also prone to learning the culture that they qualified for.

TRANSFORMATION OF CONVENTIONAL FORCES

Do more with less.  This was the Army that I came into, and our ability to conduct more missions with less money and less logistics meant that we had to truly care for our equipment, and make it work for our operational needs.  

The Transformation of Conventional Forces needs to revisit those old years of making the mission happen, with less than what we have had in the past 12 years.  A much tighter budget and less logistics is what we are going to see, and we will still need to make the mission a success.  So lets take a look at the SF posture and apply it to the conventional forces.

My concept for this program of instruction is to take the Special Forces model and apply it to the Conventional Forces, with the end state of having regional forces within the United States and abroad trained and ready to respond to cultural battles in specific battle spaces.  For example, Fort Hood, TX and Fort Bliss, TX would have a large portion of its population trained in speaking Spanish, fully educated on South American cultures, with NCO's and Officers, attending South American schools, utilizing the bottom-up approach.  This would put SSG's and Lieutenants in Military Schools across the South American continent.  Utilizing the bottoms-up approach would work better than the Top-Down approach, in that you have the soldiers with the boots on the ground relating to their counter parts, creating a working relationship and understanding of TTP's.  There isn't a whole lot of armor fighting going on in the South American countries so those assets would get moved to a Regional Force within the Armed Forces where their focus is responding to a USARPAC or USAREUR crisis.

SIMULATIONS

The nay sayers of Simulations in training will tell you that Simulations doesn't give real life reactions to actions, and therefore are not cost effective for training, while the OMB will tell you that, unless you want to spend your own money on logistic support, you will utilize Simulations for training, or lose the asset completely.  Simulations does save money, especially for the Armored Force, which is always the biggest loser in budget fights.  It's been ten years since we have done a Armor on Armor fight, meaning that when budget committees look for things to cut, the center guide and sprocket are the first to go.  Utilizing simulations in training for small arms to convoy security gives the soldier, which also happens to be gaming productive, the ability to see reactions to actions and then to learn from the mistakes and take a better course of action for the next mission.  Simulations would also give our NCO Academy's and Officer Schools the ability to train leadership in a hands on approach for leaders, rather than kill our ADHD students with PowerPoint.  

THE END STATE

The end state for today's budget controlled Armed Forces would be to have Regionally trained Land forces ready to react to the different crises across the globe, specific to those areas, trained in Simulations, and validated with live ammunition.  Enlisted and Commissioned soldiers that have the ability to shoot, move, and communicate with the indigenous population forces within the specific area of assignment, language skills and cultural education complete.  Instead of moving soldiers and leadership around the Military machine every three to four years, the education of the Forces would use the money from transitions to further the education of the forces for the Regional areas of operation.  All soldiers and leaders would take a language proficiency exam at the onset of the plan, and then move once to their Region of specialty.

The Dark Days behind and ahead

Mississippi burning during the 50's was the breaking point for ethnic segregation in this country, and now, we have shows that celebrate the gang violence in Chicago by calling the city that these gang members live in as Chiraq, which according to the gang members has some similarity that I can't see, as a veteran that has deployed to the country twice.

I have seen recently a story of a mom/wife, that shot herself six times with two different guns, after writing a suicide not on her husband's overhead projector, who happens to be a former sheriff deputy, and then setting the house she lives in on fire, with her two kids inside.  The part that gets me thinking is that A. The husband's story that she committed suicide is as hole proof as Swiss cheese, and B. That HLN with Nancy Disgrace continues to celebrate the actions of a murderer with constant updates about his court appearance. Celebration of a murderer, another pathetic display of "If it bleeds, it leads" from our media outlets.

We have issues in this country, such as the proliferation of weapons from outside sources that flood a market filled with people that have every right to own a gun, in the defense of their home, and those that look at a gun as a tool for the delusion that it gives them some sort of power.

The Government is monitoring the public through phones and cameras and listening devices.  I say, good for them, because if you don't have anything to hide, then you don't have anything to worry about.  If this method of background services stops another terrorist action inside the country then I am all for it.  Besides, if the story had not broken in The Guardian, nobody would've cared one way or the other.  Starbucks will still sell the non-fat, skinny, flavored water people want at 6 a.m. while commuting the 45 minutes through the Grapevine in the morning, and pay the 250 dollar a month fee to park in the cement jungle they work in.

Excerpt from "The Newsroom" Scene 1, Season 1 hit it right on the money.

And with a straight face, you're gonna tell students that America's so star-spangled awesome, that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. [laughs] So 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

And yeah, you, sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there's some things you should know, and one of them is, there's absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined. 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20 year old college student. But you, nonetheless, are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period. So when you ask, "what makes us the greatest country in the world?" I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Yosemite? [Pause] We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors. We put our money where our mouths were. And we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it, it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in our last election. And we didn't... we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things, and to do all these things, because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. [Pause] Enough?

Thoughts From a Soldier...: "Are You a Leader?"

Thoughts From a Soldier...: "Are You a Leader?": I have gone back and forth and had some pretty good and healthy debates with family and friends about life in our country as well as tho...