flotsam
flotsam's Journal23 trips downtown and why we honor John McCain
You have to get that he didn't have to join the family business. And then having joined there was no need to join one of the most dangerous positions. Sure getting into the Academy was a lock but graduation wasn't. By the skin of his teeth he made it. So they gave him a jet, right? Bullshit-past academy there are two years of flight training you can wash out of every day. He crashed several airplanes but because of either family pull or perhaps flashes of brilliance he was allowed to continue. Onboard Forrestal he flew 5 missions doing SAM suppression which is just as bad as it gets with each being kill or be killed the stakes. As he waited for in his plane for a launch on his 6th mission a plane sited cross deck suffered a voltage surge that accidentally fired a zuni missile which struck either McCain or the next plane to him. This was the initiating event of the Forrestal fire. 138 sailors died. Video shows McCain climbing over his cockpit bow and sliding down the nose before jump clear of the flames from the forward mounted refueling probe. Less than 1 minute later 1000lb bombs that were of Korean vintage and were known to be sweating and unstable exploded killing nearly half of the aircraft fire emergency crews. McCain claimed minor shrapnel wounds but declined treatment when he saw how overtaxed sickbay people were.
The Forrestal returned to the states and their airwing spent a half year in Florida but McCain requested a combat slot and was assign to USS Oriskany CV34. Months before Forrestal returned to action McCain had flown 17 more sam suppression missions. Now on his 23 mission "as part of a twenty-plane strike force against the Yen Phu thermal power plant in central Hanoi that previously had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids due to the possibility of collateral damage. Arriving just before noon, McCain dove from 9,000 to 4,000 feet on his approach; as he neared the target, warning systems in McCain's A-4E Skyhawk alerted him that he was being tracked by enemy fire-control radar. Like other U.S. pilots in similar situations, he did not break off the bombing run,
and he held his dive until he released his bombs at about 3,500 feet (1,000 m). As he started to pull up, the Skyhawk's wing was blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile fired by the North Vietnamese Air Defense Command's 61st Battalion.
I don't even need to discuss how badly he was injured or how badly or how long he suffered. He worked six years to get the job and once he had it he took the worst missions (after the sam suppression guys finished other pilots attcked in an area where the sams had just been challenged).
Twenty Fucking Three times he joined into life or death combat voluntarily. He lost and paid the price without whining. You didn't so don't tell me what came after. He paid the fucking toll.
I have a question about blind trusts...
I know the person who places his finances in trust can no longer make monetary calls, but is he equally banned in talking to his trustee, even in a general manner, about any future decisions he would be involved in? In short I knowthe guy who's finances are in trust is blind but is it possible his fiduciary is merely near-sighted??? Can someone describe the legal bounds?
John McCain was offered a release from imprisonment...
...He was indeed, however accepting such release would have disgraced him and likely would have cost him a court martial and dishonorable discharge.
Article three of the Military Code of Conduct "If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy."
This code is taught to all military people and has been since the Korean War. Although not having the force of law under the UCMJ it is considered military bedrock and behavior in contravention of the code would almost certainly be considered "Conduct unbecoming of an officer".
So yeah-he behaved well. But don't pretend he got a golden ticket and could have taken the prize at no cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_the_United_States_Fighting_Force
For those who wonder, I very much admired Senator McCain though not his party or most politics.
From Facebook
I saw this morning another "collusion is not a crime" post. This is horseshit quoted nearly verbatim from Rudy Guliani who said "I read the statute books and no where was the term collusion" which sounds really convincing, right? Then I heard this quote which makes Rudy's little trick of semantics clear-"I read through the statute books and nowhere in there was the term "bank heist" so I guess bank robbery is legal!"...The chargeable term is conspiracy which is in the statute books and is a synonym for collusion.
Now I remember...
I failed and missed an anniversary which was yesterday. 37 years ago yesterday was what brother my and I referred to as "The Day The Music Died". It was the beginning of the death throes of organized unions at the federal level and you would be hard pressed to find a more stunning reversal for worker's rights.
On August 3, 1981, during a press conference regarding the PATCO strike, President Reagan stated: "They are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated."
At 7 a.m. on August 3, 1981, the union declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek (a four-day week and a eight-hour day combined). In addition, PATCO wanted to be excluded from the civil service clauses that it had long disliked. In striking, the union violated 5 U.S.C. (Supp. III 1956) 118p (now 5 U.S.C. § 7311), which prohibits strikes by federal government employees. After supporting PATCO's effort in his 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan declared the PATCO strike a "peril to national safety" and ordered them back to work under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act. Only 1,300 of the nearly 13,000 controllers returned to work.[5] Subsequently, at 10:55 a.m., Reagan included the following in a statement to the media from the Rose Garden of the White House: "Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees, a sworn affidavit, when they accepted their jobs: 'I am not participating in any strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while an employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof.'"[7] He then demanded those remaining on strike return to work within 48 hours, otherwise their jobs would be forfeited. At the same time, Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis organized for replacements and started contingency plans. By prioritizing and cutting flights severely, and even adopting methods of air traffic management that PATCO had previously lobbied for, the government was initially able to have 50% of flights available.[5]
On August 5, following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, Reagan fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers and unions have been systemically been cut from federal, state, and local governments ever since...
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