They just refuse to give up…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
There are truly times I’m ‘glad’ when I can skip a news day…  Otherwise I’d need another case or two of duct tape…

The usual suspects are up to the usual shenanigans inside the beltway, and I get back to THIS…

Democratic senators offer gun control amendment for cybersecurity bill
By Ramsey Cox – 07/26/12 07:29 PM ET

Democratic senators have offered an amendment to the cybersecurity bill that would limit the purchase of high capacity gun magazines for some consumers.
Shortly after the Cybersecurity Act gained Senate approval to proceed to filing proposed amendments and a vote next week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the gun control amendment, came to the floor to defend the idea of implementing some “reasonable” gun control measures.

The amendment was sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Schumer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.). S.A. 2575 would make it illegal to transfer or possess large capacity feeding devices such as gun magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums of more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition. 

The amendment is identical to a separate bill sponsored by Lautenberg. Feinstein was the sponsor of the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. 


The proposed amendment would only affect sales and transfers after the law took effect.


Uh huh, SURE it will…  


Schumer defended the Brady law and assault weapons ban on the floor Thursday evening, perhaps in preparation for the coming fight with Republicans and gun rights activists.

Schumer suggested that both the left and right find common ground.
“Maybe we could come together on guns if each side gave some,” Schumer said. 



Chuck You’s idea of common ground is for US to give up everything and they get their way…


He suggested that Democrats make it clear that their goal is not to repeal the Second Amendment.



YEAH, RIGHT…


“The basic complaint is that the Chuck Schumers of the world want to take away your guns,” Schumer said of the argument made by gun lobbies. “I think it would be smart for those of us who want rational gun control to make it know that that’s not true at all.”

Schumer also pointed out that it would be reasonable for the right to recognize that background checks on those buying guns is necessary — as called for in the Brady law. He also said average Americans don’t need an assault weapon to go hunting or protect themselves.


Um… We ALREADY have that… And criminals DON’T do background checks…


“We can debate where to draw the line of reasonableness, but we might be able to come to an agreement in the middle,” Schumer said. “Maybe, maybe, maybe we can pass some laws that might, might, might stop some of the unnecessary casualties … maybe there’s a way we can some together and try to break through the log jam and make sure the country is a better place.”


It would be a MUCH better place if we had CCW everywhere!!! Then ALL the criminals would have to think twice…


Next week the Senate is expected to debate and vote on proposed amendments to the cybersecurity bill.


Make sure you let YOUR Senators know what you believe, and what you expect of them!!!

YGTBSM (Again)…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Kinda says it all…



I don’t EVEN want to say what I’m thinking right now…


Sigh…

Back in battery…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
I’m down to the last two cells, but I’m back…LOL


Thanks much to the Nerds, Spear, Farm Girl, and Indy for the hosting and the fun!


But I have to say those 0-dark-30 get ups get old… Luckily, I was basically able to stay on right coast time, so the flights weren’t bad, BUT I was nodding off at 2000 left coast time every night!


SO anyhoo…


The trivia question was this-



And the answer was the M-29 Davy Crockett! NOT something I’d have wanted to be shooting… Just sayin…

And a couple of other rather interesting things observed…


The scariest words in the military lexicon are “Broken Arrow”, which is a nuclear incident.  These pics are the ‘shells’ from two of the real Broken Arrows that have occurred…


And last but not least, one of ‘technical’ interest!

The white object in the background is a complete MIRV, and the foreground is a fired MIRV that was recovered after a test firing.  Of note is the amount of ablation that occurs on re-entry!


These pics were taken at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, NM.


Now off to catch up on my reading…

Arms Treaty Dead (for now)…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Finally!  Looks like the US contingent did it in!


UN Arms Treaty Dead

By James S. Robbins – The Washington Times
July 27, 2012, 06:53PM

Talks over the UN Arms Trade Treaty fell apart today, effectively killing the agreement. The Arms Trade Treaty Legal Blog reports that the process seemed to be moving to completion when the United States requested an extension to the time to negotiate the agreement. This opened the door to other countries to begin registering objections, and it soon became clear that reaching agreement within the allowed timeframe would be impossible. The proposed treaty, which raised considerable domestic opposition from gun rights advocates in the United States, died before it had a chance to become a threat. As a delegate from China observed, “C’est la vie et la vie c’est ça.”

The UN may take up the matter at a later date, but for now it is on indefinite hiatus. 

Out Playing…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Light blogging today/tomorrow-  Out playing with ‘things’…


A trivia question until I get back…


What’s this???





Answer when I get back in comms!

On the Road (Again)…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
PMS x 2- 


It was one of THOSE mornings at IAD, trying to get through security.  TSA was on a roll (breaking the porn scanner), and backing up the line, added to multiple bag checks, and the line was full and three rows deep in the pre-check area.  They kept holding off trying to fix the porn scanner, but finally ‘had’ to start letting folks through when the line was about 15 people and the bags were backed up on the back side of security.  


About that time, they needed a male ‘assist’, so a female came stomping over and took over the line at the detector.  It was obvious she was ‘not’ in a good mood, and was being a PITA, making people wait, etc.


A lady was next in line, in a chair due to a leg operation (and TOLD the woman she had a pin in her leg)and had the paperwork. She shuffled through the scanner, and sure enough set it off…


And was told to step back and go through again, and set it off again… And the woman starts yelling for a female ‘assist’, but keeps the lady standing there.  The lady steps BACK through and tells the woman to go ahead and let folks go while she waited, but NO, YOU GET BACK HERE was the statement.  Now she’s got the woman standing there for probably 3-4 minutes, and the lady is asking for a chair to sit in and getting a ‘bit’ irate, but NO, YOU JUST STAND THERE.


By now the bags are backed up again, and I counted 22 people in line, and these two women are glaring at each other.  Thankfully a supervisor showed up, and he pulled the woman off line, let the woman with the leg problem sit down, and started running us through.  Total time 32 minutes… sigh…


And I barely made the flight, but I made it!


So I get to the left coast, knock out a couple of meetings, and had pre-arranged a visit to Creedmoor Sportshttp://www.creedmoorsports.com/shop/home.php (BAD Mistake)…  


I was like a kid in a candy (VERY EXPENSIVE CANDY) store.  They are truly nice folks, as nice in person as they are on line; I picked up the one thing I needed, drooled over the ‘real’ shooting jackets, and other nice toys, picked up something I didn’t ‘really’ need, and only spent twice what I planned… But I figure I got out cheap! It would be really easy to drop a couple of thousand dollars in that place!

Burp…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Sorry… 🙂


Too much GOOD food today!  Met up with Navy One for lunch (seafood fix), and met friends for dinner (Chinese fix).  Now I need a wheelbarrow to cart my ass off…


In other news, it appears the Aussies got to do another SINKEX during the last big exercise, so the little country that can fired a Mk-48 torpedo and sunk a fairly large ex-Navy ship with one ’round’… It hit under the bridge, broke the keel, and both halves sank in 40 minutes…


Now THAT is what you call firepower! 🙂  Off to bed, early go in the morning (WAY too early actually)… Sigh…

Agression…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
This one came over the transom from the mil-net email… Once again, China IS stepping up their aggression in the region, not only militarily over the last three years, but now THIS…

CHINFO Item 17.   China Sends Troops To Disputed Islands

(NEW YORK TIMES 24 JUL 12) … Jane Perlez

The announcement came as Chinese authorities told state media that 45 legislators elected over the weekend to govern the 1,100 people who live on the island groups of the Spratlys, the Paracels and the Macclesfield Bank — known in Chinese as the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands — met for the first time on Monday.

The new legislators would not only govern the island groups, many of them consisting of rocks and atolls, but also two million square kilometers of the South China Sea over which China claims jurisdiction, according to state media.

The two moves appeared designed to reinforce China’s claims over the South China Sea a week after a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at which China, according to diplomats at the meeting, used its influence to stop even a rudimentary communiqué on the South China Sea among the 10 nations.

The establishment of a legislature for the sparsely populated islands, and the dispatch of soldiers, will antagonize Vietnam, which claims the same islands. Vietnam and China have fought since the 1970s over the three island groups, and last month, Vietnam passed a law that claimed sovereignty over the Paracels and Spratly Islands. In response, China said the islands were the “indisputable” territory of China.

The Philippines and China have also been involved in a dispute for months over Scarborough Shoal, an area off the coast of the Philippines claimed by both countries.

In the case of the Nansha, Xisha and Zhongsha islands, China’s State Council approved the establishment of a prefectural-level administration known as Sansha City to replace a lower county level administration last month.

The election of the legislators over the weekend and their meeting Monday at a first session of a people’s congress appeared to be practical steps to show China was serious in its drive to have the South China Sea as its domain.

A mayor, who was formerly led the agriculture department of China’s Hainan provincial government, and three vice mayors were elected Monday by the 45 deputies to run the new Sansha administration, state media reported.

China Daily, an English-language government-run newspaper, described Yongxing Island as a “hidden beauty” formed by white coral shells piled on reefs. Government buildings lined Beijing Road, along with banks, shops and an airport, the newspaper said.

The speed of China’s actions was not surprising, said Wu Xinbo, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “Now the Philippines and Vietnam are both advancing their claims so China must also respond accordingly with its own plan,” Mr. Wu said.

The People’s Liberation Army garrison that was announced over the weekend would most likely be established on Xisha island, Mr. Wu said. “Xisha is closest to China and the facilities are relatively good.”

In a detailed report on the South China Sea in April, the International Crisis Group said that China had delayed establishing the Sansha city administration to govern the Paracels and Spratly, and appeared more intent on using tourism as way of asserting sovereignty.

Three months later, China has moved rapidly to set up the more powerful administration in response to Vietnam’s legislation claiming sovereignty and “provocations” by the Philippines, Mr. Wu said.

And our response???

Anyone???

Bueler???

/crickets

You are correct there has been NO response!  For over 30 years that I am aware of, the USA has stood behind both Philippine and Taiwanese claims and earlier Vietnamese claims to portions of the Spratleys.  The islands (mostly atolls) are the center of an ongoing set of claims of ownership that have accelerated since oil was found there back in the 70’s…

You can read THIS to get  a sense of what our administration’s ‘new’ stance is… @#&*# pathetic…

And an interesting read HERE… Are you ready???

I AM Sumdood!!!

Posted on by March 6, 2013

To steal one from AD, or the alternative title is Karma is a Bitch… 

I was reminded of this ‘incident’ at dinner Saturday night; it actually happened a couple of years ago, but some folks STILL remember it…

Now on with the story-

I was sitting in on a meeting discussing training and procedures and how to fix both for a ‘certain’ location, one of the “junior” folks had been tasked to go back through archival data and documents to see if there was any previous information that might be pertinent to the discussions.  

Now for a point of reference, this guy had a rather over/hyper-inflated sense of self, to put it mildly, he thought his didn’t stink  (think BIG watch, little dick type)…

Anyhoo… At the end of the first day, a document from the mid 90s was brought up, and this little asshat summarily dismissed it with this statement.  “Aw that is useless, it was written by some civilian dude named (ME), since he was a civilian, I’m POSITIVE he didn’t have any experience and it cannot be useful.” 

Now at this point, some of the heavies in the room are all looking around at me to see my response; I just nodded to a couple of the heavies, and smiled…

After the first day closed, a few of us including this guy’s boss were talking, most of them wanted to know why I hadn’t said anything… I responded I didn’t know how important this guy was in the food chain.  One of the heavies basically said, less and less important due to his attitude, so if you want to take him down a peg or two, that’s fine!

Soooo, next morning we reconvene, and the document gets brought up again…  Now the poking starts from others, well WHY isn’t the document useful?  Did you actually read it?  

So asshat goes into this long diatribe about how it didn’t make any sense, nobody would do it that way, etc…

I interrupted and asked how he “knew” this, had he actually tried it, or had any real experience.

His answer was he had ALL this experience and he KNEW stuff like this wouldn’t work.

So I interrupted again and asked him about his SPECIFIC experience relating to the subject (e.g. had he ever actually flown in that area)…

Turns out it is really zero!

Now at this point, he’s getting a little pissed, so he finally asks me what my name is and why am I “confusing” the issue…

So I tell him, and tell him I am the author of that particular document, at which point most of the meeting erupts in laughter…  

 So now asshat decides to question my credibility, after I lay out my background (including the fact that I had quite a few hours IN that area doing the actual mission), asshat decides, “Well, you are out of date and out of touch with the current procedures.”

My comeback was, “Oh really?”

At that point, his boss called a break, and left the room with asshat…

After the break, no asshat!  He’d been sent back to the office and basically told he was relieved of his job!

Moral of the story- Before you open your mouth in an open meeting, know who is at the table, and what their backgrounds are…  OR keep your ego in check…

Old age and treachery will over come youth and ego ANY day of the week!