Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Thursday, October 31, 2013

More Boeing 777X could spell the end of the 747 series of aircraft.

I was looking at something else on Bloomburg news and chased this link and got the story.  Those that read my blog know that besides the anti-Obama stuff, the 2nd amendment stuff, I also put out there a lot of information on the Aviation industry.    I am biased a bit, I work in the aviation field so I have a vested interest.  On a slightly different news, I saw one of our new 737-900ER's for the first time,   We were outfitting them getting ready for revenue service.  My company has bought 100 of the airplanes to replace the Boeing 757's in the next 5 years.  I was impressed with the 737.  The interior is totally different than the 800 and the 700 series airplanes that we presently use.

I pulled these images off "google" since I am not sure how my company likes my posting pics especially of new stuff, so in the interest of OPSEC, I just pulled these images off the internet.


Aerospace

Boeing Unveils Its Jumbo Killer


Lufthansa announce ordering 59 wide-body Boeing Co. 777-9X aircraft in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sept. 19, 2013
Photograph by Ralph Orlowski/Bloomberg
Lufthansa announce ordering 59 wide-body Boeing Co. 777-9X aircraft in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sept. 19, 2013
(Corrects the units of thrust in the 11th paragraph and in the embedded graphic)
Boeing (BA) forever changed aviation in 1970 when it introduced its 747 jumbo jet, whose size and range revolutionized flying and became a cultural icon in the process. It’s since gone on to log orders for more than 1,500 of the humpbacked behemoth’s various models. But now the world’s No. 1 maker of commercial aircraft is poised to offer a model that may kill off its best-known creation.
Betting it can capture the operating economies of a huge plane in a smaller one, Boeing is undertaking a radical makeover of its smaller 777 jet that will be ready to take flight by decade’s end. The new 777X model will boast the biggest engines ever put on a plane, a record wingspan that can be shortened by having the tips fold up after landing, and lower operating costs. Cramming all this cost-saving technology into a smaller plane that operates with two engines—rather than the four needed by jumbos—could herald an end to the race to build ever-larger jets that’s driven much of modern aircraft design.
The 777X will be the first twin-engine jet able to ply long-haul routes with payloads comparable to the larger jumbos. That’s likely to accelerate airlines’ shift away from mammoth, four-engine fuel-guzzlers such as Boeing’s latest 747-8 and Airbus’s (EADSY) double-decker A380. “My assumption is the 747 is dead, or will be dead in a year or two,” says Adam Pilarski, senior vice president at aerospace consultant Avitas. Like the 747 four decades ago, he says, the 777X is aimed at a market segment where it lacks a direct rival and “may have a very good run.”
The first model, the 777-9X, will be able to fly as far as 8,000 nautical miles with more than 400 passengers while burning 20 percent less fuel than the current 777, now the world’s biggest twin-engine jet. A second variant, carrying about 350 people, will follow and push the range past 9,400 nautical miles—far enough for a New York-Singapore nonstop flight. Experts expect airlines to approve. “It’s just very difficult to stop the compelling, strong economics of the big, long-range twin airplanes,” says John Plueger, president of Los Angeles-based jet lessor Air Lease (AL).

Even though Boeing’s board has yet to grant final approval for the plane’s launch, Boeing already has grabbed an $11 billion order from Lufthansa (LHA:GR) for 34 of the jets. Peter Arment, an analyst at Sterne, Agee & Leach, predicts the tally may reach “well over 100 orders” worth more than $34 billion at list prices after the plane’s expected unveiling at the Dubai Airshow in mid-November.
By rolling out an aircraft that will eliminate the need for a megajumbo at many airlines, Boeing may cannibalize sales ofits own 467-passenger 747-8, whose $356.9 million list price makes it the aircraft manufacturer’s most expensive model. George Ferguson, a senior analyst with Bloomberg Industries, says Boeing has little choice but to take that risk, since Airbus in 2014 is set to begin deliveries of its new midsize A350 widebody, which will compete head to head with the current 777. Explains Pilarski, a former executive at McDonnell Douglas, which Boeing bought in 1997: “If they continue with the status quo, the 777 will begin losing market share.”
The 777 is the top-selling plane in Boeing’s lineup. Able to carry as many as 350 people, it lists for $320.2 million for the largest model, although discounts are common on all planes for launch customers and those ordering in bulk. The catalog price of the 777X, expected to be about $340 million based on Lufthansa’s order, hasn’t been made public.
Most airlines’ interest in jumbos cooled years ago. Boeing has won only 40 orders for the passenger version of the 747-8, which entered service in 2012, and has received none so far in 2013. Instead, Boeing has drawn far more excitement from customers over its much smaller (210 seats to 330 seats), super-efficient 787 Dreamliner. Still, Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s vice president for marketing, insists the 747 remains critical to the company’s goal of offering a range of products to satisfy demand for planes with 200 to 500 seats. “We’re bringing the 777X to the market eyes wide-open with how it will fit in the family,” he says. “We’re confident the 747-8 will be a great airplane to complement what we’re doing there.”

     
Airbus, a latecomer to the jumbo market with the A380’s 2007 arrival, defends its jet as being in “a totally different size and comfort category than the 777X,” says Senior Vice President Chris Emerson. Typically configured with seating in the low 400s to the low 500s, the A380 has amassed 259 orders, although none in 2013.
Boeing’s newest 777 will borrow the swept carbon-fiber wing developed for the 787 Dreamliner, expanding to a span of 233 feet, the largest ever on a Boeing commercial jet, according to Aspire Aviation, a Hong Kong-based consultant.
With the broader wing, the 777X will need 15 percent less thrust from its new General Electric (GE) engines than required on the current 777-300ER, even though the new plane will have 50 more seats. Each engine will produce 102,000 pounds of thrust, giving a 777X about as much propulsive power as five of Boeing’s pioneering four-engine 707s from the 1950s.
The biggest design breakthrough features relatively simple technology: a hydraulic actuator to fold the hinged wingtips after the jet lands. That will let the 777X dodge rules limiting jumbos to airports with specially widened taxiways and gates. Operating costs will be lower, since the wider wings would otherwise cause the planes “to take up two whole gates, and you’d have to pay for that proportionally,” says Hubert Horan, a former airline executive who’s now a Phoenix-based consultant.

Plueger says the 777-9X clearly heralds the end of the line for less-efficient, out-of-production versions of the 747, such as the jets that Lufthansa is replacing. “We see the 9X as an airplane that will finally serve the role of eliminating all of the remaining 747-400s out there,” he says.

 I also had done an article about the Boeing 777X
         

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Voters Remorse and Obamacare

I pulled this stuff off several sources including the LA times, the NY Post, Drudge Report and other places.   Obamacare was never intended to be an insurance program, it is designed to control the populace.  The people that pushed this pile of crap on us made sure that they are exempt from the laws and penalties of Obunglercare.  The bad thing is that I don't know if it can be repealed if the republicans are able to get the presidency and both chambers of congress.  Quite a few people believe that this is a massive attempt to kill the middle class, have only the elitist and the poor since they will be depending on the government for benefits, it will guarentee democrat control for generations until the whole system collapses and a democratic based dictatorship starts up since the democrats already believe that they know what is best for you, to get a dictatorship at the end with them in control isn't much a stretch.
     The middle class is what made America unique in the world, other countries had rich and poor, no middle ground, basically the rulers and the serfs.  The middle class is what took power away from the elitist, check out European history and see what it did to the rule of the kings and barons.
     This program is designed to bankrupt the middle class kinda like what Stalin did to the kulaks in Russia in the 30's, the Kulaks were the landowning peasantry and they had the rule of law to an extent, well the era of the strongman or Stalin wiped them out, Stalin killed millions on engineered famine and cost controls,  He basically seized the wealth of the Kulaks to finance the heavy industry that the Communist loved.
     Think about it, the rich have their own program and the poor get subsidized, whereas the middle class pay for all the increases out of their own pocket.  The middle class will bear the brunt of Obamacare.  The government wants more people to depend on them for basic needs, easier to control a dependent population.







New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.
A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.
Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.
Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.
“This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate,” said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. “There’s a lot of resistance. Doctors don’t know what they’re going to get paid.”
Three out of four doctors who are participating in the program said they “had to participate” because of existing contractual obligations with an insurer or medical provider, not because they wanted to.
Only one in four “affirmatively” chose to sign up for the exchanges.
Nearly eight in 10 — 77 percent — said they had not been given a fee schedule to show much they’ll get paid if they sign up.
The survey invited doctors to anonymously share opinions about the new health care law, and many took time out of their busy days to vent.
“Obama Care wants to start right away, but who see all these new patients???? Not me,” e-mailed one doc.
Another said, “I plan to retire if this disaster is implemented. This is a train wreck.”
“I refuse to participate in the exchange plans! I am completely opposed to this new law,” said a third respondent.
One doctor recycled the mantra used to attack addictions: “The solution is simple: Just say no.”
One physician was so disgusted, he threatened to taken only cash patients going forward.
“I am seriously considering opting out of all insurance plans including Medicare because of [ObamaCare].”
Some physicians said the pressure on insurance carriers to control costs is leading to rationed care.
“OBAMACARE is a disaster. I have already seen denial of medication, denial of referrals,” one doc said.
And they worry that stingy payments for medical services offered by insurers could put some doctors out of business and force others into retirement.
“Any doctor who accepts the exchange is just a bad businessman/woman. Pays terrible,” argued one doctor.
Said another MD, “Can’t imagine any doctors would be willing to work for so little money? All doctors should boycott.”
Doctors complained they’ve gotten the shaft for years even before ObamaCare.

When the ObamaCare Bill arrives . . .
Photo: AP/Charles Dharapak
“She said, ‘I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it.’ ”
— The president of Anthem Blue Cross in California,
, talking about a woman who wrote the insurance company to complain about a 50 percent hike in her plan because of ObamaCare

“I get screwed from insurance companies already. I refuse to get screwed any longer,” one doctor said.
Others said they don’t have enough information to make an informed choice.
“This is a joke. We are flying blind,” said one doctor.

WASHINGTON — The White House finally admitted Monday that President Obama is breaking his promise that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it under ObamaCare.
“It’s true that there are existing health-care plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, referring to plans nixed under the sweeping new law.
NBC News reported Monday that sources deeply involved in ObamaCare concede that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to have coverage canceled in the next year.
One expert said the figure could be as high as 80 percent.
Obama administration officials knew when the regulations were written in 2010 that 40 to 67 percent of consumers on the individual market would lose coverage, NBC said.
Carney insisted Monday that only “substandard” plans would be yanked under ObamaCare.
“There are some that can be grandfathered if people want to keep insurance that is substandard,” Carney added.
“What is also true: Americans who have insurance on the existing individual market will now have numerous options available to them, and six out of 10 will pay less than $100 per month in premiums for better insurance.”
Obama has repeatedly pledged that his overhaul of the health-care system wouldn’t deprive Americans of their current insurance plans or doctors.
“We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period,” he declared on June 15, 2009.
The admission that some will, in fact, lose the plans they’ve got comes amid mounting ObamaCare headaches, including a day-long crash of the glitch-plagued Web sites where Americans are supposed to sign up for mandatory health-insurance plans.
What’s more, a growing number of consumers are shocked to discover that the law has caused them to get hit with massive premium increases, lose their doctor or simply get dropped by their insurance company.
Elderly New Yorkers were left reeling when they received notices that insurance companies were booting their doctors from the popular Medicare Advantage program because of ObamaCare, The Post recently revealed.
“Obama had said I could keep my doctor. Now they’re doing away with my doctor. They kicked him out! After 20 years, that’s not right,” said Alfred Gargiulio, who has cerebral palsy and has been seeing the same doctor in Brooklyn since 1993.
Nearly 900,000 elderly New Yorkers are enrolled in Advantage plans, which are Medicare HMOs run by private insurers.
Other New Yorkers were floored when they learned they would have to pay 100 percent of the bill if they used a doctor outside their plan’s network — a harsh penalty not imposed by most plans before ObamaCare.

The ObamaCare pain is throbbing in other states, as well.
In Florida, at least 300,000 people have lost health coverage. And just one insurer in California, Kaiser Permanente, canceled policies for 150,000 people, CBS News reported.
HealthCare.gov, the online federal exchange, crashed before dawn Sunday and didn’t come back online until 7 a.m. Monday.
The outage affected not just the 36 Web sites run by the federal government, but also the 14 sites run by states.
The crash occurred about a week after the administration promised a “tech surge” of the nation’s best computer geeks to fix glitches that have hobbled the Web site since its Oct. 1 launch.
Officials said the site would be fixed by the end of November.
The Department of Health and Human Services blamed the latest crash on an outage of a data-service hub run by Verizon Communication’s Terremark unit.
Other glitches persisted, such as an agonizingly long wait for people trying to set up an account on the Web sites.
“We are committed 24/7 to having our team dedicated to putting those fixes in place and moving forward,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs HealthCare.gov.
     

   
    
Insurance companies aren't sending out cancellation letters, they're helping people "transition" into Obamacare, according to a top Democrat.
"If [the companies] changed [the insurance plans] then they have to notify the people who have to have the opportunity to have another policy," said House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sander Levin, D-Mich.
In fact, according to Levin, the "so-called cancellation notices" merely "help people transition to a new policy."
Levin cited comments made by Florida Blue CEO Patrick Geraghty, the insurance company executive who originally floated the "transitioning" talking point on Sunday's Meet the Press.
"We're not cutting people, we're actually transitioning people," Geraghty told NBC's David Gregory. "What we've been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn't meet the test of the essential health benefits, therefore they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange."
Geraghty's argument may exonerate Florida Blue, but the fig leaf doesn't cover Obamacare nearly as well as Levin suggested, given that "the test of the essential health benefits" comes from Obamacare and invalidated the previously acceptable insurance policies.

    
There's no doubt congressional investigators have their hands full probing allegations the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups. But now a different IRS scandal -- involving the chronic, ongoing, mind-bogglingly wasteful mismanagement of a popular tax credit program -- demands Congress' attention because it has taken on new importance with the arrival of Obamacare.
The program is the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which the federal government gives out between $60 billion and $70 billion to low-income working Americans each year. It's known as a "refundable" tax credit, but it is basically a transfer payment, in which the IRS sends a check — perhaps even $5,000 every year — to workers who have little or no tax liability.
The problem is, the IRS does little to determine whether recipients actually qualify for the money. A recent report by the IRS inspector general says the agency has given out somewhere between $110 billion and $132 billion in improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments in the last decade. In that time period, between 21 and 30 percent of tax credit payments went to people who didn't qualify for them.
That is bad enough. But what infuriates lawmakers is that the IRS refuses to do anything about it. Agency officials told the inspector general they couldn't fix the problem because the tax credit program is very complicated, and also because they are afraid vigorous enforcement would discourage legitimately qualified recipients from applying for credits. And the IRS is not only not working to reduce improper payments, it is refusing to report those payments to Congress as required. The bottom line, in the words of inspector general Russell George: "The IRS is unlikely to achieve any significant reduction in Earned Income Tax Credit improper payments."
Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has heard that before. "The IRS has repeatedly ignored the fraud and abuse in the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which has already cost Americans over $100 billion," Camp said in a statement Monday. "Americans should be confident that their tax dollars are being used properly, but that confidence has been shattered by the blatant disregard this agency has shown for monitoring refundable tax credits and better protecting taxpayers."
The flow of money has continued despite the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act, which Congress passed and President Obama signed in 2010. The law "requires agencies to achieve an improper payment rate of 10 percent or less for each high-risk program," says a recent compilation of IRS reports prepared by the Ways and Means Committee. "The Earned Income Tax Credit's improper payment rate has been above 20 percent since 2003."
And now comes Obamacare. In the new national health care scheme, the IRS will do basically what it does with the Earned Income Tax Credit: It will determine Americans' eligibility for subsidies, to be paid in the form of tax credits, and then hand those tax credits out. And that has lawmakers concerned.
"Considering the IRS’ failure to address the Earned Income Tax Credit problem," says Camp, "there is no reason to think the agency will somehow do a better job administering the refundable tax credits included in Obamacare."
Indeed, it is easy to imagine the IRS arguing that it simply cannot prevent improper Obamacare tax credits because the health system is so complicated and because it does not want to discourage legitimately qualified Americans from receiving health care subsidies. If the fraud level is anything like the Earned Income Tax Credit program, improper Obamacare payments could soar into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
And what will Congress do about it? Maybe not much. Hill sources say the Ways and Means Committee is "evaluating" the latest tax credit figures and might possibly schedule a hearing. But one source adds, "We have brought this up with IRS officials in the past, but without much impact, as they tend to talk but not act."
So doesn't Congress have anything to say about that? If the IRS thumbs its nose at lawmakers, do lawmakers have to take it? Of course not. Congress has broad powers to oversee federal agencies; if lawmakers wanted, they could knock some heads and get the IRS' attention.
Whether Congress will exercise that power is another question altogether. It certainly hasn't in the past. But with the arrival of Obamacare, the question of improper payments by the IRS, already an ongoing scandal, might soar to a new level, finally demanding action.


Monday, October 28, 2013

Monday Music..."Runaway Train from Soul Asylum"

I decided to go with a song from Soul Asylum called "Runaway Train".  This song was on the circuit in 1994, I lived in Panama City Beach during this time, I was running one of the pizza restaurants that were popular with the beach crowd especially during the summer.  

      "Runaway Train" is a song by American rock band Soul Asylum. It was released in June 1993 as the fourth single from the album, Grave Dancers Union. The song led Soul Asylum to international status, and helped bring their album, Grave Dancers Union to a multi-platinum level. It was the third single off that album and reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100. The track won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 1994.

The music video, directed by Tony Kaye received heavy airplay on MTV and VH1 during its duration.
Several versions of the video were made. The video for the United States begins with a fade to a black screen with big, white blocked text reading: "There are over one million youth lost on the streets of America", whereas the UK version begins with "100,000 youth are lost on the streets of Britain". Next shown is a drawing of a girl, and a Dave Pirner voice-over says that the drawing is by a girl who had run away more than 110 times. The scene was often omitted when the video was shown, a common practice when videos had additional footage before or after the song.
After Pirner spoke, the video continued with various shots of the band playing the song, and Dave singing. Three concrete scenes are shown interspersed among the other images of the video. During the first verse, a child is shown witnessing his grandfather beating, and eventually killing, his grandmother, and running from their house in fear. During the second verse, a young teenage girl is pimped as a prostitute, and is initially purchased by the aforementioned abuser. Later, she is dragged into a van by a gang, after which she is picked up by paramedics, having been raped and beaten. During the coda of the song, a baby is snatched from his stroller by an older woman, with his mother running after the kidnapper's car.
Throughout the music video, various images of children running, or appearing with injuries from abuse, are shown. During the choruses, pictures of missing children would appear on the screen. After each picture was shown, their full name would appear in large capital letters on the screen, along with the year they had been "missing since...".
After the video, in an ending also not regularly shown, Pirner says in front of the camera, "If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number," with the following screen showing a number one could contact. MTV cut this part out because they did not want to have the video confused with being a public service announcement. VH1 shows the UK version in its full length.
There were three original versions of the video in the United States, totaling 36 missing children shown. Depending on what country the video was being broadcast, they would show children from that area who are missing. The version shown in Australia showed a number of young backpacking tourists whose families were looking for them. Several of them turned out to be victims of Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer.
In 2006, guitarist Dan Murphy stated in an interview with Pasadena Weekly that some of the cases featured in the video had ended in tragedy: "Some weren’t the best scenarios. I met a fireman on the East Coast whose daughter was in the end of the video, and he’d been in a bitter custody battle with his wife over her,” Murphy said. “It turned out the girl hadn’t run away, but was killed and buried in her backyard by her mother. Then on tour, another girl told us laughingly ‘You ruined my life’ because she saw herself on the video at her boyfriend’s house and it led her being forced back into a bad home situation.”
The UK version of the video featured Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who each went missing in 1991. Their remains were found in 2007 at a house in Margate. Peter Tobin has since been convicted of both murders.
Curtis Huntzinger, who was featured in the US video, was located deceased in 2008. His convicted killer, Stephen Daniel Hash, is currently serving a sentence of 11 years for manslaughter in Folsom State Prison.
The last image in all three U.S. versions of the song is Thomas Dean Gibson, who disappeared from Glendale, Oregon, in 1991 at the age of 2. He is still missing as of 2013, and an age-progressed photo of him at age 19 was released in 2009 by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Also featured in the video, but still missing in 2013 were Byron Page, Wilda Benoit, Christopher Kerze, and Martha Dunn.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Busy Weekend...

I was out at the scouting base teaching Cub Scouts how to shoot BB's.  it is one of the keystone programs at camp and the kids love it.    I tried to post a couple of things while I was there, but the network was sketchy and my kindlefire was non-cooperative.  Oh well.
    I will post stuff once I catch up with my blogroll and some sleep.


Thursday, October 24, 2013

Obamacare data to be used to create a defacto database on firearm possession.

I got this from JPFO, there are more concerns that Obunglercare will be used to continue the endrun around the 2nd Amendment.  From Obunglercare computers stating that all information that you input belongs to the government from your personal financial data to your medical data from your Dr, will be available to any government agency that desires access to it.  Many people are concerned that this is a back door gun registry.  Remember the company that got the no-bid contract to build the database is the same Canadian company that screwed up a gun registry in Canada and got booted off the contract.   Ain't crony capitalism great!  I wonder how much they "donated" to the coffers of the democrats, the pay to play Chicago politics that the Obama Whitehouse is known for.    Also the data would be used to strip people of their 2nd amendment rights by imperial fiat.


By Rachel Alexander, October 21st, 2013
Article Source


What does gun control have to do with health care? As odd as it seems, Obamacare contains provisions that jeopardize gun ownership, especially for veterans. Anti-gun provisions were added to initial drafts of Obamacare legislation under the pretext of prohibiting people with mental illness – which can include PTSD - from owning guns. Fortunately, the NRA stepped in and got some of the worst language revised last December. Senate amendment 3276, Sec. 2716, part c. prohibits the creation of a firearms database and stops doctors from disclosing or collecting information relating to a patient's firearms. Ironically, this provision was probably the only positive result of most members of Congress not bothering to read the bill before voting on it.
However, the provision does not go as far as prohibiting doctors from asking their patients if there are any firearms in their home. In January, Obama issued 23 executive actions and orders regarding firearms. Order 16 stressed that Obamacare does not prohibit doctors from asking patients about their firearms, and the fact sheet includes, "Clarify that no federal law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence." What constitutes a "threat of violence" could be very arbitrary. This puts doctors in a difficult position by suggesting they act as pseudo-law enforcement agents. It is damaging to doctor-patient privilege. If doctors have a patient with PTSD or mental illness, and they fail to ask the patient about their firearms, or report them to law enforcement, they could be on the hook later. It encourages them to err on the side of snooping into their patients' guns. This is especially troubling considered the definition of mental illness keeps expanding.
The state of Florida implemented legislation that would have severely restricted a doctor's ability to ask a patient about guns at home, but a federal court struck it down as unconstitutional. After the NRA got that provision added, the organization backed off on pressing for further changes, no doubt because trying to get more changes done at that time would have been impossible with the Democratic-controlled Senate and presidency. But there are still areas within our healthcare laws that could prohibit Americans from owning firearms – specifically our veterans.
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration ordered the Department of Veteran Affairs to share information about 90,000 veterans considered "mentally defective" by the VA to the FBI, so they could be added to the national instant check system (NICS) as prohibited possessors. To be declared "mentally defective" by the VA does not require an adjudication; it could be a doctor merely finding that a veteran has a mental illness and "lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs." That could easily be held to apply to a veteran with PTSD who is simply in a wheelchair. The definition of "mental defective" by Veteran Affairs expanded under Clinton in 1999. The number of Americans now in the prohibited possessors database has increased to over 550,000 and 11 percent of them are veterans. Nearly 40 percent of veterans are believed to have PTSD.
Under Obamacare, federal agencies like the ATF can still pore over health records and determine who has mental issues or PTSD. There is nothing in Obamacare that prohibits another federal agency from compiling a database of gun owners.
Gun Owners of America warns that the next step will be linking insurance with gun ownership. Some private insurers, including State Farm and Prudential, drop homeowners from their policies for owning certain types of guns or not using trigger locks. It's not difficult to see how this could be adopted as a requirement of Obamacare in the vague name of "health."
The problem with linking gun control with health care is that everyone knows gun crimes are almost always caused by criminals who illegally obtained the weapons, not law-abiding gun owners. Painting all veterans who have PTSD as potential criminals isn't going to stop the real criminals. There are hundreds of shooting and hunting excursions available for veterans today to specifically help them cope with PTSD. To arbitrarily exclude all of these patriots from rehabilitation with proven results is political manipulation at its worst. Taya Kyle, the widow of the American Sniper who was shot by a mentally ill veteran while helping him shoot for rehabilitation, now speaks out against restricting Second Amendment rights. It wasn't the killer's PTSD that caused the murder, he had a much more troubled history than just PTSD.
Organizations like the NRA and Gun Owners of America continue to expose these sneaky backdoor attempts at gun control. There are plenty of health-care groups clamoring to have Obamacare limit gun ownership, like the American Academy of Pediatrics. They're not going to stop, as revisions can still be added to Obamacare to tweak it. David Satcher, a surgeon general under President Bill Clinton, who headed the Centers for Disease Control in the 1990s, is blatantly open that the goal is to create a national database of gun owners through Obamacare. "Privacy needs to be protected, but it's important that this kind of data be gathered," he said. These feel-good measures actually endanger safety, not promote it. As the NRA's Wayne LaPierre says, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Hump Day....and other humor

People at work and at home (son) have been having a good time with the Geico commercial involving the camel. 




Well I know what day it is.....






And some adventures with Yosemite Sam and the camel.


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Monday Music "My name is Luka"


I am posting Monday Music on a Tuesday morning(early)..again.  I think my schedule will be chaotic until around Christmas.  Between work and boy scouts, I am very busy.  I don't mind, I just want to "do right" by the kids including my son whom I am very proud of.  I recently added this song to my MP3 collection on my phone.  I remembered hearing this song on AFN while i was stationed in Europe around 1987.  The lyrics were a bit haunting and never knew the artist name until I happen to catch the song many years later on my Sirius/XM radio and downloaded it to my collection.

"Luka" is a song recorded by Suzanne Vega and released as a single in 1987. It remains her highest-charting hit in the United States, reaching number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Vega also recorded a Spanish-language version of the song, featured on the single.

This song was one of the earliest to deal with child abuse and domestic violence. One critic said, "the 'happy' music is a metaphorical denial, making this seem beautiful and serene while discussing something terrible and devastating. It is a wonderful use of tune as a metaphor for how many abuse victims also deny their abuse, and is a profound classic.


This video was directed by Michael Patterson & Candice Reckinge. It was shot over three days, in New York City. The part of Luka was played by actor Jason Cerbone, who was chosen after the directors auditioned more than 90 children for the part.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Boeing 747-800 information and other observations

Just a quick post and a break from the usual rants lately involving Obunglercare and the other political shenanigans happening on DC on the Potomac,

 I went camping with the cub scouts and ran the BB range for them this weekend.  I just came back and had to get some stuff handled then get ready for work tonight.  I figured I would post pics and information of my favorite airplane.  I shamelessly cribbed this stuff off "Aviation News"


October 18, 2013
Credit: Boeing
Facing weakened demand for big passenger and freight aircraft, Boeing has opted to reduce the 747-8 production rate from 1.75 aircraft per month to 1.5 through 2015.
The move comes as the company passes the half way point of its accumulated order backlog for the aircraft, the vast majority of which are for the freighter model. To date, the 747-8 has accumulated 107 orders, 56 of which have been delivered.
The sustained slow down in the cargo market is the main reason for the cutback, even though Boeing’s market forecast calls for long-term average growth in the air cargo market to begin returning in 2014. Overall the company forecasts global demand for 760 large aircraft in the 747-8 and Airbus A380 category over the next 20 years, valued at $280 billion.
Boeing’s outlook for the 747-8 market could also be impacted by the development of the 777X, which is expected to enter service at the turn of the decade. For the moment Eric Lindblad, vice president and general manager, 747 Program, Boeing Commercial Airplanes says “this production adjustment better aligns us with near-term demand while stabilizing our production flow. Although we are making a small adjustment to our production rate, it doesn’t change our confidence in the 747-8 or our commitment to the program.”

May 21, 2013
Credit: General Electric
Boeing has begun flight tests of a 747-8 passenger model powered by upgraded General Electric GEnx-2B engines, which are expected to improve fuel burn by a further 1.8%.
The flight tests, using RC021, an aircraft formerly destined for Lufthansa, began on May 20 with a four-hour flight from Everett, Wash. The flight evaluated the initial performance of the GEnx-2B Performance Improvement Package (PIP), as well as upgrades to the flight management computer (FMC) software. These latter changes—incorporated as FMC 3.0—will add improved required navigation performance and “quiet climb” functionality.
The FMC changes also are related to the activation of the aircraft’s horizontal tail fuel tank, the design and operation of which will also be validated in the test program. The 3,300-gal. tailplane fuel tank, which is a feature only in the passenger version, was de-activated before the first aircraft entered service when analysis indicated that, under certain fuel load circumstances, the tail tank could induce flutter.
Re-activation of the tail fuel tank will provide added range and improve the aircraft’s performance says Lufthansa, the launch customer of the 747-8. The extra weight of the fuel in the aft of the aircraft can be used to assist in trimming the 747-8 to lower cruise drag. As a result, the airline asked Boeing to make minor software changes to the fuel transfer system which would extend the length of time the fuel remains in the aft tank, thereby increasing the trim benefit.
Boeing says that as a result of the latest batch of enhancements—plus other upgrades introduced since the aircraft entered service in 2011—it will have produced a combined 3.3% improvement in efficiency. Eric Lindblad, vice president and general manager of the 747 program, says the 1.8% fuel-burn improvement from the package now under test will save airlines “approximately $1 million per year in fuel per airplane and reduces the carbon footprint.”
To combat the original GEnx-2B’s fuel-burn shortfall of more than 2%, GE designed an all-new low-pressure turbine, and added compressor, combustor and turbine improvements derived from the second batch of upgrades devised for the GEnx-1B engine on the 787.
Flight tests of the -2B PIP were conducted on GE’s 747 flying testbed earlier this year, and a final round of ground tests are nearing completion with FAR Part 33 certification expected by mid-year.
Boeing says the new configuration will first be delivered in early 2014 and be available for retrofit. Entry into service of the new engines and FMC software will take place in late 2013. The test aircraft, originally destined to be Lufthansa’s fifth 747-8, will be used for flight testing throughout 2013 and refurbished for onward sale in 2014, either as a standard airliner or for a possible business jet modification.

December 20, 2012
Credit: Joe Walker
Lufthansa and Boeing have agreed that a 747-8 previously allocated for delivery to the airline will now become a dedicated test aircraft for a set of airframe, system and engine improvements due for delivery in late 2013.
The aircraft, Line Number 1435, first flew in April 2011 but has already been used for some upgrade testing and will now continue in this role rather than be refurbished for Lufthansa. The move, which was triggered by the need to flight test a revised tail fuel system for activation on later aircraft, means that Lufthansa’s firm order book backlog reduces from 20 to 19, though the airline hints that this may only be a temporary reduction.
Lufthansa is still scheduled to take five 747-8s as planned in 2013, and 10 more aircraft by the end of 2015 that will incorporate the lighter structure and improved systems and engines. The airline currently has four 747-8s in service.
Explaining the decision, the German carrier’s 747-8 chief pilot Elmar Boje says the extensive flight test modifications already made to the aircraft would mean that, even after post-test refurbishment, the unit would be a non-standard “white elephant” in the Lufthansa fleet. However, he adds the airline’s long-range fleet group is due to decide on adding additional aircraft by the third quarter of 2013, some of which could include 747-8s.
Although the decision effectively shrinks Boeing’s overall 747-8 backlog to 71, the manufacturer is putting a brave face on the move because a variety of upgrade testing, including the General Electric GEnx-2B performance improvement package (PIP), can now be bundled into one dedicated certification effort. “The plan was to use a 747-8F freighter for the PIP flight test, but when we de-activated the tail fuel we needed an -8 Intercontinental” to flight test the revised system, says 747 vice president and general manager Elizabeth Lund. “That’s when we started our conversation with Lufthansa.”
The aircraft, originally destined to be Lufthansa’s fifth 747-8, will be used for flight testing throughout 2013 and refurbished for onward sale in 2014 as either a standard airliner or for possible business jet modification.
“Lufthansa opted to take a new aircraft instead in 2014,” says Lund. “So as a result, we had to pull this one out and delay delivery to next year. Lufthansa reserves the right to add another at the end. We asked to use it, and it was already instrumented for tail fuel testing. So all in all it’s a good business decision by them,” she adds.
Improvements to be tested next year are concentrated on the upgraded engine configuration and tail tank fuel system, though also include updates to the flight management computer (FMC) to incorporate additional required navigation performance features and a ‘quiet climb’ function.

The FMC 3.0 load is scheduled for the end of 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Dismayed and discouraged....

I an dismayed and disheartened by what I have seen, I have seen the establishment GOP knife the conservative members in the back, I see more of the same in the future.  I am wondering if we as a nation have the stones to continue to fight or have enough of the American people have gotten addicted to the government cheese to sign away their birthright for the illusion of security.  I remember the Reagan Revolution from the malaise of Jimmy Carter who until recent memory was the crappiest president in modern American history.
     I remember when Bill Clinton got away with perjury(not oral sex) as the pundits claimed during the impeachment hearing.  I remember W getting his win over legions of Chads and democrat lawyers who tried to kick out the military vote the same time they were trying to pad the election results with extra democrat voters in very democrat areas like Broward county.  I remember the attacks on 9/11 when we became a united country until the democrats more interested in loyalty to party than loyalty to country.  I also remember W becoming the spendiest president until the petulant boy king assumed the Presidency in 2008.  I remember Bush the younger pushing through the Patriot act and forming Department of Homeland security 2 organizations that Obungler has used to great effect on his political enemies and the American people to help establish a police state the likes that would make Stasi proud and the KGB envious. 
     I am disheartened and dismayed that the establishment GOP saw the need to stick it to the Tea Party when the Tea Party caucus was the reason of the GOP getting the house back from the democrats in 2010.  The establishment GOP is more concerned about getting along with the monolithic democrats than standing on principles.  They keep forgetting that life goes on outside the beltway and many people have given up on the GOP, you know the same people that gave you John McCain who threatened to leave the GOP earlier in the decade.   The Establishment GOP after getting the House back in 2010 had the real opportunity to boot Obungler out and make him a 1 term president like Jimmy Carter was. , After running the most inept campaign in history instead of winning, we got Rommney, Who had good credentials but couldn't go against Obunglercare the most hated piece of legislation in recent history.  Many people like me held my nose and voted for him even though we were not happy.  Many other conservatives knowing that Mitt was establishment GOP refused to vote at all and giving Obungler a win and a mistaken belief that he has a mandate.
     Now they have caved and surrendered like SOP for the GOP, now we will have to deal with this crap again in January which plays to the democrats plan to drag this to the 2014 elections where they will use it as a blugeon against the GOP instead of the 2014 being a referendum on Obunglercare.  We have a crushing debt, massive entitlement spending and no one wants to make the hard calls to fix the problem.  I am a fairly sharp guy one of the sharper knives in the cutlery drawer, I wonder where the Ginsu blades on the GOP are?  Don't they see the same thing? or are they just blinded by life in the beltway and forget what the real world is like.   I fear for my country, the future that my son will inherit and his generation will have to deal with the failures of the politicians to fix the problems instead of kicking it down the road.

     I pulled the following article from Breitbart and I liked what Ben wrote, perhaps somebody in the GOP can do this to keep from getting hammered  in January........
    

The latest Republican cave should teach conservatives two particular lessons. First, crisis politics never benefit conservatives. When there is a crisis, the side with the media at its back and unity in its caucus will always win. That side is the Democrats. Crises do not work to conservatives’ advantage; the left can simply demonize conservatives by suggesting that their stance against massive government interventionism is a stance against the American people. In the fact of that pressure, the fractious Republican caucus is likely to buckle.
Second, the American people understand and like funding on a case-by-case basis. When Republicans passed an individual bill funding vital defense concerns, President Obama was forced to sign it, even despite his moratorium on signing funding without doing so for the whole federal ball of wax.
On January 15, America is slated to require a new continuing resolution. President Obama is itching for a replay of this fight closer to the November 2014 midterm elections. Republicans should not give it to him. Instead, they should spend every day between now and then passing individual spending bills and forcing Democrats to reject them in the Senate, or President Obama to veto them. Then the creation of a funding crisis itself will be on President Obama from the start. This also happens to be the way the founders envisioned funding the government, rather than through massive, pork-filled omnibus packages.
Can Republicans win victories by controlling the purse? They sure can, but only if they don’t wait until President Obama and the Democrats demand, at the point of bayonet, that Republicans open the vault. Instead, Republicans should pay the bills one at a time, just the like other Americans do. Then we’d be spared the drama and the crisis – or, at the very least, the cynical dramatics of watching the President of the United States and his Senate Majority Leader henchman claim that Republicans are the bad guys, even as they kill hundreds of spending bills even their own constituents like.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Monday Music..."Voices Carry" and other musings.....

Sorry about lack of postings...I have been very busy, I am assistant scoutmaster at one troop and my son in a scout in another so basically I go to 2 meetings and they are on Monday and Tuesday. 

     I will get to my "Monday Music" Which is "Voices Carry" by "Till Tuesday...(Kinda appropriate there) in a minute..or two but first I will do a few intemperate thoughts.  Y'all by now have heard of the EBT glitches that have hit 17 states....Perhaps I am a bit paranoid but this is the first time there has been a widespread "glitch"

    
The welfare state is unsustainable because of welfare brood mares like This Freeloader
If you want a perfect snapshot of the dysfunction that is poverty in America, you won’t see a more perfect one than in the above video. (video at linked site) Angel Adams of Tampa, Florida, has fifteen children by three different fathers.
15 children by three different fathers! Holy crap! And not a single one is still with her.
When her “fiancé,” who had already fathered ten of those children got sent to jail, she says things began to fall apart. She and twelve of her children are now living in a single hotel room, without shoes, without food, and without clean clothes.
 And, of course, she doesn’t have a job. All she knows is getting preggers and expecting other people to pay for her irresponsibility in having 15 children that she cannot afford to raise.
Adams blames social services for failing to help her. Social service agencies, however, claim that they were trying to help, and paid for rent, utilities, and even furniture. In addition, Adams admits, community members have been helping with food.
What about the other fathers? Shouldn’t they help this baby momma?
“Somebody,” Adams says, “needs to pay for all my children . . . somebody needs to be held accountable, and they need to pay.” And there’s your underclass snapshot: It’s somebody else’s problem. 
That is the problem, The underclass expect others to help them, and there is no gratitude, just expectation.  They believe that they are "owed" this for being a mouthbreather.   We had this weekend where Wal-mart in Louisiana had a problem with the EBT cards and no limit indicated,
MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA) – Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.
The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended.
Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says Walmart was so packed, “It was worse than any black Friday” that he’s ever seen.
The same people used their Obamaphones and contacted each other and that " the free shit at Walmart"  This was on some of the twitter feeds that I read.
Lynd explained the cards weren’t showing limits and they called corporate Walmart, whose spokesman said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700.00 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Walmart said they wouldn’t press charges if she left the food.
Lynd says at 9 p.m., when the cards came back online and it was announced over the loud speaker, people just left their carts full of food in the aisles and left.
The free stuff be gone.
     I work at the food pantry in my county, I see these people come in with their obamaphones, bling, and bitch at the food we GIVE them.  They demand much and there is no gratitude involved.  I have seen people that are happy to get anything, and those are the ones I like to help, they appreciate it.  The freeloaders demand and expect it because they believe that they are entitled and "Owed"   I have many issues with this.  We are creating another generation of "Gimmedats"   What will happen when the EBT cards go silent for several days...?

     Also The veterans showed up at the D.C on the Potomac and carried the "Barrycades" back to the White House" as a message to the petulant boy-King. that closing off memorials to Veterans is a big No-No
Now we have the Senate GOP caving like a Apartment building in India to the Democrats.  They are more concerned about holding on to their power and perks than handling the business that they were elected to.  They want to kick the can down the road and have another standoff with Obungler in January on the budget and Debt.  They keep hoping to find a way out of this but when Obama and the Democrats are monolithic( Collective groups are like that) there is no give, they want and expect the GOP to give up and slink away.  With the able assistance of the mainstream media they have been very successful in controlling the narrative and the blame.

  My Monday Music song is "Voices Carry" by the group "Till Tuesday"

"Voices Carry" is a song written and performed by American New Wave band 'Til Tuesday. It was produced by Mike Thorne for the group's debut album Voices Carry, released in 1985. The song's lyrics, written by Aimee Mann, are about past sour relationships and were originally written and sung as if to a woman, but changed due to Epic Records' pressure. The song was inspired by Mann's breakup with Hausman.
The single achieved strong American radio airplay and MTV rotation in the summer of that year.
Directed by D.J. Webster, the accompanying music video received wide exposure on MTV, positive reactions from critics, was nominated for numerous awards, and it is attributed to be the reason behind the song's success. It was released in North America in March 1985 to positive reviews from music critics. "Voices Carry" became the band's highest charting single and their only top ten hit in the U.S., peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. Internationally it reached the top twenty in Canada and Australia.    
"Voices Carry" was recorded in 1985 at RPM Sound Studios in New York. The song is about past sour relationships, and was originally written and sung by Aimee Mann as to a woman 'Til Tuesday rehearsed that format in Boston the previous summer, but Epic was unhappy with the lyrics; they thought that it was a "very powerful, commercial song", and wanted to remove the lesbian components to appeal to the mainstream market.
Despite the pressure to replace the lyrics, producer Mike Thorne thought that "it didn't matter any to the impact of the song itself", and the band eventually changed the gender of the love interest. At the beginning, 'Til Tuesday and Thorne were undecided between "Love in a Vacuum" and "Looking over My Shoulder" to be released as the first single, but ultimately Epic's A&R executive Dick Wingate chose "Voices Carry", because it "define[d] precisely the band and its style". According to Thorne, his contract stated that he had the right to be the first to remix the song for the 7" single release. He was then told that it had been remixed by Bob Clearmountain; about this he commented, "not what the rules were [...] but it sounded pretty good, as well it might coming from one of the finest American engineer/producers".






The music video for "Voices Carry" was directed by D.J. Webster, and filmed at Dorchester's Strand Theater, in Boston. The clip incorporates dialogue and acting, and resembles a mini-movie. The plot centers around the band's lead singer, Aimee Mann, who appears as a musician with a violent boyfriend, played by actor Cully Holland. He mistreats her for playing in a rock band, and demands that she change her look to fit in his upper-class lifestyle. The video uses spoken dialogue in between to interrupt the musical parts, including Mann's boyfriend demands: "Why can't you for once do something for me?". At the end she lashes out at him during a concert at Carnegie Hall, she stands up from her seat in the audience and yells the lyrics—"He said, shut up! He said, shut up! Oh God, can't you keep it down?..."—as she removes her cap to reveal her spiky, rat-tailed hair.
The success of the single was largely attributed to the video,[26] which received wide exposure on MTV, along with positive reactions from critics and nominations to numerous awards. Keith Thomas of Knight Ridder newspapers called the video "a clever and stunning effort". Praising the dialogue and acting he said that it "looks better than most feature films", adding that "everything about the clip is grand". Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times also praised Mann's acting, saying that she appears "marvelously charismatic" in it, while Dennis Hunt from the same newspaper said that it was "cleverly conceived". Debbie del Condo of the Orlando Sentinel called it the "Most Memorable Video of 1985", and added that she will "keep waiting for their next video". In his book Totally awesome 80s, author Matthew Rettenmund called it a "great story video". Author Brent Mann in his book 99 Red Balloons..., called the video "pure New Wave" and added that it was "perfect for MTV and VH1 consumption".
At the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards, the band won the award for Best New Artist in a video.The same year, at the Fourth Annual American Video Awards, Mann was named the Best Female Performer in a video for "Voices Carry". The video was placed number forty on Slant Magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Music Videos",and was listed on Pitchfork Media's "100 Awesome Music Videos", in 2006.
The 2012 music video for "Labrador", the second single from her album Charmer, features a satirical shot-for-shot remake of "Voices Carry" video within the framing device of Mann having been forced to shoot the video after inadvertently signing complete control of the video over to director Tom Scharpling. The video features Jon Wurster as the Wall Street boyfriend, Jon Hamm as Scharpling, and Ted Leo in a cameo.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Murphy's Law......of Combat and other things...

I was surfing Wikipedia looking to the origins of webcomics and I followed a few links and there I was........looking at "Murphy's Law"   I had typed in a webcomic that had a military theme "Murphy's law" by Mark Baker, it talked about a soldier's experience in the green machine and I saw a lot of similarities and some of this was very funny.  This is where I got the following comic that I used on an earlier post.

This article is with apologies to Murphy's Law who is a straight up guy with a very good website.  He is "good People"

Murphy's laws origin

Dr. Stapp on the Deceleration Track The following article was excerpted from The Desert Wings
March 3, 1978

Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base.

It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash.

One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it."

The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" and added this one, which he called Murphy's Law.

Actually, what he did was take an old law that had been around for years in a more basic form and give it a name.

Shortly afterwards, the Air Force doctor (Dr. John Paul Stapp) who rode a sled on the deceleration track to a stop, pulling 40 Gs, gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it. Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy's Law was born.

The Northrop project manager, George E. Nichols, had a few laws of his own. Nichols' Fourth Law says, "Avoid any action with an unacceptable outcome."

The doctor, well-known Col. John P. Stapp, had a paradox: Stapp's Ironical Paradox, which says, "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle."

Nichols is still around. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, he's the quality control manager for the Viking project to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars

1. Friendly fire - isn't.
2. Recoilless rifles - aren't.
3. Suppressive fires - won't.
4. You are not Superman; Marines and fighter pilots take note.
5. A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.
6. If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
7. Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo and not want to waste a bullet on you.
8. If at first you don't succeed, call in an air strike.
9. If you are forward of your position, your artillery will fall short.
10. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.
11. Never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself.
12. Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
13. If your attack is going really well, it's an ambush.
14. The enemy diversion you're ignoring is their main attack.
15. The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:
a. When they're ready.
b. When you're not.
16. No OPLAN ever survives initial contact.
17. There is no such thing as a perfect plan.
18. Five second fuses always burn three seconds.
19. There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.
20. A retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.
21. The important things are always simple; the simple are always hard.
22. The easy way is always mined.
23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
24. Don't look conspicuous; it draws fire. For this reason, it is not at all uncommon for aircraft carriers to be known as bomb magnets.
25. Never draw fire; it irritates everyone around you.
26. If you are short of everything but the enemy, you are in the combat zone.
27. When you have secured the area, make sure the enemy knows it too.
28. Incoming fire has the right of way.
29. No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection.
30. No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.
31. If the enemy is within range, so are you.
32. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
33. Things which must be shipped together as a set, aren't.
34. Things that must work together, can't be carried to the field that way.
35. Radios will fail as soon as you need fire support.
36. Radar tends to fail at night and in bad weather, and especially during both).
37. Anything you do can get you killed, including nothing.
38. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in, and you won't be able to get out.
39. Tracers work both ways.
40. If you take more than your fair share of objectives, you will get more than your fair share of objectives to take.
41. When both sides are convinced they're about to lose, they're both right.
42. Professional soldiers are predictable; the world is full of dangerous amateurs.
43. Military Intelligence is a contradiction.
44. Fortify your front; you'll get your rear shot up.
45. Weather ain't neutral.
46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
47. Air defense motto: shoot 'em down; sort 'em out on the ground.
48. 'Flies high, it dies; low and slow, it'll go'.
49. The Cavalry doesn't always come to the rescue.
50. Napalm is an area support weapon.
51. Mines are equal opportunity weapons.
52. B-52s are the ultimate close support weapon.
53. Sniper's motto: reach out and touch someone.
54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
55. The one item you need is always in short supply.
56. Interchangeable parts aren't.
57. It's not the one with your name on it; it's the one addressed "to whom it may concern" you've got to think about.
58. When in doubt, empty your magazine.
59. The side with the simplest uniforms wins.
60. Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps.
61. If the Platoon Sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.
62. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, never stay awake when you can sleep.
63. The most dangerous thing in the world is a Second Lieutenant with a map and a compass.
64. Exceptions prove the rule, and destroy the battle plan.
65. Everything always works in your HQ, everything always fails in the Colonel's HQ.
66. The enemy never watches until you make a mistake.
67. One enemy soldier is never enough, but two is entirely too many.
68. A clean (and dry) set of BDU's is a magnet for mud and rain.
69. The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
70. Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you can't hit the broad side of a barn.
71. The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.
72. The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator.
73. Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
74. No matter which way you have to march, its always uphill.
75. If enough data is collected, a board of inquiry can prove anything.
76. For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. (in boot camp)
77. Air strikes always overshoot the target, artillery always falls short.
78. When reviewing the radio frequencies that you just wrote down, the most important ones are always illegible.
79. Those who hesitate under fire usually do not end up KIA or WIA.
80. The tough part about being an officer is that the troops don't know what they want, but they know for certain what they don't want.
81. To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.
82. The weapon that usually jams when you need it the most is the M60.
83. The perfect officer for the job will transfer in the day after that billet is filled by someone else.
84. When you have sufficient supplies & ammo, the enemy takes 2 weeks to attack. When you are low on supplies & ammo the enemy decides to attack that night.
85. The newest and least experienced soldier will usually win the Medal of Honor.
86. A Purple Heart just proves that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
87. Murphy was a grunt.
88. Beer Math --> 2 beers times 37 men equals 49 cases.
89. Body count Math --> 3 guerrillas plus 1 probable plus 2 pigs equals 37 enemies killed in action.
90. The bursting radius of a hand grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range.
91. All-weather close air support doesn't work in bad weather.
92. The combat worth of a unit is inversely proportional to the smartness of its outfit and appearance.
93. The crucial round is a dud.
94. Every command which can be misunderstood, will be.
95. There is no such place as a convenient foxhole.
96. Don't ever be the first, don't ever be the last and don't ever volunteer to do anything.
97. If your positions are firmly set and you are prepared to take the enemy assault on, he will bypass you.
98. If your ambush is properly set, the enemy won't walk into it.
99. If your flank march is going well, the enemy expects you to outflank him.
100. Density of fire increases proportionally to the curiousness of the target.
101. Odd objects attract fire - never lurk behind one.
102. The more stupid the leader is, the more important missions he is ordered to carry out.
103. The self-importance of a superior is inversely proportional to his position in the hierarchy (as is his deviousness and mischievousness).
104. There is always a way, and it usually doesn't work.
105. Success occurs when no one is looking, failure occurs when the General is watching.
106. The enemy never monitors your radio frequency until you broadcast on an unsecured channel.
107. Whenever you drop your equipment in a fire-fight, your ammo and grenades always fall the farthest away, and your canteen always lands at your feet.
108. As soon as you are served hot chow in the field, it rains.
109. Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.
110. The seriousness of a wound (in a fire-fight) is inversely proportional to the distance to any form of cover.
111. Walking point = sniper bait.
112. Your bivouac for the night is the spot where you got tired of marching that day.
113. If only one solution can be found for a field problem, then it is usually a stupid solution.
114. Radios function perfectly until you need fire support.
115. What gets you promoted from one rank gets you killed in the next rank.
116. Odd objects attract fire. You are odd.
117. Your mortar barrage will put exactly one round on the intended target. That round will be a dud.
118. Mine fields are not neutral.
119. The weight of your equipment is proportional to the time you have been carrying it.
120. Things that must be together to work can never be shipped together.
121. If you need an officer in a hurry take a nap.
122. The effective killing radius is greater than the average soldier can throw it.
123. Professionals are predictable, its the amateurs that are dangerous.
124. No matter which way you have to march, its always uphill.
125. The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
126. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small. (or "on order")
127. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used on abandoned positions.
128. When a front line soldier overhears two General Staff officers conferring,
he has fallen back too far.
129. Don't ever be the first, don't ever be the last, and don't ever volunteer to do anything.
130. If at first you don't succeed, then bomb disposal probably isn't for you.
131. Any ship can be a minesweeper . . . . once.
132. Whenever you lose contact with the enemy, look behind you.
133. If you find yourself in front of your platoon they know something you don't.
134. The seriousness of a wound (in a firefight) is inversely proportional to the distance to any form of cover.
135. The more stupid the leader is, the more important missions he is ordered to carry out.
136. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not your friend.
137  When the enemy is closing, the artillery will always be to long
138  Smart bombs have bad days too.
139  Uncrating and assembly instructions are always inside the crate.
140  If you have a personality conflict with your superior:  he has the personality, you have the conflict.
141  If you enter the CO's Presence with an idea, you will leave his Presence with the CO's idea.

142  If something can go wrong at the worst possible time...It will   (Aguila2011)