[Daily Caller] Veterans Affairs Sec. Robert McDonald falsely told a homeless veteran last month that he had served in special forces during his five-year stint in the Army.
McDonald, appointed to head the scandal-ridden VA last year, served as a captain in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division between 1975 and 1980. And though he completed Army Ranger training, the former Procter & Gamble CEO was never a member of a special forces. Former P&G CEO comes clean ?
#2
Why did he have to exaggerate? 82nd ABN, Ranger School, good service record is a great thing. Now he look like an idiot. In the late 70's the 82nd did perform training and ops with the SF groups there, and some were detailed over for short periods due to MOS shortages. Hope he answers to this.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/24/2015 10:33 Comments ||
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#3
Sez he "completed Ranger training." Been more than a few who "completed"...and did not become Rangers. Just say'n.
TOKYO, Japan (February 23, 2015) – HAKUTO, the only Japanese team competing for the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE, has announced a contract with fellow competitor, Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, Pa., to carry a pair of rovers to the moon. Astrobotic plans to launch its Google Lunar XPRIZE mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., during the second half of 2016. HAKUTO’s twin rovers, Moonraker and Tetris, will piggyback on Astrobotic's Griffin lander to reach the lunar surface. Upon touchdown, the rovers will be released simultaneously with Astrobotic’s Andy rover, developed by Carnegie Mellon University, travel 500 meters on the moon’s surface and send high-definition images and video back to Earth, all in pursuit of the $20M Google Lunar XPRIZE Grand Prize.
[DAWN] Indian health workers are investigating two new suspected cases of polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... in the impoverished east, a year after the country celebrated eradication of the crippling virus, an official said Monday.
The boys, both aged two, from neighbouring villages in Bihar state have been isolated after developing fever and severe weakness in their limbs earlier this month, leaving them unable to walk, the official said.
Uday Kumar Choudhary, chief medical officer for Darbhanga district, where the children live, said they were suffering from acute flaccid paralysis, a medical condition often connected to polio.
"We have sent the samples for testing and the results are expected in a few days. We cannot say anything now," Choudhary told AFP over phone from Darbhanga. "Both the children have been isolated. We hope it turns out to be negative," he added.
Suspected polio cases are occasionally reported from rural and normally underdeveloped areas of India but the country has not reported a positive case since 2011 after a mammoth and successful years-long vaccination programme.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/24/2015 00:00 ||
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[CNN] For the first time, the U.S. Air Force has resurrected a B-52 bomber that had been in long-term storage at the Boneyard, the portion of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, where the military sends aircraft that have been retired from the fleet.
The 53-year-old Stratofortress, tail number 61-1007, nicknamed the "Ghost Rider" had been in storage at the desert in the care of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) since 2008. Thousands of aircraft are stored at the Boneyard, where the dry desert environment helps preserve them. Some are scavenged to supply parts to planes still in the fleet. Others are brought back into service. Ghost Rider, after upgrades, will become the first B-52 to return to duty from the Boneyard.
Though the dry desert air inhibits corrosion, the baking heat can have other adverse effects, including causing dry rot in the tires and fuel lines. The lines and fuel bladders in Ghost Rider were completely replaced, Tech. Sgt. Stephen Sorge, a fuels specialist from the 307th Maintenance Squadron, said in an Air Force report on the project.
Once that work was done, the plane's engines were tested again in January. On February 13, Ghost Rider flew again, a three-hour flight from Davis-Monthan to its new home, Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. The resurrection process took 70 days, according to the Air Force report
"I've been flying the B-52s since the '80s and it surprised me that after almost seven years ... she cranked up just fine and we had no issues with the flight control systems," Col. Keith Schultz said in the Air Force report after piloting the eight-engine jet on the 1,000-mile flight.
Schultz, who with more than 6,500 hours flying B-52s is the most experienced active pilot of that aircraft in the service, led a co-pilot and a navigator, the minimum three-person crew, on the flight to Louisiana. The B-52 would normally fly with a crew of five.
"Those were the only three seats we had activated for egress," he told the Shreveport Times.
For safety reasons, Ghost Rider made the entire flight with its landing gear down, at a speed of only 288 mph and at a height of 23,000 feet, well below its top speed of 650 mph and ceiling of 50,000 feet, according to the Times report.
It also flew without some of the other things aviators have come to rely on.
"We were fortunate to have had good weather the entire trip as the inertial and navigational equipment had not been installed," Schulz said in the Air Force release.
Ghost Rider will replace another bomber at Barksdale that was damaged by a fire during maintenance.
"We had an oxygen leak with a spark and it caused a cockpit fire. There was so much damage it was actually more economical to bring this one out of the desert," Schultz told the Times.
For a time, Ghost Rider will sit beside the damaged B-52 for transfer of usable, updated equipment, the Times reported. It is expected to resume active service next year.
As of May 2014, the Air Force reported there were 76 Stratofortresses in its fleet, 58 in the active force and 18 in the Air Force Reserve. Besides Barksdale, B-52s are based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
#1
Good for her!! The old battle horses always charge to the sound of the guns. It was tragic watching them be chopped apart as part of the arms reduction.
Posted by: Titus Snore6365 ||
02/24/2015 15:22 Comments ||
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MOGADISHU -- Massive blaze burnt down a petrol depot in Mogadishu’s Hawlwadag district according to officials on Monday, Garowe Online reports. Witnesses say plumes of black smoke could be seen from the Black sea junction, with Banadir and Hormuud firefighting trucks racing to contain the spread of heavy fire.
Hawlwadag district commissioner Ahmed Nur Ali told the media that the blaze resulted in vast loss and the destruction of facilities. Speedy winds and slow response reportedly hampered efforts to put out flames billowing from the depot.
As a result of delicate stability following the removal of Al Shabaab militants in early 2011, petrol and gas businesses have been in boom.
As it were...
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/24/2015 00:00 ||
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[20Committee] But the icing on the cake is this explanation from one of the anonymous DC officials who always provide the basis of such press accounts:
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made military threats against Kiev, Riga, Tallinn, and even Warsaw. His air force has also waged a harassment campaign on the fringes of NATO airspace. But one of the US sources noted: "I think it's all a bluff. He has enough people around him in the defense and foreign ministries who would tell him that [a military confrontation with NATO] is just going too far".
In the first place, there is simply no evidence that Putin considers a military confrontation with NATO to be "going too far," despite the fact that, in any military and economic sense, that is a true statement. The notion that Putin is simply bluffing, it's all some sort of dangerous and expensive ruse, is the sort of nonsense that passes for wisdom in too many Western governments. When the alternative is too scary to contemplate, denial works for a time, until the Russian bear comes crashing through the front door, sharpened teeth and claws at the ready.
[Putin is worth] $200 billion. After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on, all that money is in property, bank, Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.
Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution recently explained that one of the reasons sanctions against Russia weren't working was because they were designed to financially target Putin's close associates. "There's an element there of thinking you can hit the guys around Putin as if it's like a real oligarchy," Gaddy said. "These oligarchs, the richest people in the world, their only protection in that society [is Putin] This is like a Mafia operation. He makes sure that the key people around him are vulnerable." So the rules and penalties for 'insider trading' do not apply to them either ?
[NEWSWEEK] The battle for Debaltseve is over. On February 18, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, ordered his troops to withdraw from the city in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
The soldiers hadn't a chance of winning. They were easily outnumbered by pro-Russian forces, whom Moscow has supported throughout the conflict. As the Ukrainian soldiers made their way out of the bombed city, the ceasefire accord reached in Minsk on February 12 was in tatters.
Repeated calls by Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... , the German chancellor, to Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... , the Russian president, to implement the ceasefire have gone nowhere. Diplomacy has failed. What is more, Europeans have not grasped the implications of Ukraine losing its territorial integrity.
European leaders can wring their hands. They can threaten to ratchet up the sanctions they have imposed against Russia. But the damage has been done ever since March 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea. Through its weak response to Russian aggression, the E.U. has discarded the rules of the post--Cold War era.
Even the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, in which Western and Communist bloc leaders pledged to respect the inviolability of borders, has been torn up. Europe is entering a new and dangerous era for which it is completely unprepared.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/24/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Welcome to the Sudetenland. Europe has been on various rehab and suicide watches since it attempted to 'off' itself a hundred years ago. Getting the idea why your forefathers left or were thrown out ages ago?
Here in Europe, yes we see Putin as dodgy, but we also see him standing up for russian speakers who elect him.
We also saw the EU remove an elected president and install a puppet, which Putin took advantage of.
It's also rather unclear that people in the areas annexed ACTUALLY want to be ukrainian rather than russian.
[The American Spectator] Reagan went ahead with his speech. But he notes that a few weeks later the liberal teachers who had protested his appearance had a new demand. A "...demand was made that Central High School allow the U.S. Communist party secretary, Ben Davis, to speak -- the basis of the demand being that he was entitled to equal time because I had spoken."
Got that? The "equal time" spokesman selected for local liberals to oppose Ronald Reagan was an official of the U.S. Communist Party.
In other words? Ronald Reagan had not the slightest hesitation in connecting the liberal movement and the Democrats specifically to Communism -- just as Rudy Giuliani did the other day when he said of President Champ: "From the time he was 9 years - old, roughly 'dancing boy' age, he was influenced by father figureFrank Marshall Davis, who was a communist."
#2
All the focus is on whether Obama loves America. Because everything else Giuliani said is simply factual, and they don't want to talk about that. But the conservative media should keep bringing it up!
#3
A measure of how much truth is spoken against the left is how much pushback, squealing, and whining occurs from the liberals/progressives/communists. Rudy must have hit a lot of targets judging from the pushback.
#4
For in depth information on Davis and on Obama's Hawaii and early college years, read The Communist by Paul Kengor. 183 reviews, four and a half stars on Amazon.
#6
If I recall, there was a recent article confirming that Axelrod's daddy was a card carrying member of the Communist Part of the US. Valerie Jarrett has a long pedigree of Communist connections as well as Iranian (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2418)
Communist influenced people all around him, can we really not accept how deeply left this horrible man is?
[Iran Press TV] Former Maldivian president Mohammed Nasheed has been refused bail by a court a day after he was placed in durance vile I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! on terrorism charges.
A court on Monday refused to grant bail to Nasheed allegedly due to an attempt by him in 2013 to seek refuge in the Indian embassy in the capital, Malé.
Police used force to drag Nasheed into the court which, according to reports, caused him minor injury.
A front man for Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said the court has ordered the opposition leader to remain under police custody.
Shauna Aminath described the charges against Nasheed as politically motivated and a ploy to shut down protests ahead of a planned demonstration against the government of President Abdulla Yameen on Friday.
Nasheed's top legal adviser also deplored the government's decision to deny Nasheed any legal access.
"The conduct of the courts, police and President Yameen's administration has been reprehensible," said Hissan Hussein.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/24/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Obama: "We need to cut off all recognition of the Falklands!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/24/2015 19:58 Comments ||
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[The Blaze] "All this prep work culminates early Oscar Sunday, when the LAPD embarks on a block-by-block sweep of the neighborhood. By 3 p.m., the maze of streets around the Dolby is as locked down as a military base. Sharpshooters are positioned atop buildings, while close to 600 uniformed cops surround the perimeter in a daunting show of force."
#2
I think there was a media blackout of the protest. Err, whiteout...redout? No..greenout..ah FI.
The best chance of that protest getting any attention would have been Oprah. She was spotted cutting through security checks and acting the fool in the audience.
Whatever coverage there would have been was snuffed by some white rich bobblehead girl rambling about some equal pay cuz work b hard for girlz, or something.
I wonder if Oprah's original intent was to get some stage lighting on the protest, and when she realized that was not going to happen, booked it into the audience to get maximum face/schmooz time.
#6
The difference is that Chris Kyle shot brown people. These LA snipers didn't shoot anyone. And if the had, it would have been to defend Hollywood stars, which is a noble cause.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/24/2015 17:54 Comments ||
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#7
Wonder if the celebs or big events like this are made to pay the taxpayers back for all that extra security?
Posted by: chris ||
02/24/2015 19:24 Comments ||
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#8
Did we ever hear about how the "No Actors of Color Nominated" protests went?
#9
He's our best half-black actor in Hamlet!
Columbia's palest Othello yet!
Okay, so he's Arab,
Not chocolate but carob,
Not even a ham... maybe Baconette?
[American Thinker] Folks, I pray that what I am about to say will help open your eyes to the evil coming from the Left in our country (the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and the mainstream media). When you start teaching innocent little children to feel guilty for being born white, it can only be described as a war on white America.
I am black and very pleased with who God made me to be. Imagine the Left's reaction to a white person saying they are grateful for God's choice for their life. According to the Left, everyone (gays and minorities) are encouraged to be proud of who they are except white people.
I brought this up at dinner with white friends. I wonder how white America is dealing with the Left relentlessly trashing all things white? When will it reach a tipping point? My friends laughed, "Oh my gosh, Lloyd is becoming David Duke (white nationalist, former Grand Wizard of the KKK)." My friends were having a little fun with me. But one does have to wonder when whites begin saying, "Enough!" The Hollywood caricature of the stupid white male began decades before 'Family Guy.'
"Life of Riley" played on the radio in the '40s, I think...
#1
But one does have to wonder when whites begin saying, "Enough!"
They did in 1776. There's a reason for the 2d Amendment.
The Left sells guilt and hate. They have nothing else to offer. Covet thy neighbor's wealth, bear false witness, and steal that wealth is their program.
#2
1791, but that's just a detail, Procopius. And the 2nd Amendment was not about saying 'enough' to media, 'elite', acadamia, or even parties, but to Government. It may not matter anymore - the Founders tried but were unable to prevent the rot of government dependency.
#4
Every time I see a stupid white male TV commercial I email the Station and advertiser to express my outrage. Tell them I will never buy their products. Everyone should do it and flood them.
Posted by: Titus Snore6365 ||
02/24/2015 15:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[CNN] For the first time, the U.S. Air Force has resurrected a B-52 bomber that had been in long-term storage at the Boneyard, the portion of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, where the military sends aircraft that have been retired from the fleet.
Is Vladimir Putin hiding a $200 billion fortune? 
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
[The American Spectator] Reagan went ahead with his speech. But he notes that a few weeks later the liberal teachers who had protested his appearance had a new demand. A "...demand was made that Central High School allow the U.S. Communist party secretary, Ben Davis, to speak -- the basis of the demand being that he was entitled to equal time because I had spoken."
[The Blaze] "All this prep work culminates early Oscar Sunday, when the LAPD embarks on a block-by-block sweep of the neighborhood. By 3 p.m., the maze of streets around the Dolby is as locked down as a military base. Sharpshooters are positioned atop buildings, while close to 600 uniformed cops surround the perimeter in a daunting show of force."
