Military Helicopter Flight Training

A friend of mine from my unit in Vietnam sent this U.S. Army training film of Helicopter Flight Training. When I went through, the program was 12 months beginning at Ft. Wolters, Texas and finishing at Ft. Rucker, Ala.

Boy, does this bring back memories. Some observations:

When one solos for the first time the other candidates really do throw you in a pool. In this case, the pool was at the local Holiday Inn.  I was the 6th candidate in my class to solo (after 9 hours of flight time). Everything about that first flight is etched forever in memory because, when my instructor, Marshall Heckaman, told me to "take it around", we had just completed the day's lesson, but I had been thinking that I was going to be flunked out. The damn thing was impossible to control (or so I thought). I honestly had no idea I had been flying the aircraft virtually the whole time. Those instructors were sneaky.

Instrument flight training was really, really hard. It made me sick because I could not see the horizon and the instructor (knowing this, I think) would throw the aircraft out of trim forcing me to reorient the damn thing. I did well, though and was one of only three guys to get a full instrument flight rating.

Flight training was pretty scary sometimes, but the really scary parts were also the most exhilarating. As you might imagine, we all hungered for the low-level gun runs. In this film, they do a great job of illustrating what it looks like from inside the aircraft. My instructor screamed at me if I ever got above 15' above the ground. Believe me, at 140 knots, 10 feet off the deck with the M60s blazing -- it's like nothing you could imagine.

Third, the eight day exercise was really cool -- especially the night navigation part. You'll see a bit of it toward the end when a guy runs out and lights up a small landing area with 5 or 6 torches. But note that the landing area is illuminated ONLY AFTER the pilot is on close final (i.e., just about to land). Prior to that, we were looking for a light no brighter than that given off by a match flare.

I count those two years (1 year of flight school and my tour in Vietnam) as possibly most formative ones of my life.

Fair Share? What does that mean exactly?

Via The Tax Policy Blog

 

It didn’t go unnoticed, during Obama’s attempt to calm the market, his claim that “fairness” will turn this economy around. What we need, Obama claimed, is for “wealthy Americans and corporations” to pay more in taxes. In other words, we need to equalize the distribution of wealth.

 

Why do lefties like Obama believe this? I can think of two reasons: First, Obama is simply illiterate economically. He really believes that American’s economic  troubles stem from tax rates that are skewed to the poor, i.e., are regressive. That’s fair argument and an economic one for which hard data can be marshalled in its support – or can’t. Consider this:

• Recently released IRS data for 2009, shows that taxpayers earning over $200,000 paid 50 percent of the $866 billion in total income taxes paid that year, or $434 billion. Skeptics will say, "That's because they earn the majority of the income in America. Not so. These taxpayers earned 25 percent of the $7.6 trillion in total adjusted gross income in the country that year.
• The 2009 IRS data also shows that a record 58.6 million tax filers had no income tax liability that year. This means that 42 percent of the 140 million Americans who filed tax returns that year contributed nothing to the basic cost of government.
• Millions of people received cash "refunds" in 2009 even though they paid no income taxes: Some 21 million nonpayers received $27.5 billion in refundable credits from the child credit; Obama's Making Work Pay program gave out $12.8 billion in refundable credits to 32 million filers; The Earned Income Tax Credit program doled out $54 billion in refundable credits to 24.9 million filers; and, nearly 5 million filers received $3.9 billion in refundable Education Credits and roughly 1 million filers got $4.65 billion in refundable credits under the First Time Homebuyers credit program.

What about the corporations, then? Here, also, is an inconvenient truth (at least for Obama and other lefty redistributionists):

• In 2008, the roughly 1,900 largest corporations paid $152 billion in income taxes. This amounted to 67 percent of the $227 billion in total corporate income taxes paid that year.

Second,  Obama, like so many lefty ideologues, is captured by the siren song of equality. To Obama, the presence of inequality is manifest evidence of injustice. As evidence of this is his use of the phrase “fair share”.  But, F.A. Hayak put this argument to bed as follows:

 

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time

 

This shouldn’t surprise – It’s the quote on this blog’s masthead.

How's that Hopey Changey thing workin' for ya?

Barack Obama, 27 Aug, 2008

 

And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

 

Hmmm – the greens of Iran, the protestors in Egypt and Syria, and the insurgents in Libya all put their hope into an American response. What did they get? Bupkus!

 

 

President Obama - Faithful Christian or Panderer? You decide

President Obama invokes the name of Jesus more that did President Bush

DNA Components Found In Ancient Meteorites

I’m not quite sure why this is newsworthy except, perhaps, to rile the waters in which creationists and atheists swim. However, I call your attention to this paragraph from the story:

 

For decades the scientific community had hypothesized that a chemical process inside comets and meteorites could create elements of DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic acid. The ladder-like molecule contains genetic “blueprints” needed to create life and living organisms. It’s made up of four different molecules, called nucleobases, which lock together rung-by-rung in the now-iconic double-helix shape. (my emphasis)

 

The claim that DNA is necessary to create life is objectively wrong. Scientists do not know the criteria (chemical, physical, or biological) necessary to create life. The importance of nucleic acids for life lies in its ability to mediate reproduction, not create life. How life came into being? No one knows.

 

Nor is this a minor point. Both sides of the origin-of-life debate often conflate reproduction with creation and this surely obscures the controversy. At the moment, science and scientists do not understand how life came into being.

 

Truth in advertising: I am a firm believer in evolution by natural selection (ENS, aka Darwinian evolution). But when discussing the merits of ENS, anti-creationists must first acknowledge this essential truth.

 

Obama: Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Brett Stephens, Wall Street Journal,

But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.

Read the whole article

Full Frontal Bachmann

[She] proved that one man, all by his lonesome, didn't stand a chance when faced with the Full Bachmann

ABC's Jake Tapper: "What Is The President Doing?"

From Mike Allen’s Playbook:

 

ABC’s Jake Tapper, to Jay Carney at yesterday’s [Aug 4, 2011] briefing: “[W]hat is the President doing? … [W]e know that … he went to fundraisers last night. What is he doing today? … He stood up there and hectored Congress about all the stuff that needs to be done to help create jobs … and then he flew off to Chicago. What’s he doing today? … So the same stuff he was doing a couple of months ago, calling on Congress to pass things? … Has he called Mitch McConnell? Has he called John Boehner? … [I]s he working on things that they can do? … You’re the one that’s always saying the President can walk and chew gum at the same time. … Other than calling on Congress to pass things that you’ve been calling on Congress to pass for months, what is he doing to help the economy?”

The Civility Project

The National Conference of Editorial Writers, an institution established sixty-four years ago, has adopted at new mission something called the “Civility Project”. The Civility Project endeavors to improve the quality of political discourse. Accordingly, they’ve just elected Froma Harrop, a syndicated columnist and member of the Providence Journal’s editorial board. Here’s what Mr. Harrop wrote yesterday in his syndicated column:

 

"Make no mistake: The tea party Republicans have engaged in economic terrorism against the United States--threatening to blow up the economy if they don't get what they want. And like the al-Qaida bombers, what they want is delusional: the dream of restoring some fantasy caliphate. . . . Americans are not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, but that's what Obama has been doing. . . . That the Republican leadership couldn't control a small group of ignoramuses in its ranks has brought disgrace on their party…"

 

How’s that for a start to the Civility Project?

 

Hat Tip – James Taranto, Best of the Web

Samuel Adams on the Tea-Party and the Debt-ceiling Debate

To those who understand Government’s first duty as ensuring our well-being (which is to say Democrats and those that vote for them), reflect on this:

 

"If ye love comfort better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, [then] go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands of your master. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

 

--Samuel Adams, 1776

 

Surely, Sam Adams was the first Tea Partier…

 

“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

Fun and Sarcasm from the Blogosphere This Morning

They told me if I voted for Bush other countries would cease to respect us -- and they were right!   U.S. a parasite, says Putin.

 

Now that the tea-party “terrorists” have got their way in the debt-ceiling debate, here’s a partial list of the horrors  about to be unleashed:

·         Roving bands of outlaws stalk our streets, selling incandescent bulbs to vulnerable children..

·         Beltway policy experts begin living by own wits; after 45 minutes there are no survivors.

·         NPR news segments no longer buffered by soothing zither interludes.

·         Breadlines teeming with jobless Outreach Coordinators, Diversity Liaisons, and Sustainability Facilitators.

·         General Motors unfairly forced to build cars that people want, for a profit.

·         Chaos reigns at Goldman Sachs, who no longer knows who to bribe with political donations.

·         No longer protected by government warning labels, massive wave of amputations from people sticking limbs into lawn mowers

·         WH communications office reduced to sending talking points to Media Matters via smoke signals and log drums.

·         Potential 5-year old terrorists head to boarding gates ungroped.

·         Defenseless mortgage holders forced to live in houses they can actually afford.

·         Without college loan program, America loses an entire generation of Marxist Dance Theorists.

·         President Obama places tarp over Washington Monument to conceal from Chinese repo men. .

All kidding aside, maybe there is something to the left’s fear of the Tea Party. Surely, when Tom Friedman notes that the Tea Party is the Hezbollah faction of the Republican Party we ought to take note.  

 

Can you feel the love! Tea Partiers are terrorists, Nazi’s, and members of Hezbollah… How’re those healing words workin’ out for ya’?

 

From Pajama’s Media, Ed Driscoll on the Orwellian doublethink of the left:

 

“ to call the grass-roots, libertarian-oriented Tea Party “Totalitarian.” This has to be the first “Totalitarian” movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone.”

 

On the debt-ceiling deal: Somebody explain to me how increasing our credit card limit lowers our risk of default? Shouldn’t the government be reducing spending, not borrowing? I mean, that’s what the little people do.