YGTBSM!!!

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Panetta disarms Marines in a combat zone!!!


Article HERE



Less than a week after a US staff sergeant allegedly massacred 16 civilians in Kandahar, American soldiers were banned from bringing guns into a talk by Mr Panetta at a base in Helmand province.
Around 200 troops who had gathered in a tent at Camp Leatherneck were told “something had come to light” and asked abruptly to file outside and lay down their automatic rifles and 9mm pistols.
“Somebody got itchy, that’s all I’ve got to say. Somebody got itchy – we just adjust,” said the sergeant who was told to clear the hall of weapons.
Major General Mark Gurganus later said he gave the order because Afghan troops attending the talk were unarmed and he wanted the policy to be consistent for all.
I’m throwing the BS flag here- Afghans normally DO NOT have weapons when in the presence of high ranking officials, USMC/USA/USN ALWAYS have been authorized to carry weapons in a combat zone… 
“You’ve got one of the most important people in the world in the room,” he told the New York Times, insisting that the decision was unrelated to Sunday’s killings. “This is not a big deal.”
WTFO???

And video from Breitbart saying the same thing HERE.
This crap is going entirely TOO far, if they don’t trust our own troops, the stay the F**k away from em…

A Little Humor…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
A blonde wanted to go ice fishing. She’d seen many books on the subject, and finally getting all the necessary tools together, she made for the ice. 

After positioning her comfy footstool, she started to make a circular cut in the ice. Suddenly, from the sky, a voice boomed, 

” THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE.” 

Startled, the blonde moved further down the ice, poured a thermos of cappuccino, and began to cut yet another hole. Again from the heavens the voice bellowed, 

” THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE.” 

The blonde, now worried, moved away, clear down to the opposite end of the ice. She set up her stool once more and tried again to cut her hole. 

The voice came once more, 

” THERE ARE NO FISH UNDER THE ICE.” 

She stopped, looked skyward, and said, 
“IS THAT YOU LORD?” 

The voice replied, 

“No, this is the manager of the hockey rink .”


And before I catch a ration for this one, I got it from a BLONDE! 😛


And I’ll leave you with this one…

Um… howinthehell can you POSSIBLY believe something like that is appropriate to wear in public???  


Sigh…

How to sing the Blues…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Another one from the Mil-email… Pretty damn funny…(attributed to Memphis Earlene Gray with help from Uncle Plunky)

                1.  Most blues begin “woke up this morning.”

                2.  “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line:

                     “I got a good woman

                       with the meanest dog in town.”

                3.  Blues are simple.  After you have the first line right, repeat it then find something that rhymes, sort of:

                    ” Got a good woman

                      with the meanest dog in town

                     He got teeth like Margaret Thatcher

                     and weighs 500 pounds.”

                4.   The blues are not about limitless choices

                5.   Blues cars are Chevvies and Cadillacs.  Other acceptable Blues transportation is Greyhound Bus or southbound train.  Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle.  So does fixin’ to die.

                6.   Teenagers can’t sing the blues.  Adults sing the blues.  Blues adulthood means old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

                7.   You can have the blues in New York City, but not in Brooklyn or Queens.

                      Hard times in Vermont or North Dakota is just depression. Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues.

                8.   The following colors do not belong in the blues:

                                a.  violet

                               b.  beige

                                c.  mauve

                9.     You can’t have the blues in an office or a shopping mall: the lighting is all wrong

                10.   Good places for the blues:

                                a.  the highway

                                b.  the jailhouse

                                c.  the empty bed

                          Bad places:

                                a.  tanning salon

                                b.  gallery openings

                                c.  weekend in the Hamptons

                11.    No one will believe it’s the blues if you wear a suit unless you are an old black man.

                12.   Do you have the right to sing the blues?

                         yes if:

                                a.  your first name is a southern state – like Georgia

                                b.  you’re blind

                                c.  you shot a man in Memphis

                                d.  you can’t be satisfied

                        no if:

                                a.  you once were blind but now can see

                                b.  you’re deaf

                                c.  you have a trust fund

                13.    Neither Julio Inglesias nor Barbra Streisand can sing the blues

                14.   If you ask for water and Baby give you gasoline, it’s the blues

                          Other blues beverages:

                                a.  wine

                                b.  Irish whiskey

                                c.  muddy water

                        Blues beverages are NOT:

                                a.  any mixed drink

                                b.  any wine kosher for Passover

                                c.  Yoo Hoo (all flavors)

                15.  if it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death.  Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is a blues way to die.  So is the electric chair, substance abuse, or being denied treatment in an emergency room.  It is not a blues death if you die during a liposuction treatment.

                16.   Some blues names for women:

                                a.  Sadie

                                b.  Big mama

                                c.  Bessie

                17.  Some blues names for men”

                                a.  Joe

                                b.  Willie

                                c.  Little Willie

                                d.  Lightning

                     Persons with names like Sierra or Sequoia will not be permitted to sing the blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

36 years…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
So I’m on my search for a .22 rifle for next weekend, and I’m at my local gun store wandering the aisles, and trying to figure out what I want to do…

I notice a couple of older gents (well, MY age, alright…) and they are also circling the place too.  I realize one of them is watching me, and I keep thinking I’ve ‘seen’ him before somewhere…

I finally ‘think’ I’ve placed him, so I walk up behind he and his friend and say, “Flight, Radar, do you have ANY idea where you’re going?”

He snaps around, looks at me, and says, “Dammit, I ‘THOUGHT’ that was you! I was waiting to hear you say something to somebody!”  We shook hands and ended up pounding each other on the back, and probably had the gun store folks wondering what in hell was going on!!!

He was one of my pilots 36 years ago, out in WESTPAC back in the day.  He’s also retired and still consulting to ‘various’ organizations, the ‘little ones’ are now grown, married and he’s a 5 time grandpa!

We spent about 20 minutes just going back and forth on folks we’d served with and who was where, and what they were doing.  And then he brought up ‘the flight’…

We were deployed to Misawa AB, Japan on a 6 month deployment.
In August of 1976, two Americans had been killed at the DMZ in Korea during a tree cutting, so all the American forces were on higher alert, and we were pretty much restricted to the base…

September 20, 1976 was a routine patrol flight, up around the North end of Hokkaido, chasing bad guy submaines… “Gene” was the PPC, and we were minding our own business; sitting on a sonobuoy pattern and basically boring holes in the air, when a rather ‘interesting’ radio call came in to ‘warn’ us of a possibility a MIG-25 headed our way…

Truly a WTF moment…  Since we were well outside USSR airspace, minding our own business, etc…  Flight decided to descend, figuring we’d be below the cloud deck and we didn’t think they would try to shoot us down. 

We finished the mission and RTB’ed, only to find out a MIG-25 had landed at Hakodate airport not long after we’d received our little message…  Track reconstruction and later interviews with LT Victor Belenko confirmed he had,  in fact, probably passed within 5nm of us, and was at or below our altitude!!!

We never saw him, and he apparently never saw us…

Of course that racheted up the tension as the Japanese refused to give the MIG back for something like 60 days, and allowed US intelligence folks to basically dis-assemble the airplane (If I remember right, they finally gave it back to the USSR in 30+ crates).  There were all kinds of threats made against American flyers, and the Soviets said they were going to capture a US crew as ‘hostages’, etc…

Made for a rather ‘interesting’ rest of the deployment, and pretty much screwed us out of any good deals (like the Osan trips), and pretty much kept us flying our asses off… sigh…

His friend is a retired Marine Col, and he was just shaking his head, and commented he’d been III MEF at the same time and he was on alert to ‘go’, if things got any worse.

We both had to do other things, but we exchanged phone numbers, and I’m sure we’ll be having a drink and or dinner pretty soon!

36 years… Damn how time flies… 

Appleseed…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
.45 ACP+P talked me into attending an Appleseed next weekend, so I’m wondering if anybody else in the local area wants to join me in embarrassing themselves???

Seriously, training is always good, and I’m looking forward to the chance to get some good trigger time.  .45 ACP said they will have loaner rifles available, and the more the merrier…

W,W,W,W- Appleseed, shooty goodness, 17-18 Mar, Mechanicsville, VA (just outside Richmond)  Info HERE!

Now I’ve got to go to the range this weekend and re-sight my Garand(s) and look around for a .22 to buy that will work (not even going to try it with a lever action)…

10-22, or ???

USN KA-3B vs. Russian Trawler AGI…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
One more round of us vs. them… From a friend who was on the Bonnie Dick when this happened… Frito was a Phantom RIO and loved the guys that flew Texaco…

The Russian “Trawlers” (NATO designation: AGI for Auxiliary General Intelligence) with what looked like one thousand “fishing” antennas plied the Gulf of Tonkin on a daily basis… needless to say, it was a cat-and-mouse game to see what havoc they could expend towards our two carriers operating there 24 hours a day.

Since the U.S. government had proclaimed the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin three miles off the coast of North Vietnam and Hinan Island, People’s Republic of China, to be international waters, American ships in the Gulf were bound to obey the international rules of the road for ocean navigation.

This meant that if the Russian ship maneuvered herself into the path of an aircraft carrier where she had the right of way, the carrier had to give way even if she was engaged in launching or recovering aircraft.

The navigation officer was constantly trying to maneuver the ship so that the trawler wouldn’t be able to get in position to abuse the rules of the road and gain the right of way.

Sometimes he was successful in sucking the trawler out of position, but the room available for the ship to maneuver was limited by our on-station requirements, and sometimes the trawler was successful interrupting our flight operations.

The pilots of the air wing were strictly forbidden to take any action against the Russian ship, but one day CDR John Wunche, the commanding officer of the heavy tanker KA-3B detachment, had finally had enough of the Russians’ antics.

John Wunche was a big man with bright red hair and a flaming red handlebar mustache. He was a frustrated fighter pilot whom fate and the Bureau of Naval Personnel had put into the cockpit of a former heavy bomber now employed as a carrier-based tanker.


CDR Wunche flew the tanker like a fighter and frequently delighted the tactical pilots by rolling the “Whale,” as we all called the KA-3B tanker, on completion of a tanker mission. Consequently, John’s nickname was “the Red Baron.”

On 21 July 1967 he proved just how appropriate that name was.

The “Bonnie Dick” had nearly completed a recovery. The Russian trawler had been steaming at full speed to try to cut across our bow, and the bridge watch had been keeping a wary eye on the intruder. For a while it looked as if the Russian would be too late and we would finish the recovery before having to give way to the trawler.But a couple of untimely bolters extended the recovery and the “Bonnie Dick” had to back down and change course to comply with the rules…

The LSO hit the wave-off lights when the “Whale” was just a few yards from the ramp. John crammed on full power and sucked up the speed brakes for the go-around. The “Bonnie Dick” began a sharp right turn to pass behind the Russian, causing the ship to list steeply, and there, dead ahead of John, was the Russian trawler.

He couldn’t resist. He leveled the “Whale” about a hundred feet off the water and roared across the mast of the Trawler with all fuel dumps open like a crop duster spraying a field of boll weevils.

The Russian disappeared in a heavy white cloud of jet fuel spray, then reemerged with JP-4 jet fuel glistening from her superstructure and running lip-full in the scuppers. The Russian trawler immediately lost power as the ship’s crew frantically tried to shut down anything that might generate a spark and ignite the fuel.

She was rolling dead in the water in the Bon Homme Richard’s wake, her crew breaking out fire hoses to wash down the fuel, and the “Bonnie Dick” steamed out of sight, completing the recovery of the Whale. 

Needless to say, the Red Baron was an instant hero to the entire ship’s company.

Worth the read…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Got this one from ASM over at Random Acts of Patriotism, go follow the links and read one hellva story…
There’s a relatively new blog out there called She’s a Garand Girl which is a great title and the idea that she’s joined the blogging world as a Garand owner and shooter brings me a smile.
She didn’t hesitate at the start, trying to find her voice or making a Hello World entry, she jumped in with a series of posts. A very hard series covering an event of sustained violence in which she, young and unarmed (except for a very fine pickup truck), prevailed. The latest post covers the aftermath. I don’t know if she will share more of the story, although I hope she does. There’s more to tell if we’re going to get the rest of the way from then to now.
She has put up a sort of cover letter post with links to the story posts in order.Every one of us needs to read this series. She is sharing events from a very private place and she deserves to be heard and supported. Because if things ever go south and it’s just me and the tools at hand, I hope I do as well as Garand Gal did.

Random Travel #682…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
A couple of pics from the hotel…




They do belt AND suspenders security, guards (running mirrors under cars and looking in trunks etc.), fences (with pointy spikes), and state of the art video systems…

And the Souk…  Restaurants, etc. in this one little area, and there are 5-6 of these spread around the city.  Some that we are NOT welcome in, and the cops will actually stop cars with caucasians and tell them to turn around and leave an area… Sorry for the lousy spots, the wind causes dirt to stick to the windows and they can’t keep em clean…

Thai, Italian and Mexican are popular restaurants. Last night we went to the Movenpick (big Swiss Hotel chain) for the seafood buffet.  Absolutely unbelievable!  Fresh fish, shrimp, etc. cooked to your liking a variety of ways, various other dishes (seafood related), Sushi (freshly prepared), and a desert bar with probably 30 items, with wine for $51 US; and it was all you can eat!!!  


Needless to say, I shot my diet right square in the ass last night… sigh 


Interestingly, most of the hotel ’employees’ are contract workers, with Philippine, Indian, and Asians representing the majority. The ‘managers’ are all Bahraini, Saudi, etc.  Apparently, most of the contracts are one year contracts, so if you don’t perform, you don’t keep the job, so service is excellent pretty much everywhere.


And there is DEFINITELY a double standard in this part of the world. Two instances, one was in the lobby, where there is no smoking, and a ‘royal’ (wearing a keffiyeh with a gold rope) lit up in the middle of the lobby and not a word was said…  He stubbed his cigarette out with his shoe, and someone was right there to pick up the butt.

Second, driving in this morning, again a ‘royal’ driving an Aston Martin comes up in the right turn lane, honks, bulls his way into traffic, then cuts across 3 lanes to turn LEFT!  Bahraini police at the corner did NOTHING… sigh…


Oh yeah, and one last picture- The ‘spare’ palace…
They keep it fully staffed, lights, A/C etc. just in case a visiting Sheik or King shows up on short notice (or maybe long notice, I don’t know)…


And in the background is the financial district with the ‘sail’ building. It’s one of the central buildings for the financial district and home to a bunch of banks, investment firms etc.  


Oh yeah, one last thing… Beef Bacon is ‘different’, to put it mildly…

Are we there YET???

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Another day, another airplane… sigh…



Are we there yet??? Nope, Kuwait and a wait…


And somebody REALLY screwed up the reservations, cause we are in a 5 star hotel!!!  Damn!



And this isn’t even one of the high dollar rooms. They apparently start at $2000/night and go up from there!


Sure beats the hell outta where I was the last three weeks…