Profile in cowardice

A-10 Thunderbolt "Warthog"

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine

Martha McSally has shown flashes of courage in the past.

     She was the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat, logging nearly 100 combat hours in her A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, which is nicknamed the Warthog because of its resemblance to that fearsome critter.

The Warthog is a close air support aircraft designed to blow up tanks, armored vehicles and anything else that needs blowing up with weapons that include an armor-piercing 30 mm rotary cannon. You do not want to be in a tank seeing that cannon coming toward you.

 The jet itself is pretty impressive, able to fly with major damage -- one of its two engines blown away, for example, Meanwhile, McSally herself was protected by a titanium steel cocoon. Perhaps the most courageous part of all this was the aircraft itself.

U.S. Rep. Martha McSally

 But McSally distinguished herself in other ways during her military career. While stationed in Saudi Arabia, she challenged a Pentagon policy requiring servicewomen to wear Muslim garb when traveling off-base. Specifically, they were supposed to wear the abaya, a black head-to-toe robe that is perceived as a sign of subordination to men.

For eight years, McSally fought to get the policy changed, eventually with a lawsuit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “And I won,” as she exclaimed in political campaign commercials that in 2015 won her a seat in Congress, from Arizona’s District 2, which includes part of Tucson. Including my part of Tucson.

Unfortunately, since then McSally has elected to wear the political equivalent of the abaya,  cloaking herself head-to-toe in subservient  garb to follow House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican majority in Congress. Last week, she voted in favor of the shameful healthcare bill that would take away the health insurance of some 24 million Americans while giving a tax break to the wealthy, especially billionaires like President Donald Trump.

The abaya

And now that Congress is in recess, McSally has gone into hiding, refusing to take part in town hall meetings with her constituents. After all, they’re angry and might say ugly things about her. And she’d have to stand up there on a stage and    take it, without a titanium steel cocoon  for protection.

Alas, the Warthog Warrior has become the Cowardly Lion.

Someone, however, held a town hall last  night in Tucson: U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who represents the 7^th Congressional District in Phoenix. Gallego is one of many Democrats around the country who are shaming House Republicans who backed the American Health Care Act last week but now are refusing to hold town halls to defend their votes.

McSally’s office made a meek response to Gallego’s foray into District 2, chiding him for holding a political rally outside his district “instead of spending his time serving his time serving the constituents in his own congressional district.”

Well, I’m a District 2 constituent, and I don’t think I’m being well served at all by Rep. Martha McSally. I have to say, I didn’t vote for her any of the times she ran. And I definitely won’t vote for her in 2018.   

Hide in your abaya all you want, Rep. McSally. It won’t protect you from the backlash over your cowardly Trumpcare vote.

Let's Hope This Plane We're On Doesn't Crash

I used to fly a Luscombe 8A.  While the photograph is definitely of a Luscombe 8A it is not a picture

of my Luscombe 8A.  My Luscombe 8A looked quite a bit different.  It badly needed a paint job so it was kind of a splotchy yellow, metallic color greatly resembling a plane that had already crashed.  The 8A model Luscombe did not enjoy a good reputation.  In fact, a guy named Budd Davisson several years ago wrote that the Luscombe 8A had been voted "The Airplane Most Likely to be Abandoned on the Back Tie Down Line."  The other not so good part of the reputation was that the planes were supposedly "squirrely" on the ground.  Despite all that, I used to fly a Luscombe 8A thus proving that to know a Luscombe 8A is to love a Luscombe 8A.  And I loved that airplane.  It must be noted, though, that I wasn't a very good pilot.  I flew out of a dirt field and discovered that the main difference between dirt and asphalt has to do with glare.  And glare, come to find out, plays havoc with depth perception.  I made that discovery while trying to land on an abandoned air strip.  I thought I was inches above the asphalt.  Come to find out I was several feet above it and dropped in hard.  I wound up with the nose of the plane sticking into a tree.  It must also be noted that the Luscombe 8A is one sturdy aircraft.  Since the propeller had stopped spinning I came to the quick conclusion that the engine was no longer running.  I pulled the plane out of the tree, found some rocks to use as chocks, spun the propeller and the engine started right up.  Being quite the experiential learner, I decided to try that landing again and managed to duplicate the first attempt thus proving that the Luscombe 8A is really a sturdy aircraft while simultaneously confirming my lack of pilot skills.  Those weren't the only stupid things I did in my airplane.  I was a beginner pilot, I had a hard time admitting my flaws, and apparently I did not learn much from experience.  At least I didn't have a twitter account then and I certainly didn't dislike anyone who was a better pilot.  The better pilots just kind of looked at me and shook their heads.  Here's the thing, though.  I truly believe that not one of those many better pilots ever wished me failure.  They never, I'm sure, wished I would crash.  No one should seriously hope for a crash or for pilot failure especially when we are all passengers on the same plane.

Follow up to "How's your connection with God?"

Turns out, I guess, my connection was pretty good. At least, this morning I finally connected with the nurse assistant to my pulmonologist.

As you may recall, my pulmonology specialist examined the results of my recent hospital CT-Scan and concluded that the hospital doctor was wrong, I didn't have a blood clot in my lung that required treatment with an expensive drug, Eliquis, which is advertised heavily on TV. That was wonderful news for me, both medically and financially, but I needed the lung specialist to send his findings on to my Primary Care Physician so I could get off the drug.

And the nurse assistant wasn't returning my phone calls -- any of the four calls in the last four days. Until today.

Finally, steaming at the ears, I let the front desk at the doctor's office know what was going on. And they put me through to the office manager, who immediately put me through to the assistant, who decided, under the circumstances, that maybe he could answer his damn phone, after all.

Instantly cooperative, he sent off a FAX to my primary care doctor, who presumably will straighten out what needs to be straightened with the drug and the hematologist that I was going to have to see for an oncology consultation about what was wrong with my blood.

All of which has reminded me of the days when Dr. Floyd Brallier was my only doctor in my home town, Wickenburg, Ariz. -- and in fact, the only doctor in our town. And whenever something medical went wrong with me -- which was often -- my mother would simply bring me in to his antiseptic-smelling office and without fuss, appointments, or consultations, he'd fix me up. But that's another story for another day.

But meanwhile: Dr. Brallier, I need you now.

How's your connection with God?

Against major odds, I have managed to reach (to get all fancy about it) three score and fifteen years of age, with enough disabilities on my chart that my Primary Care Physician sometimes asks, “So anyway, how’s your connection with God?”

I think he’s just joking. At least, I hope he is.

He’s a very good doctor, with intense Indian eyes (India Indian, not American Indian). I’m not sure about his sense of humor.

The first time I met him as a patient, he went down through the impressive list of maladies that were – and still are – conspiring to do me in. When he was finished, I asked, half-jokingly, how long I had to live.

He laughed. “Well, I don’t’ think we’re quite there yet,” he said.

But from there on, that joke became a fixture of our doctor-patient relationship.

Until, last time I met with him after a three-day hospital stay for a suspected case of pulmonary embolism, he checked me out briefly with his stethoscope and muttered, “Bad lungs, bad heart, bad blood! How’s your connection with God, now?”

This time, I’m not sure he was kidding.

But as it turns out, the report of my impending death was an exaggeration (to misquote the frequently misquoted Mark Twain.) I don’t actually have a blood clot on my lung.

That’s what I learned a few days after the appointment with my PCP.

My pulmonary specialist actually checked the CT-scan results that the hospital had based the diagnosis on and found that there was no pulmonary embolism, praise the Lord. Just a mild case of pneumonia.

However, because of that bad diagnosis, I’m taking some expensive medicine that I apparently never needed. And because I need my primary care doctor to tell me to stop taking it, I need the pulmonary guy to send him a letter about his findings.

Not as simple as it sounds, apparently. That letter has taken three days of unanswered voice messages and I still don’t have it.

I’m starting to find this not so darned funny, after all.

Take A Slug Of History With Laird's

I live just a ways down the road from the oldest distillery in America.  In 1698 Alexander Laird booked passage on the Caledonia and emigrated from County Fife, Scotland, to the British colony now known as America.  His sons Thomas and William came with him.  William settled in what would eventually become Monmouth County, New Jersey.  Apparently William had been a distiller of Scotch back in Scotland.  Old William might have had a hard time finding barley where he settled but he had no problem at all finding apples.  He began distilling Applejack for his own use and then, of course, for his friends and neighbors.  Naturally William's children learned the family secret recipe and in 1780 Robert Laird established America's first commercial distillery.  Robert Laird had served in George Washington's Revolutionary War Army so when the general asked for the secret Applejack recipe he got it and started distilling it himself.  Applejack has an important place in our country's history.  Abraham Lincoln sold it in his New Salem, Illinois, tavern.  His saloon license lists the price of a half pint as twelve cents.  For a half cent more you could sleep in the saloon but if you wanted a meal you had to fork over twenty-five cents.  William Henry Harrison apparently loved Applejack to excess.  And in June, 1967, when Lyndon Johnson met with Soviet Premier Alexei Kozygin at the Summit in Glassboro, New Jersey, he gave the Soviet leader a case of Laird's Applejack.  I'm pretty sure that a daily slug of Laird's Applejack doesn't provide the same health benefits as an apple a day but it might, if you are an experiential learner, increase your understanding of this country's history.

Oslo-The Play at the Vivian Baumont Lincoln Center Theater

It's hard to believe that two hours and forty-five minutes could go by so quickly.  But it did. With less than two dozen characters and very little action, the play tells the true story of the Oslo Peace

accords which began first in secret and which ultimately led to the September 13, 1993, signing  by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas of a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements.  This document became known as the 'Oslo Accord'.  In it Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace. Both sides agreed that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established and assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. Then, permanent status talks on the issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem would be held. While President Bill Clinton’s administration played a limited role in bringing the Oslo Accord into being, it would invest vast amounts of time and resources in order to help Israel and the Palestinians implement the agreement. By the time Clinton left office, however, the peace process had run aground, and a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence had begun.  The play speaks not of the long term success of the Oslo Accord but of the ability of people to come together and at least try to create peace.

At least, he seemed presidential ...

Ten things you can say about Trump’s Feb. 28 address to Congress:

1.    He looked presidential, with his suit coat buttoned and with a nice blue-and-white striped necktie that didn’t hang halfway to his knees.

2.    He actually sounded presidential, speaking in a pleasant, conversational tone  instead of his usual ranting and raving.

3.    He didn’t mention “carnage” or “tombstones”.

4.    He didn’t rail against the media, not even once.

5.    He didn’t sound as if he were teetering on the brink of insanity.

6.    He stuck to what he read on the teleprompter, except for one moment when he backed away from the podium to honor a slain Navy Seal.

7.    He trotted out many of the falsehoods that have been a Trump trademark. He touted a $1 trillion infrastructure program, but never mentioned deficits.

8.    He still needs a presidential speech writer. Someone keeps slipping things like  “radical Islamic terrorism” into his speeches. BAD.

9.    He had one truly extraordinary moment, his tribute to Navy SEAL Ryan Owens.

10.  However, by keeping the standing applause going and going while the grieving widow, Carryn Owens, stood with tears streaming down her face, he made the tribute seem more like an exploitation. Way to go, Mr. President.