True or False???

  1. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
  1. Alfred Hitchcock did not have a bellybutton.
  1. A pack-a-day smoker will lose approximately 2 teeth every 10 yrs.
  1. People do not get sick from cold weather; it’s from being indoors a lot more.
  1. When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even your heart!
  1. Only seven percent of the population are lefties.
  1. 40 people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.
  1. Babies are born without knee caps. They don’t appear until they are 2-6 years old.
  1. The average person over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
  1. The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
  1. The average housefly lives for one month.
  1. 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.
  1. A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.
  1. The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute.
  1. Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than the rest of the day.
  1. Most of us have eaten a spider in our sleep.
  1. The REAL reason an ostrich sticks its head in the sand is to search for water.
  1. The only 2 animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the Rabbit and the Parrot.
  1. John Travolta turned down the starring roles in “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Tootsie”.
  1. Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina State anthem.
  1. In most television commercials advertising milk, a mixture of white paint and a little thinner is used instead of real milk.
  1. Prince Charles and Prince William NEVER travel on the same airplane, just in case there is a crash.
  1. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used a tomato can for a carburetor.
  1. Most hospitals make money by selling the umbilical cords cut from women who give birth. They are reused in vein transplant surgery.
  1. Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana. They were 7th cousins.
  1. If coloring weren’t added to Coca-Cola, it would be Green.

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NRA Annual Meeting…

On my way to Louisville for the NRA AM…

nra_am_marque

The meeting web page is HERE.

And here is the firearms policy…

Firearms Carry Policy

During the 2016 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, lawfully carried firearms will be permitted at Annual Meeting venues including the Kentucky Exposition Center (KEC), KFC Yum! Center Arena, and Kentucky International Convention Center (KICC) in accordance with Kentucky law. Firearms and knives will be prohibited in any areas temporarily under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Secret Service. When carrying your firearm, please remember to follow all federal, state and local laws.

Please note that under Kentucky law, concealed firearms are prohibited in areas primarily devoted to dispensing alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, and loaded firearms are prohibited in any room where alcoholic beverages are being sold by the drink. Alcoholic beverages will be served at some events at the Kentucky International Convention Center (KICC), in certain areas of the KFC Yum! Center Arena, and in some smaller venues.

I will try to get a few posts up while I’m on the floor, so if anyone wants me to look at specific items, please let me know. I’ll do my best to get you answers.

Donation Alert…

Got this one over the mil-email net… Take your BP meds before you read!!!

Disgraceful and despicable!!!  A leech on society and vets.  Less than 2% of the charities cash donations being used to support veterans and their families.

It’s pretty bad when CNN jumps in on the negative coverage… But this one really pisses me off, especially since they have apparently been doing this for !!!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/politics/vietnam-veterans-charity/index.html

Washington (CNN)At first glance, the National Vietnam Veterans Foundation is a roaring success. According to its tax filings, the charity has received more than $29 million in donations from generous Americans from 2010 to 2014 for what it calls on its website “aiding, supporting and benefiting America’s veterans and their families.”

But look a little closer on those same filings and you can see that nearly all of those donations have been cycled back to telemarketers, leaving less than 2 percent for actual veterans and veterans’ charitable causes.

From Charity Navigator’s site…

This rating was published 02/01/2016 using data for FY2014, the most recent 990 received at that time.

Overall Rating Chart

Charts

Contributions BreakdownContributions, Gifts & Grants100%

Source Dollars
Contributions, Gifts & Grants $8,657,816
Federated Campaigns $0
Membership Dues $0
Fundraising Events $0
Related Organizations $0
Government Grants $0

Expenses BreakdownProgramAdministrativeFundraising6.8%90.1%

Expense Dollars
Program $580,772
Administrative $270,552
Fundraising $7,742,169

Revenue/Expenses TrendProgram ExpensesPrimary Revenue2011201220132014

Year Program Expenses Primary Revenue
2011 $503,503 $4,029,007
2012 $559,853 $4,895,198
2013 $568,790 $7,051,143
2014 $580,772 $8,657,816

The charity’s most recently filed tax return, for 2014, lists a catalogue of expenses paid for by donations: including $133,000 for travel, $21,000 for unnamed “awards”, $70,000 for a category described as “other expenses” and even a little more than $8,000 for parking.

When compared to other veteran’s organizations you get this…

Charity Name & State Overall Score Overall Rating
National Vietnam Veterans Foundation (DC) 24.60 0 stars
Pat Tillman Foundation (IL) 86.61 3 stars
Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation (VA) 93.05 4 stars
AMVETS National Service Foundation (MD) 90.01 4 stars

 

And here’s the real kicker… The charity president works at the VA in DC!!!

The CEO and founder of the National Vietnam Veterans Foundation, himself a veteran, is J. Thomas Burch, who is also a federal employee working as an attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Burch is deputy director in the VA’s Office of General Counsel, where he pulled down $127,000 in salary in 2014. That’s the same year he drew a salary of $65,000 as head of his “zero-star” charity.

A VA spokesman told CNN Burch’s position at the veteran’s charity is not a conflict of interest “per se”. But the spokesman added the VA is now “reviewing” the situation and that the agency’s Office of Inspector General is handling that review.

When contacted by CNN, Burch asked that we not contact him at his job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he refused to answer phone calls placed to his home. CNN tried to confront Burch as he drove home from work in a black Rolls Royce, but upon seeing a CNN camera crew, Burch gunned the Rolls Royce down his suburban Washington, D.C. street and disappeared.

The charity’s vice president, David Kauffman, said in an email that the NVVF was responsible for “feeding homeless and unemployed veterans by donating to food banks, sent personal care kits to hospitalized veterans and donated blankets, hats and gloves to homeless centers.”

According to the charity’s tax filings, though, it accounted for about $122,000 in cash donations to veterans, out of more than $8.5 million raised in donations in 2014. That is less than 2% of the charities cash donations being used to support veterans and their families.

DC just doesn’t get it…

DC’s CCW ‘limitations’ have once again been slapped down!!!

Federal judge orders D.C. officials to stop enforcing provisions that bar most residents from carrying firearms
Fairfax, Va.— The National Rifle Association (NRA) today responded to an order issued by a federal judge in Grace and the Pink Pistols v. District of Columbia that instructed D.C. officials to stop enforcing provisions of the city’s code that barred most D.C. residents from carrying firearms for self-protection.“Today’s order is a victory for Second Amendment rights and has real implications for the safety of law-abiding citizens,” said Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action. “The Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment protects the core right of self-defense in the home, but as the District Court today reaffirmed, that right is just as important to ordinary citizens commuting to work or shopping for groceries in an unsafe neighborhood.”

In the ruling issued today, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia concluded that the district’s law is likely unconstitutional and that the plaintiffs who are challenging it in court would be severely harmed if the district were allowed to continue to enforce its ban while the lawsuit went forward. The judge held that the district’s “overly zealous . . . desire to restrict the right to carry in public a firearm for self-defense to the smallest possible number of law-abiding, responsible citizens” unconstitutionally flouted the Second Amendment.

In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a D.C. law banning most citizens from possessing handguns at all, reasoning that such a ban was flatly inconsistent with the individual right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The district continued to enforce its ban on carrying firearms in public even after that ruling, however, and a federal district court struck that separate ban down in 2014. The district responded by enacting a new “licensing” scheme that only allowed its residents to carry firearms in public if they could show a specific, documented need for self-defense—for example, by proving that they had been attacked or were receiving death threats. The city issued a minuscule number of licenses, and the scheme had the practical effect of a full ban.

“Legislation that restricts the law-abiding does nothing to reduce crime and is unconstitutional. The NRA is glad that fact was recognized in federal court today,” concluded Cox.

The ruling prohibits law enforcement from enforcing the concealed carry ban temporarily while the constitutionality of the ban continues to be argued in court. The NRA will continue to support this suit financially.

h/t NRA Media

Net Humor…

marshmallows

The horrible truth behind unregulated marshmallow ranches.

In the winter marshmallows are able to take cover in the snow, but come spring the older ones are sitting ducks for marshmallow hunters that will round them up by the thousands at a time and truck them off to their deaths.

Now that they are fat from gazing all winter, they will be rounded up and indiscriminately slaughtered, sized, bagged and sold in stores.

Some of the younger smaller ones will be disintegrated alive in boiling liquids! Some will be locked away in rooms only to be roasted alive on beds of potatoes or drown in cold semisolid green colored liquid later in the year!

Some are viciously stabbed with sticks held over flames of fire and some left to needlessly die as their lifeless bodies fall helplessly into smoldering fire pits. Sometimes in family units at a time, shoulder to shoulder they go.

Some attempt to escape disguising themselves as ducks or rabbits only to have their heads bitten off by vicious killers.

There MUST be a stop to this carnage!

Remember that golden brown on a graham cracker with a piece of chocolate is the only humane way.

Color me…

Cynical…

But I can’t help but wonder if the whole transgender thingie is nothing more than a red herring…

What ELSE is out there that the administration is trying to keep us from seeing? Is it the true depth of the trouble Hildabeast is in? Why have we seen NO coverage of any of the questioning of her staff?

Is it the Iran deal? One that they’ve basically admitted is a sham?

Is it the economy?

We know the military is in the toilet, and that occasionally gets into the MSM…

Facebook’s ‘trending’, and what else is the book of face lying about???

Is it labor, e.g. the number of folks out of work?

Is it murder rates in the democratic cities??? We know they are much higher than last year…

Is it the fact that Trump is actually gaining ground on Hillary and might win?

Is it the imminent collapse of Venezuela?

Is it the fact that the administration is determined to bring more muslim refugees to the USA, while ignoring the Christian refugees???

I don’t have a clue, but the hair on the back of my neck is starting to stand up. I feel ‘something’ is going on that we’re missing…

Truth

Any ideas???

Aviation Art…

15

The Blohm und Voss V-138 Flying Boat, out of Norway, were ocean going reconnaissance planes for spotting enemy supply convoys that were shipping supplies, troops and equipment.
It was known by their crews as “Der Fliegende Holzschuh” “The Flying Clog.” They would call into bases on the coast for JU-88’s to bomb and strafe the supply ships. All three engines on the B&V 138 were diesel and they would land in the North Atlantic and German U-Boats would surface and refuel them.
The Blohm und Voss crew could eat and sleep while the plane was being refueled giving them a break because they could be away for weeks. The gun turret in front was fired by pilot by remote. In the rear there was a gunner. In the dramatic painting by Roy Grinnell, it depicts BV138C-1 of 2/KU. FL. Gr (Kusten-Fliegeruppe) 406 in North Norway, 1942.

What Next???

It seems the administration has now set up a blackmail scheme to ‘force’ schools into compliance for transgendered…

The Obama administration’s ‘guidance’ Friday that every public school provide transgender access — or face the loss of federal funds — drew swift and strong condemnation from conservatives, with one public official blasting it as presidential “blackmail.”

The administration’s directive — citing Title IX in telling schools to give transgender students access to all activities and facilities consistent with their gender identity — effectively touched off a national debate that could well extend into the next president’s term and reverberate through the courts.

To whit- “When a school provides sex-segregated activities and facilities, transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.”

Full article HERE, on Foxnews.com

Interestingly, Title IX only designates sex as M/F… You have to go to Dept of Ed directives to find any mention of LGBT, and nowhere in there are any ‘changes’ to the basic Title IX law…

AFAIC, make them ALL gender neutral, put in full walls and lockable stalls and go for it… OR, you could do it far east style… Holes in the floor, no partitions, and good luck finding toilet paper.

Granted this is an oversimplification, but does this now bring into question the larger issues not only with Title IX sports (e.g. boy IDs as a girl or vice versa, can she/he now not only use the guys/girls locker room, but can she/he now play on guys/girl’s sports teams?), but also accommodations in the general public.

The other elephant in the room is pedofilia and child abuse. With all the attention being focused in the last 15 years on these crimes, the administration’s direction ‘seems’ to directly counter (at least in my mind), the extent people have gone to, to ensure that children are not taken advantage of. The other elephant is young girls, all of whom have significant privacy issues (especially early-mid teens), can now be forced to allow boys who identify as girls to come into their bathrooms/shower areas… That’s not going to end well…

And all this is being done to cater to .035% of the population…

When you add in the SJW (nee POS) constant complaining, it’s bringing things to a boil between those with conservative views and those with socialist views…

Sigh… I’m getting too old and grumpy for this crap…

Net Humor…

This one came over the transom from the mil-email string…

THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN IN STAR TREK

-The Enterprise runs into a mysterious energy field of a type it has encountered several times before.
-The Enterprise goes to visit a remote outpost of scientists, who are all perfectly all right.
-The Enterprise gets involved in an enigmatic, strange, and dangerous situation, and there are no pesky aliens they can blame it on in the end.
-Some of the crew visit the holodeck, and it works properly.
-The Enterprise visits the Klingon home world on a bright, sunny day.
-The crew of the Enterprise discover a totally new lifeform, which later turns out to be a rather well-known old lifeform wearing a funny hat.
-An attempt at undermining the Klingon-Federation alliance is discovered without anyone noting that such an attempt, if successful “would represent a fundamental shift of power throughout the quadrant”.
-The crew of the Enterprise are struck by a mysterious plague, for which the only cure can be found in the well-stocked Enterprise sick-bay.
-Picard hears the door chime and doesn’t bother to say “Come”.
-The Captain has to make a difficult decision about a less advanced people which is made a great deal easier by the Starfleet Prime Directive.
-Picard doesn’t answer a suggestion with “Make it so”.
-The Enterprise successfully ferries an alien VIP from one place to another without serious incident.
-Picard walks up to the replicator and says “Coke on ice”.
-An enigmatic being composed of pure energy attempts to interface to the Enterprise’s computer, only to find out that it doesn’t know the password.
-Kirk doesn’t get into a fistfight.
-Kirk gets into a fistfight and doesn’t rip his shirt.
-A power surge on the Bridge is rapidly and correctly diagnosed as a faulty capacitor by the highly-trained and competent engineering staff.
-Worf actually gives another vessel more than two seconds to respond to one of the Enterprise’s hails.
-The Enterprise is captured by a vastly superior alien intelligence which does not put them on trial.
-The Enterprise is captured by a vastly inferior alien intelligence which they easily pacify by offering it some sweeties.
-Kirk doesn’t end up kissing the troubled guest-female before she doesn’t sacrifice herself for him.
-The Enterprise visits an earth-type planet called “Paradise” where everyone is happy all of the time. However, everything is soon revealed to be exactly what it seems.
-When Worf tells the bridge officers that something is entering visual range no one says “On screen”.
-A major Starfleet emergency breaks out near the Enterprise, but fortunately some other ships in the area are able to deal with it to everyone’s satisfaction.
-Guinan forgets herself, and breaks into an expletive-laden stand-up comedy routine.
-The Enterprise is involved in a bizarre time-warp experience which is in some way unconnected with the Late 20th Century.
-Beverly Crusher manages to go through a whole episode without having a hot flash and getting breathless every time Picard is in the room.
-Kirk (or Riker) falls in love with a woman on a planet he visits, and isn’t tragically separated from her at the end of the episode.
-Somebody takes out a shuttle and it doesn’t explode or crash on an isolated planet.
-Counsellor Troi states something other than the blindingly obvious.
-Mood rings come back in style, jeopardising Counsellor Troi’s position.
-The warp engines start playing up a bit, but seem to sort themselves out after a while without any intervention from boy genius Wesley Crusher.
-The Enterprise separates as soon as there is any danger.
-Wesley Crusher gets beaten up by his classmates for being a know-it-all little wanker, and consequently has a go at making some friends of his own age for a change.
-The crew of the Enterprise are struck by a strange alien plague, for which the cure is found in the well-stocked sickbay.
-Spock (or Data) is fired from his high-ranking position for not being able to understand the most basic nuances of about one in three sentences that anyone says to him.
-The transporter is actually able to lock on to someone’s signal when they’re in danger.
-Most things that are new or in some way unexpected.
-Worf kills Wesley by mistake in the holodeck.
-A redshirt sneaks down a deserted corridor, turns a corner, and suddenly has a surprise birthday party.
-Data falls in love with the replicator.
-A redshirt manages to avoid the thrown knife, phaser shot, arrow, or whatever.
-The deflector shields hold through the duration of the battle.
-Kirk meets a woman whom he’s known for years but never had sex with.
-Kirk says “Uhura, I’m frightened”.
-Kirk gets court-martialled for violating the Prime Directive.
-An unknown ensign beams down as part of an away team and lives to tell the tale.
-An android race turns out to be completely friendly and not threatening or menacing in any way.
-Some patient of McCoy’s who’s NOT a central character lives.
-Scotty doesn’t mention the laws of physics.
-The crew of the original Enterprise disperse, Sulu gets his own ship, and nobody suffers major emotional trauma.
-A major character dies and isn’t resurrected.
-The episode ends without Bones and Kirk laughing at Spock’s inability to understand the joke and doesn’t raise his eyebrows.
-The mysterious giant threatening object is on a direct course for some world other than Earth.
-Artificial intelligence and android technology make human exploration of the galaxy obsolete.
-A major character has a serious character flaw.
-A VIP visitor to the Enterprise is not a relative, lover or close friend of a major character.

 

TBT…

Back in the day…

Well, actually about 12,045 days ago… 🙂

The ‘military’ side of Keflavik, IC.

The first hangar, center bottom, was the VP hangar. Needless to say, this is a ‘summer’ shot!

An aerial view of the ramp areas and facilities of the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, with other facilities in the background.

An aerial view of the ramp areas and facilities of the P-3 and 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron ramps, with other facilities in the background.

Aeroflot used to try to ‘taxi’ through our ramp, by ‘mistaking’ the tower’s directions to the terminal, which is just out of the picture, lower right.

Fuel trucks, airplanes, and occasionally USAF Security Police were used to ‘block’ their access, to prevent them taking pictures of the airplanes and inside of the hangar.

Flying out of Kef in the winter was always fun, considering the closests alternate airport was 772nm away (Kinloss) which was 2 1/2 hours. Made for some LONG days…

One funny note, they actually do have golf courses up there, and in the summer, you could tee off at midnight, and finish in ‘twilight’ about 0400 in the morning. Drinking in the bar was problematic, since you could stagger out at 1130 or 2330, and not be able to tell the difference… 🙂

Posted in TBT