This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Hondo

  • Monday Feelgood Story, Part 2

    It’s not very often these days that you see a vet in an NFL camp. And it’s even rarer when that vet is a rookie in his 30s.

    But according to published reports, at the Seattle Seahawks 2015 camp that’s the case today. US Army vet Nate Boyer is the guy.

    ESPN has a short article on the guy. IMO it’s worth a read.

    Yes, he’s a longshot to make the team. But even making it that far at age 34 is impressive as hell. And based on what he says in the article, it also sounds like the guy generally has kept things in perspective.

    Well done, young man. Damn well done.

    Best of luck.

  • A Delayed Mother’s Day Gift “Comes Home”

    In 1942, a soldier – Dominic O’Gara, or Millville, MA – was preparing for war in CA. He sent his mother a Mother’s Day gift. It was lost.

    Now 73 years later, it’s resurfaced. And though both O’Gara and his mother have passed, it’s made it’s way home.

    A former resident of the man saw an unopened envelope for sale on eBay. Noting the address and date, he bought it for $5.

    The envelope contained an embroidered pillow sham, with “Mother” embroidered on it. Though creased, it’s in perfect shape.

    The purchaser was unable to locate any surviving members of O’Gara’s family. So instead of returning it to the family, they’re trying to get the item framed and hung in the town’s Senior Center prior to Memorial Day. The Senior Center is not far from the neighborhood where the O’Gara’s lived.

    Fox News has an article with more details. It’s worth a read any time – but especially today.

    Happy Mother’s Day, all.

  • Yer NSFW Sunday Funnies: The Damn Few, Season 2

    Some TAH readers may have noticed that TAH hasn’t featured a “The Damn Few” episode in some time.

    No, the guys at Ranger Up haven’t quit making “The Damn Few”. We (or at least, I) was simply looking for them in the wrong places. “The Damn Few” episodes now seem to be distributed solely on YouTube. “I did not know that.”

    Turns out that the last “The Damn Few” episode I remember being featured here at TAH – the episode entitled “The Wizard of VA” – was actually the first episode of “The Damn Few, Season 2”. There are a total of nine episodes in “Season 2”.

    To assist anyone suffering from a raging case of “The Damn Few” withdrawal, here’s a link to a consolidated “The Damn Few, Season 2” playlist. Yes, that means all 9 episodes. It’s set to start at Episode 1, but you can watch them in any order you like.

    As always with Ranger Up’s “The Damn Few”: be forewarned, and use caution when watching. They’re crude; contain coarse language, including profuse profanity; and are most definitely NOT in any way/shape/form/manner even close to being “politically correct”. I’d suggest that you NOT watch these at work – or when within earshot of prudes, impressionable young children, clergy, or others lacking a sense of humor.

    That said: if so inclined, enjoy. Then maybe go poke around the Ranger Up website and see if anything there catches your fancy. (smile)

  • Two Bits of Economic “Good News” . . .

    . . . one short-term, and one long.

    The short-term “good news”: the US labor participation rate for April was 62.8%. That was indeed a slight increase from the previous month – and was slightly less than it was this month 37 years ago during the middle of the Administration headed by that “truly wonderful” POTUS,       Jimmah the Clueless       Jimmy Carter.

    Of course, longtime TAH readers know that is NOT exactly good news. Due to normal population growth, that also means we now have a record number of Americans eligible for the civilian labor force who aren’t even trying to work. The estimated number not working today who could be is 93,140,000.

    The labor participation rate for US women is also at a 27 year low. Due to population growth during the last 27 years, that in turn means the number of American women not working is also at an all-time high – approximately 56,167,000.

    The US labor participation rate is probably the best single common measure of the overall performance of the US economy (and even it is not complete). It’s been stagnant – mired at Carter-stagflation levels – staying at or below 63% for the past 18 months.

    Yeah, the “official” unemployment rate (U3) did go down a bit too.  But the “official” unemployment rate is effectively worthless as a measure of actual economic conditions. Follow it if it makes you feel better, but it won’t tell you much.

    As far as I’m concerned, I’ll get excited about the economy when the labor participation rate begins to show steady improvement over time. So far, it hasn’t. It’s been caught in Carter-doldrums territory, drifting aimlessly and without direction, for the past 18 months.

    But at least it’s stopped its free-fall. That only took this      clown krewe       Administration close to 5 years. Even Carter’s      ship of fools      Administration did better than that.

    Second, the long-term “good news”. Remember all those predictions that Social Security was going broke, and would have to cut benefits starting in less than 20 years? (When Social Security’s so-called “trust fund” is exhausted it becomes fully PAYGO, with outlays limited to income – which is predicted to be about 3/4 of what’s needed. When that happens, benefits in turn will be cut – or other funding will have to be found, through either more borrowing or even higher taxes.)

    Well, it seems as if some Ivy League researchers – at Harvard and Dartmouth – took a look at Social Security’s future projections. Their conclusion?

    Social Security’s own projections concerning it’s so-called “trust fund” appear to be biased and overly optimistic – and have been for well over a decade. The truth of the situation appears to be worse.

    Specifically, the researchers found that Social Security’s estimates of their trust funds’ financial health have been overoptimistic since around 2000. (emphasis added)

    “After 2000, forecast errors became increasingly biased, and in the same direction. Trustees Reports after 2000 all overestimated the assets in the program and overestimated solvency of the Trust Funds,” wrote the researchers, who include Dartmouth professor Samir Soneji and Harvard doctoral candidate Konstantin Kashin.

    The “so what”? The Social Security “trust fund” is what will temporarily make up the difference between Social Security’s tax income and benefits paid when Social Security’s tax income falls below outlays (and yes, Social Security is funded by current taxes – they’re called “FICA taxes”, and are assessed on the first $119,000 of wages earned). That will happen in a few years (2019 is the current projection), which means the fund will start being tapped in then. And Social Security itself projects that “trust fund” will be depleted by 2033.

    But if the “trust fund” isn’t in as good a shape as we’ve been told . . . it will likely be depleted earlier. How much earlier? Unknown.

    Bottom line: Social Security’s “trust fund exhausted” point might well be considerably closer than the the Social Security Administration’s own projected date of 2033. Joy, joy.

    Sorry for the “bummer” article today, but it’s better to be told the truth up-front than to get blindsided by reality.

  • One Guy Doesn’t “Get It”; His Employer Does

    Over the past few days a little drama has played out on Facebook. It involves a restaurant, a waiter, his apparent contempt for the military, a public rant – and how that backfired.

    Sometime in the past week or so in Hawaii, a waiter at a restaurant served a party at one of the restaurant’s tables. The party at that table purportedly ran up a $60 check and left a very small tip.

    The tip was reportedly small enough that it seems to me to have been a deliberate message that the service was poor.  But I suppose I could be wrong; maybe the individual paying the bill was simply an a-hole, or meant to leave more and simply forgot.

    The waiter was upset. Hey, I can understand that. A tip of less than 1/2% is pretty bad.

    But what the guy did next was, well . . . maybe not such a good idea.

    The waiter had determined that at least some people in the party that had left the small tip were military. So the guy later went on Facebook and posted a rather irate, insulting, and profanity-laden diatribe concerning the people involved in the incident specifically – as well as about the military in general. (The diatribe can be viewed here – be forewarned that the language contained is very coarse.)

    Did I mention he seems to have posted this diatribe under his own name?  Or that this restaurant is located just a few miles away from both Schofield Barracks and Wheeler AFB – and gets a lot of military business? Or that one of the restaurant’s co-owners is the son of a World War II and USAF vet who served in Europe at the Battle of the Bulge?

    Predictably, the Facebook outburst got widely noticed. But I’m pretty sure that didn’t work out precisely as the waiter had intended.

    The owner apologized publicly as soon as he’d found out about the incident. And according to this article from the Army Times, “On Tuesday, [the owner] said the server no longer worked for his restaurant, but would not elaborate.”

    I’ve intentionally omitted the names of those involved above. If you’re interested, the names are in the links if you’re curious.

    Yeah, in America we have freedom of speech and expression. But the First Amendment applies to government actions – not those of your employer.  And when what you say adversely impacts your employer’s bottom line . . . well, unless you have a really good employment contract or negotiated agreement, your employer generally has the right to put his business interests before yours and fire you.

    I guess maybe this guy has figured that last part out for himself by now.

  • Oh, TSO Ain’t Gonna Like This . . .

    . . . and neither are a few of our regular readers from one part of the country.

    Wells report finds Pats employees probably deflated balls vs. Colts

    Actual report in PDF can be found here. It seems pretty thorough – as well as fairly damning.

  • Former CIA Deputy Director: “The Arab Spring Was a Boon to Islamic Extremists”

    Now that he’s no longer in office, it appears that the former Deputy Director of the CIA – Michael ­Morell – has decided to make some money as an author.  He’s written a book about his career called The Great War of Our Time.  As you might guess from the title, it focuses largely on post-9/11 events.

    Here’s what he had to say about the “Arab Spring”. It explains quite a bit, actually.

    “We thought and told policy-makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage al-Qaeda by undermining the group’s narrative. [Instead], the Arab Spring was a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa. From a counterterrorism perspective, the Arab Spring had turned to winter.”

    Yeah, that explains – at least in part – why we sat on our hands and watched while longstanding allies went down the tubes.  But it doesn’t explain why we “screwed the pooch” so badly on that call.

    I understand quite well that intel is not an exact science. But historically, whenever an authoritarian regime has collapsed, a temporary power vacuum is created. If there’s not someone immediately around to pick up the pieces, things get chaotic.

    Terrorist organizations do rather well in chaotic situations.  So I kinda wonder why we didn’t foresee the real possibility that the Arab Spring might create a chaotic situation that al Qaeda and its ideological brethren could exploit.

    Maybe it was as simple as a case of “telling the boss what he wanted to hear”. After all, when the boss makes it clear they only want to hear news with which they agree . . . well, that’s what they’ll get, true or not.

    That kinda seems to me to have been the case some 35+ years ago in Iran.  Maybe that’s what happened here too.

    The Washington Post has a reasonably good article about the guy’s book, and briefly covers a few other things he talks about in it as well. If you have a few spare minutes, the article might be worth a read.

  • Yet Another “Stupid Criminal Trick”

    Well, we have another “brilliant criminal” story.

    Seems as if a certain “Levi Charles Reardon” was wanted by the police in Montana for felony forgery.  To publicize that fact, the police in Cascades County put a wanted poster of the guy on their Cascades County Crime Stoppers Facebook.  They then listed the poster as one of their “April Most Wanted”.

    Apparently Reardon really liked the wanted poster when he saw it online – so he liked the wanted poster.

    From his Facebook account.

    Turns out that was not such a good idea.  You can probably guess the rest.

    Yep, you’re right:  Reardon was apprehended without incident on Friday, 24 April 2015, and made his initial appearance in court on Monday, 27 April 2015. His arraignment is set for Thursday, 7 May.

    Hey, no one ever said most criminals are the “sharpest tools in the shed”. (smile)