Sigh.
Perfect? No. But ..... sigh.
1 hour ago
Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
If there is an accidental pairing of a male napster with a female midn or vice versa just assign a new midn and email me. Apparently there were some very creative names that made the determination of the napsters gender quite difficult to figure out.Creative - indeed.
For more info, click here.Soldiers Angels Project VALOUR-IT TEAM NAVYProject Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries. Technology supplied includes:
- Voice-controlled Laptops - Operated by speaking into a microphone or using other adaptive technologies, they allow the wounded to maintain connections with the rest of the world during recovery.
- Wii Video Game Systems - Whole-body game systems increase motivation and speed recovery when used under the guidance of physical therapists in therapy sessions (donated only to medical facilities).
- Personal GPS - Handheld GPS devices build self-confidence and independence by compensating for short-term memory loss and organizational challenges related to severe TBI and severe PTSD.
Ozawa's "Northern Force" comprised four aircraft carriers (Zuikaku — the last survivor of the six carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the light carriers Zuihō, Chitose, and Chiyoda), two World War I battleships partially converted to carriers (Hyūga and Ise — the two after turrets had been replaced by a hangar, aircraft handling deck and catapult, but neither battleship carried any aircraft in this battle), three light cruisers (Ōyodo, Tama, and Isuzu), and nine destroyers. His force had only 108 aircraft.At the tactical level - the results came as expected.
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The force which Halsey was taking north with him — three groups of Mitscher's Task Force 38 — was overwhelmingly stronger than the Japanese Northern Force. Between them, these groups had five large fleet carriers (Intrepid, Franklin, Lexington, Enterprise, and Essex), five light fleet carriers (Independence, Belleau Wood, Langley, Cabot, and San Jacinto), six battleships (Alabama, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Washington), eight cruisers (two heavy and six light), and more than 40 destroyers. The air groups of the 10 US carriers present contained a total of more than 600-1,000 aircraft.
German unemployment fell slightly in October, dropping to its lowest level in 18 years as the impact of persistently strong growth in Europe's top economy continued to filter through to the jobs market.The German way ... the numbers speak for themselves. We went Left - and they did the economically right thing.
The number of jobless fell by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 3.153 million, figures from the Labor Office showed on Thursday, while the headline level dipped to 2.945 million, confirming figures announced a day earlier.
The headline reading fell below the 3 million mark — a key political threshold — for the first time since November 2008, to its lowest point since October 1992.
... On an adjusted basis, the jobless rate held steady at 7.5 percent.
In June, the German government announced an austerity package Why has the German (and broader European) economy sizzled at the same time as the much touted “Summer of Recovery” in the U.S. has fizzled?We can recover. All we need is the right leaders, the right policy, and time.
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As economist John Cochrane puts it, belief in the efficacy of government expenditure as economic stimulus requires a world where “people make plans to consume more, invest more, and pay more taxes with the same income (emphasis added).” The “same income” point is significant because an increase in consumption for a given amount of national income naturally results in a larger trade deficit. The increase in aggregate consumption not only increases spending on imports, but also increases domestic spending on goods and services that would have otherwise been exported (see Tony Makin’s chapter).
Although no breakdown is yet available, most analysts anticipate that a major driver of the German economic expansion was an increase in net exports. Part of this is due to the decline in the value of the euro, which made German-produced goods less expensive, but some of it is directly attributable to stimulus spending in the U.S. and China. When a hypercompetitive, high-end manufacturing base like Germany sees major trading partners increase government expenditure, the optimal policy response is to do nothing. Some of the increase in external demand will translate to increased exports, providing a boost to the domestic economy without a penny of additional borrowing.
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While the Obama Administration’s critique is reasonable from a raw arithmetic standpoint, blaming Germany’s robust growth on its failure to stimulate domestic consumption rings hollow. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) explains in its 2010 review of the German economy, “Germany’s strong export orientation stems from the openness of its economy, its long-standing manufacturing traditions and its competitiveness in global markets.” After enduring nearly a decade of slow growth and low inflation, Germany has disinflated its way to an extremely competitive position thanks to painful labor market reforms. The cost of one hour of labor in Germany is now extremely low relative to the economic value added in that hour. Better coordination of public expenditures is not going to erase Germany’s huge competitive advantage in high-end manufacturing.
... that provided the private sector with a clear and unambiguous message that public debt levels would not grow unsustainably. This likely instilled confidence in the private sector by reducing households and businesses’ estimates of the burden of government, which leads to an increase in consumption and investment.
In an attempt to reduce the Navy's dependence on petroleum, engineers designed and built an experimental craft that runs on a blend of 50 per cent diesel and 50 per cent algae-based fuel.Ummmm ... biodiesel isn't really that new or transformational. Dude in town runs his Dodge on cook'n grease from a fish camp. Hush Puppy smell all up and down the street.
The 49-foot command boat, which is intended for use in rivers and marshes, was tested at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia, reaching a speed of 44.5 knots.
Improve Diversity Representation Throughout our Corps ACMC, with DC M&RA & CG MCRC in direct support - chair a comprehensive review of the current diversity posture of and issues within the Marine Corps. This review will aim to develop a comprehensive, institutional strategy:Let me translate for you:
1) to improve the accession, retention and promotion of qualified individuals and 2) to foster immediate and marked adjustments for improved recruitment of minority Marines (officer and enlisted) along with their career development and mentoring. Upon implementation of an approved Service-wide strategy generated from this study, senior leaders will conduct periodic accountability reviews with CMC. (Due: 18 Feb 11)
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis appointed himself the city’s de facto fire commissioner last week by enjoining the department from hiring any new firefighters without his approval—and he will give his approval only to the racial hiring schemes he has already tried to foist on the department.BZ to Mayor Bloomberg. Sure, I have some issues with him from guns to trans-fat, but on this one he deserves all the support he can get.
Mayor Bloomberg has courageously refused to cave in to the judge’s quota demands—a stance vanishingly rare in today’s politically correct world. His refusal is justified, both legally and as a matter of policy. Judge Garaufis’s rulings have been capricious and biased, creating new law while ignoring facts that undercut his radical new doctrines. And Garaufis’s ultimate goal—to craft a future hiring process based on racial considerations—would put the city’s residents at risk by making skin color as important a qualification for firefighters as actual preparedness.
... Rudy Giuliani just told me at City Hall at his portrait unveiling that "the door's not closed" on the possibility of him running for president again in 2012.Giuliani-Pawlenty 2012; the unspellable ticket for unbearable times.
He said he won't think about anything until after the November midterm elections, and that he gets encouraged by people as he travels.
I asked, "So the door's not closed?" and he replied, "The door's not closed."
In a radio interview that aired on Univision on Monday, Mr. Obama sought to assure Hispanics that he would push an immigration overhaul after the midterm elections, despite fierce Republican opposition.... and then something his friends at the Justice Department must enjoy.
“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”
"We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."Would that be the back of the bus Mr. President?
Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth.Juan, BZ. At least you can look yourself in the mirror in the AM.
When college presidents and academic administrators pay their usual obeisance to "diversity" you know they are talking first and foremost about race. More specifically, they are talking about blacks. A diverse college campus is understood as one that has a student body that -- at a minimum -- is 5 to 7 percent black (i.e., equivalent to roughly half the proportion of blacks in the general population). A college or university that is only one, two, or three percent black would not be considered "diverse" by college administrators regardless of how demographically diverse its student body might be in other ways. The blacks in question need not be African Americans -- indeed at many of the most competitive colleges today, including many Ivy League schools, an estimated 40-50 percent of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants.This disgusting mindset that parallels US Navy policy to actively discriminate against those that don't fit their theory will spread in the strangest ways - like any cancer.
As a secondary meaning "diversity" can also encompass Hispanics, who together with blacks are often subsumed by college administrators and admissions officers under the single race category "underrepresented minorities." Most colleges and universities seeking "diversity" seek a similar proportion of Hispanics in their student body as blacks (since blacks and Hispanics are about equal in number in the general population), though meeting the black diversity goal usually has a much higher priority than meeting the Hispanic one.
Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Indeed, the opposite is often the case, as the quota-like mentality that leads college administrators to conclude they may have "too many" Asians. Despite the much lower number of Asians in the general high-school population, high-achieving Asian students -- those, for instance, with SAT scores in the high 700s -- are much more numerous than comparably high-achieving blacks and Hispanics, often by a factor of ten or more. Thinking as they do in racial balancing and racial quota terms, college admissions officers at the most competitive institutions almost always set the bar for admitting Asians far above that for Hispanics and even farther above that for admitting blacks.
But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. “Being an officer or winning awards” for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, “has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.” Excelling in these activities “is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.”Once you buy into bigoted theories of the Diversity Industry - more discrimination is easier and easier to do.
Espenshade and Radford don’t have much of an explanation for this find, which seems to place the private colleges even more at variance with their stated commitment to broadly based campus diversity. In his Bakke ruling Lewis Powell was impressed by the argument Harvard College offered defending the educational value of a demographically diverse student body: “A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.” The Espenshade/Radford study suggests that those farm boys from Idaho would do well to stay out of their local 4-H clubs or FFA organizations — or if they do join, they had better not list their membership on their college application forms. This is especially true if they were officers in any of these organizations. Future farmers of America don’t seem to count in the diversity-enhancement game played out at some of our more competitive private colleges, and are not only not recruited, but seem to be actually shunned. It is hard to explain this development other than as a case of ideological and cultural bias.
A tape recording of the 1970 shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier, a newspaper reported Friday citing the work of a forensic audio expert.The next part of the story is why for so long the political establishment and the press would not investigate the whole story - and instead decided to smear and blame the men of the Ohio National Guard who were just defending themselves.
The finding lends support to a theory that the guardsmen thought they were being shot at during a campus Vietnam War protest. Witnesses said at the time that an FBI informant monitoring the protest fired warning shots because he felt threatened.
The National Guard opened fire on student protesters on May 4, 1970, killing four and injuring nine others. Eight guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges four years later. Many believe the events contributed to the change in the public's attitude toward the war, which ended five years later.
The reel-to-reel audio recording was made by a Kent State student who placed a microphone at a windowsill in his dormitory, which overlooked the antiwar rally. He later turned the tape over to the FBI. A copy eventually wound up in a Yale University archive.
A crew from Cleveland's WKYC-TV filmed Norman running toward guardsmen and police and being chased by two men. One of the men yelled: "Hey, stop that man! I saw him shoot someone!" The crew recorded Norman handing a gun to a police officer, saying, "The guy tried to kill me." Norman later said he was referring to an assault that happened after the Guard shootings.That is a story that a good reporter needs to work on. Hopefully, more will follow.
Former WKYC reporter Fred DeBrine and soundman Joe Butano have said they heard a Kent State police detective open the cylinder of Norman's gun and say: "Oh my God, he fired four times." The detective denied making the remark. A campus patrolman's report said the gun was fully loaded with no smell of burned powder.
DeBrine and Butano repeated their assertion this week, the Plain Dealer reported. The paper said Norman has remained elusive for decades and could not be reached for comment.
"We looked up out on the horizon, and pretty soon all you could see were helicopters. And they came in and it was incredible. I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again," said Doyle, now retired and living in Rhode Island.Go here as well and see the video. These are the true Vietnam Veterans - not the cr@p fed to you by school books and Hollywierd. "Global Force For Good," something new? Child please; when has the USN not been a global force for good?
The South Vietnamese military helicopters were packed with people — pilots and their family and friends. And now, as some of the choppers were precariously low on fuel, the pilots were looking for a place to land. Dozens of UH-1 Huey helicopters flew past the Kirk heading for the larger aircraft carriers. The Kirk had only a small flight deck.
1. Fully Qualified. All officers recommended for assignment must be fully qualified; that is, each officer recommended must be capable of performing the required duties of the assignment officers that do not meet that standard shall not be recommended for assignment.Huh? ... and your point is? Will the next paragraph describe how humans are born with two eyes, two arms, and two legs?
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b. The Navy is comprised of Sailors representing 24 different ethnic groups and hundreds of cultural heritages. Fully qualified officers must be capable of leading personnel from widely varying backgrounds while executing the Navy’s strategic diversity initiatives. The Navy’s ability to meet this leadership challenge depends, in part, on having leaders who reflect our very best, including performance, professional experience, education, and the spectrum of professional communities.
Why are important projects now unaffordable? Decades ago, when the federal and state governments were much smaller, they had the means to undertake gigantic new projects, like the Interstate Highway System and the space program. But now, when governments are bigger, they don’t.A couple of years ago, the eldest of the wee Salamanders asked why when I was her age I had grown up watching rockets taking off for the moon. Why the spaceships in 2001: A Space Odyssey never happened even though the technology was there?
The answer is what Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal once called demosclerosis. Over the past few decades, governments have become entwined in a series of arrangements that drain money from productive uses and direct it toward unproductive ones.
New Jersey can’t afford to build its tunnel, but benefits packages for the state’s employees are 41 percent more expensive than those offered by the average Fortune 500 company. These benefits costs are rising by 16 percent a year.
New York City has to strain to finance its schools but must support 10,000 former cops who have retired before age 50.
California can’t afford new water projects, but state cops often receive 90 percent of their salaries when they retire at 50. The average corrections officer there makes $70,000 a year in base salary and $100,000 with overtime (California spends more on its prison system than on its schools).
States across the nation will be paralyzed for the rest of our lives because they face unfunded pension obligations that, if counted accurately, amount to $2 trillion — or $87,000 per plan participant.
As OMB director, Daniels was on the National Security Council, and as governor he's visited Indiana troops around the world; he says "it's important to support the commander in chief" on Afghanistan. But he's open to cuts in defense spending beyond those Secretary Robert Gates has imposed. "No question that the system is rigged to overspend," he says, "like health care. No question that defense dollars could be spent better."Gov. Daniels - we have ideas here, we've been discussing them for years. Let me give you the opening chapters - shall we review?
"But back to not becoming Greece," he says. "Can we continue with every mission we've assigned the military indefinitely? Is every one essential to the safety of Americans?"
"The answer may be yes," he concedes, "but you may have to stop doing some things completely. We are now borrowing the entire defense budget from international investors."
Today, the military is fully engaged in a war effort to stem the tide of al Qaeda and its radical brand of Islam. As we were warned, this will be long-term fight with a determined enemy willing to die for their cause. While fortunate to date that no large-scale attacks have been successfully carried out within our borders, it is up to everyone to keep up their guard and not allow complacency to overtake the daily grind of our jobs, school and kid’s soccer games.He's participating in comments - so stop by and add your $.02.
Amidst plenty of C2 confusion, this change essentially preserves the goodness of integration of Ech 1-Ech II, Provider-TYCOMs, and CPF-USFF via AIR/SURF/SUB FORs and re-affirms the tried and true C2 (responsibility, authority and accountability) of the Type Commanders--SURFPAC, SURFLANT, AIRPAC, AIRLANT, SUBPAC, SUBLANT.Like I said in comments over there, the sun looked brighter when I saw the term "Enterprise" go. Only one thing in the Navy should have "ENTERPRISE" in its name - and that would be a warship.
Great idea getting rid of the "Enterprise" term that unintentionally evolved in degrading C2. In our line of work, accountability for performance must reside with an individual and not a board room.
Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command and Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet announced on Wednesday a realignment of the command structure for the respective fleets.Yep, that second paragraph cracked me up.
Officials say the new structure establishes unambiguous command and control and administrative control lines of authority and accountability for ship manning, training, equipping and maintenance issues.
The action includes the realignment of Commander, Naval Air Forces and Commander, Naval Surface Forces from Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command to Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Navy also says, since naval forces are assigned to Type Commanders and not Fleet Type Commanders, the revision includes the direction that only Type Commanders have the authority to man, train, equip and maintain assigned forces.
The Navy's action also establishes a Fleet Integration Executive Panel chaired by both Commander U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander U.S. Fleet Forces Command, replacing the Fleet Readiness Enterprise, formerly led by U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
With the realignment, the Type Commanders reporting to Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet include: Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet / Commander, Naval Air Forces (AIRFOR); Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet / Commander, Naval Surface Forces (SURFOR); and Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The Type Commander reporting to Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command include: Commander, Naval Air Force, Atlantic; Commander, Naval Surface Force, Atlantic; Commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic / Commander, Submarine Forces (SUBFOR); Commander, Military Sealift Command; Commander, Navy Cyber Forces; and Commander, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command.
The quest for a low-cost, low-tech, irregular warfare aircraft to provide ground pounders with long loitering, on-call recon and strike got a big boost recently when Joint Forces Command’s Gen. James Mattis threw his support behind the Navy and Air Force “Imminent Fury” effort.What he said.
Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that he was taking a personal interest in the classified project, being run chiefly out of the Navy’s Irregular Warfare Office, that is looking at small turboprop aircraft for ground support. The sought after design falls somewhere between the Vietnam era OV-10 Bronco and A-1 Skyraider. It must stay aloft for a long time for surveillance needs but also have the punch to provide precise fire support when needed; a true “over the shoulder” aircraft for small ground units doing distributed operations in remote locations.
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“A LAAR aircraft capability has the potential to shift air support from a reactive threat response, to a more proactive approach that reduces sensor to shooter timelines, with immediate and accurate fires, providing surveillance and reconnaissance throughout a mission, while providing communication and navigation support to troops on the ground,” said Mattis.
"...he was a nice guy and a good lawyer and built up his fiefdom but he was pretty political. Like most of the senior people at Fannie Mae who had law degrees, he thought like a lawyer when it needed people with more business backgrounds. The lawyers only wanted lawyers in charge because they thought they were the smartest people in the room but didn't understand processes and lacked an operational mindset."A great question for him is, what was a lawyer mindset with no national security background going to bring to the NSA job?
Buried in the annual Coast Guard authorization act passed this week by Congress is wording that would strike from the U.S. Code the statement that all appointments to the Coast Guard Academy "shall be made without regard to the sex, race, color or religious beliefs of an applicant."Read the whole thing and wallow in the shame it brings to all of us.
Under current federal law the academy is "race neutral," but the change would put it on the same footing as other colleges and universities in balancing its enrollment by admitting students from specific groups.
Simply striking the sentence will not increase diversity, said Antonio Farias, the academy's director of diversity affairs.Yes, in 2010 we actively discriminate on the basis of race, creed, and color. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying to you - as an institution we admit it. Those who are promoting racist policies are not wearing hoods and sheets though, or brown shirts - but have Congressional parking spaces or have "Diversity" somewhere in their job title.
"We have to get out there and recruit," he said Thursday. "Having the sentence simply gone doesn't mean more qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds will apply. What it means is it gives us latitude in how we shape classes so we're on par with the Harvards, MITs and other highly selective colleges that are not under a race-blind arrangement, and gender blind and religious blind. We have had all these blinders on."
Farias said minority students would still have to meet all of the qualifications, and then their background becomes a "plus factor," as it would for a football player or a cellist.