Thinking out loud

Who was to blame?

WCPN's Sound of Ideas program this morning dealt in part with the Kent State tragedy of May 4, 1970 and whether a newly-analyzed audiotape contains a command to fire.

To me it is irrelevant whether the Ohio National Guard troops heard someone yell "fire" or saw an officer level his sidearm at the demonstrators. The key factor in the tragedy was that the Guard leadership allowed its soldiers to operate with rifles primed to fire.

At the time, I was running Army convoys in Vietnam. We were in a war zone but had not experienced an ambush for months, so our SOP (standard operating procedure) was to have the safeties engaged on our weapon with no rounds in the chamber. Had the Guard, on a college campus against unarmed protestors, had the same SOP it would have taken not one but three commands to fire.

Win or lose? Stay or Go?

As bitter as it would be, elimination from the NBA playoffs could be more important than victory in keeping LeBron in Cleveland.

Think about it. If he wins an NBA title for the Cavaliers the King will have rewarded the land of his birth and could move on with fewer regrets. However, should he fail this time it would leave the supreme goal unachieved.

Speaking of saviors, where's Red Adair when we need him?

The legendary Texan epitomized a time when the hero could ride in on the white horse and save the day. Adair returned from serving in a WWII bomb disposal unit and went on to battle oil well fires, both on land and offshore. He even came out of retirement to help squelch the Kuwait oil fields set ablaze by Saddam Hussein's retreating Gulf War troops.

Can't you just picture Adair speeding to BP's Deepwater Horizon rig and straddling the blowout preventer ala Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove?