Who knows, Maybe Murph got this one finished… 🙂
Who knows, Maybe Murph got this one finished… 🙂
First up- Pravda has an interesting take on Trump- HERE
And Marcus Luttrell in the new NRA ad, HERE
Feel good stories of bad guys getting their just desserts thanks to good guys AND girls! HERE
And one more video… 100 years of Parris Island… If you ever wondered what Marine Corps boot camp looks like…
Parris Island: Cradle of the Corps from David W. Miller on Vimeo.
And one from Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man, HERE a quiet hero…
For those planning to attend the NRAAM, DaddyBear has a list of hotels, HERE!
And the ending of an era… ASW patrol planes have been based in Hawaii since the 1930s… That will end in 2017… HERE
Found this the other day in the move…
July 21, 1969…
We’d spent the night in a bar on Via Veneto in Rome, watching the whole thing on Italian TV. Picked this up on the way back to the pensione the next morning, and I don’t know who the wise ass was that drew the Keds on the footprint.
Somehow I’ve managed to hang on to this one and a few other ‘interesting’ papers/headlines from over the years.
Now if I can just get the dog to stop… Sigh…
Why is it you take a week off and suddenly you’re TWO weeks behind? And s**t is blowing up (parenthetically speaking) left and right?
It’s not like I couldn’t be reached… But nooooo…
I’m not saying I’m indispensable by any means, because I’m not, but dang it, it would be nice if folks actually stepped up and made DECISIONS!
Gah…
So rather than getting ready for the blogshoot this weekend, I’m ass deep in alligators and the rain is pouring down. Just heard today there are ‘rumors’ that BO et al are going to force yet another year of sequestration on the military.
AND he’s keeping at least 6,500 of our finest stuck in Afghanistan at least through 2016, to be used as targets for kidnapping etc. He’s apparently also looking (quietly) at places like SuperMAX to move the Gitmo prisoners to, congress be damned…
Grumble…
Sorry, go read the folks on the sidebar, I’ll try to get caught up soon!
This is just getting more and more ridiculous…
Anti-Second Amendment advocate and Hillary for President 2008 Co-Chair Terry McAuliffe issued Executive Order 50 in Virginia yesterday morning. Knowing that he can’t get his gun control agenda through the Virginia General Assembly, Governor McAuliffe appears to be following President Obama’s model of bypassing the legislative process by using executive order. In a plan that masquerades as a “tough on crime” proposal by parroting the National Rifle Association’s call to enforce existing laws, the Virginia Governor openly attacked law-abiding gun owners by prohibiting concealed and open carry of firearms in executive office buildings throughout the state.
And more from the NRA on Hildabeast’s gun confiscation statements…
| Hillary Admits Gun Confiscation is ‘Worth Looking At’ | |
| Fairfax, Va.— Hillary Clinton said at a New Hampshire Town Hall today that gun confiscation is something “worth looking at.” Discussing the firearms confiscation program in Australia, Clinton admitted she would consider implementing such a system in America.
A voter asked, “Recently, Australia managed to get away, or take away tens of thousands, millions, of handguns. In one year, they were all gone. Can we do that? If we can’t, why can’t we?” Mrs. Clinton responded by describing Australia’s program, and then said, “I think it would be worth considering doing it on the national level, if that could be arranged.” Chris Cox, executive director of The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said, “This validates what the NRA has said all along. The real goal of gun control supporters is gun confiscation. Hillary Clinton, echoing President Obama’s recent remarks on the same issue, made that very clear.” Clinton’s call for gun confiscation follows recent comments she made at a private fundraiser late last month. While expressing support for a ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms, Clinton stated her belief that the Supreme Court wrongly held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to self-defense. In her own words: “…the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.” “Hillary Clinton just doesn’t get it. The NRA’s strength lies in our five million members and the tens of millions of voters who support the Second Amendment,” Cox said. “A majority of Americans support this freedom, and the Supreme Court was absolutely right to hold that the Second Amendment guarantees the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms. Hillary Clinton’s extreme views are completely out of touch with the American people.” |
And this IS verified… HERE! Sigh…
I’m just going to go curl up in the corner until 2017….
h/t JP
There has always been, and always will be infighting between the fighter drivers, and the rest of naval aviation… 😀
Sir, I am DJ Bxxx and I would appreciate it if you could tell me what It takes to be a fighter pilot in the US Navy. What classes should I take in high school to help the career I want to take later in my life? What could I do to get in the Academy?
Sincerely,
DJ Bxxx
————————————————————-
From: XXXXXX, X.X. CAPT USN
Anybody want to help this poor kid from Cyberspace?
“Charlie Oscar”
————————————————————-
A worldly and jaded P-3 Pilot, LCDR X, rose to the task!!
Dear DJ,
Obviously, through no fault of your own, your young, impressionable brain has been poisoned by the superfluous, hyped-up, “Top Gun” media portrayal of fighter pilots. Unfortunately, this portrayal could not be further from the truth.
In my experience, I’ve found most fighter pilots pompous, back-stabbing, momma’s boys with inferiority complexes, as well as being extremely over-rated aeronautically. However, rather than dash your budding dreams of becoming a USN pilot, I offer the following alternative:
What you REALLY want to aspire to is the exciting, challenging, and rewarding world of Maritime Patrol. And this, young DJ, means one thing….the venerable workhorse, THE P-3 Orion! I can guarantee no fighter pilot can brag that he has flown a mining run at 300 ft above the water, at 300 knots, while trying to calculate a means of justifying an emergency divert to Pattaya Beach, Thailand, avoiding shipping, and yelling at the TACCO, all while eating a box lunch, with the engineer in the back taking a piss and the navigator puking in his trash can! I tell you, DJ, Maritime Patrol is where it’s at!
Where else is it legal to throw hazardous material out of the aircraft, and not even give a crap what Greenpeace and the other tree huggers think! No where else can you crawl in the back of the aircraft and take a nap because you are so hung over that focusing your eyes takes to much effort!
And talk about exotic travel? When P-3’s go somewhere, they GO somewhere (usually for 6 months, unfortunately). This gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the local culture enough to give any natives a bad taste in their mouths for the USN and Americans in general, not something those jet jocks can do from their airport hotel rooms! As far as recommendations for your course of study, I offer these:
Take a lot of math courses. You will need all the advanced math skills you can muster to enable you to calculate per diem rates around the world, and when trying to split up the crew’s bar tab so that the co-pilot really believes he owes 85% of the whole thing and the NAV believing he owes the other 20%.
Health sciences are important, too. You will need a thorough knowledge of biology to make those educated guesses of how much longer you can drink beer before the tremendous case of the shits catches up to you from that meal you ate at that place that had the belly dancers in some God-forsaken foreign country whose name you can’t even pronounce!
Social studies are also beneficial. It is important for a good Patrol Plane Commander (PPC) to have the cultural knowledge to be able to ascertain the exact location of the nearest titty bar in any country in the world. Then be able to convince the local authorities to release the RADAR operator, after he offends every sensibility of the local religion and culture.
A foreign language is helpful, but not required. You will never be able to pronounce the names of the NAVAIDs in Italy, and it’s much easier to ignore them and go where you want to anyway. As a rule of thumb: Waiters and bellhops in France are always called “Pierre”, in Spain it’s “Hey, Pedro”, in Puerto Rico it’s “Juan”, and in Italy, of course, it’s “Mario.” These terms of address also serve in other countries interchangeably.
A study of geography is also paramount. You will need to know the basic location of all the places you’ve been when you get back from your deployment and are ready to stick those little pins in that huge world map you’ve taped to your living room wall, right next to that gigantic wooden giraffe statue and beer stein collection.
Well, DJ, I hope this little note inspires you. And by the way, forget about that Naval Academy thing. All P-3 guy’s know that there are waaay too few women and too little alcohol there to provide a well-balanced education. A nice, big state college would be a much better choice.
Good luck and see you on the Data Link! (if it works!)
Actually not far from the truth…
h/t Timmy
I’m really beginning to think we are there…
And it the O.M.G. category, imagine looking out the open door of your puddle jumper and seeing this… 
Two questions come immediately to mind… What caliber for snakes on MY plane, and how the hell did you miss that on preflight??? And how to I shoot it and not hit the tire… Decisions, decisions…
h/t JP
I thought, thought that I had a post today but apparently I neglected to actually check and see that it went up- Sorry about that folks! Still ass deep in unpacking boxes and unpacking books and trying to get things sorted before I head back to work tomorrow.
Go read the folks on the sidebar they are much better than I am and I’ll be back in battery starting on Monday.
Got a love the changeable Texas weather, it’s been in the high 90s to the low 50s this week. But then again it’s Texas if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it’ll change.
One more good meal tonight with friends, then it’s back to the normal stuff… sigh…
First delivery of stuff was made yesterday…
Oh yeah, and fireplace! 🙂 Hmmm, that reminds me, need fireplace tools.
And about half of the books… Peter and I were chatting Wednesday night at dinner about how hard it is to ‘cull’ the library and try to decide what to keep and what to let go. At least I was able to give mine to the VA hospital, but it was still a hard decision.
Note to self- Go buy another set of racks…
And then there was the ‘cluster’ of the safe move. It’s a rather ‘large’ safe, purchased from a local store (actually cheaper than shipping one with all the attendant hate and discontent), so there were four men moving it. Lift gated up to the bed of the truck, with the lift gate groaning and sagging.
Female store employee is standing on the ground ‘bracing’ the safe…
Friend says, “You might want to move.”
She says, “I’m fast, I can get out of the way.”
Friend shakes head, “That safe goes, she’s going to be a puddle…”
Getting it off the truck was not bad, but moving it in the house was actually kind of comical… 🙂 But it’s in and done.
Now back to unpacking…
Continued lite commenting and reading until I get some of the mess cleaned up.
Thankfully friends (you know who you are), are helping out, otherwise I’d be high and dry and totally screwed… THANK YOU!!!
Before the A-10, there was the A-1E. It was big, ugly, slow and could and did haul damn near everything in the inventory…
Better known as the Spad, it was a round nosed beast loved by it’s pilots, and those who’d been shot down in Nam…
It’s ability to loiter, and the carrying capacity that rivaled the B-17 on one engine was something to behold.