Not what you might think…
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and this one is definitely one for the books…
Not what you might think…
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and this one is definitely one for the books…
Not what you might think…
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and this one is definitely one for the books…
Got this one from a friend in Britian who is a retire Group Commander, somehow I don’t think he’s ‘impressed’ with the latest changes in the British Navy…
The Royal Navy is proud of its new fleet of Type 45 destroyers. Having initially named the first two ships HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless, the Naming Committee has, after intensive pressure from Brussels , renamed them HMS Cautious and HMS Prudence. The next five ships are to be named HMS Empathy, HMS Circumspect, HMS Nervous, HMS Timorous and HMS Apologist.
Costing £850 million each, they meet the needs of the 21st century and comply with the very latest employment, equality, health & safety and human rights laws.
The new user-friendly crow’s nest comes equipped with wheelchair access. Live ammunition has been replaced with paintballs to reduce the risk of anyone getting hurt and to cut down on the number of compensation claims. Stress counsellors and lawyers will be on duty 24hrs a day and each ship will have
its on-board industrial tribunal.
The crew will be 50/50 men and women, and balanced in accordance with the latest Home Office directives on race, gender, sexuality and disability. Sailors will only have to work a maximum of 37hrs per week in line with Brussels Health & Safety rules, even in wartime! All the vessels will come equipped with a maternity ward and nursery, situated on the same deck as the Gay Disco. Tobacco will be banned throughout the ship, but cannabis will be allowed in the wardroom and messes. The Royal Navy is eager to shed its traditional reputation for “rum, sodomy and the lash” so out has gone the occasional rum ration which is replaced by sparkling water.
Although sodomy remains, it has now been extended to include all ratings under 18. The lash will still be available but only on request. Condoms can be obtained from the Bosun in a variety of flavours, except Capstan Full Strength.
Saluting officers has been abolished because it is deemed elitist and is to be replaced by the more informal, “Hello Sailor”. All information on notices boards will be printed in 37 different languages and Braille. Crew members will now no longer be required to ask permission to grow beards or moustaches – this applies equally to female crew members.
The MoD is working on a new “non-specific” flag because the White Ensign is considered to be offensive to minorities. The Union Flag had already been discarded.
The newly re-named HMS Cautious is due to be commissioned soon in a ceremony conducted by Captain Hook from the Finsbury Park Mosque who will break a petrol bomb over the hull. She will gently slide into the water as the Royal Marines Band plays “In the Navy” by the Village People. Her first deployment will be to escort boat loads of illegal immigrants across the channel to ports on England ‘s south coast.
The Prime Minister said, “While these ships reflect the very latest in modern thinking, they are also capable of being up-graded to comply with any new legislation coming out of Brussels ..”
His final words were, “Britannia waives the rules.”
Costing £850 million each, they meet the needs of the 21st century and comply with the very latest employment, equality, health & safety and human rights laws.
The new user-friendly crow’s nest comes equipped with wheelchair access. Live ammunition has been replaced with paintballs to reduce the risk of anyone getting hurt and to cut down on the number of compensation claims. Stress counsellors and lawyers will be on duty 24hrs a day and each ship will have
its on-board industrial tribunal.
The crew will be 50/50 men and women, and balanced in accordance with the latest Home Office directives on race, gender, sexuality and disability. Sailors will only have to work a maximum of 37hrs per week in line with Brussels Health & Safety rules, even in wartime! All the vessels will come equipped with a maternity ward and nursery, situated on the same deck as the Gay Disco. Tobacco will be banned throughout the ship, but cannabis will be allowed in the wardroom and messes. The Royal Navy is eager to shed its traditional reputation for “rum, sodomy and the lash” so out has gone the occasional rum ration which is replaced by sparkling water.
Although sodomy remains, it has now been extended to include all ratings under 18. The lash will still be available but only on request. Condoms can be obtained from the Bosun in a variety of flavours, except Capstan Full Strength.
Saluting officers has been abolished because it is deemed elitist and is to be replaced by the more informal, “Hello Sailor”. All information on notices boards will be printed in 37 different languages and Braille. Crew members will now no longer be required to ask permission to grow beards or moustaches – this applies equally to female crew members.
The MoD is working on a new “non-specific” flag because the White Ensign is considered to be offensive to minorities. The Union Flag had already been discarded.
The newly re-named HMS Cautious is due to be commissioned soon in a ceremony conducted by Captain Hook from the Finsbury Park Mosque who will break a petrol bomb over the hull. She will gently slide into the water as the Royal Marines Band plays “In the Navy” by the Village People. Her first deployment will be to escort boat loads of illegal immigrants across the channel to ports on England ‘s south coast.
The Prime Minister said, “While these ships reflect the very latest in modern thinking, they are also capable of being up-graded to comply with any new legislation coming out of Brussels ..”
His final words were, “Britannia waives the rules.”
Matter of fact, I think he’s pissed… (mad not drunk)… or maybe a bit of both…
Another one that came in via the mil email net… Worth thinking about.
These facts are very interesting for those of us who were in Vietnam as opposed to the lying politicians who continue to claim they were there.
A little history most people will never know.
Interesting Veterans Statistics off the Vietnam Memorial Wall “Carved on these walls is the story of America, of a continuing quest to preserve both Democracy and decency, and to protect a national treasure that we call the American dream.” ~President George Bush
SOMETHING to think about – Most of the parents of these men are now deceased.
There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010.
The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 36 years since the last casualties.
And people STILL visit the wall every day…
Beginning at the apex on panel 1E and going out to the end of the East wall, appearing to recede into the earth (numbered 70E – May 25, 1968), then resuming at the end of the West wall, as the wall emerges from the earth (numbered 70W – continuing May 25, 1968) and ending with a date in 1975. Thus the war’s beginning and end meet. The war is complete, coming full circle, yet broken by the earth that bounds the angle’s open side and contained within the earth itself.
The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth , Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.
There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall.
39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.
8,283 were just 19 years old.
The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old.
5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.
One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.
997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam .
1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam .
31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.
Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons.
54 soldiers on the Wall attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia . I wonder why so many from one school.
8 Women are on the Wall. Nursing the wounded.
244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.
Beallsville , Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.
West Virginia had the highest casualty rate per capita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.
The Marines of Morenci – They led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known and cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest . And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci’s mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps. Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.
The Buddies of Midvale – LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam . In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.
The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 – 2,415 casualties were incurred.
For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. There are no noble wars, just noble warriors.
This is Lee Teter’s iconic painting called Vietnam Reflections, which, to me, is the portrait of a survivor who keeps coming back to the wall to try to understand why he survived and the others died…
If you ever get to DC, it is worth seeing…
Nuff said.
You may or may not have heard about the “nationwide” wireless Lightsquared is trying to put up… Problem is, it interferes with GPS since it uses the SAME frequency band…
In 2011, LightSquared’s attempts at creating a nationwide wireless broadband system have put GPS technology as we know it in jeopardy. Among others working to stop this crap is Save Our GPS Coalition http://saveourgps.org to raise awareness about the effect this issue would have on GPS for unmanned systems.
On 12 Jan., the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) sent a letter to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), stating, “…this proposal raises significant interference concerns…” and that “…it is incumbent on the FCC to deal with the resulting interference issues before any interference occurs.” The NTIA is the executive branch agency, located within the Department of Commerce, principally responsible for advising the president on telecommunications and information policy issues. The NTIA consulted with the departments of Defense, Transportation and Homeland Security before releasing its statement. LightSquared continues to lobby the FCC to grant its request to create a nationwide network of ground transmitters that could drown out GPS signals.
Despite repeated negative testing, LightSquared pushes on in an attempt to create a nationwide broadband network that would cripple GPS as we know it. Just this week http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/another-test-finds-lightsquareds-satellite-service-interferes-with-military-aviation-operations/2012/01/17/gIQAcXZo6P_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headline, federal regulators released a report saying the problems with LightSquared’s plan were not fixable, and LightSquared responded with a press release calling the system “rigged,” instead of taking steps to actually fix the problem and save our GPS.
So if you ‘value’ that little GPS system in your car or airplane, you might want to pay attention this…
It may come back to bite us all in the butt!!!
Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) under consideration in, respectively, Congress and the Senate. Supposedly, Congress has shelved further consideration of SOPA – The Senate is scheduled to bring PIPA to a cloture vote on January 24th.
The webstrike on, with approximately 7000 websites saying they will not be online/posting tomorrow. I will join them by not posting or commenting at all tomorrow… You can go HERE and see the strike website and video.
Join us please, and lets show our disapproval…
Got this at work, and it’s worth a look if you travel for either business or pleasure…
We have been seeing incidents with rental car companies that appear questionable to us and I wanted to give you a heads-up on some of the issues that travelers have been dealing with.
Some travelers have been charged for damages that may or may not have occurred while the car was in their possession. Dings, cracks, flat tires, fender damage etc. You may want to pay a little extra attention when the car is inspected prior to signing anything.
Also, one of the rental companies has stated that they offer other options to the traveler at check-in. You might select a car that is presented to you which is actually an upgrade. One term that is used is ‘Intermediate’, which is equivalent to the rental agency’s ‘Mid-sized’ cars. Other terms used by the rental companies are ‘Standard and Full’, both of which are upgrades.
We have also had incidents of travelers declining the insurances, but they have been added to the bill anyway. You may see it listed as PAE / ESP / SLI CHG.
Personal Accidents and Effects – PAE
Emergency Sickness Plan -ESP
Supplemental Liability Insurance – SLI
With this in mind, take an extra minute at the counter to check the estimated charges to ensure that you are not being overcharged.
I am sending this out to all since this information may be helpful both for professional as well as private travel.
Doing some ‘spring cleaning’ today, e.g. looking for my damn gloves in the closet, I ran across my old flight jacket hanging in the back of the closet, and thought y’all might get a laugh out of this trip down memory lane…
This is the front of the jacket I wore, less the TACCO patch on the right sleeve…
And the back of the jacket…
In the early 80’s when I went through AOCS to become an NFO, we had to attend ground school at VT-10 in Pensacola. Most of the instructors were young Lieutenants just off their first squadron tours, and had maybe 5-6 years in the Navy.
We had this one particular LT who’d been in a West Coast A-6 squadron who liked to wear his flight jacket when he instructed…
One day one of the young Ensigns asked him a question about one of his patches. He went into a detailed description of the patch and how he’d ‘earned’ it, and on and on… He finally closed with the comment that, “You’ve got to EARN the right to wear a flight jacket with patches on it, and not a one of you in here has EARNED that right.”
The WO and I looked at each other, and the ex-Coastie sitting behind us said, “THAT is a bunch of BS.”
After class, we adjourned to the club for a libation or three, and it turned out we all had our “Fleet” flight jackets with us. Now at this point, I had 11 years in, 9 years in the Fleet; the WO had 19 years in, 14 years in the Fleet; and the Coastie had 11 years in and 9 years for flying as a SAR crewman and C-130 crewman in places like Kodiak.
Looking at the schedule, we found we would have this particular LT again two days later right after lunch, so we decided we’d all bring our “Fleet” flight jackets and wear them to his class…
So… Two days later, we meet in the parking lot, change to our “Fleet” jackets and hustle into the class room well ahead of the rest of the students and staff…
Since we sat near the back of the class, only a couple of folks noticed what we were wearing and that ALL three of us had more patches than the LT did; and I saw a few smiles as some folks figured out what we were up to.
The LT came in and started his lecture and for the first 15 minutes or so didn’t notice anything. Then he saw the WO’s jacket and literally stopped in mid-sentence, walked back to where we were sitting and asked us whatinthehell did we think we were doing.
I said something to the effect of, we were just wearing what we’d EARNED, just like him; and he went off! He told us that we weren’t allowed to wear ‘those’ jackets, we were disruptive, and we were to go see the Ops O right now…
So, off we went to Ops, and into the Ops O’s office. He looked up and asked what we’d done now, weren’t we supposed to be in class?
So I explained what had gone on, with concurrences from the WO, and the Coastie…
OBTW, both the WO and I had known the Ops O for about 8 years, having flown with him in a previous squadron 🙂
He just started laughing, looked at us, shook his head, and said, “You assholes know better than to screw with the instructors and you know this school is NOT set up to deal with people like you!”
So he took us back to class, and called the LT out in the hall and had a ‘chat’ with him about the fact that there were people in classes than HAD been in the Fleet, and probably much longer than he had, and he’d better watch his comments before they come back and bite him in the butt…
Needless to say, we were ‘closely’ watched after that, and our class tended to get the senior instructors!
In spite of all the BS, we all made it through, and ended up with successful careers as officers 🙂
I’d been working on a post to respond to Joan, as I’m really sick and tired of the ‘games’ being played with the victims of ALL violence…
However, in taking a break I went over and read a few blogs this morning and was stunned by the cogent response Minuteman has written.
Go HERE and take a few minutes to read his post. He said everything I wanted to say, and did it much better than I ever could.
We, the concealed carry community, chose NOT to be victims, and we are willing to help anyone who wants the ability to fight back.
Pretty good one and worth thinking about…
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
“One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
“The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Doesn’t get much simpler than that…
Back off the road finally, looking forward to actually sleeping in my OWN bed 🙂
Night all….zzzzzz
A magazine recently ran a ‘Dilbert Quotes’ contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type managers.
These were voted the top ten quotes in corporate America:
‘As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards with photo ID. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.'(This was the winning quote from Fred Dales, Microsoft Corp in Redmond WA )
‘What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.’ (Lykes Lines Shipping)
‘E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.’ (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)
‘This project is so important we can’t let things that are more important interfere with it.’ (Advertising/ Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
‘Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.'(Plant Manager, Delco Corporation)
‘No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them.’ (R&D supervisor,
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/ 3M Corp)
Quote from the Boss: ‘Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.’ (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said,’That would be better for me.’ (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
‘We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.’ (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
‘What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.’ (Lykes Lines Shipping)
‘E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.’ (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)
‘This project is so important we can’t let things that are more important interfere with it.’ (Advertising/ Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
‘Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.'(Plant Manager, Delco Corporation)
‘No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We’ve been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I’ll let you know when it’s time to tell them.’ (R&D supervisor,
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/ 3M Corp)
Quote from the Boss: ‘Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.’ (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said,’That would be better for me.’ (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
‘We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.’ (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
One can only wonder how these people every GOT to a position of power… Or is this the Peter Principal in action???