So sayeth Fred ...

Orwell would be so proud ...

Ever wonder why such soulless, mindless bureaucratic dribble keeps finding its way into the "auto-delete" rule in your Outlook email - with otherwise brave, sane people's signature under the "Vr," line?

Attached is the September Blueprint. Communications themes for this month are Diversity. This aligns to the Strategic Business Plan goal of Enable Our People.

Talking points are as follows:

* NAVSEA's diversity vision seeks a workplace where individual differences are acknowledged, valued and used to sustain the organization's critical national defense efforts.
* Management Directive 715 (MD 715) is a tool to help ensure progress toward a fully diversified work environment that integrates EEO into NAVSEA's strategic mission.
* NAVSEA must begin now to realize a future workforce with diversity at all levels of the organization where the workforce understands and embraces diversity programs and values.
* A workplace environment free from harassment and prejudice has a direct and immediate impact on the NAVSEA mission.
* NAVSEA continues to emphasize the diversity of thought gained from different life experiences, and is expanding recruiting and outreach programs to diverse schools and organizations in order to expand our potential applicant pool. We are committed to being the nation's employer of choice by hiring the best and brightest workers available and keeping these talented individuals engaged in some of the nation's most interesting scientific and engineering work.

Simple. Few but the most racist and lost true believers actually believe this junk. Just go to the ref'd "MD 715." Read it all, if you can, but if not go just to the opening of Section II "Essential Elements of Model Agency Title VII and Rehabilitation Act Programs."

They don't believe it - it is required to be stated. That is why it reads so soulless and Commissariatish.

I would prefer that NAVSEA's theme for this month was "How and the heck do we fix this mess of Shipbuilding plan .... " but alas, I am a dreamer.

Hat tip NAVSEA Spy.

Palin on ANWR's Caribou

I think this picture about says it. Bring'n a little sanity to the discussion. Perfect.

Palin and Obama have a lot in common

Might as well save my readers the comments and emails.

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.
..
Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Stuff happens in life and in families --- a lot of families -- it is what you do when it happens that matters. I don't know about you, but I know what my house is made of.

Anyway, as Allah points out - I don't see the Obama camp getting all high-and-mighty about it.

Needless to say, for a variety of reasons you won’t be hearing anything about this from Team Barry. But in case any more reason was needed, people are e-mailing to remind me that The One’s mother was also a teenager when she gave birth to him and married his father just six months before he was born. That won’t stop the left from attacking, of course — remember, the ostensible sin here is hypocrisy, not teen motherhood, even though the point clearly enough is to try to shame Palin with her daughter’s morals.

....and yes, I saw the ring last Friday (you can too if you look at the pic on the upper right), but said nothing. I think it is fair to say that this is something the McCain camp knew about and was not going to hide.

Playing Twister with Vaseline

After my, "Dude, you owe me a beer!" call last Friday, I had one of those curve-ball weekends that didn't give me much time to do anything near a computer -- so let me catch us up on McCain-Palin. (be-still my fluttering heart).

I am still a bit off-bubble from this weekend, so mostly I am going to steal from others -- starting with the title of this post.

My support for Palin is mostly that she is just what we need as a nation and a party -- and offers the Republican Party an opportunity to break the dead hand of the old leadership and shift to a new Generation (like Rep. McCotter (R-MI), Gov. Jindal (R-LA), and Rep. Putnam (R-FL) and others ). That is the Strategic view. The Operational view though is that this just twists the Democrats in knots -- not the XX vs XY one that many jerk towards, no --- something much more substantive. Do they really want underestimate this? (full video here)

You need to read it all, but here is a sampler.

In fact, McCain's pick of Governer Palin has lathered the Presidential game of Twister with a nice coat of Vaseline. Obama and Biden best be wary how they contort themselves here. In the words of comedian Brian Regan: "Right foot red... BROKEN! Left foot green... BROKEN."

Let's review the minefield that Team Obama/Biden must navigate with Palin on board.

Palin has more executive experience than Obama himself (having run a company, a PTO, a town and then Alaska).

• WARNING: Bring up the experience issue at your own peril.
• SAMPLE: "When Senator Obama started his first run for local office I was already a two-term mayor. If you simply count the years of experience, I win, frankly."

• Palin fought corruption in an AK GOP party that was (and still is) full of it
  
  • WARNING: Careful around the "ethical" issues
  • SAMPLE: "Like Chicago politics, Alaska politics can sometimes get dirty. In my case I fought my own party tooth and nail for substantive change. I'll let voters decide what Barack Obama did in Chicago."

Her parents sound like they have a nice story too!

The father of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin says he's been left "speechless" by the announcement that his daughter is John McCain's running mate.

Chuck and Sally Heath got a call from Palin's husband, Todd, yesterday as they were driving to a remote camp in Alaska to hunt caribou. Todd Palin told them to make sure they listen to the radio news because the camp is out of cell phone range.
...
The announcement has proven amusing to Heath. After dealing with constant phone calls, he says he'd "rather go moose hunting than be involved with politics."

Rich Lowry, I think, hits just the right note.

Palin is the Republicans' first woman vice-presidential nominee and, of course, has a chance to be the nation's first woman vice president. But "firsts" aside, she's potentially so compelling because she has lived so close to the everyday experience of Americans.

Both McCain and Obama come out of elites removed from middle-class life - in McCain's case, the aristocracy of the Navy; in Obama's, the Ivy League and uber-liberal Hyde Park politics.

Obama tried to pick someone with a connection to working-class life, and got Joe Biden - who's famously from Scranton, but has marinated in the US Senate for the last 35 years.

Palin's the real thing. She met her husband of 20 years in high school. As she said yesterday, she and her husband "grew up working with our hands." A fisherman and snowmobiler, he's a member of the United Steelworkers union and works in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope.

She was "just your average hockey mom," then joined the PTA, got elected to City Council and mayor and won an upset campaign for governor two years ago.

Alaska's Republican Party is a cesspool of cronyism, earmarking and gross self-dealing - and Palin took direct aim at it when she challenged incumbent Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski and beat him in a primary. She went on to defeat ex-Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general.

And I bet they have no idea what the price of Arugula is a Wholefoods.

Finally, if like me life took you away from the tube - here it is. I like part 2 better, but see both.





Anyway -- she looks better than GWB in a flight suit - and more importantaly takes time to visit her troops.

If you haven't already, please read BeldarBlog's bit, and do like I did - order the book.

---

Enough seriousness. RedState Update, as usual hits the high points.



And remember that Gov. Palin was once a Sports Anchor? Check out that '80s hair!

---

Just to be fair and balanced. One of the leaders of the Obama camp offers this erudite, balanced, argument.

NB: actually Diddy - it's 1 out of 20 --- if you must know. And it is Meth, not Crack that is the issue; if you cared to know.

Now THAT is how you deliver a ship ... errr ... boat

The Navy gets the keys today (28 AUG) to its newest nuclear submarine, the New Hampshire.

Eight months ahead of schedule and $40 million under budget, the New Hampshire

The New Hampshire was christened in June and has gone through sea trials since then.

The Navy will run more sea trials and training before the sub makes its way to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for commissioning in October. will be turned over to the Navy at the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn.

Nuff said.

The 7G P-3

Let's see - they have to park ~25% or so of the P-3 fleet due to happy-talk about aircraft fatigue for over a decade that couldn't be happy talked anymore, and the rest are still all are just plain old. P-3 Spy tells me that per-pilot flight hours have gone through the floor, and Instructor Pilot standards on number of flight hours until you can be one have fallen as well. What does that help get you?

P-3s were involved in six mishaps so far this fiscal year, according to Naval Safety Center spokeswoman April Phillips. Despite the fact that there were eight last year, all but one were Class C, the lowest level of mishap.

In each of three classes of mishaps, P-3 mishaps rates have increased during the past decade — from zero to 1.23 per 100,000 hours flown for Class A mishaps, and from zero to 1.23 per 100,000 hours flown for mishaps involving a serious injury or between $200,000 and $1 million in damages, know as Class B.

For Class C — mishaps involving $20,000 to $200,000 in damages — the rate has been higher than seven mishaps per 100,000 hours for four of the five most recent years. A decade ago, that rate was less than 4 per 100,000 hours flown.

In February, the Navy said it needed $548 million in extra fiscal 2009 funding to fix cracks in P-3 wings and to bolster research and development for its replacement, the P-8 multimission maritime aircraft, in hopes of moving up its arrival to the fleet. The funding was the No. 1 item in the Navy’s unfunded “wish list,” which reflects items not included in the service’s budget submission.

Navy spokesman Lt. Clayton Doss said the fact that the repair money wasn’t in the budget submission doesn’t mean the Navy is ignoring the problem. Repairs were put on the list, Doss said, because the budget already had been completed when the extent of the structural issues was discovered.

When you read "discovered" - read "admitted to."

So, how does this play with the following? Heck, I don't know ... but if you connect the dots ...

....a Patrol Squadron 1 pilot lost control of a P-3 after an engine surged during a training exercise near Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.

The aircraft dropped 5,500 feet, pulling 7 Gs before its pilot regained control less than 200 feet from the ground, according to the reports. The aircraft lost 45 rivets, broke a wing spar and bent its airframe; it landed safely at Whidbey with its crew unharmed.

JOs are all over some boards with more info.

They did five spin rotations from 5500 ft- - they bottomed out "between 50 and 200 ft"!! They could see the inside of the fuel tanks when they landed. I'll forward the pictures this evening.

They were at 160 KIAS, appr flaps during a prop fails to feather drill on #1 when #2 started surging. They bagged #2, but while doing so got to 122 KIAS. When they added power, they were way below Vmcair, and departed. About a minute later, just before impact, they recovered.
...
The P-3C that almost went into Puget Sound waters a few days ago was from NAS Whidbey.

• It was a CPW-10 aircraft being operated by VP-1.
• Squadrons don't own aircraft any more.
• The P-3 fleet has so deteriorated because of under-funding and over-use that there are less than 100 still flyable*.
• The P-3s belong to the wing and are "lent to the squadrons on an as-needed" basis.
• The mission was a NATOPS pilot check, with a CPW-10 pilot (LT) aboard, a VP-1 LT and LTJG, plus VP-1 aircrewmen that included two flight engineers.
• The word is that the crew finally recovered control of the aircraft about 100 feet above MSL by pulling 7 Gs.
• The bird was landed back at NASW.
• Max damage was sustained by the aircraft, including almost tearing off a wing.
• Aircraft BuNo 161331.
• My first thought is that this was a Vmc incident:
• At Whidbey, P-3C 161331 was doing a Functional Check Flight.
• They shut down #1 engine.
• With #1 off, #2 engine exhibited vibrations and was shutdown.
• With two engines off on the same side the aircraft stalled.
• 7 G's were reported to pull it out of the stall.
• 45 consecutive rivets were pulled out on the stbd wing during the 7 G pull out (rolling pull), after peaking at negative 2.4g's as well.
• They did five spin rotations from 5500 ft -- they bottomed out "between 50 and 200 ft."
• They could see the inside of the fuel tanks when they landed.
• They were at 160 KIAS, appr flaps during a prop fails to feather drill on #1 when #2 started surging.
• They bagged #2, but while doing so got to 122 KIAS.
• When they added power, they were way below VMC air, and departed.
• SDRS recorded the flaps being raised and the landing gear being cycled down and then back up.
• Aircraft released all the fuel in tank #3 when it appears that the seam between planks 3 and 4 split.
• Tank #4 also lost its fuel load when plank #1 separated from rest of the aircraft wing."

Yikes. We have lost aircraft before -- so it was most likely just the man-luck and aircraft-luck odds just met up in a way that the most important thing, the people, were able to walk away. Therefore, it was a good flight.

AW1, here are the pics for 'ya!