Tuesday, December 31, 2013

100 years of commercial Aviation....January 1 1904 to January 1 2014

As my regular readers of my blog know, I work in the commercial aviation field, so anything that goes on with aviation has my interest.  There was a blerp on my company website about tomorrow being the 100 years of commercial aviation.  Sometimes this boggles the mind, aviation has been around for a little over 100 years at this point and soo much has happened in this time, it makes me wonder what the next 100 years will bring to the world as aviation makes the world smaller and easier for everybody that wants to to see the world.  I pulled this article from several different sources and some of the pics are compliments of "google"

Almost 100 years ago, on January 1, 1914, a small plane lifted from the water in St. Petersburg’s downtown with just one passenger, launching the world’s first regularly scheduled commercial airline flight.
The idea of the airline was Percy Fansler’s.  Percy was an engineer from Jacksonville, Florida. His vision convinced a dozen St. Petersburg business men and the Board of Trade to invest in a commercial airline to fly from St. Petersburg to Tampa, just ten years after the Wright brothers’ first flight. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line was born.

The First Passenger

Picture The first passenger, former St. Petersburg Mayor Abe Pheil, paid $400 at an auction for the flight to Tampa.  His pilot was the young aviation pioneer Tony Jannus.  The airline operated two scheduled roundtrips daily across Tampa Bay, Florida, with two bi-wing seaplanes called “Benoist Airboats.”  Regular one-way fare was $5.00
With average airspeeds of 60 mph, flight time between the Bay Cities was just 23 minutes – a fraction of the time required for the trip by car, rail or boat.  That first New Year’s Day flight heralded what we have since come to know as “The Birth of The Global Airline Industry.”
Jan. 1 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first commercial aviation flight and the creation of the first commercial airline. 
On New Year’s Day 1914, pioneer aviator Tony Jannus, piloting a Benoist Airboat Bi-Plane with one paying passenger, took off from the St. Petersburg, Fla., yacht basin for a short promotional flight across the bay to Tampa, Fla. The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and aviation historians acknowledge the aircraft owner, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, as the world’s first airline.
At 10 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2014, Kermit Weeks, the founder and CEO of Fantasy of Flight in Tampa, plans to fly his full-scale reproduction of the original Benoist bi-plane across Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg’s North Yacht Basin to the Peter O. Knight Seaplane Basin in Tampa. 

The Story of the World’s First Airline

Picture
(This account is adapted from The Making of St. Petersburg by Will Michaels, Published by the History Press, 2012)

Each year, the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society celebrates the world’s first airline and its record-breaking pilot, Tony Jannus. And where was this airline? New York? Chicago? London? Berlin? No. The world’s first airline originated in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    The world’s first regularly scheduled heavier-than-air airline took off from the Municipal Pier in St. Petersburg on New Year’s Day 1914. The airline was known as the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. It was organized just a few months before that New Year’s first takeoff. The airline was the brainchild of Percival E. Fansler, a Jacksonville-based electrical engineer. Fansler enlisted the support of Thomas Benoist (pronounced ben-wah), an early airplane manufacturer who provided the planes-or, more precisely, the airboats. The airboat was known as Benoist Airboat Model XIV, no. 43. The model number referred to the year in which the plane was to be offered for sale (1914). The number indicated that it was the forty-third aircraft to be built from initiation of the Benoist Aeroplane Company. The Benoist Airboat was an early version of what we now know as a seaplane, able to take off and land on water. This was a necessity at the time as St. Petersburg had plenty of water but no airports. Airboat no. 43 was supplemented a little later by a second airboat, no. 45. The two airboats made up the airline’s total fleet. No. 43 accommodated one passenger in addition to the pilot. No. 45 was somewhat larger and capable of accommodating two. Benoist also provided the pilot, Antony Habersack Jannus. Tony Jannus was a test pilot for Benoist who set early records for passenger flight time and for overwater flight in 1913, and he was the pilot when Albert Berry made the first successful parachute jump. He also held the first federal airline license. 

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Mural by George Snow Hill at Tampa International Airport.

    But this world first would never have been possible without the backing of Board of Trade manager L.A. Whitney and businessman and later city mayor Noel Mitchell. In order to make his plan for a new airline work, Fansler needed the support of the St. Petersburg business community and the city’s government. He also needed a subsidy to help reduce the financial risk to Tom Benoist. Fansler made his proposal to Whitney, who immediately pledged $1,200 to subsidize the airline. Whitney then referred Fansler to Mitchell, who pledged another $1,000. Mitchell then gathered eleven other local investors to pledge $100 each to start the airline. Mitchell even got the city to build a hangar for the airboat on the South Mole of the municipal pier, at the foot of Second Avenue Northeast. 

  “Tony Jannus Will Make First Flight Thursday,” read the headline of the St. Petersburg Daily Times on December 30, 1913. On January 1, three thousand people gathered to see the first flight of this fledgling airline. This was a huge crowd for the city considering that the permanent population was perhaps seven thousand people at the time. Among the crowd was the humorist Will Rogers, who was performing at the Johnny Jones Circus in St. Petersburg. In a charity auction to raffle off the first flight ticket, former St. Petersburg mayor Abe Pheil bid $400 for the privilege of being the first passenger. Invited to say a few words just prior to takeoff, Percy Fansler commented, “The Airboat Line to Tampa will be only a forerunner of great activity along these lines in the near future…what was impossible yesterday is an accomplishment of today-while tomorrow heralds the unbelievable.”
Picture
Tony Jannus at the controls of a Benoist plane, 1913.

    Jannus then took off, skimming across the bay at a height of fifty feet.  After a twenty-three minute flight, including a brief landing on the bay to make adjustments to the propeller drive chain, Jannus and his single passenger, Ave Pheil, touched down on the Hillsborough River in Tampa.  An even larger crowd of 3,500 greeted the Benoist in Tampa.  Tampa mayor Donald B. McKay welcomed Jannus and Pheil.  The return trip took only twenty minutes.

   Upon arrival back in St. Petersburg, Jannus dropped his flight goggles, breaking the glass. Ten-year-old Judy Bryan ducked under the rope holding back the crowd. Running up to Jannus, she asked if she could have the goggles. Without hesitation, he gave them to her. Then he removed one of the brightly lettered Benoist pennants from the wing and handed that to her also.

  In the weeks that followed, Jannus made at least two regularly scheduled round trips a day between St. Petersburg and Tampa, carrying everything from Swift hams to bundles of the St. Petersburg Daily Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). Cost of a passenger ticket was $5 each way and $5 for each one hundred pounds of freight. This was not cheap, as $5 in 1914, adjusted for inflation, is valued at $115 in 2012. While $5 per trip was high compared with the cost of rail or steamship, it barely covered the costs of operations. When Tom Benoist was asked how he could cover his costs and make a profit, he stated, “There are at present about 30,000 tourists in the area and I believe a great many of them will patronize the airboat line to save time. Besides, I am anxious to demonstrate the capability and practicality of aerial transportation at a price anyone can afford even if such a low rate means a revenue loss to me, for today’s loss could very well be tomorrow’s profit.” 


       Jannus lauded his time in the Tampa Bay area. In April 1914, he wrote in Aero and Hydro magazine, “All told we believe that our work has stamped St. Petersburg as the aviation headquarters of Florida and this is largely due to the hearty cooperation of the city and citizens of the town. There are now hangars that will hold four large [flying] machines and plenty of room to put more and I must say that Tampa Bay is a fine place to fly in winter.”

   Finally, as the tourist season wore down, the airline suspended its daily operations on March 31. The airline continued for another month with a reduced schedule and flights upon request. The last flight was on May 5. The airline did not break even but came close to it. It appears to have been self-sustaining in two of its three months of operation. In January, it only flew eighteen days. The amount of subsidy drawn from the business community ranged between $540 and $1,740. The exact financial net of its operations is unclear. Given more time for marketing and optimizing operational efficiency, the airline may very well have turned a profit.


     The Benoist no. 43, also known as the Lark of Duluth, was actually owned by banker Julius Barnes of Duluth, Minnesota. He had either loaned it or sold it back to the Benoist Company for use in the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. According to aviation historian Warren Brown, after the airline closed, no. 45 was sold to Roger Jannus. Roger Jannus then sold the airboat, and it was taken to San Diego, where it crashed in the ocean in February 1915. Several local aviation enthusiasts bought Benoist Airboat no. 43 and took it to Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania. The plane crashed but was rebuilt and named the Florida. The Florida was brought back to St. Petersburg, and Tony Jannus returned to fly it. On February 25, 1915, the flying boat crashed in the bay after a wing broke. It was again rebuilt. In November 1916, no. 43 was placed in storage, and after that was lost to history.
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Thomas Benoist.

  Tony Jannus was killed in World War I in an accident while training Russian pilots over the Black Sea for the Curtiss Aeroplane Company. His brother, Roger Jannus, enlisted in the Aviation Branch of the United States Signal Corps during World War I and was killed in 1918 at Issoudon, France, when his de Havilland-4 burst into flames in midair. (The de Havilland was known as the “Flying Coffin.”) In referring to Tony Jannus, R.E.G. Davies, curator of air transport at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum, said it best, “Of all the early aviators, his career and achievements were possibly the most influential before the outbreak of the First World War. Had Jannus lived, Charles Lindberg would have had a worthy rival.”

  Jannus’ achievements and the significance of the world’s first airline have long been recognized. In 1964, the St. Petersburg and Tampa Chambers of Commerce established the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society to annually honor Jannus and the first airline. The Jannus Society’s annual award is known as civil aviation’s premier recognition for extraordinary accomplishment. Past recipients include such aviation icons as Donald Douglas, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Frank Borman, Charles Yeager, Sir Freddie Laker and Norman Mineta. Portraits of Jannus and the first airline painted by 1930s Works Progress Administration muralist George Snow Hill hang at Tampa International Airport. Jannus was also inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame.

  A new wing was built at the St. Petersburg Museum of History in 1992, dedicated to a permanent exhibit featuring the first airline and its founders. This includes a flying reproduction of the Benoist no. 43. The goggles and pennant given by Tony Jannus to ten-year-old Judy Bryan, along with a full-size working replica of the Benoist Airboat and other memorabilia relating to the first flight, are on permanent exhibit. Another replica hangs at the St. Petersburg–Clearwater International Airport. In 2006, Tony Jannus’ portrait was added to the First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He was designated “A Great Floridian” by the State of Florida in 2010. Downtown St. Petersburg's Jannus Landing entertainment center is named after the famed pilot.

  In 2010, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) designated the Central Yacht Basin in St. Petersburg as a Historic Aerospace Site-the place of the first commercial airline flight. In 2011, astronaut Nicole Stott carried the original Benoist pennant on the thirty-ninth and final flight of space shuttle Discovery (STS-133). In 2012, efforts were underway to plan the celebration of the centennial of the first airline in 2014, including petitioning of the U.S. Postal Service for the issuing of a Centennial/Jannus commemorative stamp.
  The contributions of Percy Fansler and Thomas Benoist have been overshadowed by Tony Jannus over the years. While Jannus was the chief pilot of the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line and effectively served as its public face, the company could not have accomplished what it did without Fansler and Benoist. The idea of the airline was Fansler’s. It was he who enlisted the sponsorship of the Benoist Company, sold the project to the St. Petersburg business community and city government and served as airline manager. Tom Benoist provided the planes and chief pilot Tony Jannus and agreed to operate the airline on a break-even basis. Percival E. Fansler and Tony Jannus were inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame in 2003. Thomas Benoist was inducted in 2012.

    This is a story of both a Florida and world "first." But it is also the story of a future-oriented community that appreciated the latest in invention and was willing to take a risk to see whether the concept of an airline could be of practical value to a booming Florida area - and further add to that boom.  While the airline did not quite make a profit, it paid other dividends.  Commenting on the significance of the airline, Tom Benoist, the builder of the Benoist airboat said, "Someday people will be crossing oceans on airliners like they do on steamships today."  The airline served as a prototype for the future.  Others would build upon the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line’s experience to create the multi-billion dollar aviation business that the world enjoys today

“To me, flying is not the successful defying of death but the indulgence in the poetry of mechanical motion, a dustless, relatively bumpless, fascinating sensation of speed; and abstraction from things material into an infinite space; and abandon that is more exciting but less irritating than any other form of mechanical propulsion…Florida is a live, wide -awake place for aviators and St. Petersburg is the best town for that purpose…”

Tony Jannus, 1914.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Monday Music "Safety Dance" from Men without Hats

I am posting another "Monday Music" on Monday!!!!!  Yay go me.....won't last though...Next week I will be up to my armpits in scouts and school and rec activities for my son and I will try to sleep and post in between this time.  So next week, my Monday Music will prolly show up on Tuesday......as usual.
     I decided to go with "Safety Dance" from Men wothout hats.....It was a quirky song but it was somehow very popular in the mid 80's where it got a lot of playtime on MTV.


    
"The Safety Dance" is a song written and recorded by Canadian new wave band Men Without Hats, and to date, it remains their biggest hit. It was initially released in Canada in January 1983 as the 2nd single from the band's first full-length album, Rhythm of Youth. The song was written by Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club for pogoing.
The song entered the Canadian top 50 in February 1983, peaking at #11 on 14 May. In the meantime, "The Safety Dance" was released in the US on March 16, but did not enter the US charts for a few months. When it finally did, the record became a bigger hit than it had been in Canada, peaking at #3 in September 1983.[4] It also reached #1 on Cash Box, as well as #1 on the Billboard Dance Chart. "The Safety Dance" similarly found success in other parts of the world, entering the UK charts in August and peaking at #6 in early November, and entering the New Zealand charts in November, eventually peaking at #2 in early 1984.

    
The writer/performer, Ivan Doroschuk, has explained that "The Safety Dance" is a protest against bouncers stopping dancers pogoing to 1980s new wave music in clubs when disco was dying and new wave was up and coming. New wave dancing, especially pogoing, was different from disco dancing, because it was done individually instead of with partners and involved holding the torso rigid and thrashing about. To uninformed bystanders this could look dangerous, especially if pogoers accidentally bounced into one another (the more deliberately violent evolution of pogoing is slam dancing). The bouncers did not like pogoing so they would tell pogoers to stop or be kicked out of the club. Thus, the song is a protest and a call for freedom of expression. Other lyrics in the song include references to the way pogoing looked to bouncers, especially "And you can act real rude and totally removed/And I can act like an imbecile".
Doroschuk responded to two common interpretations of the song. Firstly, he notes it is not a call for safe sex. Doroschuk says that is reading too much into the lyrics. Secondly, he explained that it is not an anti-nuclear protest song per se despite the nuclear imagery at the end of the video. Doroschuk stated that "it wasn't a question of just being anti-nuclear, it was a question of being anti-establishment.

     
The music video for the song, directed by Tim Pope, is notable for its English folk revival imagery, notably Morris men, Mummers, Punch and Judy and a Maypole. It was filmed in the village of West Kington, near Chippenham, in South West England. Ivan Doroschuk is the only member of the band to actually perform in the video. Doroschuk, and others in the video, can be seen repeatedly forming an "S" sign by jerking both arms into a stiff pose, one arm in an upward curve and the other in a downward curve, apparently referring to the first letter in 'safety'. The Morris Dance side in the video was Chippenham Town Morris from Wiltshire, performing Monkton Park. The dwarf actor is Mike Edmonds. His T-shirt in the video shows the "Rhythm of Youth" album cover.
After many years of speculation about the identity of the female dancer in the video, on February 25, 2013 the fan club for the girl in safety dance on facebook revealed her to be Louise Court, however it is still unconfirmed who went on to become a journalist and since 2007, UK editor of Cosmopolitan.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Some Winter Humor..

This is a quick post, I have been real busy the past few days and have had little time to get on the computer.  I have a few minutes before I have to go to woek so I figured I would post something.  I will post some stuff either Monday or Tuesday with some details on my weekend.

    Now some winter humor...


Thursday, December 26, 2013

Civilian Conservation Corp.....and modern times.

I had posted an article about the Bonus Army on a prior posting and in it they had talked about the Civilian Conservation Corp or the CCC.  I decided to read up on this a bit more partly when I did a Patriot Guard Mission to Pine Mountain on Veterans day, we spent a bit of time at the Roosevelt State part near Pine Mountain GA and there was a plaque to the CCC dedicated there.  Apparently the CCC did a lot of work to build this park and preserve it.  I added some information that I had picked up from several different websites.  The CCC did a lot of good things and they kept a lot of people employed productively.  I wonder if a modern version of the CCC would work, to handle the multitudes of underemployed young people and have them doing the same kind of thing.  I after a lot of thought, believe that the CCC worked back then because of the people back then, the mindset vs today.  Back them almost everybody wanted "honorable work".  It was part of the DNA of Americans
to work, to be a slacker and freeload off somebody else was a great social stigma, unlike today where there are "Youtube,Video's" on how to play the system.   I would like to believe that such a program would work, but with todays Obama's America with the labor laws, the environmental laws, and the attitude, I believe that the CCC would not work today with today's Americans.   It would be just another program like food stamps, where it started off with good intent and has morphed into a trillion dollar boondoggle with no end in sight. 

    
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. Robert Fechner was the head of the agency. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families).
The American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs. Principal benefits of an individual's enrollment in the CCC included improved physical condition, heightened morale, and increased employability. Of their pay of $30 a month, $25 went to their parents. Implicitly, the CCC also led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources; and the continued need for a carefully planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources.
During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide and upgraded most state parks, updated forest fire fighting methods, and built a network of service buildings and public roadways in remote areas.

CCC workers constructing a road, 1933.
The CCC operated separate programs for veterans and Native Americans.
Despite its popular support, the CCC was never a permanent agency. It depended on emergency and temporary Congressional legislation for its existence. By 1942, with World War II and the draft in operation, need for work relief declined and Congress voted to close the program.


Franklin Delano Roosevelt built the Little White House in 1932 while governor of New York, prior to being inaugurated as president in 1933. He first came to Warm Springs in 1924 hoping to find a cure for the infantile paralysis (polio) that had struck him in 1921. Swimming in the 88-degree, buoyant spring waters brought him no miracle cure, but it did bring improvement. During FDR’s presidency and the Great Depression, he developed many New Deal Programs (such as the Rural Electrification Administration) based upon his experiences in this small town.

While posing for a portrait on April 12, 1945, FDR suffered a stroke and died a short while later.





At 9,049 acres, Georgia’s largest state park is a hiker’s and backpacker’s haven.  More than 40 miles of trails, including the popular 23-mile Pine Mountain Trail, wind through hardwood and pines, over creeks and past small waterfalls.  Many visitors are surprised to find rolling mountains 80 miles southwest of Atlanta.  Above King’s Gap is Dowdell’s Knob where President Franklin D. Roosevelt sometimes picnicked and pondered world affairs.  A life-size sculpture of the president now welcomes visitors to the overlook.

FDR's favorite retreat was Dowdell's Knob in what is now F.D. Roosevelt State Park. On this rocky outcropping, FDR entertained his closest friends using a grill that remains on the site. He also came here alone to grapple with issues like World War II and the Depression. Dowdell's Knob is where FDR felt most at home and is one of the few places where he felt no need to hide his disability.
     Several park amenities were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, including cottages and the Liberty Bell Swimming Pool fed by cool springs. A wooded campground sits near the edge of a small fishing lake, and privately operated stables offer guided horseback rides.  In 1924, FDR came to this part of Georgia to swim in naturally warm springs that offered relief from polio. 


Stanleys Baby.........The real life equivelent of "Rosemary's baby"

I am working on a post involving the CCC or the Civilian Conservation Corp and it ain't done yet so I am posing this missive I ran across from "GOC" and I figured I would post it while I am working on another post.  The picture is one I ran across on the internet and save to my pic file that I add to any post that I run.


December 1960 was not a good time for the United States. Among the tragic events of that month were the New York Air Disaster, in which 136 people were killed when UA Flight 826 collided over Staten Island with TWA Flight 226, and the raging fire on the USS Constellation in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in which 50 were killed and 150 injured.
Of course bad things happen every month in a country as large as the United States. In fact, bad things happen every day, so many sometimes that we tend to forget about them in light of the next spectacular event.
One item that happened in December 1960, for example, attracted no attention, made no headlines, caused no animated conversation in the coffee shops and pubs across America. It was, in brief, the union of misdirected evil and misguided naïveté which resulted in the birth of a hybrid species on 4 August 1961.
Barack Hussein Obama, an abusive, alcoholic Kenyan agitator acting on orders from his master الشيطان (or Iblis in Arabic), planted the unholy seed of Ash-Shaytan in the womb of the clueless flower child Stanley Ann Dunham.
As the seed was not human, it did not contain the DNA imprint which would promote development of the routine human traits of morality, ethics, and personal accountability. And as the host was in the low-normal stratum of human potential, the zygote received only minimal-strength coding for a number of traits including purpose, self-discipline, and honesty.
After nine months of parasitic development, the embryo was ejected by the body of Dunham, who then began a pattern of rejecting and abandoning the monster she had co-created until her death 34 years later when she realized, too late, the profound catastrophe of which she had been an integral part.
As the mongrel grew, it was nourished by minions of the eternal Evil One, such as the mother’s completely deluded parents along with an even more delusional surrogate father named Frank Marshall Davis, who taught the misbegotten mistake the tricks of suspicion, anger, accusation, and whining to get what he wanted.
Later his education was completed by an embittered false prophet masquerading as a Christian minister, who taught him race-baiting and fact-skewing; a rabble-rousing domestic terrorist, who taught him how to become famous and wealthy by publishing manufactured stories with manipulated data and massaged dates; and total immersion in a well-established thugocracy, which taught him political extortion and ethnic intimidation.
No, December 1960 was not a good time for America. I was a lowly E-3 in the USN at the time and blissfully unaware of the destructive force being created in Paradise. As for those limousine liberalistas and ethnic loyalistas who elevated the hellish puppet to ultimate power, we told you so, you morons.
The lesson to be learned here is, of course, that naïve young girls who have been captivated by liberal-arts professors should not have sexual relationships with specimen from outside their own species.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas to everybody in Internetland

Merry Christmas to everybody in internet land, Right now people are recovering from the early morning wakeups after going to bed late to make things were squared away for Christmas.  This is a day to hang with family and relax...eat more then you are supposed to despite what any government health nazi is saying to the contrary.  Again Merry Christmas to everybody especially to those people that are twisted enough to visit my little corner of the internet.

                       Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!!!

I will go back to my regularly scheduled programming stuff tomorrow.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Monday Music "Do they know it is Christmas" and the Westjet Christmas Miracle.

I decided to go with one of my favorite songs for Christmas for my Monday Music posting.  I decided to go with "Band-Aid"  Do they know it is Christmas?.  I remembered doing an posting last year on this so it is a duplicate post.  I don't normally do a music repeat except for this song.  I was in High School in my senior yeart and this was all over MTV and the news back then.  It was a totally new idea to do a charity this way.  I believe in giving...as long as it is people doing it...It is proper..and a Christian thing to do.  Not government  which I consider it wealth transference and it is wrong. for the force of government is used to take money by force from people to give to other people in the name of "giving". I call it "legal theft".  Giving is supposed to be voluntary, that is the nature and the magic of it.


The original 1984 Feed the world logo was designed by Phil Smee of Waldo's Design, who designed all the Ads prior to the event being announced. Geldof was so moved by the plight of starving children that he decided to try to raise money using his contacts in pop music. Geldof enlisted the help of Midge Ure, from the group Ultravox, to help produce a charity record. Ure took Geldof's lyrics, and created the melody and backing track for the record. Geldof called many of the most popular British and Irish performers of the time (Kool & The Gang and Jody Watley were the only Americans present at the original recording), persuading them to give their time free. His one criterion for selection was how famous they were, in order to maximise sales of the record. He then kept an appointment to appear on a show on BBC Radio 1, with Richard Skinner, but instead of promoting the new Boomtown Rats material as planned, he announced the plan for Band Aid. The recording studio gave Band Aid no more than 24 free hours to record and mix the record, on 25 November 1984. The recording took place at SARM Studios in Notting Hill between 11am and 7pm, and was filmed by director Nigel Dick to be released as the pop video though some basic tracks had been recorded the day before at Midge Ure's home studio. The first tracks to be recorded were the group / choir choruses which were filmed by the international press. The footage was rushed to newsrooms where it aired while the remainder of the recording process continued. Later, drums by Phil Collins were recorded. The introduction of the song features a slowed down sample from a Tears for Fears' track called "The Hurting", released in 1983. Tony Hadley, of Spandau Ballet, was the first to record his vocal, while a section sung by Status Quo was deemed unusable, and replaced with section comprising Paul Weller, Sting, and Glenn Gregory, from Heaven 17. Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran sang between contributions from George Michael and Sting. Paul Young has since admitted, in a documentary, that he knew his opening lines were written for David Bowie, who was not able to make the recording but made a contribution to the B-side (Bowie performed his lines at the Live Aid concert the following year). Boy George arrived last at 6pm, after Geldof woke him up by 'phone to have him flown over from New York on Concorde to record his solo part. (At the time, Culture Club was in the middle of a US tour.)
Feed The World logo designed by Markus Newman
The following morning, Geldof appeared on the Radio 1 breakfast show with Mike Read, to promote the record further and promise that every penny would go to the cause. This led to a stand-off with the British Government, who refused to waive the VAT on the sales of the single. Geldof made the headlines by publicly standing up to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and, sensing the strength of public feeling, the government backed down and donated the tax back to the charity.
The record was released on November 29, 1984, and went straight to No. 1 in the UK singles chart, outselling all the other records in the chart put together. It became the fastest- selling single of all time in the UK, selling a million copies in the first week alone. It stayed at No. 1 for five weeks, selling over three million copies and becoming easily the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK, thus beating the seven-year record held by Mull of Kintyre. It has since been surpassed by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" (his tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales) but it is likely to keep selling in different versions for many years to come. In 1986 the original music video from "Do They Know It's Christmas?" received Band Aid a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Short Form.
After Live Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was re-released in late 1985 in a set that included a special-edition 'picture disc' version, modelled after the Live Aid logo with 'Band' in place of 'Live'. An added bonus, "One Year On" (a statement from Geldof and Ure on the telephone) was available as a b-side. "One Year On" can also be found in transcript form in a booklet which was included in the DVD set of Live Aid, the first disc of which features the BBC news report, as well as the Band Aid video.

Participants

The original Band Aid ensemble consisted of (in sleeve order):
Also including:
    TO continue the Christmas video theme I am doing, I also included a video from Westjet, I saw this in Church and I thought it was brilliant.  A Canadian Airline called "WestJet" did a Christmas Miracle video and it did show the power of giving the goodness of people.  I being of an aviation background found it fascinating.
      I also found the "blooper reel" for it.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Bonus Army, historical precidents for future actions?

I remembered something I had read a long time ago when I was reading on Douglas MacArthur and some of the other senior officers that served in WWII that during the time of the great depression, the U.S. Army was used to evict an army of veterans from WWI that was demanding their bonus payout from service in WWI, it was called the Bonus Army.  I saw a video of this that was sent to me and I figured it would go well with the debate if the Military would move against the American people.  One thing I did take from this video was the fact that many of the military used the *Dienst ist Dienst* defense, the same thing that was argued by the Senior German officers at Nuremburg.  The term basically means that it is my job or my duty to carry out the orders of those appointed over me.   I am not comparing the U.S. Military to the Nazi's...but there are those in the military ranks that would blindly follow orders even though they may be illegal or immoral orders that are against the U.S. Constitution and the UCMJ.  Remember the sudden removal of officers for malfeasance that seemed to be cropping up like weeds lately...Are there soo many officers that have issues with their moral compass  which says something about the class and caliber of officers holding jobs.  Or are they being removed to place more politically reliable officers in positions of authority.  I remember when I was in the service, we were told to obey the orders of those appointed over us except if was an illegal or an immoral order that conflicted against the UCMJ, The rules of Land Warfare or against our moral code.  I wonder if this is still stressed or has it been removed due to the political climate.  I don't know.   This and several other videos are available on "Youtube".  It is something to consider.  I do know this incident was considered a "black" eye to the U.S. Army and the officers involved.

The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant.
Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each service certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time, visited their camp to back the effort and encourage them. On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were wounded and later died. Veterans were also shot dead at other locations during the demonstration. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the army to clear the veterans' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused in May with an offer of jobs for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home. In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto and paid the veterans their bonus years early.

Friday, December 20, 2013

New Hitler Parody video....


I have been feeling under the weather lately, I actually went home from work early, I am not sure if it is exhaustion or if I caught something that has been making the rounds.  I was surfing around and ran across another "Hitler Parody" video.    What can I say...They are great!


Thursday, December 19, 2013

Continuation of the Liberal Elitist call for "gun control"

I got another email link from JPFO.org with the continuing story of the LtColonel that believes that the American people should be disarmed with the exception of certain "acceptable firearms"   I had posted Here on it as have many other bloggers.  Well JPFO sent more information on it.

Here is the colonel with all his glory(notice the lack of bracket for NVG use)  Well I will post the entire missive that L. Neil Smith wrote as an open letter to the good Colonel.

    

By L. Neil Smith, lneil@netzero.com.
The Libertarian Enterprise. December 18th 2013

Prepared for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. © JPFO. Inc 2013

CORRECTION: We must humbly apologize for having used an incorrect picture, which was believed to be correct at the time. The substituted picture is described as the actual Lt. Col Bateman being discussed, derived from his Facebook page.

This is an open letter, of sorts, to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman, a "second amendment-hating ... active military commander" who, according to Paul Joseph Watson writing for Prison Planet.com, December 6, 2013, composed an article for Esquire magazine in which he advocated a total ban on all firearms, and closing down all gun manufacturers except for those who produce weapons for the federal government.
Apparently he threatened a blogger who had the gall to disagree with him, vowing to "pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers" and allegedy issuing veiled death threats. "You will be disarmed," it says here. "The state will have a monopoly on firepower." He even schemes to make it illegal for most types of guns to be inherited. "I'm willing to wait until you die," he tells us, "hopefully of natural causes".
He apologizes for a future in which she will die.
The man has, in fact, a six-point program for creating a future in which the Second Amendment -- and, most likely, the entire Bill of Rights, because that's typical with hypocritical clowns like him -- would become a dead letter. Why would he want to do that? To create a more peaceful society, of course -- less violence and death -- and if you won't willingly cooperate you will be killed in the house-to house searches.
It doesn't seem to have occurred to this military genius that gun laws are enforced at gun point. You say you want less violence and death, Bob? I wonder how that's going to work out in a nation of 100 million Americans who have obeyed their last gun law, holding 750 million "firearms of modern design in good working order". Will you be out front leading the campaign, Bob, or at home, hiding under your bed?
You appear to have learned nothing from history or human nature, Bob, from the Roaring Twenties or the War on Drugs. Following any prohibition, there's always more, not less of the prohibited commodity. Guns will be everywhere, most of them silenced and fully automatic.
Because ... why not?
My father was a lifelong career military officer who understood the phrase "Duty, Honor, Country" in a way you never will. He flew dozens of combat missions over Europe during World War II, was shot down, and spent a year in Stalag Luft III, a prisoner-of-war camp. He retired as a Major after 30 years, because he blew the whistle on intructors selling test answers to officers at a Strategic Air Command school at Mather Air Force Base in the 1950s. Instead of rewards and promotion, he had to be hidden away by his political allies, in the Arctic.
It is disgusting to think that you remain in the military, while better men than you are being purged by a rogue administration, led by a probable illegal alien and communist, because they will refuse to fire on their fellow Americans who won't give up their guns. When I was in high school, neighbors of mine in the First Air Commandos at Hurlburt Field were among the first Americans to die in Vietnam, beheaded by the Viet Cong, or eaten alive by land crabs, believing that they were defending the rights you now threaten so casually to abrogate.
You are a disgrace to the uniform worn by my dad and millions of other Americans down through history who thought they were answering a call to protect the lives, liberties, and property of their fellow Americans.
I must confess that when I first read the nonsense you'd written, I thought you were probably a fourteen-year-old kid in his pajamas, somewhere, sitting behind a keyboard in his mother's basement, making empty threats simply to enjoy the flap they generated. That's what you sound like, Bob. It's pretty easy to stir gun-owners up; they've been relentlessly defamed and persecuted for so many decades by twisted, broken, sick, moral cripples like Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein.
More than anyone, however, your rhetoric and tone make me think of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, whose mental health was never properly looked into once he began issuing threats to those around him, and who killed thirteen innocent individuals at Fort Hood in 2009 and injured thirty more.
There was a time, Bob, when concepts like decency and honor meant something, a time when, had an officer (British, of course) shamed himself as you have, he would have taken his Webley revolver and a single cartridge into the next room and done the right thing. But those times are long past, Bob, and what do you know of decency and honor?
We have been learning the hard way that frustrated "progressives" are among the most dangerous entities on the planet. They turn out to be behind the vast majority of notorious and brutal public shootings. They seem to have no brakes, no self-control, like ordinary human beings. Nor do they seem aware that other people are as real as they are.
I believe that violence could be right around the corner for you, Bob, that you should be separated from the Army now, "for the good of the service", and put away where you can't hurt yourself or anybody else.
So I will predict a different future for you than the future you have predicted for us. I'm a science fiction writer, and that's my job. I caution you, don't try this at home; I'm better at it than you are.
It starts with a militarily marked van pulling up to the curb in front of your office, your home, or the retirement community to which you have been committed. Two burly orderlies get out and enter the building.
In a few minutes they emerge holding you between them, wearing leg irons, handcuffs, and belly chains. Make too much noise, you will be gagged. The media will have been alerted; there will be cameras. Your neighbors will stand around gawking and talking to the microphones. It won't matter if you're frog-marched, carried bodily, or rolled out in a wheelchair with a bottle of oxygen in your lap. The orderlies will put you in the back of the vehicle behind a wire partition and drive away.
After a flight somewhat reminiscent of the movie Con Air or The Fugitive, you will be driven in another military vehicle (the new airport is still under construction) to a tiny rust-belt municipality in western Pennsylvania called Nuremberg, specifically to a newly constructed Gothic-style building patterned after those in another place, a place in Germany, called Nuremberg, in which all those Nazi military and civil officials were tried for their crimes against humanity.
You may remember how that turned out.
Charges against you will include crimes against the Constitution of the United States, violation of the solemn oath you took as an Army officer to uphold and defend that Constitution, and, if it can be proven that you harbored your present views when you took that oath, perjury.
Unlike the original Nuremberg tribunals, you will be alotted your full Warholian fifteen minutes. Your trial will be carried -- along with those of many others -- on cable channels dedicated to such entertainment, and the Internet, where the most interesting or amusing segments from your trial will be exhibited over and over again on YouTube.
The proceedings will be fair but fast, conducted before a jury of the people whose rights you have violated. Once you are convicted, you will be transported by various means to San Francisco, and taken to a brand new 100-story windowless prison, built especially for government miscreants like you, on Alcatraz Island. Constructed entirely of black obsidian-like glass that glitters in the sun, it will become one of the most-photographed objects in the world. All confinement will be solitary, although CNN will be piped into your cell on a 24 hour basis.
Inside the prison without windows, Alcatraz's infamous Rule of Silence will be maintained at Taserpoint. Meals will be simple but healthy, from menus supplied by your fellow inmate, Michelle Obama. Outside, Japanese and other tourists on excursion boats will be delighted to pay for chunks of meat with an expired sell-by date, so they can chum the already-shark-infested waters of the bay around the Rock.
Every day you will be taken for exercise to the roof, a glassy smooth surface without guards or guard-rails, where you may interact with your fellow convicts: mayors and city councilmen, governors and legislators, bureaucrats of every rank and description, Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet members and Presidents. The wind is always strong at altitude in San Francisco, out in the middle of the bay. Should you decide you can't take any more, you are free to be blown over the edge by the wind, pushed over by your former colleagues, or simply to jump, yourself.
Your bones will remain at the base of the building as a warning -- or encouragement -- to others. At long last you will be of service to America.
That's the future I'm working to realize, Bob, and there are millions more like me who share my dreams. I suppose you could make amends before it's too late, abjectly apologizing to everyone you've threatened, insulted, and offended. But that would leave a question hanging.
Why should anyone believe you?

Author and lecturer L. Neil Smith is Senior Editorial Consultant for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. A fifty-year veteran of the libertarian movement, he is the Author of 33 books including The Probability Broach, Ceres, Sweeter Than Wine, And Down With Power: libertarian Policy In A Time Of Crisis. He is also the Publisher of The Libertarian Enterprise, now in its 17th year onlin


Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Modern Rules and Engagement.

I had gotten this email from my father that had this article in it from one of the local papers.  I really liked it so I figured I would use it on a post.  The pictures are compliments of "google search" since I am a simple person that likes pictures and cartoons to help tell a story.



     From the Fayette County GA newspaper, The Citizen on 12/10/13
by Terry Garlock
 
By my measure, America’s recent wars have been rife with immorality at the very top, where the well-paid and comfortable and protected make decisions that profoundly affect the lives, and sometimes deaths, of the Americans we send to fight.

I’m not referring to the top generals-turned-politician bucking for another star by their sudden yes-man enthusiasm for Obama’s trampling the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Frankly, my guess is George Washington never even suspected which of his troops was gay and that gay troops have been helping fight our wars all along. While keeping that part of their life under wraps was surely a personal burden for them, that secrecy helped avoid the inevitable turmoil of introducing the element of romance where it doesn’t belong, in places we require our troops to bet their lives on unit cohesiveness and effectiveness. The new and enlightened policy, wherein the Pentagon holds gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) celebrations, is bad enough, but I am thinking of other policy failures with mortal consequences.

I don’t mean the Obama Administration’s purge of too many generals who have insufficient sensitivity for sexual and gender issues, resist women in combat, have too much curiosity on Benghazi and not enough affection for liberal ideas. Beyond the issue of fairness to these men, we should worry about emasculation of the armed forces.

I’m not referring to the extraordinary burden heaped on our men and women in uniform by three, four or more combat tours while the rest of us sacrifice nothing, while the White House dreams up new ways to redistribute income with government giveaways to favored groups but nary a thought to special compensation to our troops whose families bear our country’s heaviest cost.

Obama’s public dithering over the 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan is closer to my mark of despicable leadership, especially his public announcement to our enemies that we would begin our withdrawal in 18 months. If you doubt that was playing for his own political benefit, that he was appealing the right with his eventual surge announcement and to the left with his simultaneous withdrawal announcement, just ask any seventh grader whether winning a war involves disclosing to your enemy when you will quit. But then, Obama has never to my knowledge even whispered the word “victory.”

 
I’m not focused on Obama’s spectacular failure in squandering the victory in Iraq, a blunder nicely and easily hidden from an apathetic public who were nearly as eager to end the war as the Vietnam generation. Iraq had no Air Force. Air superiority was purely American, but Obama walked away in complete withdrawal without a status of forces agreement, quite consistent with his priority of ending, not winning, the war. Nobody is better at blaming others, and Obama blamed the Iraqis when he offered to leave 3,000 troops after his generals said we needed 20,000 to do the job and protect themselves, and Iraq’s Maliki countered with refusal because Obama was not serious. Maliki was right, and air superiority in the region now belongs to Iran.

So, how are we betraying our troops as they fight our wars?

It began before Obama. By the time he took office it was already a slowly maturing process in which fighting for victory became passé, overshadowed by fighting for world opinion, using our military like an extension of the State Department. By committing to hostilities not directly linked to our true national security, and imposing rules that make combat success more difficult, we send home a higher number of wounded and flag-draped coffins for heart-breaking funerals.

Consider this. Mike King, Skip Ragan and I had dinner a few months ago with some younger combat helicopter pilots, and discovered two astonishing things. First, the Blackhawk helicopter now has a “hover button” that engages an auto-pilot to keep the aircraft stationary, for example at a high hover for a hoist Dustoff (medevac) mission over dense jungle. That is huge, since hovering a helicopter is tedious, like keeping a uni-cycle upright within a circle no larger than a dinner plate. As young men, we never dreamed automatic hover would be possible.

The second astonishing thing was a pair of Dustoff pilots, each with three Afghanistan tours, who had never taken a ground fire hit. They explained the risk assessment involved with each mission that prevented them from flying into an area that was still hot.

I can’t help but think about Wayne Franz, who was trained as a medic and will never forget his first mission in Vietnam. He said he was assigned to a helicopter with no break-in training, very jittery as they took off to pick up wounded. When they touched down in the landing zone, Wayne said grunts urgently loaded wounded on the aircraft with IVs already started and blood splashing all over the place, and just as he started hoping none of them would die before they reached the hospital pad, the aircraft took off while he held on. He sorted out which IV ran to which patient and wondered what he could do on the short flight that might keep each man alive, but they soon touched down, the hospital crew rushed the patients to triage, leaving Wayne in a blood-covered daze standing by the helicopter wondering what the hell just happened when the pilot stepped out and said to him, “Wow, that was a close one!” Wayne asked him what he meant, and the pilot pointed to a few bullet holes from the ground fire they took on the way in or out of the LZ.

Wayne thought, “Holy crap! How am I going to survive a year of this?” But he did, and I wonder how many are alive today because he was there for them.

I can tell you there are countless men alive today who long to identify and shake the hand of the Dustoff crew that flew them out of Vietnam’s hot LZs. I am one of them. Here in Peachtree City, Alan Walsh and Terry Hoffman are two of many Dustoff pilots who risked their neck hundreds of times to pick up wounded and saved countless lives. Combat deaths in Vietnam were roughly the same ratio as in WWII, but Vietnam resulted in three times as many severely wounded. The difference was Dustoff. Our grunts knew if they got hit in the filth of the jungle, in an hour they would be with doctors and operating rooms. Many badly wounded survived when they would have died in WWII without the benefit of Dustoff.

I am certain that today’s Dustoff pilots in Afghanistan are no less brave, and are surely better trained and equipped than we were over 40 years ago. But they are not permitted to fly into areas with risks while our wounded on the ground may turn into flag-draped coffins, and that is only part of the story.

A new report points the finger of blame at new Rules of Engagement (ROE) imposed by the Obama Administration in 2009, rules that were continually tightened as if they were “playground rules.” A soldier cannot fire on the enemy unless he sees a weapon. He cannot enter a dwelling even during combat, or return fire into a house or Mosque or school. Rules govern what can be searched, by whom, and at what times. The air support and artillery that are the lifeline of ground combat units are held in abeyance until cleared by multiple levels of review including lawyers. And so on. The enemy knows about ROE changes and uses that knowledge, sometimes even before the word spreads to our own troops.

Last year our enemy shot down a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, killing 30 Americans, including 17 members of SEAL Team 6. During that Tangi Valley operation, known enemy operatives were spotted but permission to shoot was denied. When the rocket-propelled grenade shot down the helicopter, An AH-64 Apache gunship pilot saw it happen but ROEs prevented him from firing into the building from which the RPG was fired. Just before that incident an AC-130 gunship spotted enemy operators with weapons and could have fired with no risk of collateral damage but permission to fire was denied.
 
Wayne Simmons, a retired US intelligence officer who worked in Afghanistan at a high level, says the ROE restraints have “. . . created a hesitation and confusion for our war fighters.,”  You don’t need combat experience to know that could get Americans killed.

Former Army Captain William Swenson, Medal of Honor recipient, said he was nearly killed by the Army’s reluctance to use air support. Ryan Zinke, former commander of a SEAL Team 6 assault team, said we either need to fight or go home.

From January 2009, when ROEs were changed, to August 2010, casualties more than doubled. In 2010 casualties were three times the level in 2008 and five times the 2007 number. That this is happening while the rest of us ignore it should be a matter of national shame.

If I had my choice, my strong bias would be to keep our troops at home, withhold military force until an enemy crossed a clear line of American national security, then eliminate the threat quickly and decisively. To regain what Obama has wasted, our allies’ trust and fear in our enemies’ hearts, we should conduct our military actions in a way that makes the bad guys whisper to each other with trembling dread, “Whatever you do, don’t provoke the Americans!”

When we do send our troops into combat while you and I enjoy the comfort and safety of home, there are some things we owe them out of decency. We owe them and their mission our unbridled support and gratitude. We owe them the battlefield tactics that value their life as the highest priority, even over possible civilian collateral damage, and if we can’t accept that then we should pound our war hardware into plowshares. We owe them the commitment to conquer the enemy quickly rather than rules to attempt a gentle war in hopes of world approval. And finally, to avoid the risk of battlefield rules created by liberal weenies who might wet their pants at the sight of a gun, we owe it to our combat troops to let the armed forces create their own ROEs, since they know what the hell they are doing, with White House oversight.

Is it immoral for political staff at home, with no personal stake or consequences, to create ROEs that raise the likelihood of American dead and wounded? It is to me, and even though you and I can ignore it and enjoy life, we have a duty to speak up