Friday, June 7, 2013
787's all fixed and flying
Boeing announced that the fireproof battery box modification has been accomplished on all 50 787's and that they are all flying.
Kathleen Sibelius, wicked witch of the west
You gotta wonder about Sibelius. We have a 10 year old child dying of cystic fibrosis. The parents appeal to Sibelius to get the 10 year old a lung transplant. She brushes the parents off with some bureaucratic baffle gab. Which convinces everyone in the country that she is a hard hearted nogoodnick who runs a death panel. She has to be dumber than a stone not to see that.
The parents don't give up, they get a court order to put the kid on the list for a transplant. Which makes Sibelius look incompetent as well as a hard hearted nogoodnick.
She is clearly spending too much time shaking down companies for Obama care money that Congress has refused to authorize.
Typical Obama appointee.
The parents don't give up, they get a court order to put the kid on the list for a transplant. Which makes Sibelius look incompetent as well as a hard hearted nogoodnick.
She is clearly spending too much time shaking down companies for Obama care money that Congress has refused to authorize.
Typical Obama appointee.
Bean counters are loading the dice (beans)
The Pentagon has a problem. Cost of the new F-35 fighter is so high that overseas customers are backing off. It's a nice airplane everyone agrees, but they just cannot afford it. One of the budget busters, after paying the list price for a new fighter, is the cost to fly it, Cost Per Flying Hour.
Despite their best efforts at cooking the books, it looks like the F-35 will cost $24,000 per flying hour. Which adds up quick. And you have to fly it if you want it to do any good. Pilots need about 10 hours a month to stay competent in such a high performance, complicated machine. Figure to have maybe two, maybe three pilots per aircraft, and you get to 360 flying hours a year, or $8.6 million dollars a year per airplane. It doesn't take many years for operating costs to exceed the purchase price. And any experienced person will figure the $24,000 per hour to be a lowball estimate.
So, to make things look a little less bad, the Pentagon is inflating the cost per flying hour of the current workhorse fighter, the F-16. This is also a good airplane, everyone, including the cost-no-objective Americans, flies it. The Aviation Week article did not give the before and after F-16 estimates, but they did quote several people expressing surprise that such a thing would be changed. The F-16 has been flying for over 20 years, we have real numbers going back a long time, and altering them comes pretty close to lying.
Despite their best efforts at cooking the books, it looks like the F-35 will cost $24,000 per flying hour. Which adds up quick. And you have to fly it if you want it to do any good. Pilots need about 10 hours a month to stay competent in such a high performance, complicated machine. Figure to have maybe two, maybe three pilots per aircraft, and you get to 360 flying hours a year, or $8.6 million dollars a year per airplane. It doesn't take many years for operating costs to exceed the purchase price. And any experienced person will figure the $24,000 per hour to be a lowball estimate.
So, to make things look a little less bad, the Pentagon is inflating the cost per flying hour of the current workhorse fighter, the F-16. This is also a good airplane, everyone, including the cost-no-objective Americans, flies it. The Aviation Week article did not give the before and after F-16 estimates, but they did quote several people expressing surprise that such a thing would be changed. The F-16 has been flying for over 20 years, we have real numbers going back a long time, and altering them comes pretty close to lying.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Why does the US media get the big stories wrong?
The Atlantic has a long sad story about it. I have a simplier explaination. The media is staffed with crusaders, zealous fanatics who see them selves as prophets come to save the world. Woodward and Burnstein "All the President's Men" is their self image. They could care less about truth, informing their readers, all they want to do is win. And they will do a lot a shady (not quite outright lying, but close) stuff to win.
These people float thru college doing journalism majors and learning nothing of substance. No American history, no European history, no math, no physics, no chemistry, no statistics, no Shakespeare, no foreign language, no philosophy, no biology. No practical skills such as carpentry, auto mechanics, hunting, fishing, farming, or even light bulb changing. They come out of college shallow and ignorant. They may be fairly good at slinging BS, but they don't know nothing. Naturally the stories they write are largely a waste of the reader's time.
These people float thru college doing journalism majors and learning nothing of substance. No American history, no European history, no math, no physics, no chemistry, no statistics, no Shakespeare, no foreign language, no philosophy, no biology. No practical skills such as carpentry, auto mechanics, hunting, fishing, farming, or even light bulb changing. They come out of college shallow and ignorant. They may be fairly good at slinging BS, but they don't know nothing. Naturally the stories they write are largely a waste of the reader's time.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Blind to lead the blind
Obama is appointing Susan Rice to be National Security Adviser at this very minute. Susan Rice is that clueless administration weenie who went on all the Sunday talk shows right after Benghazi to say Benghazi wasn't terrorism, it was just a spontaneous political demo that got a little out of hand. Yeah right. If she believed that, then I have a bridge to sell her.
National Security Adviser is a post invented in the Eisenhower administration, to sort out conflicts between the State and Defense departments (doves vs hawks) It's a powerful post. Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, pretty much ran US foreign policy. In fact Nixon wound up appointing Kissinger to be Secretary of State. Anyhow, Obama is putting a clueless and ignorant party hack into the job.
Obama could really use a good National Security Adviser. He needs a lot of help. So far, all Obama has managed is to subject the US to a torrent of scorn and abuse. He offends our friends, and he makes nice to our enemies. He is so dumb he cannot tell a friend from an enemy. His new National Security Adviser isn't gonna make anything get better, not ever.
The clueless feel better when surrounded by the more clueless.
National Security Adviser is a post invented in the Eisenhower administration, to sort out conflicts between the State and Defense departments (doves vs hawks) It's a powerful post. Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, pretty much ran US foreign policy. In fact Nixon wound up appointing Kissinger to be Secretary of State. Anyhow, Obama is putting a clueless and ignorant party hack into the job.
Obama could really use a good National Security Adviser. He needs a lot of help. So far, all Obama has managed is to subject the US to a torrent of scorn and abuse. He offends our friends, and he makes nice to our enemies. He is so dumb he cannot tell a friend from an enemy. His new National Security Adviser isn't gonna make anything get better, not ever.
The clueless feel better when surrounded by the more clueless.
Proper background and education
That's what Gina McCarthy has, according to a letter to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader. The letter writer was bashing our two US senators for not pushing McCarthy into the job of EPA administrator. McCarthy is a new name to me, an old news junkie who watches a lot of cable TV news.
McCarthy has a masters degree in "Environmental Engineering and Planning" from Tufts. Tufts is OK, but it was my safety school way back when. The "environmental engineering" degree is another new one on me. Real engineering is either civil, mechanical, or electrical. As holder of a real electrical engineering degree, I don't have much respect for something so trendy as "environmental engineering". Does such a major require you to know anything? Like integral calculus? Strength of materials? Laplace transforms? Boolean algebra? Or is it all touchy feely talk about how wonderful it is to live a Hiawatha livestyle?
Since graduation McCarthy has held jobs in various state environmental pollution agencies. In short a career bureaucrat. No real world experience.
Somehow I don't feel so good about Gina at the EPA.
McCarthy has a masters degree in "Environmental Engineering and Planning" from Tufts. Tufts is OK, but it was my safety school way back when. The "environmental engineering" degree is another new one on me. Real engineering is either civil, mechanical, or electrical. As holder of a real electrical engineering degree, I don't have much respect for something so trendy as "environmental engineering". Does such a major require you to know anything? Like integral calculus? Strength of materials? Laplace transforms? Boolean algebra? Or is it all touchy feely talk about how wonderful it is to live a Hiawatha livestyle?
Since graduation McCarthy has held jobs in various state environmental pollution agencies. In short a career bureaucrat. No real world experience.
Somehow I don't feel so good about Gina at the EPA.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Civil Service reform to deal with IRS
TV was playing some democrat explaining that Civil Service regulations prevented the firing of IRS bureaucrats who targeted conservative groups. Unfortunately, he may not be lying. It's just about impossible to fire a federal GS type. Back in my Air Force days, you couldn't even speak harshly to them. I remember the base supply officer, a nice guy named Fleming Cheek, tried to fire a GS worker for stealing out of the warehouse. He couldn't do it.
Civil Service was invented in the 1880's to prevent newly elected politicians from laying everyone off and giving all the jobs to their supporters. Since 1880, Civil Service has been inventing regulations to protect its people from layoff, overtime, discipline, and any every attempt by management to get them to do some work. If management cannot fire the IRS offenders due to Civil Service red tape (which is management's story this morning), Congress ought to cut the red tape and throw the bums out.
The only way to prevent IRS from targeting taxpayers is to throw a serious scare into their little bureaucratic hearts. Firing forty or so bureaucrats over the targeting of the Teaparty is a good way to start.
Civil Service was invented in the 1880's to prevent newly elected politicians from laying everyone off and giving all the jobs to their supporters. Since 1880, Civil Service has been inventing regulations to protect its people from layoff, overtime, discipline, and any every attempt by management to get them to do some work. If management cannot fire the IRS offenders due to Civil Service red tape (which is management's story this morning), Congress ought to cut the red tape and throw the bums out.
The only way to prevent IRS from targeting taxpayers is to throw a serious scare into their little bureaucratic hearts. Firing forty or so bureaucrats over the targeting of the Teaparty is a good way to start.
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