Friday, January 12, 2018
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Tyler @ The Drive has pics of the MQ-25. NICELY DONE BOEING!
Tyler has the story and even MORE pics here.
Just plain WOW!
Boeing either read the Navy's mind, is trying to help the Navy out, saw a tremendous opportunity to oneup the competition or all of the above.
What do I mean?
They're coming with what looks to me like a big stealth body UAV. You know what that means don't you. Flexing into the ISR, or strike mission should be relatively simple (wonder if it will have bays for extra fuel that can be reconfigured for sensors or weapons?).
The Marine Corps better adjust now.
They're trying to tailor the force so that Company Landing Teams can participate in the rolling back of enemy defenses? Launch assaults from further offshore?
Never gonna happen. Land based anti-ship missiles will maintain a range advantage, as will most foreign air launched systems.
The Marine Corps could be looking at a future where the Navy is asking NOT for an America class LHD filled with F-35's and the Marines left on the pier.
No the future could be that the Navy asks for an America class LHD and Marine Air, Marine Ground and Marine Logistics are left on the pier and they sail with 40 MQ-25D's...5 for ISR, 5 for tanking, 10 for missile trucks and the remainder for deep strike.
You take every big deck LHD (and I think this is possible with the new automated landing system...the only thing you MIGHT have to install are arresting wires) and if you're in a real high tech shootout and automation has gotten pretty far then you could have a robot LHD, carrying robot planes to destroy robot enemy targets. Rearming, refueling and such might be tricky but think of the possibilities!
You can plan for the future but sometimes the future has a plan for you! Hope HQMC remembers that!
Trump's latest crazy statements. Are you not entertained? Good because you missed the real threat to democracy today...
Thanks to Joe for the link!
If you're not aware then your President and mine made some pretty outlandish statements today. The first via The Washington Post...
President Trump caused a stir with his announcement that the United States had delivered F-52 fighter jets to Norway.Story here.
Was it a secret advanced jet capable of beating its Russian counterparts? A ruse to fool intelligence analysts?
Neither, it turns out. The “F-52” is a fictional jet only available to fly if you’re a gamer at the controls of “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.”
This was an obvious mistake and can only be chalked up to one thing. Trump simply doesn't know much about the military, doesn't do his homework and talks off the cuff so much that mistakes like this flow from his lips like water off a waterfall.
But the public via the clarion call of the media was entertained. Why? Because Trump haters launched into their usual diatribe of stating the obvious and Trump defenders were busy trying to justify the idiocy.
The second bit of entertainment is via NBC
President Donald Trump on Thursday referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic aide briefed on the meeting told NBC News.Story here.
Trump's comments were first reported by The Washington Post, which said the group of nations referred to also included El Salvador.
The comments came as senators huddled in the Oval Office with the president to discuss a path forward on an immigration deal. Trump questioned why the United States would want people from nations such as Haiti while he was being briefed on changes to the visa lottery system.
According to the aide, when the group came to discussing immigration from Africa, Trump asked why America would want immigrants from "all these shithole countries" and that the U.S. should have more people coming in from places like Norway. Thursday's meeting came one day after Trump met with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at the White House.
The same dynamics are at play with this except its got the added juice of having a racial tinge.
I refuse to be fooled.
This guy is DESPERATE to be loved by Dems...especially Democrat leadership but they continue to pushback against him. So what did he do? He turned another gaff (and I believe this was a gaff...full disclosure...I'm black and I've called those countries shitholes...that characterization does not equal racists) into an opportunity to appeal to his declining base.
What made this gaff seem especially egregious is because he referenced back to wondering why we don't have more people from Norway immigrating.
I believe that is a part of his diminishing mental health. Oh and I'm not so sure that he's suffering early onset. I think that the Russia Probe coupled with the stuff he's seeing sitting in the big chair and the constant berating that he's suffering from the mainstream media simply has him stressed beyond recognition.
The fact that he doesn't engage in daily exercise (a known stress moderation tool), has a poor diet (dude admits that he eats McDonald's on an almost daily) and is probably a bit overweight makes me believe that he's mentally stressed and is probably more of a candidate for a heart attack in office than he is in danger of being diagnosed as mentally ill.
But I digress.
Were you not entertained by the drama brought to you by the talking heads in the media and our political elite?
Well if you were then you missed the threat to our democracy, and didn't get a real look at how your political masters actually view you.
via Wired.
In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was legally collecting millions of Americans’ phone calls and electronic communications—including emails, Facebook messages, and browsing histories—without a warrant. Congress has now decided not only to reauthorize these programs, but also to expand some of their most invasive techniques.Story here.
The spying initiatives Snowden brought to light are authorized under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which was set to expire later this month. On Thursday, Congress voted down an effort to reform Section 702, and instead passed a bill that expanded warrantless surveillance of US citizens and foreigners. The newly passed bill reauthorizes Section 702 for six years, long after President Trump’s first term in office will have expired.
The amendment that the House of Representatives shot down would have added significant privacy safeguards to the law, including the requirement that intelligence agents get a warrant in many cases before searching through emails and other digital communications belonging to US citizens. The bill Congress did pass, meanwhile, codifies some of the most troubling aspects of Section 702, according to privacy advocates.
So the American people were asleep at the wheel while the House just EXPANDED spying authority.
Don't be fooled either.
Where there is power, there is abuse.
Republicans who are suppose to be champions of limited govt voted for this bill overwhelmingly. Democrats who are suppose to be champions of free speech voted for this bill overwhelmingly.
You had a chance to see the true face of your Representatives.
They don't like you.
They don't trust you.
But they damn sure put in place the pieces to control you....if and when the time comes.
WW2 Eastern Front Photo Essay. Must see!
 |
| An execution of Jews in Kiev, carried out by German soldiers near Ivangorod, Ukraine, sometime in 1942. This photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted at a Warsaw post office by a member of the Polish resistance collecting documentation on Nazi war crimes. The original print was owned by Tadeusz Mazur and Jerzy Tomaszewski and now resides in Historical Archives in Warsaw. The original German inscription on the back of the photograph reads, "Ukraine 1942, Jewish Action [operation], Ivangorod." # |
100 Prominent French Women sign an anti #metoo manifesto!
Just plain wow.
I've watched the nonsense inside the Marine Corps and been a bit confused by it personally. Women Marines are warriors but at the same time they need my protection from abuse? They can fight on the battlefield but they can't handle a guy that can't take a hint?
Forget my misgivings. Listen to these ladies. via World Crunch.com
Some 100 prominent French women artists and intellectuals have issued an open letter in Le Monde condemning the movement to call out inappropriate male behavior that erupted in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.Story here.
Collective* LE MONDE 2018-01-10
English edition • WORLDCRUNCH
PARIS — Rape is a crime. But trying to pick up someone, however persistently or clumsily, is not — nor is gallantry an attack of machismo.
The Harvey Weinstein scandal sparked a legitimate awakening about the sexual violence that women are subjected to, particularly in their professional lives, where some men abuse their power. This was necessary. But what was supposed to liberate voices has now been turned on its head: We are being told what is proper to say and what we must stay silent about — and the women who refuse to fall into line are considered traitors, accomplices!
Just like in the good old witch-hunt days, what we are once again witnessing here is puritanism in the name of a so-called greater good, claiming to promote the liberation and protection of women, only to enslave them to a status of eternal victim and reduce them to defenseless preys of male chauvinist demons.
Ratting out and calling out
In fact, #MeToo has led to a campaign, in the press and on social media, of public accusations and indictments against individuals who, without being given a chance to respond or defend themselves, are put in the exact same category as sex offenders. This summary justice has already had its victims: men who’ve been disciplined in the workplace, forced to resign, and so on., when their only crime was to touch a woman’s knee, try to steal a kiss, talk about "intimate" things during a work meal, or send sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their interest.
This frenzy for sending the "pigs" to the slaughterhouse, far from helping women empower themselves, actually serves the interests of the enemies of sexual freedom, the religious extremists, the reactionaries and those who believe — in their righteousness and the Victorian moral outlook that goes with it — that women are a species "apart," children with adult faces who demand to be protected.
Men, for their part, are called on to embrace their guilt and rack their brains for "inappropriate behavior" that they engaged in 10, 20 or 30 years earlier, and for which they must now repent. These public confessions, and the foray into the private sphere or self-proclaimed prosecutors, have led to a climate of totalitarian society.
I know most of you have what I consider an illogical bent to your view on this.
I know that you "believe the women".
I can't, won't and will not without proof.
History is filled with men that have been falsely accused and were savaged by mobs for things that they did not do.
So hit me with your best shot but hit me with something I can seek my teeth in, not just silly emotionalism.
General Dynamics finally unwraps the 2nd Cav's Dragoon 30mm Strykers...
Ok. Let me get this straight. The reason why these vehicles have had their turrets shrink wrapped and we got these bullshit teases is because we were waiting on a contractor to pull out his pen knife and do what a 3 year old can?
Are you shitting me?
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