Category: Military

Trump craps on our Constitution, rips off taxpayers and Congress does next to nothing!

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❝ In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies…What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

❝ Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

Trump says “Jump!” Pentagon says “How high, boss?”

❝ On previous trips to the Middle East, the C-17 had landed at U.S. air bases such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany or Naval Station Rota in Spain to refuel, according to one person familiar with the trips. Occasionally the plane stopped in the Azores and once in Sigonella, Italy, both of which have U.S. military sites, the person added.

But on this particular trip, the plane landed in [Prestwick] — a pitstop the five-man crew had never experienced in their dozens of trips to the Middle East. The location lacked a U.S. base and was dozens of miles away from the crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort.

Prestwick needs more dollar$ to keep from bankruptcy – and Trump needs Prestwick to stay in biz to even hope to jack up his overpriced Turnberry Resort to profitable.

RTFA for all the slimy details. The worst of it is the Pentagon rolling over and sticking all four feet in the air for the Fake President. Paying million$ for fuel when our military is one of the biggest providers of jet fuel in the world is absurd – and taxpayers continue to pick up the tab.

Trumpolini knows his meal ticket is getting ready to disappear. The carrion-eating flock in Congress lets him getaway with graft no president has ever tried on; so, why not push it another notch. Directly crap on Constitutional writ prohibiting payoffs and kickbacks to his business and properties. A criminal enterprise that the original constitutional congress figured might be tempting to some crooked politician. An impeachable offense written into the foundation of our laws…that the fake president not only flouts, he gets aid and comfort from brass hats in the Pentagon along the way.

Thanks to UrsaRodinia and Ignorance is Strength

Navy will stop trying to guide ships by touchscreen

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US Navy photo

❝ The Navy will begin reverting destroyers back to a physical throttle and traditional helm control system in the next 18 to 24 months, after the fleet overwhelmingly said they prefer mechanical controls to touchscreen systems in the aftermath of the fatal USS John S. McCain collision.

The investigation into the collision showed that a touchscreen system that was complex and that sailors had been poorly trained to use contributed to a loss of control of the ship just before it crossed paths with a merchant ship in the Singapore Strait…

❝ Rear Adm. Bill Galinis said that bridge design is something that shipbuilders have a lot of say in…not covered by any particular specification that the Navy requires builders to follow…

Rear Adm. Lorin Selby said that the move to achieve greater commonality is not just limited to where helm control systems are installed in the bridge, but how functions appear on the screens of the control systems, and anything else that would contribute to confusion for a sailor moving from one ship to another within the same class.

“When you look at a screen, where do you find heading? Is it in the same place, or do you have to hunt every time you go to a different screen?…”

How long have we been designing weapons of war? It doesn’t matter if the discussion comes down to small controls or large less precise controls. Inconsistency between vessels means the crew running the ship can only reliably operate one particular product. Moving to another ship in the same class prompts disaster.

Moving to digital controls isn’t a problem on its own; but, consider lifelong habit when designing systems, folks. Anyone you know driving a car where the steering, speed and braking are controlled by a touchscreen?

Save $1.2 trillion that the Pentagon doesn’t need

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“Need” being the operative word.

❝ The Pentagon could save more than $1.2 trillion with a number of tweaks to its spending plan for the next decade, including canceling the creation of a Space Force and nuclear weapons projects, according to a report by the Center for International Policy.

❝ The report, “Sustainable Defense: More Security, Less Spending,” offers new strategies that challenge the National Defense Strategy by encouraging more diplomacy (specifically in regard to the Iran nuclear deal) and less military confrontation to cut costs. It also says the NDS “exaggerate[s] the challenges posed by major powers” like China and Russia.

❝ The report offers Congress several solutions to reduce Defense Department spending in the short term, including restricting overseas contingency operations funds, cutting the Pentagon’s private contractor workforce by 15 percent, blocking plans for the Space Force, avoiding placing weapons in space and rolling back the nuclear modernization plan. Capitol Hill is in the middle of a funding debate over fiscal 2020 military spending.

The rationale of last resort from tame economists for inflated military budgets is the production of non-consumable goods. They produce jobs, profits and little or no inflation. Meaningless in an economy that has Wall Street wankers whining over a lack of inflation and our tax base for items we actually could use has been reduced by the butt-kisser in the White House. Making less available for items like healthcare and education.

New Mexico wants Air Force to halt public access to contaminated lake

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A campsite at Lake Holloman — Joshua Hernandez/AP

❝ New Mexico’s top prosecutor is demanding that the U.S. Air Force close a publicly accessible lake at Holloman Air Force Base, saying…the concentration of hazardous chemicals at the site poses a risk to public health and the environment.

…Attorney General Hector Balderas told Air Force officials that sampling shows the contamination — linked to chemicals known as per-and-polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — are dozens of times higher than federal health advisory levels.

❝ In the case of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, the samples showed 84 times more than the advisory levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency…

❝ New Mexico is preparing to sue the Air Force over groundwater contamination at two bases, arguing that the federal government has a responsibility to clean up plumes of toxic chemicals left behind by past military firefighting activities.

You might think the responsible answer from the military – after all, part of our federal government – would be to work to remedy toxic conditions resulting from their own activities. But, then, this is the United States. The culturally moronic response – “What me worry?” – isn’t limited to cartoon characters. Our politicians, generals, profiteers from the whole military-industrial complex persist in feeling they’re exempt from responsibility to the public-at-large. All we’re allowed is to foot the bills for all of it.

Watch independent testing of the sidearm just adopted by the US Army

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This is from a couple years ago and Sigg and the Army didn’t perform this test back then – and I don’t believe they do, nowadays. I’d be pleased to be corrected.

Though I embrace pretty much every progressive legal requirement for gun ownership, I’ve been a gun owner my whole adult life. I come from an extended family that had beaucoup years working for gun manufacturers all the way up to prototype gunsmiths. I still own guns. I still shoot pretty damn good for an old geezer.

I think if a firearm is passed for military use it should be able to pass more rigorous testing than what is apparently considered sufficient. If the folks who produced this video still have it right.

‘Nuff said.

New rules for UFO sightings start [of course] by calling them something else

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The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with “unidentified aircraft,” a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.

The previously unreported move is in response to a series of sightings of unknown, highly advanced aircraft intruding on Navy strike groups and other sensitive military formations and facilities…

To be clear, the Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied — rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction…

Luis Elizondo, the former Pentagon official who ran the so-called AATIP [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program] office, complained after he retired from government service that the Pentagon’s approach to these unidentified aircraft has been far too blasé.

“If you are in a busy airport and see something you are supposed to say something,” Elizondo said. “With our own military members it is kind of the opposite: ‘If you do see something, don’t say something.'”

Tales of American Military bureaucracy still seem to echo the worst of history’s examples. You’d think that with a budget guaranteed larger than any other significant combination of nations a bit of confidence might temper the character of our own Colonel Blimps. Or Admiral Blimps.

The Fake President Called Former President Jimmy Carter To Talk About China

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Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

❝ President Trump called former President Jimmy Carter for the first time…[weekend of April 13/14]

❝ Earlier this year, Carter sent Trump a letter with some advice about managing the U.S.-China relationship. Carter oversaw the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries 40 years ago.

On Saturday evening, Trump called Carter to talk about it. It was the first time they’d spoken, Carter said. He said Trump told him that he is particularly concerned about how China is “getting ahead of us…”

❝ Carter said he agreed with Trump on this issue.

“And do you know why?” Carter said. “I normalized diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war,” he said…

❝ Carter said the United States is “the most warlike nation in the history of the world” due to a desire to impose American values on other countries, and he suggested that China is investing its resources into projects such as high-speed railroads instead of defense spending.

If you read up on uses for a national military, China follows an old model where the military is truly constituted for national service. That primarily means damage control and service to communities hit by natural disasters. Enough of those to go around to keep any standing forces occupied. Plus actual defense.

The wasted money in some quarters is viewed as production of non-consumable goods to aid our economy. A subsidy without calling it such. The Cold War took care of motivation for politicians who got subsidized industries and employment in their districts. Little or no inflation resulted from the subsidies because consumer goods don’t really include tanks or aircraft carriers.

Pentagon + White House = Ignore Law, Add $97.9 Billion to Budget

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❝ US defence officials previously feared that rising interest rates and growing federal debt would push the government’s net interest costs so high that they would squeeze out funding available for personnel, training, equipment, modernisation, maintenance, and more. Interest rates are now higher and the debt is now larger, but Pentagon budget officials are no longer worrying about either…

❝ The national defence budget – as well as the ‘domestic’ budget – is legally capped by the 2011 Budget Control Act. However, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget instructed the Pentagon to use the uncapped Overseas Contingency Operations account to bypass the legislated limits, which were meant to lower discretionary spending and begin lowering the US public debt. Pentagon officials said about USD97.9 billion was shifted into the unlimited OCO account.

So far.

With the Fake President in office, who cares about budgets, the rule of law or how big a bill you drop on American taxpayers?

See how little Trump cares about American Families!

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The dirty details are over here. Education, social services, healthcare, practically everything built over generations to help the American family find a better life for themselves, their children, their neighbors is dismissed out of hand by the fake president.

Apparently, he counts on military voters and, of course, all the corporations getting a bump in profits from his wartime budget. Except, most of his war is on ordinary Americans.