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No, Uncle Sam doesn’t really want YOU: Military now turns down 80% of applicants

By Douglas Ernst
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The Washington Times
May 13, 2014

Uncle Sam doesn’t want you. At least 80 percent of you.
These days, the U.S. military is only taking 20 percent of the applicants who walk into their local recruiter’s office intent on enlisting in the armed services.

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SEE ALSO: General: Millennial Marines shun self-absorbed culture

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Army Sgt. 1st Class Terrence Hoard told the Kansas City Star that his recruitment office once needed to sign up 16 to 20 soldiers per month to meet recruitment goals. Today, he can get by with 10 to 12.
“We’re turning down twice as many as before,” he told the paper, which reported that four of every five adults who seek to join the military in 2014 do not make the cut.
The U.S. Army hopes to hit 57,000 recruits for active duty this year. It’s on pace to do just that, even while applying a stricter set of standards as it pertains to physical fitness, appearance (i.e., tattoos), intelligence test results and an applicant’s criminal history.
The Navy is no different.
“It’s not that we have a zero defect mentality, because we don’t,” Nathan Christensen, a Navy officer in public affairs for the Defense Department, told the Kansas City Star. “But it is true that the quality of military recruits right now is the highest it’s been in 40 years.”
The tough environment for potential recruits is due in large part to troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Pentagon’s plans to cut the size of the active duty Army.

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SEE ALSO: Feds released hundreds of immigrant murderers, drunk drivers, sex-crimes convicts

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The Kansas City Star reported that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel aims to lower active duty soldiers from 520,000 to 490,000 by autumn 2015.

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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/13/uncle-sam-doesnt-want-you-military-now-turns-down-/

5 Myths About Antarctic Melt

By By Becky Oskin, Senior Writer 2 hours ago

WEST ANTARCTICA ICE SHEET IS MELTING

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News that the catastrophic collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is already underway, like other big reports about the southernmost continent, spur chatter and questions about what's really happening at the bottom of the world.

Here, Live Science explains the reality behind some common misconceptions about big changes in Antarctica.
1. Antarctic ice is getting bigger, not shrinking!
Yes, the Antarctic sea ice has been growing larger over the last few decades. But here's what people miss when they raise this point: Sea ice is NOT the same as land ice. When scientists talk about the Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, they're referring to glacial ice on land. And unlike the Arctic ice cap, which persists year-round, in Antarctica, almost all of the sea ice melts in the summer. So having more sea ice does little to boost Antarctica's total ice mass. [Vanishing Glaciers: See Stunning Images of Earth's Melting Ice]
Interestingly, the growing sea ice might be related to the shrinking glaciers. Stronger winds, along with changing ocean temperatures and salinity (salt content) are driving the increase in sea ice, by creating more open areas for ice to form and by reducing melting. The same conditions are also linked to the retreating glaciers. Winds drive an ocean circulation pattern that brings up warm water, which is nibbling away at the glaciers from below.
2. It must be all those volcanoes.
View gallery

This image shows a view of the Earth on Sept. 21, 2005, when Antarctic sea ice was at its full exten …

West Antarctica, where the ice is melting fastest, is also home to a number of active volcanoes. Could they be melting the ice, instead of climate change?
Several lines of evidence say the answer is a resounding NO.
First is Iceland. The land mass has many very active volcanoes, but glaciers still cover its surface. And Iceland is just one of several examples showing that fire and ice can coexist at volcanoes without widespread melting occurring. Second, volcanoes called tuyas erupted through ice sheets during past Ice Ages, and there is little evidence they caused rapid, catastrophic melting. Third, the volcanic activity beneath West Antarctica hasn't significantly changed in the past few decades, which is when the glaciers there started their galloping retreat. Finally, a super-eruption the size of Yellowstone's biggest blast would be needed to melt through the miles of ice that cloak the volcanoes, scientists have calculated. [Fire and Ice: Images of Volcano-Ice Encounters]
3. It's all a global warming conspiracy
Forty years of data don't care whether or not some people oppose the 97 percent of scientists who agree that humans are causing global warming. The latest findings from West Antarctica are based on direct observations of retreating glaciers, not computer models or climate projections. The study concludes that West Antarctica's six biggest glaciers are shrinking back into deep valleys with no ridges or mountains to halt the rapid pace. (Here's where a volcano might actually help!) And no amount of global warming or cooling, save a new ice age, will make a dent in the retreat.
4. The Earth will cycle itself into another ice age anyway
Climate scientists also agree the Earth has naturally warmed and cooled throughout its history. These cycles have repeated themselves about every 100,000 years for the last 900,000 years. If the pattern held true again, Earth might already be heading into another ice age, but there's a confounding factor: humans. Greenhouse gases, aerosols (airborne pollution particles) and other changes wrought by humans mean the natural climate cycle can't play out the same as before. Also, carbon dioxide levels are heading toward levels last recorded when the Earth was much warmer, about 3 million years ago, before modern humans evolved. The Earth is not heading into an ice age anytime soon.
5. Ice shrinks when it melts, so ocean levels will go down
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is on land, not floating in the ocean. Actually, it is dipping its toes in the sea, but the majority of the ice is on land. (Antarctica's glaciers end in floating ice shelves that extend into the ocean.)
Thus, the vast majority of the ice is not currently displacing water and will raise sea level when it melts and flows into the ocean. Fascinating side note: Land in West Antarctica is already rising up where the ice cover has retreated. Called glacial rebound, this phenomenon is still taking place in North America, where the land is recovering from the weight of the massive ice sheets that covered the continent during the last ice age.

http://news.yahoo.com/5-myths-antarc...111730476.html

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

No, Uncle Sam doesn’t really want YOU: Military now turns down 80% of applicants

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Obama's 'uncle sam' doesn't want you unless you are an illegal alien. Then, even the Republicans want you to flood the US military.

What's wrong with this picture?

http://www.alipac.us/f19/time-lapse-...dition-303307/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/obama-tells...9/#post1414392

Air Force Grounds Its Lockheed F-35s After Fire

By David Lerman Jun 26, 2014 7:00 PM ET 2 Comments Email Print

The U.S. Air Force today grounded its fleet of F-35 fighter jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) as a safety precaution after a fire on one of the planes forced an aborted takeoff.
The temporary suspension of flight operations applies to the Air Force’s 45 “A model” planes. The Defense Department didn’t direct a halt to tests of the Marine Corps and Navy versions of the jet, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.
The grounding was the latest setback for the F-35, the costliest U.S. weapons system, which is being built even as it’s still being developed. The order was issued after an emergency at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida on June 23, when a fire in the rear of one plane forced the pilot to abort a takeoff.
“As a precautionary measure, the Air Force has decided to temporarily suspend all F-35A operations until it is determined that flights can resume safely,” the Air Force said in a statement. “This is not an uncommon practice following a mishap. It ensures the safety of our crews and our aircraft so we can determine there is no fleet-wide issue that needs to be addressed.”
The cause of the Eglin incident remains under investigation, Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters today.

Source: Lockheed Martin Corp. via Bloomberg Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 fighter jet.

The Marine Corps hasn’t flown its 31 F-35s for the last two days and is assessing whether to suspend flight operations on a daily basis, said Captain Richard Ulsh, a Marine Corps spokesman. The Navy is still assessing whether to issue a service-wide suspension, although some of its planes have been temporarily grounded, said Lieutenant Jackie Pau, a Navy spokeswoman.

Increased Cost

The F-35 has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, excessive weight and delays in software. Building all 2,443 planes is projected to cost $398.6 billion, a 71 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars since the contract with Lockheed, the largest U.S. defense contractor, was signed in 2001.
The Air Force’s F-35s are at four bases: Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, Edwards Air Force Base in California, and Eglin, said Major Natasha Waggoner, an Air Force spokeswoman.
Lockheed will assist in any investigation of the fire at Eglin, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Bethesda, Maryland-based company. He referred any further comments to the Air Force.
Oil Lost

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon ordered that all F-35 engines must be inspected before the planes could resume flying. That order, issued June 13, came in response to an “in-flight emergency” on June 10, when a Marine Corps F-35 had to return to base at Air Station Yuma, Arizona, after its engine lost oil. There were no injuries. Inspections of three other planes at the station revealed “suspect findings,” the Defense Department said in a statement.
Last year, the Pentagon grounded all F-35s after a routine engine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in a test aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base. Flights resumed about a week later after further inspections found no other problems.
While defense officials have cited progress for the F-35, Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, has said it hasn’t yet demonstrated sufficient reliability improvements. There’s “some marginal evidence of improvement, but it’s not enough,” Kendall told reporters June 12.

To contact the reporter on this story: David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Larry Liebert

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...fter-fire.html

Congress refuses to provide unemployment benefits for 300,000 veterans while they waste $400 billion on the F-35 jet which caught fire on a Florida runway this week, prompting the Air Force to ground the entire fleet.

http://bloom.bg/Tsq07K

Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion

By Hayes Brown July 9, 2014 at 4:03 pm Updated: July 10, 2014 at 8:55 am



An F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in its natural habitat: the ground
CREDIT: AP Photo/Lockheed Martin

Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home.
It’s hard to argue against the need to modernize aircraft used to defend the country and counter enemies overseas, especially if you’re a politician. But the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion — an increase of $7.4 billion since last year. That breaks down to costing about $49 billion per year since work began in 2006 and the project is seven years behind schedule. Over its life-cycle, estimated at about 55 years, operating and maintaining the F-35 fleet will cost the U.S. a little over $1 trillion. By contrast, the entirety of the Manhattan Project — which created the nuclear bomb from scratch — cost about $55 billion in today’s dollars.
“The political armor of the F-35 is as thick as the heads of the people who designed the airplane and its acquisition plan,” Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional staffer and outspoken critic of the F-35, recently told Foreign Policy about the longevity of the plane, despite the many setbacks it has endured. The support for the F-35 is so great in Congress that there’s actual a bipartisan Joint Strike Fighter Caucus dedicated to promoting it and keeping it alive. With that in mind, here are just a few of the other things that the insane amount spent on the troubled fighter could have gone towards instead, both at home and abroad:

Buying Every Homeless Person In The U.S. A Mansion

On any given night in 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded, there were an estimated 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets. Numerous studies, however, have showed that rather than putting money into temporary shelters or incarceration, communities have saved millions of dollars by investing in permanent homes for the homeless. A recent report showed that in one Florida community, it cost taxpayers an estimated $30,000 to take the homeless off the streets through traditional methods, but only around $10,000 per person to give them permanent housing and provide job training and other support. Expanding that concept to the Federal level, even taking into account things like varying real estate prices around the country, it’s possible that $7.4 billion would be more than enough to start a program nationwide. With the full amount spent on the F-35 at its disposal, the U.S. could afford to purchase every person on the streets a $664,000 home.

Unilaterally Funding Every Humanitarian Crisis

Overall, the United States less than one percent of its federal budget to foreign assistance. The State Department and USAID in Fiscal Year 2014 set aside about $31.1 billion in foreign aid funding, according to ForeignAssistance.gov. This includes $4.5 billion devoted towards funding the U.S. response to humanitarian crises around the world, including those in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and others. Millions of refugees and internally displaced people in these conflicts are struggling to survive, as the United Nations reports that each of these emergencies remain chronically underfunded. This year alone, the U.N. Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has raised only 35 percent of the funds it needs. In contrast, the $49 billion per year spent on the F-35 would singlehandedly fund not just UNOCHA’s $16.7 billion request, but also those of UNICEF and other emergency disaster relief bodies, saving countless lives.
In addition, U.N. officials want the situation at the U.S.’ southern border to be classified as a refugee crisis as well, as most of the thousands of children currently being detained fled their homes to escape a myriad number of life-threatening conditions. The Obama administration has requested $3.7 billion from Congress in emergency spending to help staunch the flow and provide for those who have already made it to the United States, but Republicans already appear to be lining up against the proposal. The F-35′s increased cost from last year alone would have easily covered that amount and then some.

Feeding Every Schoolchild In The Country

Earlier this year, President Obama signed into law an compromise version of the Farm Bill after months of deadlock saw the expiration of the former version. As part of the deal, House Republicans demanded huge cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), former known as food stamps, backing down only after a veto threat from the White House. The final bill, however, still included $8.7 billion worth of cuts, equaling about a $90 per month cut for recipients. The F-35′s excess costs for the last year by themselves could have nearly covered all of the losses, prevent state governors from having to scramble to provide families with the assistance they need.
As a backup when food subsidies are cut, low-income families often find themselves turning towards schools to provide meals during the day for their children. The National School Lunch Program feeds approximately 31 million students every year, at the cost of about $16.3 billion in both cash and commodity payments. The full cost of the plane so far would have funded this program as it stands for 24 years. If the amount being dispersed to schools was doubled, allowing the program to reach all 55 million students enrolled in K-12, the F-35 still would be able to cover that for the next decade.

Providing Security Around The World

Under the weighted system used to determine dues, the U.S. pays the lion’s share of funding to the United Nations’ 16 peacekeeping missions around the world. For the coming fiscal year, that works out to about $2.4 billion. That’s quite a bargain, as then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice argued in 2009, telling PBS: “If the US was to act on its own – unilaterally – and deploy its own forces in many of these countries; for every dollar that the US would spend, the UN can accomplish the Mission for twelve cents.” Given how cost effective blue helmets are at providing security in areas where conflict has just ended, it would behoove the U.S. to grant even more support to the system. Additional funds would provide better arms and equipment, as well as better training, as the number of peacekeepers required around the world increases. The amount the U.S. has spent on the F-35 could have funded this year’s level of peacekeeping — a record-high $8.6 billion — for the next 46 years.

Boosting Funding Needed To Rebuild America

The United States is falling apart. A lack of funding for bridges, roads, and other infrastructure has led to collapses across the country and the more than 63,000 bridges that have been labeled as “structurally deficient.” The Department of Transportation’s total budget request for next year is $90.1 billion, part of a four-year budget of $302.1 billion with $199 billion set aside to rebuild America’s roads and bridges. Obama has for the last two years called for a $50 billion lump sum to be added to the on top of DOT’s budget to help address the growing need, and twice Congress has rejected this proposal. If the U.S. were to have channeled the $298 billion is has spent so far on the F-35 — and continued spending at that level for the next six years — the U.S. would be halfway towards closing the $1.1 trillion gap in investment needed in infrastructure, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In addition, a report from the Center for American Progress, citing Moody’s Analytic’s chief economist, estimates infrastructure investment generates $1.44 of economic activity for each $1 spent. That sort of claim can’t be duplicated in the spending on the F-35.

***Along with the United States, seven other countries have committed to purchasing F-35 fighters from Lockheed Martin once they’re completed, which is helping diffuse the costs for the American taxpayer. But these partners are growing increasingly wary of the aircraft’s ballooning price. Australia recently announced that it was scaling back its purchase, as has the Netherlands. Those concerns will likely only be compounded by the current grounding of the fleet. And so, though the British Air Force intended to have the fighter in service a full two years ago, the only place you’ll be able to see the F-35 in action for now remains on the big screen — where its successes have been about equal to those in real life.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/...ondoggle-fail/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/drudge-repo...ngress-310020/