Guns Not Really Helping Keep Anyone Safe.....

The gun crowd tells us the problem in America is GUN FREE ZONES.

It is when guns are not allowed that is when you have problems. That is when you have shootings and people die.

If you allow lots and lots of guns what you end up with is peace and tranquility.

Guns solve all problems. And here is a good example of what they are talking about.

TEXAS is NOT a gun free zone. Texas loves guns. Look at how wonderful that all turned out. 151 Guns. 9 people DEAD. Many people wounded. 177 people arrested.

I am not seeing where guns helped this situation.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/us/texas-biker-shootout-new-details/index.html

Russian Bombers 1 Mile Away From USS Ronald Reagan.....Oops...

the Russian bombers skimmed the water at an altitude of 500 feet and came within one nautical mile of the aircraft carrier.

(ONE NAUTICAL MILE????????? IN TOP GUN THEY WERE FREAKING AT AT 200 MILES. AT 150 MILES THEY LAUNCHED THE ALERT 5 AIRCRAFT. IF THE RUSSIANS GOT WITHIN ONE MILE SOMEONE ON THE REAGAN IS ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH. MAYBE BOTH CATIPULTS WERE BROKEN. MAYBE THE RUSSIANS HAVE STEALTH ABILITIES THAT WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT.)

Navy officials said such encounters in that region are not unprecedented, and the intercept and interaction were considered "safe."

(BULLSH*T! RUSSIANS FLYING 500 feet ONE MILE FROM OUR AIRCRAFT CARRIER IS NOT SAFE. THAT IS A PROBLEM)

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/two-russian-warplanes-edge-close-u-s-aircraft-carrier-n453756

Dreamliner Battery Fires....Shhhhhh Don't report it.....

Dreamliners are still catching fire but today nobody is bothering to report it to you. It is none of your business.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you….. Well it actually will hurt you but at least Boeing (and the FAA) won’t have to listen to your endless whining before the plane you are in plunges to the ground.

Just sit there and look out the window and think happy thoughts. The raging inferno going on beneath your feet is none of your damned business.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/…/faa-is-doing-nothing-about-con…/

Unreported failures

In October of last year, in an event that no one reported, (WHY REPORT IT….NO NEED FOR CONCERN) a Qatar Airways 787 had to make an emergency diversion. The pilots were alerted to a battery issue during flight. Qatar Airways referred questions to the FAA and NTSB, and declined to say how many travellers were on the plane. The Dreamliners can carry 254 passengers.

The FAA, which was notified of the episode by Boeing, commented on the incident via spokeswoman Laura Brown: “The battery design and enclosure performed as intended by limiting and containing the failure.” (IF IT WAS SUCH A SUCCESS THAN WHY THE EMERGENCY LANDING????…JUST KEEP FLYING. IT IS ALL GOOD.)

Boeing notified the FAA and the NTSB about the emergency landing of Qatar’s 787 under a provision designed to encourage the industry to “share significant safety related information,” NSTB spokesman Peter Knudson said. Neither agency conducted an investigation (WHY INVESTIGATE…..F*CK IT!) into the failure of the Qatar Airways battery, but the FAA allowed Boeing to assess the damage and report the results back to the agency .(LET US KNOW HOW SH*TTY YOUR PLANE IS AFTER YOU LOOK AT THE ASHES….. WE WILL BE LOOKING THE OTHER WAY.)

According to a knowledgeable source, last week a European 787 operator also had a battery release fumes and smoke into the containment box but this person did not identify the airline. (KEEP IT A MYSTERY. PEOPLE LOVE MYSTERIES)

The FAA’s Brown would not confirm any other episodes beyond the one on Qatar Airways. “We don’t consider something an ‘event’ if the containment box performs as designed,” she said.

(AS LONG AS THE RAGING INFERNO STAYS INSIDE THE CONTAINMENT BOX THERE IS NO PROBLEM. IF A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS AND NOBODY HEARS IT THAN IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. IF A FIRE HAPPENS ON A DREAMLINER BUT NOBODY SEES IT THAN IT ALSO NEVER HAPPENED. NO NEED TO INVESTIGATE. NO NEED TO REPORT IT. IGNORING THE PROBLEM IS ALWAYS THE CORRECT ANSWER. ENJOY YOUR FLIGHT.)

The first battery problems were on these airlines in 2013, (IT WAS MUCH EARLIER THAN 2013. THE FIRST FIRE HAPPENED IN TESTING YEARS EARLIER…..BOEING SAID THEY FIXED IT…..BOEING LIED.) triggering the grounding of the fleet. The plane was only allowed to fly again after Boeing encased the batteries in a stainless steel box to make sure the power source could meet fire protection standards. (PROBLEM SOLVED…FLY ON.)

After 787s were fitted with the battery housing, a Japan Airlines 787 undergoing maintenance at Tokyo’s Narita Airport began emitting smoke (UH OH…..) in January of 2014. Investigators with the Japan Transportation Safety Board said overheating of cells could be expected (THAT IS JUST NORMAL) and they were confident the plane maker’s fix would work as intended. (THE WORD “CONFIDENT” AND “DREAMLINER” DO NOT GO TOGETHER)

The JTSB was not notified (WHY WOULD THEY BE?) of the failure on Qatar Airways according to JTSB’s Mamoru Takahashi, who added that Boeing was not obligated (NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS) to report it. Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Qatar are three of the largest operators of Dreamliners (MY CONDOLENCES) Since putting 22 of the modified 787s into service, Qatar’s Al Baker has expressed confidence (THERE IS THAT WORD AGAIN) in Boeing and in the battery fix.

Experts are concerned (NON EXPERTS ARE CONCERNED TOO)

Jeff Dahn, a physics professor at Dalhousie University and a battery expert, says this issue should not be ignored (SURE IT SHOULD) because it means something is wrong with the cells. (DON’T BE DRAMATIC….) “Normally they will do nothing unless they are being mechanically abused or electrically abused. Since they are in the box, they are probably not being mechanically abused, so there is something going on with those cells.”(IGNORE IT)

Another battery expert who asked not to be identified (SCARED OF BOEING) said he, too, was surprised by the frequency of the problem, considering how few of these cells are in service, 16 per aeroplane on about 300 787s flying. “One out of a thousand sounds high.(IGNORE IT) I would categorise it as a supplier quality control problem (YAY OUTSOURCING) first. It has a safety component but they are managing it by the redesign,” he said.
Dahn used the new Tesla electric car models, each of which has 7000 cells, as a point of comparison. “Why would you continue to use lithium-ion cells that are having trouble?” Dahn asked about Boeing. “Look at the Teslas driving around. They not having problems and there’s a gazillion of them.”

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/faa-is-doing-nothing-about-continued-boeing-dreamliner-battery-failures/

Russias Threat to Underwater Sea Cables......

Remember when Corporate America decided to lay off all their American IT workers and move all the jobs to India. 

Remember this was heralded as a fantastic idea which would make companies more profitable and be a big win for all involved.

Well after Putin chops the underwater Internet cables into lots of pieces, plunging corporate America into the stone ages, lets all revisit those decisions to see if everyone still thinks they are awesome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html?action=click&contentCollection=Asia%20Pacific&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article&_r=0

“Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.”

“The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.”

“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.

from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

One NATO ally, Norway, is so concerned that it has asked its neighbors for aid in tracking Russian submarines.

“The risk here is that any country could cause damage to the system and do it in a way that is completely covert, without having a warship with a cable-cutting equipment right in the area,” said Michael Sechrist, a former project manager for a Harvard-M.I.T. research project funded in part by the Defense Department.

What worries Pentagon planners most is that the Russians appear to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths, where the cables are hard to monitor and breaks are hard to find and repair.

The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry global business worth more than $10 trillion a day, including from financial institutions that settle transactions on them every second. Any significant disruption would cut the flow of capital. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications.

So important are undersea cables that the Department of Homeland Security lists their landing areas — mostly around New York, Miami and Los Angeles — at the top of its list of “critical infrastructure.”

Attention to underwater cables is not new. In October 1971, the American submarine Halibut entered the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, found a telecommunications cable used by Soviet nuclear forces, and succeeded in tapping its secrets. The mission, code-named Ivy Bells, was so secret that a vast majority of the submarine’s sailors had no idea what they had accomplished. The success led to a concealed world of cable tapping.

And a decade ago, the United States Navy launched the submarine Jimmy Carter, which intelligence analysts say is able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on communications flowing through them.

Your Government Finding New Ways to Spy On You......

Your government just made it easier for them to spy on you. 

Private corporations can now hand over all your private information to the government and there is NOTHING you can do about it.  In a free and open society the most important thing is the government knowing all your business. 

They want all the power and they want you to have none of the power.  Your job is just to sit there and be quiet.

privacy activists argue that the bill lacks robust privacy protections. They expressed concerns with provisions that allow the Department of Homeland Security to share information gathered in the program with other government agencies, such as the FBI or the National Security Agency.

Critics say that effectively turns the legislation into a backdoor surveillance bill that benefits the intelligence community.

the bill would give participating companies liability protections that could prevent customers from suing them for sharing private data, even in ways that violate a company’s own privacy policy

Some tech giants came out against the bill, including Apple, which has aggressively positioned itself on privacy issues. "We don't support the current CISA proposal," the company said in a statement last week. "The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of their privacy."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/27/senate-passes-controversial-cybersecurity-information-sharing-legislation/

New Stealth Bombers......Get Your Check Books Out.....

Get your check book ready……The government wants another bomber.

Today there is the B-52, and the B1, and The B2 Bombers. None of those have yet been successful in defeating ISIS, or Al Qaeda, or The Taliban, or deterring Putin, or Communist Chinese.

That means we need a new bomber.

They say this one will cost 500 million per plane.

Stop laughing.

They were serious when they said it.

The reality is when it done you can multiply that number by about 10.

These initial government estimates are always fairy tales.

They say this new plane will be ready by the mid 2020’s.

Stop laughing.

That means you should add 15 years to that estimate.

The problem is the government (and corporate America) sucks at estimating. Their numbers are just pulled out of thin air and represent nothing found in reality.

That doesn’t matter though because there is this…….

“William LaPlante, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, suggested the Air Force will offer a "cost-plus" contract to the winning firm, meaning the government will take on the risk of any cost overrun.”

Read that again slower…….”The government will take on the risk of any cost overruns……”

That means YOU will take on the risk of any cost overruns. It will come right out of your checking account. When their estimate turns out to be complete B.S. which it will........

Northrup Grumman will not be held responsible for their make believe numbers. Uncle Sam will just ring your door bell and stand out front with his hand out.

Today Jeb Bush announced his plan for Social Security. Instead of retiring at 65 you will be retiring at 70. That is 5 years Jeb won’t have to pay you Social Security. Good news for Jeb and good news for Northrup Grumman who will have that extra money to cover the costs of this next over budget (and behind schedule) project which is about to begin.

Money for your retirement….Well there is none.

Money for bombers…..Oh yeah…Getting that money is not even a problem.

Enjoy your new bombers. You are going to love them.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/politics/long-range-strike-bomber-contract/index.html

China Still Hacking Away.....

“Chinese government hackers have attempted in the past few weeks to penetrate the networks of U.S. companies to steal their secrets despite a pledge by China’s president that they would not do so”

(WHATTTTTTT? I don’t believe it. The Chinese lied? There is no way.)

“Chinese hackers have targeted at least seven U.S. companies since President Xi Jinping vowed last month in Washington that his country would not conduct cyber-economic espionage — the theft of trade secrets andintellectual property for the benefit of the nation’s industries.”

(I cannot believe the Chinese president went to the White House, stood next to the president of the United States (clinked Champaign glasses together) and lied right to the presidents face. I just can’t believe it. The Communist Chinese are such honest and trustworthy allies. This article must be mistaken. I am sure the Chinese will be demanding an apology.)

“In the three weeks since Xi left Washington — including the day after he left, on Sept. 26 — hackers linked to the Chinese government have attempted to gain access to tech and pharmaceutical companies’ networks”

“the fresh efforts by Chinese hackers, if they prove to be part of a renewed campaign of commercial espionage in cyberspace, will put pressure on the Obama administration to hold China accountable.”

(Obama isn’t holding the Chinese accountable for anything. They got lots of weapons and most of our jobs. They can do whatever they want. The only thing Obama will do is hold a 3rd State Dinner to celebrate our good friends the Communists. With friends like them who needs enemies. )

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/china-still-trying-to-hack-us-firms-despite-xis-vow-to-refrain-analysts-say/2015/10/18/d9a923fe-75a8-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html

NCAA Morals Going Down The Drain.....

Remember the good old days when the only evil person in NCAA Basketball was Jim Calhoun.  Remember when he made too many recruiting phone calls and the NCAA went crazy.  The Uconn program got suspended so they couldn't participate in post season all because there is nothing more despicable than multiple phone calls. After all Phone calls are disgusting.

Well today everyone is in trouble and the infractions are a whole lot worse than phone calls.

Rick Pitino is buying his recruits prostitutes.  How can any other program compete with that?  

Here is your choice Mr 18 year old recruit.  You can go to school A that gave you a free lunch and a tour of campus OR you can go to Louisville who bought your very own  hooker.  What do you say?

Meanwhile nobody knows nothing about nothing.  Standard response to everything these days.  Tom Brady doesn't know his balls are deflated and Rick Pitino doesn't know his program provides prostitutes.  Sounds believable to me.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/153574696/college-basketball-coaches-control-freaks-ncaa

The USS Gerald R Ford....Debacle.....

The Pentagon has taken $13,000,000,000.00 of your tax dollars to build the USS Gerald R Ford Aircraft Carrier. 

How exciting…..It is currently 22% over budget and years behind schedule……..Plus it doesn’t work. 

Whether it works (or doesn’t work) doesn’t really matter because you are still paying for it either way. 

When you are done paying for the Gerald R Ford you will then being paying for the USS John F Kennedy. That is the next Aircraft Carrier……. which is also years behind schedule, and Billions over budget, and also doesn’t work.

Don’t feel like you have to pay for these boats all at once.  Your kids (and their kids) will be helping you pay for these boats for many years to come.

A gazillion times I have told you about the $400,000,000,000.00 F-35 which doesn’t work either……. but I want to make sure you understand that spending a fortune (and getting crapola) is not exclusive to the F-35.

When it comes to wasting your hard earned tax dollars the Pentagon is top notch.  But you don’t need to worry about that…..

I go on Facebook and nobody is complaining about the 13 Billion Dollar USS Gerald R Ford “Debacle”.

A typical Aircraft carrier cost 4 billion dollars.  The Gerald Ford is already more than 3 times that cost and it is still not finished…… or working.

It is almost like people are not even paying attention. 

People complaining about poor people on food stamps…… well that I see all the time.  People get so mad about poor people.  But when the Pentagon is robbing you blind nobody seems to even notice.

So what is the issue with the Ford?  Good question……  The Ford is the first of a brand new class of Aircraft Carriers. How exciting……

For many decades US aircraft carriers have used steam catapults to launch aircraft.  It is a reliable and effective way of operating.  But using proven technologies is not very sexy.

The Gerald R Ford is attempting to us Electromagnetic Catapults.  That sounds impressive but the only problem is they don’t work very well.  They are finding this out only after spending the first 13 billion (of your tax dollars).  Now they are testing the sexy new concept.  But Oops….The results are not good. 

The new catapult has a high failure rate.  When launching 60 million dollar aircraft that is not a good thing.  When every 4^th plane ends up in the ocean (in front of the ship) that quickly becomes an issue. 

If an aircraft carrier cannot launch aircraft that sort of defeats the purpose of the ship….

The catapult problems are just one of many issues with the Ford.  I won’t bore you with the rest of the details.  You just need to understand that the first $13 billion did not solve the problems…… but don’t worry because the pentagon knows exactly where to get more of your tax dollars.  You just keep working hard and complaining about the poor people.

 

The less you pay attention to what the pentagon is doing (with your money) the better.

Oh and by the way there might not be enough money to pay your social security and Medicare.  The good news is there is always enough money for another Aircraft Carrier.

http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/new-gerald-r-ford-carrier-class-as-predicted-called-13-billion-debacle-1.371389

Russias Power Play A Big Deal To The Balance Of Power In The Middle East......

For the last several decades the United States could do whatever it wanted in the Middle East.

The United States had complete domination of the skies. Whether it was in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Libya, or Syria….. Nobody could challenge the United States in the air.

That all changed last week when the Russians showed up. Not only did they show up but they brought their fancy air defense.

The Russians say they are there to fight terrorists but none of the terrorists have an air force. So the fact that they brought their air defense tells you they are really trying to control the situation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/top-nato-general-russians…/

Having complete domination of the skies did not provide many victories for the United States. Iraq is still a mess. Syria is still a mess. Afghanistan is still a mess. Libya is still a mess. The Taliban is still around. Al Qaeda is still around. Now ISIS has been created and armed with American weapons.

The entire Middle East is a disaster and that was when America had no challengers.

Now Putin has shown up and the complications have increased dramatically. No longer can the United States go and do whatever they want without risking a military conflict with the Russians.

If the United States can’t beat the Taliban they certainly don’t want any part of fighting the Russians.

Not only do the Russians complicate what the United States is fumbling around to do, but it is also a huge blow to Israel.

Israel has always enjoyed complete control over the area but now they will be reined in as well.

This is why Netanyahu raced over to Russia to meet with Putin last week. Netanyahu understands the implications of what Putin is doing.

http://www.cnn.com/…/world/russia-israel-netanyahu-putin-m…/

To make matters worse Iran is sending in hundreds of Hezbollah fighters to join the Syrian fight. In the past if Hezbollah stepped out of line Israel would think nothing of dropping some bombs.

But with Russia standing guard the Israelis will think long and hard before taking action. This is a huge change to the balance of power in the region.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/iran-sends-grou…/…/2573192

Putin is looking strong. Obama is looking incompetent. Netanyahu is looking worried.

The region isn’t any more stable now (with this new power player in the mix) then it was before.