More impacts to the Military…

Posted on by March 17, 2013
The hits just keep coming, this time it’s getting both active duty AND homeless Veterans.

Via Fox News…


The $85 billion in cuts that went into effect at the beginning of the month will not spare soldiers and veterans, with a wave of cuts being announced for tuition assistance and a program that helps homeless veterans get back on their feet.

The Pentagon for months warned that the sequester cuts would be catastrophic. But the Defense Department is not the only federal agency with programs for servicemen and women that are vulnerable.

Under a federal housing program that helps roughly 100,000 Americans, homeless and formerly homeless veterans will lose assistance due to the sequester. The program is run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and provides state grants to help veterans get housing.

/snip/


The Army announced Friday that it will no longer accept applications for its Tuition Assistance program, which gives soldiers as much as $4,500 annually to take courses, at accredited schools, toward high school and college diplomas. Army officials could not give a specific amount on how much the cuts would save but said 201,000 soldiers used the program in fiscal 2012 at the cost of $373 million.

In addition, the Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard announced this week that their programs also have been suspended.

Read the whole thing HERE.  The Navy (at least so far) as managed to continue it’s TA program since many sailors are ship based and instructors actually ride the ships.

Matter of fact, TA is how I got my degree on active duty!  And I’m hearing that the Navy is still trying to find out how bad the cuts really are going to be.  Waiting on SECDEF for determinations…

JUST what we need as PRNK is about to blow up…

Abbot and Costello do unemployment…

Posted on by March 17, 2013


Unemployment explained

THESE ARE PRETTY SMART FELLAS!!!

So how can over 873,000 people come off the unemployment rolls when there were only a little over 114,000 jobs created? Below is a transcript of a conversation between two eminent economists discussing this very question!

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.

ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It’s 7.8%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that’s 14.7%.

COSTELLO: You just said 7.8%.

ABBOTT: 7.8% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 7.8% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 14.7%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 14.7% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 7.8%.

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 7.8% or 14.7%?

ABBOTT: 7.8% are unemployed. 14.7% are out of work.

COSTELLO: If you are out of work you are unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, Congress said you can’t count the “Out of Work”
as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!

ABBOTT: No, you miss his point.

COSTELLO: What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted
with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.

COSTELLO: To whom?

ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But ALL of them are out of work.

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work.
Those who are out of work gave up looking and if you give up,
you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment roles that
would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t
look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down.
That’s how they get it to 7.8%.
Otherwise it would be 14.7%.
Our govt. doesn’t want you to read about 14.7% unemployment.

COSTELLO: That would be tough on those running for reelection.

ABBOTT: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you.
That means there are two ways to bring down the
unemployment number?

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop
looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down,
and the easier of the two is to have people stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like an Economist.

COSTELLO: I don’t even know what the hell I just said!

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like Congress. 

And way too close to the truth…

h/t Gerry

Errr…

Posted on by March 17, 2013
Somehow I don’t see THIS happening in any gym class in high school in the USA…

Russian ‘gym’ is more like high school than gym class we have here…

But it might not be a bad idea… Just sayin… 

h/t JP 

Range Time…

Posted on by March 17, 2013
Met up with MSgt B at the range this morning, and we were BOTH having one of those days… 

I was running late, and barely got there.  I got up to the line planning on shooting the new Uberti I’d picked up, and I was getting NO hammer strikes…

More on that later…

So I dug out the 22/45 and my carry .45 and we started alternating on the line.

This is one of the targets, and it’s a good example of familiarity with a gun and how it shoots…

The white circles are MSgt B’s the green circles mine. If I remember correctly this was at 15 yards…


The green circle in the center was my trying to shoot his Sig.  Nice gun, full sized but I was having to WORK to shoot it well (and didn’t do all that well)!

The two white circles were his two mags with the same gun.  This, if nothing else, goes to the heart of being ‘comfortable’ with the gun you’re shooting!

The right and left green circles were my portions of the target with my C&S .45 And this shows how BADLY I was shooting…

Trigger time IS a perishable skill, and when you don’t practice it shows!!!  I put about 50 rounds of .22 downrange on another target and finally started getting the groups tightened back up.

At that point we both ran out of ammo (other than the carry mags), so we adjourned to lunch.

OBTW, the range did not have a SINGLE BOX of ammo in the place…

Still it was nice to get out, and we had fun, and a good lunch in the deal.  

Now about my stupidity on the Uberti…

I called Vine, since he’s a gunsmith and discussed WTF with him.  After he got through laughing at me, he had me check the cylinder pin and see if it was in the first or second (deep) detent.  Turns out it was in the second detent, which effectively acts as a safety, since the trigger bar never drops down.  I pulled the back to the frist detent, and I could see the hammer actually would have contacted a shell had the gun been loaded…

Sigh…  

Lazy day…

Posted on by March 17, 2013
Other than having to go in to work, I didn’t do a damn thing yesterday… And I don’t plan on doing anything today either…

Maybe I’ll get down to the range and maybe not, go read the folks on the sidebar. I’m out of ice cream today.

Sorry…

And the hits keep coming…

Posted on by March 17, 2013
This one is ‘really’ not a surprise, but it still sucks for the Navy…

From the UT San Diego-

The California Coastal Commission has roundly rejected the U.S. Navy’s sonar program, saying that what the Navy sees as its “theater” — in other words, the ocean – has some seats reserved for whales and dolphins.

The unanimous vote, taken at a commission meeting Friday morning in San Diego, sets up a possible repeat of a federal lawsuit that ultimately involved the White House and the Supreme Court in 2008.

The Navy is applying for a five-year renewal of its federal marine permit to conduct training over a huge swath of ocean between Hawaii and Southern California. For the California piece, it is required to run the plan past the Coastal Commission.

The commission didn’t like what it saw. Commissioners said the Navy didn’t supply enough information to support its conclusions that the overall marine mammal count isn’t affected by sonar technology used by the Navy to locate ships or by detonations at sea.


Full article HERE.

I see, in addition to the usual dem suspects, the NRDC and China’s hands all over this…

Now is their chance to truly hose the Navy over on allowed training…

I swear if I was in charge, I’d pull every damn ship, airplane, Army, Air Force and Marine unit out of California and move them North and West.  They ‘love’ the military money, but ‘hate’ the military and do every thing they can out there to thwart realistic (or for that matter ANY) training.  

Various History Links…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Not necessarily for everybody, but a compilation of links for various aviation things from pre-WWI through WWII and Vietnam.

o        Aviation Pioneers
o        World War I Aces
o        Hall of Fame of the Air
o        WW2 Pacific Theater (PTO)
o        WW2 US Marine Corps
o        WW2 US Navy Aces
o        WW2 Mediterranean (MTO)
o        WW2 German Aces
o        Korean War Aces
o        Russian Aces
o        Vietnam Era Aces
·         Airplanes
o        World War I Planes
o        1930s Aircraft photos
o        WW2 Fighters
o        WW2 Bombers
o        WW2 German Planes
o        WW2 Airplane Pictures
o        History of Airplanes blog
o        Nose Art
o        Postwar Jets
·         World War Two
o        WW2 Facts and Firsts
o        WW2 Medals
o        WW2 Museums
o        WW2 Pictures
o        WW2 Ships
        WW2 Weapons
h/t JP

And then there were four…

Posted on by March 17, 2013

Another Veteran is gone…

Major Thomas Griffin, a navigator on the Doolittle Raid was called home Tuesday. He passed in a VA home in northern Kentucky at age 96. At the next reunion of the surviving Doolittle Raiders in Fort Walton Beach, where they trained for the mission, they will turn Maj. Griffin’s goblet upside down, and there will be only four left upright.
Maj. Griffin parachuted to safety over China and eluded capture, eventually making it back stateside. He later flew bombing missions over North Africa until he was shot down in 1943, spending the remainder of the war in a German POW camp.
Years ago the President of Hennessy Company presented a bottle of 1896 vintage “Very Special Hennessy” cognac to General Jimmy Doolittle, in honor of his birth year and it was decided that the last two survivors would toast the fallen with it. Due to their advanced age it was decided that they would make the toast this year, before there were none left.
The private ceremony will be attended only by the surviving Raiders, the Raiders’ historian, Tom Casey, manager of the Doolittle Raiders Association, and two Air Force cadets. They will conduct a roll call of the names of all the Raiders, and when Griffin’s name is called, Lt. Col. Richard Cole, at age 97 the oldest survivor, will give a report on Griffin, announcing that he has left us.
At the end of the reading of names, the white-gloved cadets will pour the cognac into the goblets of the survivors, and they will drink their special toast: “To those who have gone.”
The final four survivors are Lt. Col. Cole of Comfort, Texas; Lt. Col. Robert Hite of Nashville, Tennessee; Lt. Col. Edward Saylor of Puyallup, Washington, and Master Sgt. David Thatcher of Missoula, Montana.

RIP Major, know that you were an example to an entire country and gave America hope!

h/t JP