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Question for FReepers. Where does a retired Sailor go for help when he is unemployed and completely broke? I have a friend in his mid-50's that served 8 years in the Navy back in the 70's. He didn't do his full 20 for retirement. He is a responsible, useful member of society, not a deadbeat. He has just been unable to find work, and I assume he has exhausted his benefits. He has recently been accepted into a veterans job re-entry program, but they won't have a bed for him for at least month. Where can a person like this...

PARIS --- While many observers cite technology transfer, prices and performance as being major factors in India’s selection of the Rafale as its next-generation fighter, reality is very different even if these factors obviously did play a significant role. In the same way that it is true that Rafale lost several competitions through no fault of its own, it must be recognized that its victory in India was also won, to a great extent, through no fault of its own. The real reason for its victory is political, and the long memory of Indian politicians was a major contributing factor....

Excerpt: "Where is that advice written? I remember reading it once or twice - and it was something I never did; just not my style. My instincts were spot on with this - as a nice Fleet LT we had a new guy coming to our command - a guy with a "reputation." You know the type. "

Remember those that gave all so we could mess it up!

Retired Rear Admiral George Worthington, former commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, told The Daily Caller that there are many people more worthy of a ship bearing their name. “Here is the issue. There are a lot of dead Marines out there whose names could go on anything that appears to be an amphibious ship,” he said, explaining that a past recipient of the Medal of Honor, Dakota Meyer, might be a good candidate. Worthington added his email “inbox” has been filled with messages from military friends who are “shocked and angered” by the decision. “We think fallen Marines...

This video is a repeat to inspired and to bring awareness of the soon coming of Jesus for His Church. All scripture was taken out of the (KJV) Bible!

MOUNT VERNON, Va., Feb. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, celebrates our first president's birthday with three days of special events including an outdoor cooking demonstration by celebrated chefs, a new food exhibition with more than 125 objects from the Washingtons' kitchen, a surprise birthday celebration for "George Washington", book signing with PBS's A Taste of History host Chef Walter Staib, and much more! Saturday and Sunday events are included in Estate admission, and admission to all events on Monday, February 20, events are FREE in honor of George Washington's birthday! Saturday, February 18All events...

Ron Paul has called Bradley Manning a hero, for bravely releasing national secrets to wikileaks. Has this damaged the US? Has it cost lives?

Marine Corps Times – Level Zero Heroes, page 30 By Gina Cavallaro Michael Golembesky is poised to publish the first book detailing experiences of Marine special operators in Afghanistan. And unlike career writers who drop into an outpost for a quick embed, Golembesky was there as a member of Marine Special Operations Team 8222 during one of its hardest deployments. He plans to tell the team’s story through the words of the operators on the ground. The 22-man team spent seven months, from October 2009 to June 2010, in Bala Morghab, a village in remote western Afghanistan’s Badghis province, a...

The F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing variant completed ship suitability testing aboard the USS WASP (LHD-1) off the coast of Virginia in October 2011. Combined, F-35B test aircraft BF-2 and BF-4 accomplished 72 short takeoffs and 72 vertical landings during the three-week testing period. VIDEO

Help if you can. A retired USAF friend took this photo this earlier this morning from Gulfport, MS (at the Armed Forces Retirement Home) and has been trying to find more info. He has called many sources, but has been unable to confirm a launch or ??? If you also saw it, please post anything you may know so I can give him an answer.

Abbreviated title: The 'Pompeii' of the Western Front: Archaeologists find the bodies of 21 tragic World War One German soldiers in perfectly preserved trenches where they were buried alive by an Allied shell The bodies of 21 German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed. The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in. Thirteen bodies were recovered from the underground shelter, but the remaining men had...

Pupils at St Mary’s RC Primary School were treated to a special performance from The Highlanders army pipe band on Thursday before many received lessons in how to play the instruments. Drum Major (Sergeant) Danny Brown introduced four pipers and three drummers from The 4th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland to the children to help promote the music and instruments to the next generation. Drum Major Brown works with the community engagement project run by the army in Scotland called The Pipers Trail. The army works with the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, National Piping Centre and local...

Drums as loud as thunderclaps and then as soft as psalms, the sounds of the shehnai matching tunes with that of bagpipes, all heralded the close of Republic Day celebrations with the “Beating Retreat” ceremony at Vijay Chowk held against the backdrop of the majestic Rashtrapati Bhavan here on Sunday. In days gone by, the “Beating Retreat” was sounded by the buglers as a signal to soldiers engaged in battle to cease their fighting, sheath their weapons and “retreat” from the battlefield. The bugle was also used in military towns to recall soldiers to their quarters in the evenings. “Beating...

Between tales of one police captain dropping to all fours to yell "don't beat me" and black and white commanders angrily proclaiming they were being discriminated against, jurors got a stark depiction Thursday of a Richmond Police Department consumed with racial tensions in 2006 when Chris Magnus took over as chief. The revelations came as Magnus spent a second day testifying in a Contra Costa County Superior Court trial over a lawsuit claiming he had discriminated against seven high-ranking black officers. Plaintiffs' attorney Stephen Jaffe tried to make Magnus look like a disconnected leader who revealed racist bents in quips...

As my colleague David M. Herszenhorn reports, scientists are poised to take some highly anticipated samples from a deep subglacial lake in Antarctica, saying on Wednesday that they had succeeded in boring through more than two miles of ice. The state-financed broadcaster Russia Today posted video of the researchers at the frigid Antarctic outpost, including clips of them snowmobiling around the endless expanse of ice and snow and watching supply planes land. What evolutionary secrets Lake Vostok — named after the Russian research station above it — may hold after being sealed under ice for millions of years has tantalized...

Tel Aviv has expressed grave concerns about the fate of Syria's weaponry should Bashar al Assad fall, saying they pose as great a threat to Israeli security as Iranian nuclear development. As the violent government crack down on Syrian civilian protestors enters its eleventh month, Israeli intelligence now regards the fall of the Assad regime as inevitable. Syria's massive stockpile of weapons includes surface-to-air missiles, high-trajectory long-range rockets and missiles, biological and chemical weapons, which are currently under the watchful guard of government troops. An Israeli defence official was quoted last week in free Israeli daily Israel Hayom, a paper...

I am currently deployed and found out about a group of people supporting vets by building hand made CBG's free of charge and sending them to the troops. Here is a picture of one sent to me by Huntz Meyer. Huntz did a beautiful job. This guitar sounds great and he personalized it for me by cutting the sound holes in the shape of hammers and anvils. My screenname Hotmetal=blacksmith. If you know someone that is deployed and likes music tell them about this site. I joined,hooked up with a builder and in no time I had my prize custom...

Iranian Revolutionary Guards are said to be present in Syria in numbers ranging into the hundreds, though exact figures cannot be confirmed. They act as trainers, advisers and intelligence-gatherers to regime forces, in much the same way as Iranian agents assisted extremist Shia and Sunni groups fighting US forces during the occupation of Iraq.A spate of kidnaps of Iranian nationals in Syria, officially described as Shia pilgrims, has been attributed to growing popular hostility to this Iranian presence. Last month, Al-Jazeera television reported claims that Iranians detained by Syrian rebel forces were soldiers operating as snipers in and around Homs....

Russia and China blocked a bid to force regime change. But a negotiated settlement is the only way out of civil warThere is no limit, it seems, to the blood price Arabs have to pay for their "spring". After the carnage in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, Syria's 11-month-old uprising grows ever more gruesome. Four days of bombardment of rebel-controlled districts in the Syrian city of Homs have yielded horrific images and reports from the embattled Bab al-Amr opposition stronghold: of mosques full of corpses, streets strewn with body parts, residential areas reduced to rubble.

Freepers Everywhere! Will you be at CPAC? If so, I hope to meet you! Look for Pamela Geller table and Marinka Peschmann's table in the Exhibit Hall space on the lower level of the Marriott. I will be there and hope to meet you! Pamela Geller's MUST READ book, "Stop The Islamization Of America will be available. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/atlas-articles/ Marinks Peschmann's MUST READ book, "The Whistleblower" (How the Clinton White HouseStayed in Power to Reemerge in the Obama White House and on the World Stage) will be available too! http://www.marinkapeschmann.com/2012/02/08/in-the-dc-area-come-to-my-book-signing-at-cpac/ Also look for the events on Friday that you won't want...

In tribute to the brave men of Culpeper, Orange, and Fauquier counties who helped establish our lasting heritage of Freedom and the identity we all share today The Minute Battalion of Culpeper County, Virginia 1775 - 1776 Left to Right: Private Man, Officer in Captain Taliaferro's Company, Private Man, Officer in Captain Wm. Pickett's Company Military Uniforms in America Plate No. 259 Copyright 1973 by Company of Military Historians Provided to Culpepper Connections! by Chip Culpepper who received it from Gene Norris Culpepper. At the Virginia convention held May 1775, in Richmond, Patrick Henry and the Committee of Safety ordered...

Our son, Logan, received an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy today!

Wednesday February, 8 2012 at 09:45 AM Starring Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, and Raymond Massey. Downed RAF bomber fliers pose as Nazis and steal Goering's car, then fly home. 1942 Military/War tcm.com

ore than 5,400 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March. The number of dead in Homs alone is now over over 200 and climbing. The Assad regime says terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country are behind the uprising, not people seeking to transform the authoritarian regime. He’s right, it was Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood that claimed responsibility in December 2011 for two suicide bombings in Damascus that killed 44 people. Yet, you have Israeli politicians like Moshe (Boge) Ya’alon telling Army Radio that the end of Assad’s regime could bring ‘relatively moderate’...

Did Chinese cyber spying cause the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s cost spikes and production delays? That’s the question Pentagon budget officials are asking according to Aviation Week. Chinese spies apparently hacked into secure conference calls and listened to meetings discussing the classified technologies aboard the jets. In particular, China may have stolen info about the F-35’s secure communications and antenna systems; leading to costly software rewrites and other redesigns to compromised parts of the plane. The worst part, this problem isn’t just limited to the F-35, though the program’s size and the fact that it’s information systems were apparently designed...

SAN ANTONIO, Feb. 6, 2012 – Navy veteran Hector Hernandez leans down to hug his dog as she pants noisily from her most recent dash around the living room. She nuzzles into his hand -- a momentary calm in the storm of activity that’s Bella. Hector Hernandez watches his wife, Anita, play with their foster dog, Bella, as their daughters, Tiffany, left, and Anita look on in their home in San Antonio. Bella belongs to the Defense Department's Military Working Dog Breeding Program on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The program, which breeds Belgian Malinois for a variety...

Thanks to Sipsey Street, and then the Daily Caller, evidence is mounting that John Boehner may be surreptitiously putting the Kibosh on Darrell Issa's Fast and Furious investigation. The vast majority of today's show - available for MP3 download or stream - dealt with this subject. http://www.benbarrack.com/show_archives.asp

North Stafford, Va. – The wife of one of the area’s best known restaurant entrepreneurs today lost her battle with cancer. Gloria Spooner, 82, died this morning. She leaves behind her husband, retired Maj. Richard Spooner, four children and 17 grandchildren. Maj. Richard Spooner is the owner of the Globe and Laurel Restaurant in North Stafford. From there on Friday night, he commented about his late wife. “She was dedicated and loyal. We were married for 60 years and we had a wonderful life together,” said Spooner.

Something tells me that the University of Pennsylvania is not in the toy business. Got to see this!

Stuart Newman said flying in the B-17 was "a real thrill"Stuart Newman flew his last mission of World War II 67 years ago, in the spring of 1945. On Friday he returned to the skies, high above South Florida, in a vintage B-17. “It was a real thrill being up there, particularly with my son,” said Newman, 89. “Think about it, it’s 60, 65, 66 years since I actually flew this thing. And to be back here and relive those moments was something very, very special, I can tell you.” Andy Newman arranged for the flight for his dad through...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/picturethis/2017408486_navydestroyeroutofthewater.html

I don't know the source of this pic.

What's the best way to make sure a family member in the Armed Services gets his/her vote counted? My son is at Air Force basic training right now and will be out of his "home" state right through July/August.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have invented a bullet that guides itself to the target. Sandia has wide expertise at miniature technology, and the bullet works like a tiny guided missile. The patented design doesn't shoot straight. Instead of a spiral rotation, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself towards a laser directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air. Jim Jones, distinguished member of technical staff, and his team of engineers at Sandia Labs think the .50-caliber bullets would work well with military machine guns so soldiers could...

A while back an inventor came up with an accurate bump fire device, so accurate and fast that the ATF not only seized it they went over his mailing list and threatened to arrest any customer who bought one and didn't hand it over. There was an article and videos of the device here but I can't find them. Anyone remember that posting? I wanted to show it to a friend of mine who owns some similar devices. Thanks.

PALM BAY, Fla. — Despite rumors to the contrary, Army veteran Jerry Miller is still very much alive. "I'm alive. I’m very alive," Miller told WESH 2 News. The U.S. Veterans Administration has declared him dead four times, but Miller, a Brevard County resident, has refuted the claims. "To me, it’s stupid. I can’t die but one time. They have killed me four times," he said. Miller, a former drill sergeant, served 10 years in the Army. He said he lives on a government pension and Social Security. The confusion started in July 2010 when he received a letter addressed...

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated). Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end. Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To...

"Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America," Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said at the Palm Beach County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner. West represents the district in the U.S. Congress.

Fast succumbing to FN-FAL envy . . . but the Belgian FNs have priced themselves out of reach since hubby bought his 30 years ago. I'm looking for a sturdy, accurate, reliable auto loader in .308 Win. (We have never owned a rifle in .223, hubby hated the M16 not just because they took away his M14 but also because the early ones had lots of problems. I have never been bothered by recoil, my deer gun is a Ruger M77 in .308. Besides, .223 would mean another set of dies . . ) I've looked at an FNAR, also...

NASA’s Apollo program began with one of the worst disasters the organization has ever faced. A routine prelaunch test turned fatal when a fire ripped through the spacecraft’s crew cabin killing all three astronauts. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, a tragic and preventable accident. There were warning signs, similar accidents that had claimed lives both in the United States and abroad. The Apollo 1 crew could have been saved from a gruesome death. Plugs Out The commander for Apollo 1 was Gus Grissom, one of the original Mercury astronauts whose first spaceflight was marred by...

Greta gives Newt time to talk...good interview.

Reza Kahlili is reporting that Ayatollah Khameini has ordered the chief commander of the Quds Forces to collaborate with Hezbollah to coordinate terror attacks in response to the assassination of one of Iran’s nuclear scientists. The man Khameini reached out to is very relevant but first, Kahlili’s report....

Gannett publication - link and title only.

Russia's largest firearms manufacturer, JSC Izhmash, unveiled its first model of the fifth-generation Kalashnikov assault rifle. The new rifle is tentatively called AK-12. The assembly of the new weapon, the development of which was initiated by Izhmash's chief designer Vladimir Zlobin, was completed in 2011. Specialists currently test the new weapon, the press service of the enterprise said Wednesday. Russia's Interior Ministry has already requested the AK-12 for test exploitation. Izhmash is ready to arrange the deliveries of the new weapon for the Russian army too, Interfax reports.

Kim Jong-eun visiting Man-Kyong-Dae Revolutionary Academy, a school for kids from elite families in N. Korea.

I need sme help. Usually I am good at finding this sort of thing online but lately I am foggy-brained or something. I know a lot of you FReepers know this stuff. Where can I find a comparison of the forces between warsaw pact and nato countries in 1946? Population, GDP, and the number of tanks, planes, submarines and all that.

Background: My wife and I bought our first, current home, with a conventional loan. We have perfect credit and are not under water but owe pretty much what it's worth. Our debt to income ratio is very low. We have a farm in Kentucky where we would like to build a log home and I'm eligible for a VA loan. Can I and or should I use a VA loan to build our dream log home? Can I do this while I'm living in my current home if the new log home will eventually be our primary residence or do...

A little help

SHOOTING AT CAMP SHELBY - MP ON ROUTINE CHECK OF NORTH GATE HIT IN CHEST BY ONE ROUND - BULLETPROOF VEST STOPS SLUG MASSIVE HUNT LAUNCHED FOR UNIDENTIFIED INTRUDER - ID OF SHOT MP NOT RELEASED © 2012 MilitaryCorruption.com It was nearly twelve midnight on Friday, Jan. 20, at Camp Shelby, Miss., when a military policeman was shot while on routine patrol. His bulletproof vest stopped the slug and saved his life. The unidentified MP was rushed to Forrest County General Hospital as a precaution. He was later released. Officials at the largest National Guard training facility east of the...