Life is still good in Northern Virginia. I am going swimming this afternoon, rain will not be here for another several hours, I have no statues in my neighborhood, and no one is marching around. Certainly not the way tropical storm Harvey is stomping on and punishing Texas, which has changed and my whole idea about moving south. Blizzards are bad, but they don’t drown you.

Harvey may be veering out to the Gulf again, ravaging places that have been already ravaged quite enough, thank you. My thoughts are for those on the Louisiana coast who may be under the storm next, and those under the deluge now.

Before I started anything this afternoon, I amended my plans.

I could have launched off on an extraordinary tale of the history of movie start Clark Gabel’s Packard, reliably reported by peripatetic contributor Jim. But what got to me watching the disaster was the scandalous systemic inability of my Navy to make airworthy the millions of dollars we taxpayers have invested in training aircraft that were about to be inundated at NAS Corpus Christy due to lack of maintenance funding.

There was not enough “Operations and Maintenance” funding to keep them ready to fly- which tells you a lot about the training pipeline these days. The cost of the damage to those jets far outstrips the money it would have cost them to be in flyable condition. The effects of the Sequester are just coming to light on the impact to training and readiness. With the recent warship collisions being bald enough a statement, now this. The lack of flexibility, not to mention the number of rated pilots, the whole thing is starting to make make me a little nuts.

I remember Dad- a reserve Skyraider pilot and still subject to recall at the time- being up-tight at a family dinner when it looked like Naval Air Station Grosse Ile had to move all their airplanes out of the path of a 1950’s storm. He would have to get ready to go while he left his family to stay with the elements. Let me just say this:

I sent a c-note to the Red Cross this morning to cover something that might be useful for the folks underwater. We can cover the rest of this crap later. Help those who are hurting to the extent that you can.

https://www.redcross.org/donate/hurricane-harvey

It is the least we can do. Well, not the least. We already did that.

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsoctra.com