XBradTC

Employees of Boeing Defense in the St. Louis Super Hornet/Growler production facility, as well as employees involved in helping manufacture F/A-18E/F components across the country, are breathing a collective sigh of relief. News just hit of an impending announcement that Kuwait will purchase 28 Super Hornets in a deal that could fetch just north of three billion U.S. dollars.

via Kuwait Set to Announce Super Hornet Deal | Fighter Sweep.

That’s some good news. And it looks like the US Navy is set to make some additional small buys of the Super.

The adoption of the Super as the replacement for the Kuwaiti’s legacy Hornets may also have some small influence on the choice of other nations shopping for their next generation fighter. Planes that sell successfully overseas tend to be adopted by more and more countries. That is, the more you sell, the more you sell. Partly that is because the extended production drives down unit costs. Partly it is also because the widespread service tends to make logistically supporting them over the service life more affordable.

When you are dealing with the mainstream media, it is always difficult to tell if you are dealing with willful ignorance or just plain old ignorance-ignorance. There are plenty of moronic savants in the national media who have cracked the “hot take” code to please their left-wing masters but have no fundamental grasp of history, or much of anything much of else.

The act of willful ignorance in the media manifests itself through bias, and lies of omission conjured up to serve that bias. These dishonest liars know they are dishonest liars, and willfully choose to not tell the world pertinent facts like, say, Baltimore has been run by Democrats for a half-century, Hillary Clinton is in favor of legally aborting infants born alive, Ted Kennedy abandoned a drowning woman, and George Zimmerman is Hispanic.

Anyone who knows anything about history understands that tactically and morally, Geller’s provocative Muhammad Cartoon Contest was no different than Dr. Martin Luther King’s landmark march from Selma to Montgomery.

The first thing the spittle-flecked will scream upon reading the above is that I am comparing Geller to King. I did not know King. I do not know Geller. I am not comparing anyone to anyone. What I’m comparing is one righteous cause to another.

The second thing the spittle-flecked will scream is that King never would have held a Draw Muhammad Cartoon Contest … which brings me to the first reason there is no moral or tactical difference between Garland and Selma:

via 6 Reasons Pamela Geller’s Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma – Breitbart.

Yup. I’m not at all surprised by the Left’s rush to condemn Geller. I’m disgusted by the fact that so many on the supposed Right wish to lick the boots of the Left, though.

For bragging rights: Why should the following road signs cause us to freak out, and how do they fit into the overall rubric of Jade Helm code-reading? In other words, what is the most paranoid interpretation you could place on these signs I found? Don’t forget to consider that “they” will insert decoys to avoid alerting the populace to what is really going on.

via Susan Katz Keating: Milspotters’ Challenge: Test Your Jade Helm Paranoia Factor.

You’ll have to click through to see the signs. But it’s worth it. Those who know, know.

//adjusts tin foil

Conspiracy theorists are freaking out over an upcoming military training exercise dubbed Jade Helm 15 – and a woman who shares a name with the operation is sick and tired of it.

“Maybe I have a low threshold, but I got annoyed pretty early,” Jade Helm told the Washington Post.

via Woman named Jade Helm sick of the conspiracy theories — but she agrees it’s ‘a kick-ass name’.

Not The Onion. Not The Duffel Blog.

The Army has announced that all 8 women who completed the initial phase of Ranger School, known as the Darby phase* will not be advancing to the Mountain phase of the course.

All eight of the women trying to move into the second phase of the Army’s elite Ranger school failed to move ahead to the school’s second, or mountain, phase. However, all qualified to restart the initial, or Darby, phase, Army officials said Friday.

Just under half of the soldiers vying to move ahead did so, according to Gary Jones, a spokesman for the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence. Tomorrow, 115 soldiers, all male, will start the mountain phase at Dahlonega, Georgia. Meanwhile, 101 male soldiers will join the eight women restarting the Darby phase at Fort Benning, Ga., on May 14. Thirty-five more soldiers, all men, washed out completely and will return to their units, officials said.

As you can tell from the numbers of men held back, and recycling through Darby, this is hardly unique.

Ranger School** is nominally a 61 day course. But quite a few people get recycled multiple times before completing the course. And the course is designed to be an endurance test, even if one completes it in the 61 days. Having to recycle multiple times drags that out quite a bit. Of course, that simply makes it even more challenging.

*back in the old days, it was sometimes called “city week” as it took place within the confines of Fort Benning- not exactly luxurious, but far more so than the Mountain and Florida phases.

**Your humble author never attended Ranger School. His initial entry training at Harmony Church was right next door to the Darby phase barracks, however, and watching the Ranger School candidates humping rucks and running everywhere left an impression on his young mind even as his own body was sore and tired from mere basic training.

Toby Harnden, the Times of London reporter who has covered war with the troops and United States politics with equanimity, tweeted on Wednesday: “Trumpeter, food blogger, actress, golfer get New York Times obits today but this man has death notice paid for by family.” Let’s fix that.

Heroes are born and made. Melvin Garten was born May 20, 1921 in New York City, where he became another smart Jewish boy attending City College of New York. Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, greatly altered his immediate plans. Upon graduation from CCNY, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper. He then married his girlfriend, Ruth Engelman of the Bronx, in November 1942. She was a war bride. Everyone said the marriage wouldn’t last, and they were right because the marriage ended on January 9, 2013 — the day she died.

via Don Surber: Melvin Garten, most decorated solider, dies at 93.

Do please read the whole thing. Melvin was a remarkable man, but much of what makes this story so interesting is the rest of his family.