20 years and changes…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
So I’m in yet another interminable meeting, and we finally get a break; standing outside with a cup of coffee, and this old guy comes walking over.

He’s smiling (a good thing), and sticks out his hand.  He says in a very soft voice, “you don’t remember me, but I know you.”

I shake his hand and say, “honestly, no I don’t.”  

He tells me his name, and I just about fell over; he and I had worked together 20 years ago.  He used to be a big strapping guy, cheerful, full head of dark hair, and deep booming voice.

Now he weighs about 120 lbs, is bald, stooped and can’t speak above a whisper.  He tells me he’s survived colon cancer, two strokes, an heart attack during Chemo and a stint in the last five years.  

I asked him what in the hell he was doing in the meeting after all that, and he said working was the only thing that kept him going.  

The fact that he’s a damn good engineer, so his bosses hung on through all the issues, and kept him on the payroll didn’t hurt either…

After all he’s been through, he needs to go buy a lottery ticket…

And thankfully all this went down BEFORE Obamacare kicked in, otherwise he probably wouldn’t be here…

And I just found out yet another old friend died two weeks ago of cancer…

Flyin and lyin…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Pilots….

In air combat there isn’t anything called cheating…The stakes are too high….

This story is attributed to former CNO ADM Jim Holloway, USN retired.

One thing about Air Force pilots is that they lie a lot. You simply can’t trust them at all.

We had an argument one night at the Belvedore Inn, across from the main gate at NAS Pax River.  A bunch of our F-14 Tomcat pilots at Strike were arguing with some F-15 Eagle drivers from Langley about who was better at what and which airplane was better.

Well, we decided to settle it the next morning in the restricted area over the Chesapeake Bay. This is where we found out how much Air Force pilots lie!!

We all agreed to meet nose on at 35,000 and settle it once and for all.


Don’t you know those lying, sneaky bastards showed up at 40,000.

God, what a bunch of lying low-lifes those Air Force types were, showing up with a 5,000-foot altitude advantage.

Hell, if we hadn’t been at 45,000, those lying Air Force dirtbags would have had us for breakfast!”

An interesting question…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
This one came in from the mil-email network, and it IS an interesting question that the lady poses…

One thing wrong with the Government’s calculation of available social security is they forgot to figure in the people who died before they ever collected a social security check!!!

WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO???

Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500.

Read that again.

Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny? We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.

Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back. If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you’re 95 if you retire at age 65) and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing with me…. I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50’s, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn. I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security). Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn’t make my benefits some kind of charity or
handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? — free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days. Now that’s welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We’re “broke” and we can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless. Yet in the last few months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile and Turkey. And now Pakistan……home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
Our retired seniors living on a ‘fixed S.S. income’ receive no additional federal aid nor do they get any financial breaks, while our government and religious organizations pour hundreds of
billions of $$$ and tons of food to foreign countries!
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn’t it? And where DID the money go???

Edit- “Supposedly” those dead who never drew anything are taken into account actuarially… And we are suffering from the ‘bow-wave’ who never put a penny in but started drawing immediately when the program was started… Supposedly…

I hate to do it…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Apparently my postings about Sequestration have tripped off a spam attack, I’m getting up to 100-200 spam hits a day all of a sudden…

So I’m going to have to go back to verification. I truly apologize, and I hate to do it, but I can’t keep up with the BS comments…

Getting rid of Selective Service Registration…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Interesting how all of a sudden they want to get rid of Selective Service requirements…

Two lawmakers are waging a little-noticed campaign to abolish the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that manages draft registration.

They say the millions of dollars the agency spends each year preparing for the possibility of a military draft is a waste of money.
Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., say the Pentagon has no interest in returning to conscription due to the success of the all-volunteer force.

The Selective Service has a budget of $24 million and a full-time staff of 130. It maintains a database of about 17 million potential male draftees. In the event of a draft, the agency would mobilize as many as 11,000 volunteers to serve on local draft boards that would decide if exemptions or deferments to military service were warranted.



Full article HERE.

Can’t help but wonder if this is so they don’t have to register women, now that they are eligible for combat…

Just askin…

h/t Les

An ‘Interesting’ picture, but not in a good way…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
This is something I never thought we’d see, at least not in my lifetime, other that at Christmas stand-down, maybe…


NORFOLK, VA. (February 8, 2013). The first time since WWII that five nuclear powered aircraft carriers were docked together. USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are all in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., the world’s largest naval station. Sources stated that this breached a long standing military protocol in the Navy meant to avoid massive enemy strike on major US forces. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Ryan J. Courtade/Released)

Additionally, there are three Amphibs in there too…

Battan (LHD5) fourth up, Wasp (LHD1) sixth up, and Kearsarge (LHD3), so effectively eight big (and bigger) decks all in a row.  And yes it DOES breach protocol, but obviously the administration doesn’t care…

h/t JP and others.

Pay to Play, $500,000 buy in…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
It appears for $500,000 you can ‘buy’ a seat at the table as an ‘advisor’ to the Prez, and meet with him quarterly.  Only problem is you will be ‘window dressing’ since you’re only allowed to sit at the table if you agree with everything he’s doing.

So I guess he doesn’t hate ALL rich people, just those that don’t support him…

I can’t help but wonder how many Hollyweird types will be signing up after last night?  

And is it just me, or was what went on last night with the First Lady TOTALLY inappropriate??? Did anyone else note all the ‘ropes’ as the military aides are called, that were her backdrop?  Total BS, and I’m betting she ignored all of them and they were probably thrown out IMMEDIATELY after the shot concluded.  

Nanny State…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
LL has a great post up HERE on the Californiacation of lots of the left coast states, so I’m not going to try to ‘top’ it…

I will provide the following picture that kinda says it all…

All of the signs are MANDATED by the state of California, along with a first aid kit, a life ring (for the pool AND one for the hot tub), as is the chair lift (and one for the regular pool too) at $3800 each.  Also the fence is new, as now the hot tubs apparently have to be fenced off too…  Total spent appx $10,000 and neither of the chair lifts has ever been used… And using the hot tub is now a big PITA, but it’s all now ‘in compliance’ with the new Nanny…er California laws.

And one more,  speaking of ‘Nanny State’…


They will shoot you and dump you in a mass grave…

Impacts of Sequestration…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
It seems that a lot of the media and commentators are saying there is ‘no big deal’ to sequestration…

I’m not getting ‘deep’ into specifics, there are plenty of articles that DO that.  I’m trying to take a broad brush approach here rather than bog down in minutia… 

However, it IS a huge deal in DOD.  Unlike the rest of the government, DOD is not allowed to reprogram money to different accounts or take hits across all accounts.  The military is pretty much taking ALL of the hit in what is called O&M accounts.  Operations and Maintenance funds are the day-to-day funds that pay for fuel, bullets, beans etc…  And when you add it the fact that there was never a budget actually passed to ‘pay’ for the Defense Authorization Bill; so DOD is operating on a continuing resolution (e.g. FY-12 funding levels), which is effectively a 3-5% cut, and now there is a 15-17% cut coming and only ONE account to take it out of, that is a SIGNIFICANT hit!

The Navy/Marines and Army have already come out and said there will be effectively no training the rest of the year, cancellation/deferment of maintenance (NOT good on ships that have already been deferred), cancelled deployments, extended deployments, and furlough of DOD employees (800,000 x 22 days) or 17,000+ man years of lost work.  

And these are only direct impacts…  And you’re looking at an ineffective military for how ever long this runs and an additional 9-12 months to get back up to speed, based on what we went through under Carter.

Who knows what the status of all the businesses will be that depend on the military???

And the Prez has the balls to get up with fire/police/EMS behind him and claim THEY will be out of work??? They are funded by State/Local agencies, not the federal government!!!  

The left has been wanting to gut the military for years and now it looks like they will succeed…

And it’s business as usual in Washington, DC…