I really wonder about people sometimes…

Posted on by March 26, 2013

There was an article in the WAPO yesterday that just shows me how ‘little’ some folks really understand about crime and criminals…

Donna St. George was the author of the article-

“Law enforcement officers provide the appearance of security, but should not be part of a holistic, concerted effort to ensure that children are safe,” says the report by the Advancement Project, long active on school issues.

/snip/

“We need strong adult-student relationships, and that comes in the form of counselors and psychologists, as well as increased presence of parents and volunteers, and proven programs that reduce violence,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project. “Armed guards are not the answer.”

It’s a decent article, you can read the whole thing HERE; but there seems (at least to me) to be a significant lack of understanding of the real issues…

Shooters WILL pick on gun free zones to act out their fantasies, as we continue to see. Right now there are at least 10,000 armed police officers serving as School Resource Officers in a variety of schools all over the USA; however many are in high schools and maybe a few middle schools, leaving most elementary schools unprotected.  What in AP’s approach will actually ‘protect’ the children?

Nothing that I can see, but it’s obvious they are anti-gun, and are hell bent on ostracizing security/LEOs/anyone else who is allowed to carry and protect our children.

And when you start digging down on the Advancement Project, guess who’s funding them…  Link HERE.

And from the Washington Times, Emily Miller’s fisking of the latest Bloomie ads, HERE…

Somebody needs to find out who this turkey is!

Who is this guy

I’m amazed that, as Miller points out, he’s violating three of the four rules! I’m betting he’s an actor, hired for his ‘redneck’ look, and posed with the gun and the accent. I’m also betting he doesn’t know a damn thing about guns!!!

Sigh…

And in other news, reader Stretch sent a link to The Old Salt Blog,  and the ongoing problems with the Navy’s LCS.  USS FREEDOM is still limping toward it’s new home in Singapore, but don’t expect much… This is, in my opinion, another program ripe for being stopped to save money; and go back to building DDGs that can actually make a difference!

I’m just wondering where we’re going and why we’re in this handbasket!

Such fun

Posted on by March 24, 2013

Well, another ‘spring’ day…

CID ramp

Snowing sideways in Cedar Rapids, field at minimums, flight finally got in, quick turned for Chicago.

acft window

This was the ‘view’ from just after takeoff until just before landing in O’Hare…

Of course I missed my connection…

Two plus hours of ‘people’ watching in Chicago really makes me wonder…

The guy with the purple sharkskin suit and green hair- I really hope he’s an actor… The 50something woman with the miniskirt, hooker boots and bad plastic surgery (above AND below the neck), well I ‘think’ she’s got issues… The older couple obviously still in love after many years might have been moving a little slow, but they were determined!

Interesting conversation with a guy out of Minnesota, he’s flying to DC to drive to MD to pick up 2 spam cans of 8mm for his old Mauser. When I asked why? He shrugged and said at the price he got it was cheaper to fly down and pick it up than buy on line (apparently the other guy wouldn’t ship it).

27 standbys for the DC flight made for an ‘interesting’ line up at the boarding gate, to put it mildly…  And the bimbette trying to ‘buy’ a seat was just stupid, but I’m not even going there…  Bottom line, 10 hours for a 2.5 hour trip, but at least I’m sleeping in my own bed!!!

Whew…

Posted on by March 24, 2013

16 hours of practical and classroom, and ‘I’ are now a certified NRA basic pistol instructor… (well, as soon as the forms get sent in)…

Decided to get out of the office (e.g. I needed to take some leave to manage hours), so I called up Bill Keller, who blogs at eiaft,  and signed up for his instructor training class.

Why, you may ask?  Well, honestly it’s because I’m getting folks coming to me for advice, and one of my co-workers is a scoutmaster and they are looking for instructors to help with merit badges. To help the scouts these days, you have to be NRA certified and they cannot afford to send people to the classes.

I figured if I’m going to do this, I might as well do it right, and over the phone conversations with Bill and reading his blog I was very comfortable with the way he does business, and his attention to detail.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s also a retired Mustang…LOL

The ONLY problem (well, other than my lousy shooting), is it’s Iowa, it’s (supposedly) Spring, and it’s colder’n hell… First morning 10 degrees, this morning a ‘heat wave’ of 25… I bout froze my ass off!!!

It was a well taught class, and both the class interactions and the documentation and support from NRA are excellent.  Bill did an excellent job of ‘managing’ a diverse group, and keeping the training running.  As always, safety was first and foremost and the ability to both present and receive information allowed us to see the course from both sides.

If you’re interested, I’d highly recommend taking an instructor course from Bill, or an NRA instructor near you.

I learned a lot, and realize that I really need to get into the books to do the training correctly… And that my previous military instructor experience is both a help and a hinderance…

F-111 Redux???

Posted on by March 22, 2013

Well, among ‘other’ issues with the F-35, these comments have been ‘released’…

“The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35A is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft,” states the report from the Defense Department’s Directorate of Operational Test and Evaluation, referring to a pilot’s ability to see the sky around them.

Test pilots’ comments quoted in the report are more blunt.

“The head rest is too large and will impede aft [rear] visibility and survivability during surface and air engagements,” said one. “Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time” in dogfights, opined another.

Full article HERE.

The F-111 had similar issues, and was too heavy for carrier ops, but to make it a ‘joint’ airplane the Navy was forced to take ‘delivery’ of 12 F-111s to satisfy the requirements.  They were promptly discarded…

Yet another case of history repeating itself by trying to build a one size fits all airplane, and it’s not going to ‘excel’ at any functions and will have real issues in carrier ops (and in the mean time the F-22 STILL has major problems with the O2 system and Raptor Cough with the pilots; which the AF is ignoring)…

And don’t get me started on the ‘spare’ F-35 engine… Program office has tried to kill that for at least 4 years, and the congresscritters keep funding it!!!

If you ‘really’ wanted to ‘fix’ the DOD budget, kill the F-35 and while you’re at it, kill the LCS program too…

Embarrassment, I can haz it…

Posted on by March 22, 2013

You know what is REALLY embarrassing…

It’s when you go to an instructor training class and your first string of fire is 6 inches left of the bull at FIFTY frikkin feet… sigh…

I can only wonder how hard my bag got thrown around to knock the sights that far off when the pistol was inside a hard case…

I had to re-shoot the string, and by aiming at the right side of the target I was actually able to get a suitable score!!!

I’ll be hiding in the corner if you need me… sigh…

The Reunion

Posted on by March 22, 2013

I don’t know who the artist is, but it DOES get the point across…

The Reunion

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So I’d say to him, “Barack, I know Abe Lincoln,
And you ain’t Abe Lincoln ..”

President Obama has made numerous attempts to quote Lincoln ,

SO WHY DOESN’T HE USE THIS FAMOUS LINCOLN QUOTE:

“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves. “

… Abraham Lincoln

Thanks to reader St.Jean for pointing out these were not actually said by Lincoln, but by Reverend William John Henry Boetcker (1873-1962). Link HERE, look at item #6.

Lots of good points here, in my opinion…

Interesting flying… This is for all those Air America guys…

Posted on by March 18, 2013

This is for a friend of mine, Weird Neil… He used to do this for a living for Air America out of Laos in an early Pilatus Porter. These takeoffs and landings are down in Sumatra and Indonesia, so a similar environment.  Enjoy!!!

Simply amazing… And gives a whole new meaning to seat of the pants flying and being able to hit EVERY landing right on the stall warning… Neil said the biggest problem was having enough power to actually taxi UP some of the hills…

Gone shootin…

Posted on by March 21, 2013

Light blogging and commenting for the next couple of days… Go read the folks on the sidebar- I’ll be back in battery on Monday.

 

Privacy, we hardly knew ye…

Posted on by March 19, 2013
More and more we are hearing reports, seeing articles, and coming face to face(book), with the lack of privacy today…

Each time we log on, make a phone call, or in the urban areas walk down the street, we are being tracked…

The facts are plain, Google has for years collected “unsecured” data with it’s Street View vehicles, both here and in Europe, the fine?$7 million… Against a company that makes something in the neighborhood of $100 a day…

And the fault?

The company blamed the intrusion on a rogue engineer who rigged a data-collection program into equipment that was supposed to only detect basic information about local Wi-Fi networks to help plot the locations of people using its mapping service and other products. After concluding its own investigation, the Federal Communications Commission last year asserted that some of Google’s managers knew about the engineer’s plan to vacuum information being transmitted over the Wi-Fi network

Report from CNN HERE; from Fox HERE. Now let’s be honest here, does anybody really believe the ‘rogue’ engineer story??? When they’ve touted how ‘tight’ their controls are on development, to put this kind of excuse out there is just ludicrous…

And the data will all be destroyed?  Yeah, right… It’s in government/regulator’s hands now and you can bet it’s already in a data mining data base somewhere!

Facebook has ‘always’ been “open” about tracking your account, your friends and other things (like buying, websites visited, etc.). Apple and the other phone providers track your location all the time and all those nicky neat pictures you take with your phones and digital cameras have metatags embedded that show exactly when/where the pictures were taken.  Here’s a LINK to the Wiki on it.

Bruce Sheneier has an editoral up at CNN International that goes into a good bit of detail, and hits most of the high points HERE.

Among other things, remember google maps, was not created by google, it was developed by In-Q-Tel, a taxpayer funded, not-for-profit, development organization of the CIA.  It is a whole lot easier for private companies to do snooping on AMERICAN citizens than it is for the government; and if they get busted they pay a small fine (see above), and are quietly reimbursed under the table by the agency that hired them to do their dirty work.  Oh, and as an aside, Siri, Apple’s voice query tool, also can be traced back to In-Q-Tel.  Now ask yourself, “What can the government do with voice-print and voice-recognition software, and how can they collect my voice….”  hmmmm, maybe you just gave it to them….

And here’s In-Q-Tel’s SITE if you want to read about it’s ‘history’…

Lastly, remember that everything you do on line is subject to snooping by any government agency, that includes walking around with your cell phone.  Also remember, there are cameras everywhere, and if you do not carry your cell phone you will stick out because facial recognition software will pick you out and you could be tagged as an “extremist/insurgent” who is not carrying a cell phone because he does not want to be tracked.  It doesn’t take much computing power to pick out people who don’t carry cell phones, especially if it’s old white guys with carry permits who are under constant surveillance anyway.  As for the filtering, it’s a simple comb filter algorithm that’s been around since the ’60’s.
And along this theme, a short story that Matt Bracken wrote at the WRSA site last year for your reading ‘pleasure’…
Are we screwed? Probably…

Another voice is heard…

Posted on by March 18, 2013

We’ve all commented on the new BS medal for drone drivers…

Now a different voice has spoken up, and “I” think this will get some attention!

The creation of the new medal honoring unmanned vehicle pilots and cyber troops, “is a telling and sad commentary on the judgment of those who are responsible for the creation and approval of this award,” Jack Jacobs, Medal of Honor recipient and Vietnam veteran, told USNI News on Wednesday.

/snip/

“The very name of the decoration is ludicrous. ‘Distinguished’ implies a level of admiration that can’t possibly be reached in the prosaic act of piloting a drone,” Jacobs said.

Full article HERE at USNI website.  Hopefully Hagel will listen and dump the medal in its entirety… Sigh…