Wednesday, December 21, 2011

United States "Budget" and Spending



Iowahawk on SPENDING can be found  HERE. You must see this YouTube Video of Iowahawk's explanation of SPENDING.

Before you look at it, take a quick look at the numbers below.

The following is courtesy of the Air Force Association (AFA):

Snapshot of the U.S. Government financial situation:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

* Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000

* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let's now remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget:


* Annual family income: $21,700

* Money the family spent: $38,200

* New debt on the credit card: $16,500

* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

* Total budget cuts: $385

Pretty basic!!!

The problem is spending.  Spending on what?  Government!  When the government "hires" an employee, they must take money from taxpayers to pay the employee.

Simply put government is OVERHEAD.  It is a force pulling down the economy.  Government should facilitate commerce, not prevent it.  Right now we have too much government.

Think about this, the Federal Government talks about BUDGET CUTS, yet the BUDGET CUTS are SPENDING INCREASES!

Cut spending!  Who cares how much you budget.  CUT SPENDING.

Actually, if we just froze spending in about 10 years we would have a surplus.

At least a drunken sailor quits spending when he runs out of money!  I know, I was one.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Evolis Pebble 3 or Peb3le Card Printer will not print

We have had an Evolis Pebble 3, or Peb3le as they cleverly call it, for six years.  It has printed about 2,000 cards.  While they still market the printer, it must be fairly said that it has been out of warranty for four years.  Still makes the per card cost high!

It has stopped printing.  After the upgrade to OSX 10.7 Lion, it printed 65 cards, then would print no more.  Now, it appears Evolis does not yet support Lion.  They claim they will in the first part of 2012.

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

70 Years Ago - Pearl Harbor


Seventy years ago tonight, as this is written, twenty-nine year old LTjg Jackson D. Arnold, USN, USNA Class of 1934, an Engineering Test Pilot assigned to Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor was at one of the usual Saturday night parties very common at the time.  He and his new girlfriend Muriel McChesney would not get home until early the next morning.  No problems, it was going to be a lazy Sunday.  He could sleep in.  Jack was, in today’s terms, a Party Animal.  He dropped off Muriel at her home a mile or so away near the foot of Diamond Head and went home to what might be generously called sleep.  Things were good, things were stable.  All was well.

Things would change.  Change faster than Jack could imagine.

Just before 0800, Jack awoke to the biggest bang he had heard since he was the Officer in Charge of ARIZONA’s Number Four Turret.  He rolled out of bed, ran out side and looked up.  Divebombers, rolling in on Pearl Harbor, meatballs on their sides.  The bang had been a Jap mistaking his pickle button for a radio key.  A 500 pounder fell a few hundred feet from his front lanai.  He ran back inside, put on his khaki uniform, grabbed his desktop radio and headed towards Pearl, with a quick stop to give Muriel the radio and tell her to keep her wits about her and listen to the radio.

Into his car and towards Pearl.  As he raced along what is now Nimitz Highway, through the cane fields, a military staff car pulled in front of him, shortly thereafter a truck pulled in behind him.  A convoy of three.  Soon a Zero found them, rolling in, he strafed the staff car, which ran off into the cane fields.  The Jap came back around and rolled in on the truck, riddled with bullets, it went off burning into the cane fields.  Jack had had enough of that, he pulled off the road and dove under the car.   After about two minutes, it came to him; there he was under the only potential target.  He decided he would more likely survive if he were a moving target and not hiding under the gas tank.  Back on the road!  In a few minutes he came to the Pearl Boat Facility where he looked for a launch to Ford Island.  No launches!  Then, he looked in the boat shed.  It was full of launches and cowering coxswains. 

Jack jumped into the launch closest to the open boat house door.  A coxswain came out, “You can’t take that, she’s mine.”  Jack said, “Well, she’s going to Ford Island.”  “Not without me driving,” as the coxswain hopped aboard and started her.

Arriving at Ford Island in the middle of the first wave, Jack sprinted across the field, scrambled into the only flyable F-4F Wildat and got her running.  A plane captain clambered up the side of the running aircraft to tell him that not only was the aircraft very low on fuel, but it was totally devoid of ammunition.  So much for his first air to air victory.  With no other flyable aircraft remaining, he looked about for a way to “contribute to the war effort.”

Just before the second wave hit, Jack came across a young Marine who had lost his life in the first wave attack, but kept his BAR from hitting the ground.  Jack, having been on the All Navy Rifle and Pistol Teams and an avid bird hunter felt at home with the Browning.  As he stood there near the base of the new tower, a lone torpedo bomber rolled in to strafe the tower and thus him.  Judging his lead carefully, he emptied two magazines into the Jap, killing the pilot and severing a line or two.  Smoke and flame poured from the plane as it crashed on the field.  The second wave was gone.  Jack went over to the wreck, it was the Torpedo Squadron Commander.  Jack took a bottle of sake from the plane, they would not need it now.  He took a big gulp, passed it to sailors gathering to see what he had found, and ran back to the whaleboat he had taken to Ford Island.

Grabbing the launch, he put out for ARIZONA to pick up survivors.  The first person he pulled from the water exclaimed, “Mr. Arnold! Mr. Arnold! Mr. Arnold!”  Looking at the man, covered head to toe in bunkers, black as a seal, Jack responded, “Sir, you have the advantage of me.  Who the blazes are you?”  The slippery dark form responded, “Sir, it is me, Johnson.”  The Number Four Turret Captain, the Petty Officer with whom Jack had worked on his first assignment out of the Naval Academy. 

Things would change for Jack.  In five weeks, he would marry his new girl friend Muriel, a marriage that would last over 60 years.  In less than a year, he would be a full Commander, form a new Air Group, Air Group Two, be the Torpedo Squadron Commander, with a very short but more successful career than the Jap Commander he shot down.  He would be Air Group Two’s first Commander or CAG for her first War Cruise on HORNET, the second carrier of that name.  Shooting down four more Japs, he would command the most successful Air Group of the war.  After the war, Jack would be Air Officer on BOXER, one of the first jet pilots in the Navy, then go into the Bureau of Naval Materiel.  He would design space suits, pioneer new techniques in aircraft and ship procurement.  Then finally he would be the first Commander of the newly formed Naval Materiel Command, the biggest command in the Navy.  He would retire as a Four Star Admiral.  But, he would always be known as Gentleman Jack whose men would follow him anywhere.

More HERE

Friday, May 27, 2011

Memorial Day Weekend


As you enjoy your leisure on the first three day weekend of the summer or the last one of the spring, depending on your climate location, please remember to whom this weekend is dedicated. Memorial Day, the day set aside to remember before God those who have given their lives that we might live free in this country. Nothing more and nothing less.

Freedom is not free. The cost is high and measured in rich red blood. It exists not because of the politician handing out rights or money, both of which have been confiscated from the citizenry. It exists not because of pundits and critics. It exists not because of political organizations. Freedom exists because when the country called, red blooded Americans answered that call knowing full well they may lose their lives in her defense. This weekend is dedicated to the remembrance of those who have given their lives that we might live in freedom. They gave their future and that of their families’ to the end that we might have a free today.

Charge your glass, raise it high. Drink to them.

United States Military Casualties

Revolutionary War (1775-1783)

Served: No data

Deaths: 4,435

Wounded 6,188

War of 1812 (1812-1815)

Served: 286,730

Battle Deaths: 2,260

Wounded: 4,505

Mexican War (1846-1848)

Served: 78,718

Battle Deaths: 1,733

Other Deaths: 11,550

Wounded: 4,152

Civil War (1861-1865)

Served: 2,213,363

Battle Deaths: 140,414

Other Deaths: 224,097

Wounded: 281,881

Spanish-American War (1895-1902)

Served: 306,760

Battle Deaths: 385

Other Deaths: 2,061

Wounded: 1,662

World War I (1917-1918)

Served: 4,734,991

Battle Deaths: 53,402

Other Deaths: 63,114

Wounded: 204,002

World War II (1941-1946)

Served: 16,112,566

Battle Deaths: 291,557

Other Deaths: 113,842

Wounded: 671,846

Korean War (1950-1953)

Served: 5,720,000

Battle Deaths: 33,651

Other Deaths: 3,262

Wounded: 103,284

Vietnam War (1964-1973)

Served: 8,744,000

Battle Deaths: 47,378

Other Deaths: 10,799

Wounded: 153,303

Gulf War (1991)

Served: 24,100

Deaths: 162

Afghanistan War (2002-present)

Deaths: 2,449 (as of May 20, 2011)

Iraq War (2003-present)

Deaths: 4,771 (as of May 20, 2011)

Wounded in action: 29,978

And the Cold War, which no one remembers, that claimed so many more.

Source: Department of Defense, United States Central Command, and Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

Source: www.va.gov

"THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD"

By Theodore O'Hara

The muffled drums sad roll has beat
The soldier's last Tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
But glory guards, with solumn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved one's left behind;
No vision of tomorrow, s strife
The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife,
At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed;
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud.
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow;
And the proud forms, by battle gashed,
Are free from anguish now.

The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shouts are past;
Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal,
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead,
Dear as the blood you gave,
No impious footstep here shall tread
The heritage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While fame her record keeps,
Or honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell
When many a vanquished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,
Nor time's remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of glory's light
That gilds your deathless tomb.