Author Archives: BZ

Report: Unions Funding GOP Super PAC That Targets Tea Party

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Fat Cat Old Guard GOPWhat?

Did you read that correctly?

A GOP Super PAC exists — funded by Demorat Unions — that works against the TEA Party?

In one word: yes.

From Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com:

by Michael Patrick Leahy

On Monday, the National Journal reported that “documents filed by other groups show that two labor organizations, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Laborers’ International Union of North America, directed a combined $400,000 to the Republican group [the Defending Main Street super PAC] in September and October.”

The Defending Main Street super PAC was organized at the end of 2012 by former Congressman Steve LaTourette (R-OH), and  has very publicly declared war on the Tea Party. It is affiliated with and has offices at the same location as the Republican Main Street Project, which LaTourette currently heads and which former Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) led from 2009 to 2012.

So.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Captain ObviousPlease allow me to hold hands with Captain Obvious for a few minutes, and state the blatant:

The Old Guard GOP consists of those persons whose (R) behind their name means they are arrogant, elitist, supercilious, aristocratic, pretentious, grandiloquent and — more importantly — separate from you and me.

And they want to keep it that way.

Just like the Demorats.

They exist in the Rarified Air of the DC Beltway and knock down high-octane cocktails at the end of the day — asshole to elbow — with the Demorats.

These persons have names like John McCain and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Lindsey Graham.  To start.

And they need to be eliminated and voted out of office and their benefits eradicated as well.

One final paragraph:

Tea Party activists around the country were not surprised that the Republican establishment has enlisted the financial support of unions in their efforts to defeat limited government policies. Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party, told Breitbart News on Monday “this confirms our belief that Washington, D.C. is about one thing and that is power. Whatever method will allow those in D.C. to keep power will be used.”

Finally.  The GOP is making their game clear.

Which is why I no longer write checks to the GOP — and I vote Independent.

BZ

 

 

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Flash Mob at the Air & Space Smithsonian: the USAF Band

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This occurred on Tuesday, December 3rd, as one solo cellist transformed into 120 players and singers of the USAF Band.  Members, once hidden behind exhibits, shed coats and walked to the main floor, and singers congregated on the second floor.

Merry Christmas, one and all, and God bless America.

BZ

 

 

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70% Of Calfornia’s Doctors Expected To Boycott Obamacare

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ObamaCare DoctorsFrom ZeroHedge.com:

Submitted by Tyler Durden

“We need some recognition that we’re doing a service to the community. But we can’t do it for free. And we can’t do it at a loss. No other business would do that,” exclaims the president of the California Medical Association.

As The Washington Examiner reports, independent insurance brokers estimate 70% of California’s 104,000 licensed doctors are boycotting the exchange. “The Covered California board says we have plenty of doctors, and they allege they have 85 percent of doctors participating, but they’ve shown no numbers,” and if a large number of doctors either balk at participating in the exchange or retire, the state’s medical system could be overwhelmed. “Enrollment doesn’t mean access, because there aren’t enough doctors to take the low rates of Medicaid,” warns one health director. “There aren’t enough primary care physicians, period.”

Via The Washington Examiner,

An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest medical association said.

“It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a high rate of nonparticipation,” said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association.

California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country — 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.

“Some physicians have been put in the network and they were included basically without their permission,” Lisa Folberg said. She is a CMA’s vice president of medical and regulatory Policy.

“They may be listed as actually participating, but not of their own volition,”

“This is a dirty little secret that is not really talked about as they promote Covered California,” Waters said. He called the exchange’s doctors list a “shell game” because “the vast majority” of his doctors are not participating

Imagine that.

But, you see, there’s a niggling little problem that no one seems to be addressing in the first place, completely absent ObakaKare.

My personal doctor, who is himself 65, said that he is retiring soon, as are a large number of physicians in Fornicalia.  He is retiring because he has become an automaton, he says, and paperwork takes a vast amount of his time.  He no longer cares for the physicians’ environment in general, and says that many of his colleagues, some much younger than himself, are “disappointed and disgusted” with the way they are treated by their administrations, by the government, by the press and sometimes by the public — which has come to believe they are overpaid and underworked elitists driving Bentleys and playing golf every day.

There will be, he says, a large sucking sound next year when doctors throughout the nation — who don’t have to — opt for either early retirement or a career change.  Or, he says, they’ll choose to work strictly for cash in a concierge fashion and totally eschew dealing with insurance.

The second problem regards nursing staff and the lack thereof.  The number of nurses and assistants are dwindling.  That includes the number of nurses who speak English (as opposed to a corrupted form of Engrish).  In the correctional aspect of my own LE department, the nurse who speaks actual decipherable English is the exception and not the rule.  Good luck on your dressing change.

Because of this, it is certain that additional demands will be made on the various classes of nurses/assistants remaining, in order to, necessarily, bypass doctors who no longer exist in sufficient quantity to perform some future tasks.  This is guaranteed.

Now add ObakaKare on top of that hot and frothing mess.

As to Fornicalia’s “Covered California,” it too is soon to be revealed as one additional hot and frothing mess.  The lies will be exposed like shit in a box from a cat with Parkinsons.

Anyone besides me believe that Governor Brown’s current 58% approval rating might be a bit tarnished in the next few weeks?

BZ

P.S.
Also, please check out the comments in the source article.

 

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Lockheed unveils SR-72 hypersonic Mach 6 scramjet spy plane

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From the minds of Clarence “Kelly” Johnson and Ben Rich came the original Skunk Works, a Lockheed conceptual project initiated in 1943.

Skunk Works Logo“Many times a customer would come to the Skunk Works with a request and on a handshake the project would begin, no contracts in place, no official submittal process.”

The Skunk Works — still alive and thriving today — resulted in ground-breaking aircraft, such as:

This is an impressive list of airframes from the minds of people unconstrained in their thoughts and willing to push the technological envelope of the times, from every angle.

I proffer that the SR-71 was the most enthralling and technologically advanced aircraft of the entire 20th century and into the 21st.  It was an airframe designed, literally, by white male geeks in short-sleeved dry-cleaned white shirts and thin dark ties, wearing brown plastic framed thick glasses, pocket protectors and utilizing wooden slide rules.  Computers simply did not exist en masse.  They sat at cheap pine tables and produced pages and pages of blue drafts, with hand-lettered notes and ennui enabled by T-squares.

The SR-71 served with the USAF from 1964 to 1998, and a total of 32 aircraft were built.  12 were lost in accidents, but none were lost to enemy action.[3][4]

The SR-71 is an aircraft, completely analog, that was allowed to perish due to age and expense.  It was, arguably, the costliest aircraft to have ever existed in the USAF inventory.

Since its demise there has been much speculation as to its replacement.  Was it Aurora?  And what would an Aurora aircraft look like?  Would it even be manned, considering the ubiquitous nature of drones today?

And, further, why would you not want a replacement?  There exist times of crisis when moving geosynchronous satellites simply won’t do, for two very important reasons: 1) it is too slow, and 2) you can only move a satellite ____ times before you deplete its finite fuel capacity.  America had the capability to hustle an SR-71 from Kadena or Beale and be over a trouble spot in as little as an hour or two.

With all that in mind, however, it appears the successor to the incredible SR-71 has been “outed,” if you will, by an article from ExtremeTech.com.

It has been designated the SR-72.

by Sebastian Anthony

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has confirmed that it is developing the SR-72 spy plane. The successor to the SR-71 Blackbird, which was capable of Mach 3.5, the SR-72 will be a hypersonic unmanned aircraft capable of Mach 6, or just over 4,500 mph. At hypersonic speeds, the SR-72 will be able to traverse any continent in around an hour — meaning, if they’re strategically positioned around the world on aircraft carriers, the US military can strike or surveil any location on Earth in about an hour. It is also suspected that the SR-72′s hypersonic engine tech — some kind of hybrid scramjet — will find its way into the US military’s High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW), a missile that can theoretically strike anywhere on Earth in just a few minutes.

Lockheed SR-72The SR-72, despite the similar name, is a completely new plane. At the moment, the SR-72 is still only a concept, though Lockheed has now confirmed that the plane is in active development. An optionally piloted scale version of the plane with a single engine will be built in 2018, with test flights scheduled for 2023. If all goes to plan (funding hasn’t yet been secured by Lockheed Martin), a full-size SR-72 (about 100 feet long) will be built and tested by 2030. As it stands, the current plan is for the SR-72 to be unmanned. It will be a very, very large drone. It will probably be unarmed, too, and outfitted entirely for intelligence gathering, though it’s too early to say for sure.

While the SR-72 will undoubtedly be a paragon of stealth and fashioned from monolithic crystals of titanium wrapped in carbon fiber, its defining feature is its operational speed of Mach 6 — or 4,567 mph (7,350 kph). At this speed, the SR-72 can cross the Atlantic (or Europe or China or…) in about an hour — or circumnavigate the planet in six hours. At an operational altitude of around 80,000 feet (24,300 meters) and Mach 6, the SR-72 will be almost impossible to shoot down.

Groom Lake and Area 51: Wonderland all over again.

BZ

 

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Vince Flynn’s last book postponed indefinitely?

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Vince FlynnIt was with great sadness that I heard author Vince Flynn had died at the age of 47, of prostate cancer, June 19th of this year.

He passed away in a St. Paul, Minnesota hospital, surrounded with over thirty family members and friends.

“Flynn was diagnosed with stage three metastatic prostate cancer in November 2010. The fatigue from his radiation treatments eventually made it difficult to focus on writing for more than an hour or two, and in October 2011, he reluctantly postponed publication for several months of his 13th book, “Kill Shot,” which followed Rapp’s adventures as he pursued those responsible for the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.”

Flynn had written 14 books in all, with a 15th, “The Survivor,” slated to come out in hardback in November.

Perhaps like myself, many fans were expecting Flynn’s book to be published posthumously, as Tom Clancy’s last novel is now being released.

Author Tom Clancy passed away on October 2nd of this year.  His last novel, Command Authority, is available via Amazon and other stores, co-authored by one of my newest favorite spy writers, Mark Greaney, a major WordForce in and of himself.

But, now, there is a major fly in the ointment of Flynn’s final release.

From the StarTribune.com:

by Kristin Tillotson

Vince Flynn, the author of the best-selling Mitch Rapp political thrillers, was working on the 14th installment in the series, titled “The Survivor,” when he died of cancer in June. The book was to have been released in October.

His publisher, SImon & Schuster, has released a statement saying that the St. Paul native’s book is “postponed indefinitely” because it is “too soon to know” how much he had completed.

Ordinarily Vince’s editor, Emily Bestler, would have been in constant communication with him about the book, but during his last six months, Flynn’s health was the only priority, said Simon & Schuster spokesman David Brown: “We know Vince was working, we just don’t know yet what he was able to accomplish. It’s just a matter of waiting for an appropriate time to sit down with his family and discuss everything. Right now we’re still mourning the loss.”

The implication of the statement seems to be that if it is determined there is enough material to publish the book posthumously, another writer or editor may be called in to finish it. Otherwise, it will likely be cancelled.

The same holds true for a collaboration Flynn was working on with writer Brian Haig, the statement said, though that book is still available for pre-order.

Allow me to state the obvious, if I might.  Vince Flynn ate the lunch of many current spy and mystery authors today.

Daniel Silva is a current spy classic, as is Alex Berenson.  And you already know what I think of Mark Greaney.  Brad Thor provides interesting concepts but I find his writing somewhat clumsy.

With luck, “The Survivor” will be released.

BZ

 

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