Rent This F-35 Parking Space - Cheap!

Another bizarre twist to the ongoing saga of the grotesquely incompetent and dysfunctional F-35 program.  The British have a spanking new aircraft carrier all ready to handle the F-35, but due to program delays Britain is now not due to get any until about 2021.  So they are looking for renters:


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30209960

NRA Is Digging Its Own Grave

The NRA is in a tough spot these days.  Between incompetent leadership and a mission that seems none too clear even to its members, things like this keep popping up from states that practically say "dump guns here".  Don't forget that there are some in the NRA who think mandatory training of children in guns is a "good thing" -- and you thought Common Core was bad?

Yet as recently as 1999, the NRA actually supported background checks for gun purchases.  For one of the most squirmy, wimp out of it performances of all time - see this.

LaPierre basically weasels his way around the fact that the improved gun check laws and purchase requirements that they once "supported" at least verbally but opposed in Congress are not effective.  (If they are never enacted, how can they be ineffective?).

The NRA is looking more and more like a bunch of idiots that don't know what their message is or where they are going.

For me -- I will do what I usually do as elections approach.  Look for those candidates that have received NRA donations and make sure to vote against them.

What Is the Gas Mileage on That Thing?

It's been awhile since we visited the F-35, that overblown, can't shoot, and pilots don't want to fly money pit at the Pentagon. 

It turns out now the ongoing costs are stubbornly refusing to go down...they basically need an overhaul every few hours of use, and they were recently nixed from crossing the Atlantic....the "little" ocean!

Guantanamo's Wreckage

I have recently become involved in a BBC effort that solicits commentary and analysis of BBC-produced programs.  It gave me the opportunity to listen to this documentary broadcast on the Guantanamo Bay prison - but  with the emphasis on prisoners who have been released.

It is a program that does not spoon-feed the listener the viewpoint they are supposed to be adopting like so many US "cable news" programs these days.  You actually need to think here - the story is told through the experiences of real people who were incarcerated at Guantanamo.  The story eventually tells itself very well, and it is not a pretty one for US citizens who in a very real way are responsible for the unjust, inhuman, and quite frankly invented reasons for keeping some of these people there at all.

Is It a Bird, a Plane? (Well, It's Supposed to Be!)

Comes the totally unsurprising word now that the F-35 is still broken (and still several times over budget).

The Marines have just grounded their whole fleet (for the tiny little reason that the engines have been bursting into flame) but if memory serves the Marines were the ones who got their first F-35s lacking some parts, like guns!  (Update -- the whole US fleet of F-35s has now been grounded).

If the Marines ever feel safe enough to actually fly all the way across the Atlantic in one of these things (where is Charles Lindbergh when you need him?), they now know they have a backup weapon - drop a flaming engine on the enemy!  Oh, wait...there is only one engine....scratch that idea.  Besides, the pilots apparently can't see well enough to aim anything at anyone anyway!
 

The Mystique of War

This insightful TED Talk by Sebastian Junger, a journalist who has covered many war zones is well worth watching.  This is why our politicians need to stop sending our young people off to far corners of the world on ill-designed quests for the politician's satisfaction of some abstract ideology, and then assuming that everything is going to be just fine and there will be no after-effects from the experience.

Naughty, Naughty Pentagon!

Sometimes I wonder if it is avarice, shrewdness, indifference, or just plain old incompetence that makes the Pentagon the worst run cabinet-level department almost since its inception.  At least a small part of the Senate (which is still getting a few things done, unlike the comatose House) is asking some pointed questions.