US Army Retired

US Army Retired

Sunday, September 2, 2018

News and Interesting Stuff for September 2, 2018


CNN’s Trump Tower Story Source ‘Doesn’t Exist,’ ‘Credibility Is Now Gone’
One fake story after another. No wonder the Home & Garden Channel beats their ratings.
As has been the case with CNN “bombshells” too many times before, nothing published by CNN ended up being true.
Not only has Lanny Davis said Cohen knows nothing about Trump having any foreknowledge of the meeting, Davis also admits he was a CNN source. This, of course, means Bernstein intentionally misled the public when he reported Davis was not a source for the story.
Nevertheless, even though the story has imploded, CNN has not only refused to correct or retract the false report but continues to stand by it, as does the now-disgraced Bernstein.
With Davis admitting he was the source, CNN has been claiming it has a another source, which is what Trump means when he is mocking their search for that “source.”
Donald Trump Attacks ‘Sloppy’ and ‘Degenerate Fool’ Carl Bernstein for Bogus CNN Story @ https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/29/donald-trump-attacks-sloppy-and-degenerate-fool-carl-bernstein-for-bogus-cnn-story/

What President Trump Did for the McCain Family the Media Won’t Report
Still, Trump announced earlier this week he had greenlit military transport for McCain, saying, “At the request of the McCain family, I have also authorized military transportation of Senator McCain’s remains from Arizona to Washington, D.C., military pallbearers and band support, and a horse and caisson transport during the service at the United States Naval Academy.”

Judge Jeanine Really Goes After Sessions
It seems the whole world is getting fed up with his lack of action. [Or at least what we see on the surface. I’m not defending him but have seen reports of things he’s doing that aren’t getting a lot of coverage.]
Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “Justice,” host Jeanine Pirro lambasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions in her “Opening Statement” segment and called on him to resign or to put on his “big boy pants and be a real attorney general.”
Pirro said Sessions was “not wanted” in the Trump administration and accused him of being used to protect the so-called “deep state.”

Canada Complains that Trump Negotiator is a “vicious son of a bitch”
Well. Well. Well. Another President Trump promise kept. Exactly what we need after so many decades of pussy-footing with other nations – especially our closest neighbors.
As NAFTA negotiations come down to the crunch in Washington this week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer wants to eliminate Chapter 19. The Americans have never been fans of the way the panels work.
So Canada has a tough decision to make: does it mount a vigorous defence of this imperfect tool? Does it try to convince the U.S. to replace it with something that might work better? Or does it give in, holding its fire for another front?
More promises kept!

Leader of Russian-Backed Breakaway Ukrainian Territory Assassinated
Just reading the headlines and article doesn’t make it clear. One has to go to the map and get real close up to see the importance of this. There is no clearly marked Donetsk People’s Republic but a closeup shows an area close to the Russian border. [It also shows the Ukraine to be a bigger country than one would expect] Another closeup shows the Sea of Azov separating the two countries with Croatia quite prominent. And finally, there’s the Luhansk People's Republic which also quite prominently borders Russia.
The leader of the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine was killed on Friday in a cafe bombing, according to several reports.
Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko was killed after a bomb exploded in a downtown Donetsk cafe called "Separ," meaning Separatist, according to Meduza.
The explosion also wounded Alexander Timofeyev, the DPR's finance minister, Meduza reported.
Two others were wounded as well, according to Interfax, but it's unclear at this point if they were DPR officers or civilians.
Does this give Putin another excuse to step up the conflict between the two nations? And, would such actions drag the US into another war we want no part of?

California to Mandate a Woman on Every Corporate Board
Think about this. A government is going to tell a private entity how to do its business. /At least beyond the usual stupid onus of rules and regulations. Just how the hell do they plan to do this? Force stockholders – private citizens – to vote for people whether they like it or not?
The measure, which can be seen here, reads, in part:
301.3. (a) No later than the close of the 2019 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California shall have a minimum of one female director on its board. A corporation may increase the number of directors on its board to comply with this section.
(b) No later than the close of the 2021 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are located in California shall comply with the following:
(1) If its number of directors is six or more, the corporation shall have a minimum of three female directors.
(2) If its number of directors is five, the corporation shall have a minimum of two female directors.
(3) If its number of directors is four or fewer, the corporation shall have a minimum of one female director.
Wanna bet a whole lot of corporations are going to be seeking new locations for the headquarters if this farce actually passes the legislature and gets enacted into law.

Google launches new search tool to help veterans get civilian jobs
Grow with Google is a multi-faceted internet tool for veteran job seekers.
It gives you the choices:
I want to:
Learn new skills
help my students
find a job
grow my business
learn new coding skills
scale my startup
Plus a whole lot more.
In addition to the new search tools Google is providing, as part of the aforementioned Grow with Google initiative, Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, is giving a $2.5 million grant to the United Service Organizations "to provide training and career guidance in IT support."
This looks good. But, with the reports of Google and other internet giants using personal information for monetary gains, I find myself wondering if this site is really what it purports to be.

The New Old Age
Longevity is now our reality. Are we ready for it?
Several different lifespan calculators tell me I have 6 to 11 years more. I feel more like 16.
This personal story talks about how we now feel about aging and “old age.” It poits out that life=expectancy is no 80 for men and 84 for women. I actually think it’s a lot higher.
Forget bridge, crosswords, and cruises: the best and most consistent advice for a secure and healthy old age involves long-term financial planning, a capacity for independence, cardiovascular exercise, minimal consumption of sugar and alcohol, restful and brain-cleansing sleep, and stimulating activities to build up our cognitive reserves.
With current technology, one no longer needs to fully “retire” and can keep contributing for many years to come.
I got down towards the end before learning the author is Canadian, if that makes a difference.
The very lengthy article is @ https://thewalrus.ca/the-new-old-age/

An Ode to Being Old
This should give a lot of middle-aged people a rosier outlook on their life expediencies. Just because we’re in our 40s doesn’t mean the end of things.
A new study, conducted by MIT in conjunction with the U.S. Census Bureau, analyzed 2.7 million people who started companies between 2007 and 2014 and found that among the fastest growing tech companies, the average founder was 45-years-old at the time of founding. The researchers also found that a 50-year-old is twice as likely to have a massive success—defined as a company that performs in the top 0.1 percent—than a 30-year-old. “These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs,” write the authors of the study. “The view that young people produce the highest-growth companies is in part a rejection of the role of experience.”
In other words: Success in business, even in the fast-paced start-up world, isn’t just about age-related smarts. Wisdom, a deeper kind of knowing that can only be gained through experience, matters too. And apparently, it matters quite a bit.

How America Killed Transit
Having lived through the destruction of mass transit in the Los Angeles area and driving a city bus for 5 years in Las Vegas, this story hit home to me. I also experienced the outstanding mass transit of German and Austrian cities.
This article outlines the rise of mass transit in the very early years to its demise with the coming of automobiles and super highways. It also outlines where attempts at renewing mass transit are underway.
It all depends upon convenience to the rider.
San Diego has a light rail service from the border into the inner city that is most successful as it runs every 15 minutes. A lot of people park their cars along the line to get onto the trolley cars, saving fuel and money.
And lets not forget the billions being spent to build new systems above and below ground. A subway in earthquake-prone California? Sorry, but you’ll never catch me riding one.
The problem is that while there has been ample federal funding to build these lines (at least until the current administration, which has halted the flow of even allocated transit funding), there are no such resources for operations. This means that trains on these expensive showpiece lines may only run every half hour or less. (At the most extreme: For several years Cleveland’s $70 million Waterfront line only had trains running two days a week.)
More importantly, the light rail lines often operate as isolated systems, with little connecting bus service to provide access to people not within walking distance of their stops. And though cheaper to build, light rail lines are often too slow and have too low capacity to make a truly meaningful dent in a city’s auto orientation.
How well I remember the lack of connectivity of buses here in Vegas.
A focus on improving local service is all the more important in an era where the White House and Congress are not very favorably disposed to transit, and well-funded lobby groups like those of the Koch brothers are spending millions to fight transit infrastructure spending. Even if the money to build new light rail lines isn’t coming from Washington, states and local governments absolutely can afford the comparatively small annual expenditure to run buses reasonably often, all day, every day, so that transit is a viable mode of transportation for all kinds of trips—not just 9-to-5 commuting. That has been proven around the world to be the way to attract riders to transit.
And transit companies are begging for people to learn and then operate their vehicles.

Earth Set for a Major Cold Spell
No, not man-made Globull Warming. Or Climate Change. Or la Niña.
It’s the sun!
Scientists are reporting that the sun has been free of sunspots for a total of 133 days this year.
With only 241 days of 2018 passing, that means the sun has been blank for the majority of the year.
Experts warn this is a sign that the solar minimum is on its way.
Website Space Weather says: “The sun is spotless again. For the 133rd day this year, the face of the sun is blank.
“To find a year with fewer sunspots, you have to go back to 2009 when the sun was experiencing the deepest solar minimum in a century.
“Solar minimum has returned, bringing extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun's atmosphere, and strangely pink auroras.”
One thing we can be certain of, wait a bit and the weather will change.

VA Extremely Short-Staffed
This isn’t the headline of the article as it declares the “VA doesn’t want you to know.” This surprises me as this site it usually quite fair.
The Department of Veterans Affairs waited until just before 5 pm on the Friday before Labor Day weekend to release eye-popping job vacancies data: the agency currently has a whopping 45,239 overall vacancies, 40,456 (89%) of which belong to the Veterans Health Administration.
This isn’t unique to the Trump Administration as the VA Secretary Bob McDonald, the VHA alone boasted some 41,500 job vacancies for medical professionals, more than the number listed in the agency’s Friday news dump.
And then it goes on to claim that President Trump’s cancellation of federal employees pay raise will only make it worse.
There is a simple problem. The demand for medical professionals outside of government is so big that’s where most of them are going to gain employment.
Is there a solution to this? IMHO, privatize as much as possible.

U.S. Army Research Institute created healthy performance bar for soldiers
If they’re as good as MREs, yummy, yummy?
This nutritional advancement is cost-neutral for the military. An underutilized commercial energy bar was removed from dining facilities to make room for the PRB. The new bar is provided to the units where control of the bars is managed by cadre leaders and eaten outside of the dining facility.
Researchers aren’t simply working to provide recruits and Soldiers with something that only tastes good; it has to make sense for their bodies as well. The PRB was created with evidence-based science and was designed to sustain performance consistent with the modernization goals of the Army. It helps recruits endure the pace of training.
And, the PRB isn’t just for Soldiers. The Air Force is in the acquisitions process for a PRB or a similar product.

A New Hybrid Jet Fighter for US
A brilliant idea. That will naturally meet stiff resistance from those set to make $$$$ by building more F-35s.
Lockheed Martin has been pitching the US Air Force a hybrid between the F-22 and the F-35.
The F-22 is the world's best air-to-air combat plane, and the F-35 has the best sensors and abilities to knock out air defenses.
Combining the two would create a jet much better than either one individually.
But by creating an all-around better jet could kill the market for the F-35, which has just started to come online and is the most expensive weapons system in history.
So, instead of more billions for s sixth-generation fighter, combine the best of the two fifth-generation birds to make the ultimate machine. It all comes down to putting newer, more powerful computers and technology into the F-22 airframe.

Posted by Dale Day at 9:17 AM

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