These are US Marines.
I joined the military shortly after Reagan took office. I heard stories about the Carter years: how officers couldn’t go into enlisted quarters without escorts, for fear of violence. Enlisted openly using cocaine in berthing areas. Our military was effectively useless.
This looks every bit as bad as those Carter years.
The Biden administration is worried that the military might not be loyal in a potential Civil War. Here is how that will be handled.
This video of a pro se litigant grilling an asshole of a cop during a deposition is worth a watch. It’s 33 minutes long, but worth it.
A bunch of high school students are surprised and angered to discover that you can’t graduate from school unless you pass all of your courses.
It’s obvious that they feel merely being enrolled in a course means receiving credit for it.
“Honestly, they could still put us in the classes now,” Tripp said. “Them refusing to do that just lets us know how much they really don’t care.”
It isn’t like they could earn credit in a week.
I know that teachers and the education system catch a lot of flack, and deservedly so. However, there still are teachers out there that care, and this is an example of what happens when a teacher who cares holds students to a standard.
This attitude of high school graduation being a right is one of the reasons why our nation is so ill informed.
My Memorial day post on the loss of an airman reminded me of the procedures when a man went overboard. Navy ships drill for man overboard at least once a week while they are at sea. The drill goes like this:
An officer throws a mannequin dressed as a sailor into the sea. That mannequin is named “Oscar,” after the flag that is flown from a ship’s mast when they have a man overboard.
There is a watch on the rear end of the ship, called the fantail watch. On aircraft carriers, there are two sailors assigned to this watch 24/7, one one each side of the ship’s rearmost point. They are wearing headsets attached to the lookout circuit. The fantail watch sees what appears to be a sailor in the water, and tosses a smoke float into the water to mark the position of the man in the water. He also calls “man in the water, (starboard/port) fantail” over the lookout circuit. The phone watch on the bridge hears this and notifies the Officer of the Deck (OOD). The OOD immediately orders three long blasts from the ship’s horn, orders the bosun of the watch to sound “man overboard” over the ship’s announcing system (1MC) and stops the ship by reversing the engines. Once it is below a certain speed, the ship will turn around and return to the location of the smoke float (if operations and conditions permit). The navigation crew uses as position tracker called a DRT (dead reckoning tracker) to coordinate the search. (This system uses inputs from the ship’s gyro to track its location. The advantage of the DRT over GPS is that the DRT can’t be jammed.)
The announcing of “man overboard” on the 1MC causes a few automatic actions. The signal bridge will hoist the above-mentioned oscar flag. The rest of the crew begins a face to face muster. There is a phone tree setup, where each crew member reports his location to a superior, who then calls their respective Division office. The division office calls the department office, who calls the bridge with a list of missing sailors. All 6,000 members of the crew must be accounted for in less than 20 minutes. Ten minutes after the initial “man overboard” call, the names of any sailors who remain unaccounted for are called over the announcing system until everyone is accounted for, or until the names of missing sailors are known. In a drill, the training team will randomly grab a couple of sailors just before the drill starts and hold them incommunicado, to make sure that they are reported as missing as a check to make sure divisions aren’t fudging the muster.
Another thing that happens is the ship launches a helicopter if possible, or a small boat if flight operations aren’t possible. The boat or helo has a rescue swimmer in it whose job is to grab the sailor.
Once the rescuers arrive near the man in the water, another smoke float is tossed in the water near him. This is in case they lose sight of him for some reason (waves, weather, darkness). They then deploy the swimmer to pull him from the water.
We used to lose 3 to 5 guys over the side in any given year. Most of the time we would find them, sometimes we wouldn’t. During the six years I was in, I remember two or three that we never found. The one referred to on Memorial day was one of them. I remember one time, we had a helicopter crash where an entire CH-46 Sea Knight went into the water, complete with aircrew. I saw that one happen. Luckily, we rescued the entire crew. That’s a story for another time.
A new law in Florida that applies to teachers. (pdf warning) I approve. It has some key points:
The State Board of Education shall waive initial general knowledge, professional education, and subject area examination fees and certification fees for: (d) A retired first responder, which includes a law enforcement officer as defined in s. 943.10(1), a firefighter as defined in s. 633.102(9), or an emergency medical technician or paramedic as defined in s. 401.23.
It goes on to authorize a sign on bonus to retired first responders and honorably discharged veterans who sign on to be full time teachers for a minimum of two years. In my case, it’s too little, too late, but it may attract some better teachers. I only dread the current leftie woke military members entering education.
It then goes on to authorize teachers to use force in self defense:
(i) Press charges if there is a reason to believe that a crime has been committed on school property, during school sponsored transportation, or during school-sponsored activities.
(j) Use reasonable force, according to standards adopted by the State Board of Education, to protect himself or herself or others from injury.
(2) For purposes of this section, in cases in which a teacher faces litigation or professional practices sanctions for an action taken pursuant to subsection (1), there is a rebuttable presumption that a teacher was taking necessary action to restore or maintain the safety or educational atmosphere of his or her classroom.
That would have been a huge help when I was hung out to dry after being attacked in my classroom. This new law isn’t perfect, but it is obvious that Florida is trying to improve some long standing issues in education.
The Republicans this weekend did what they always do. They caved in. They reached a deal for our nation’s debt that allows them to campaign as conservative while actually doing nothing of substance.
The deal allows the government to spend until January 1, 2025 without any limits at all.
It’s what Republicans do best- feather their own nests. That’s why Trump vs. DeSantis is a meaningless debate.
I just saw this job listed for a Consular Assistant in Namibia. It requires a Bachelor’s Degree and One year of experience. It also requires fluency in Namibian. Ok, a little specialized, but that hardly justifies the $340,000 a year in starting pay.
Compare that to other jobs that earn an average (not starting) pay of more than $300,000: Neurosurgeon, Cardiac Surgeon, and other jobs requiring 12 or more years of school and years of experience.
No wonder our national debt is so high.
It appears that the ATF rule against pistol braces that is due to go into effect on June 1 does not apply to members of the FPC. I am not sure if this is a nationwide injunction, or just in the Fifth circuit. Read more here.
Two guys in a car that was reportedly stolen in an armed carjacking. The cops do a high risk stop and notice that the driver has a gun in his waistband. They tell him to drop to the ground. He reaches for the gun, gets ventilated, then it turns out that the gun was a toy.
Some say that the cops overreacted, the guy heard “drop” and went to pull the pistol out to drop it on the ground when they were quick to shoot him. I think, “Don’t carjack people at knifepoint and carry a toy gun around in your waistband” What do you think?