In the old days…..
Defense was considered cowardly, and grapple was expected. Bare knuckled fighting didn’t generally punch the head.
Army Helmets
When I joined the US Army it was 1982. The standard helmet at the time was the “Steel Pot” which was just that. It had a fiberglass liner with a replaceable headband, used for guard duty and such. Not great but it was all there was.
During my time I transferred to the Kevlar helmet. It had better coverage and didn’t weigh as much. Without a liner it wasn’t the best for using to shave in.
Today’s military is into second or third generation helmets. That’s why this story interested me.
Staff Sgt. Bryan McQueen was nearing the end of his tour in Afghanistan with the 1st Security Forces Assistance Brigade on Sept. 3, 2018. He, his fellow soldiers and nearly 50 Afghans were headed to a security meeting, as routine as any other daily assignment.
Machine gun fire erupted.
McQueen felt what he could later only describe as a horse kick to the back of his head and he fell flat to the ground, landing on his face.
But in seconds he was on his feet with a simple question.
“Did these (expletive deleted) really just shoot me in the head?” he said.
The 7.62x54mmR round from the truck-mounted machine gun struck the back of McQueen’s helmet, shredding some of the materials but not penetrating the shell.
It’s true that soldiers have a morbid sense of humor. Keeping the bullet that was removed from them, a shell fragment that just missed them, and the helmet that saved them
This week that same helmet, bisected and mounted on a plaque with McQueen’s name and the appropriate unit coinage, was presented to him here at a Personal Protective Equipment soldier return ceremony.
For many years defense researchers and protective equipment programs have retrieved items such as body armor and helmets damaged by enemy fire on the battlefield for forensic analysis to improve current and future gear.
Brig. Gen. Anthony Potts, head of Program Executive Office Soldier, called the ceremony a chance to see the effect of the work that equipment programs do.
God bless SSG McQueen and his family. Equipment has made big strides in gear.
I got a weird kid
I got a weird kid. There is no hair on this story, I swear. This just happened this morning
IHOP has unlimited pancakes, so here we go. Mama puts on her headphones (she has been getting into K Movies)
Halfway there, Mercy (listening to Diamonte) asks “Dad, is Paranoid the most famous Black Sabbath song?”
uh…I suppose. “Why?”
Followed by a conversation about riffs and hooks, song structure, how you can build a song on a bass line or a riff, keep up the tempo and as long as the lyrics sound right with the melody it can be very recognizable. And that’s how it can become popular.
You can also come up with a simple riff, start slow, build up and add instruments into a huge solo and outro even if the lyrics make no sense but sound right.
”who did that?”
Siri…..
we got to the parking lot, mama takes off her headphones and says. “Mercy, your listening to Stairway to Heaven?”
”I like the guitar but the lyrics don’t make any sense. They should have gone with Ozzy”
Then we went on to dinosaurs
this kid is weird
105 mm recoiless rifle
I really, really want one of these.
Just for groundhogs you understand
Green Stars and aircraft markings
As usual. The military has to standardize the markings on their aircraft.
Cool video
The worst Air Forces in the world 2018
Some of these may surprise you
I thought Canada was a lot better than that
Gov’t good, Guns bad?
I love these guys
Recent politics
We are seeing and living in the natural progression of 24/7 satellite news feeds and politicians who are trying to “move the needle” a little more in their direction.
Everything, absolutely everything is done for the optics and desire to be “trending” in order to influence the masses.
Very little actual substance exists in anything that you see in the first 8 minutes of broadcast. And the commentary portion of the feed has gone from Andy Rooney getting his 5 minutes to hour long shows of political talking points spouters arguing with other talking points spouters for ratings.
Rush used to be a blast to listen to. The parodies and commentary were difficult to hear without laughing. Now it’s the most depressing show on radio, the “others” who want to destroy our country and our wayoflife.
Somewhere around Obama’s re-election Rush turned into a ranter rather than a parody barker.
Reagan defeated liberals by laughing at them, not ridiculing them. I would hate to have had CNN, Fox, and all the bombthrowing media multi millionaires shredding everything he did, said, looked like, thought about saying, expected to do, “may have thought about looking like he was about to think of doing” type of colonoscopy we have today.
It’s not about the country. It’s about ratings points, poll number shift direction, expected turnouts.
You can actually sit in a group with little dials in your lap to gauge how you feel about a speech while it is in progress according your demographic, age, political leaning, and party affiliations.
And this is touted by the experts as “research”
It does seem that the GOP will do things to benefit or further their own voters
While the Democrooks want to hurt the oppositions voters, taking their own for granted.
The Republicans will promise and ignore their demographic, national reciprocity and gun free zone for example, only to “throw them a bone” and assume their support.
The Ds will promise their demographic the destruction of their assumed enemies. And follow through on just enough to not get voted out by the majority. Gun control is a good example, even Obama knew better than to just give lip service to the issue.
Everytime they try it with an actual (not a safe vote) legislation, they pay for it. Clinton may have stayed after the AWB but a lot of Dems paid the price. The best they could do was a half hearted campaign to stop the sunset of it
We need a secure border. Number one on the hot list. Number one by a light year. I am fully in support of securing our border like a Tupperware bowl can only wish it could, a vacuum chamber of a border on every border, port, etc
The “wall” is a joke and a campaign slogan. Build walls, fences, barriers anywhere we can. But that isn’t much, we have to secure the border.
How to do it?
The DOJ consists of every federal law enforcement agency. US Mashals, ICE, Customs, Border Patrol, even TSA. The executive (President) is the leading law enforcement official in the country. These agencies are under his control and he can prioritize what he wants to focus on. Be that drugs, guns (as Obama did), riot control (the ‘60s), Clinton and Reno had studies about dealing with the militias (remember that)
Any President, by virtue of the office can close the border, mobilize LEO resources to the border, increase workforce, increase firepower, transfer responsibility, focus on what he deems important.
I have stated before, not just with Trump, the President could secure the border with a memo of they wanted to. It’s already part of his job, he doesn’t need any more funding for it. The DOJ is already funded very well thank you.
Understand how the legislative process works. Just because a bill was voted on, committee reformed, passed and signed doesn’t fund the bill. That has to go through the budget process. Remember Kerry voting for the war before voting against it, that was it. Voting for the war powers bill, but voting against the funding of it.
Congress can go back and fully fund the Reagan amnesty bill and secure the border, the law already exists. It was never funded (Tip O’Neil)
The legislation in 2006 for the border security was neverfunded. If it was funded right now, we would have all the funds needed. But congress defunded the border security measures in both of those laws. That’s how they backstabbed Reagan, and he never trusted their word again.
Ted Cruz brought this up in the primaries, but was drowned out by the MAGAMAGA chants.
Listen very carefully, and think about this……….under budget reconciliation, that we use as a matterof course now, the Republican controlled congress (House and Senate) could have done this with a simple majority for the last two sessions.
Why didn’t they? Why doesn’t Trump?
It’s not rocket science, its the will to actually do it rather that campaign on the issue.
If Trump had secured the border in the first six months of this administration, I would be among the first Trumpers to chant MAGAMAGA.
But he hasn’t, doesn’t want to, isn’t going to.
We have to stop being rubes. Government isn’t a pep rally, think past the brim on your MAGA hat.
Taken from conversation on a popular online forum
What happened in Venezuela
What happened in Venezuela wasn’t a force of nature or an act of God.
It was the same result as every other time power is centralized
Five second life span
These guys had all the cohones in the world. I remember those PRC77 radios and the problems they had.
Batteries, weight, range, clear communication