A Missouri state senator, Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-University City), has landed herself in a bit of hot water with with the U.S. Secret Service today after posting, then deleting, a comment on Facebook which read, “I hope Trump is assassinated!”
Unfortunately, as Chappelle-Nadal should have learned at this point in her life, the internet never forgets and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch managed to get their hands on the post: (See above image) Continue reading
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A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer prepares to take off for a 10-hour mission from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, into Japanese airspace and over the Korean Peninsula, July 30, 2017. (Tech. Sgt. Richard P. Ebensberger/Air Force)
WASHINGTON – Less than half of the bombers President Donald Trump would rely upon to be “locked and loaded” against North Korea could launch today if needed, according to the latest Air Force figures available.
That’s not a surprise to the bomb squadrons who have seen firsthand the combined effects of aircraft age, the demand of 15 years of air war operations and reduced budgets. But the numbers can be stark. Of the nation’s 75 conventional and nuclear B-52s, only about 33 are ready to fly at any given time, according to Air Force statistics. Of the 62 conventional B-1s, only about 25 are ready. With the 20 nuclear B-2 stealth bombers, the number drops further. Seven or eight bombers are available, according to the Air Force.
“On a nominal basis you don’t have more than single digits of B-2s available to do anything,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, currently the dean of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace.
“If anything good comes out of the North Korea crisis,” it should be a wake-up call, he said.
“It’s not just the nation’s bomber force,” that is so stretched, Deptula said. “It’s the military writ large. The U.S. Air Force is the smallest and least ready it’s ever been in history – that should get people’s attention.”
Staff Sgt. Shane Dewyar of the 332nd Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron, inspects an engine while deployed to Southwest Asia. Photo Credit: Staff Sgt. Eboni Reams/Air Force
On March 22, as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un prepared to test-launch a missile and tensions rose on the volatile Korean peninsula, a lone B-1B Lancer bomber took off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and flew across the Pacific on a Continuous Bomber Presence sortie.
It rendezvoused with Japanese F-15J Eagles for a training mission, before flying on to South Korea to further train with their F-15Ks and F-16s.
But there were supposed to be two B-1Bs there that day. The second bomber that was “scheduled to respond to a clear and present danger in North Korea,” as Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., said in a hearing later that day, was unable to take off. Pacific Air Forces later said a maintenance issue kept the second Lancer on the ground. Continue reading
A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress, B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit fly over Guam after launching from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, for an integrated bomber operation Aug.17, 2016. This mission marks the first time in history that all three of Air Force Global Strike Command’s strategic bomber aircraft are simultaneously conducting integrated operations in the U.S. Pacific Command area of operations. (Photo by Sandra Welch/U.S. Air Force)
The U.S. Air Force flew its three strategic bombers — the B-1B Lancer, B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress — in what was billed as the first-ever integrated bomber operation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
The flight took place Aug. 17 at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, according to a press release and photos from the service. The news quickly circulated on social media. Continue reading
Foiled ISIS attacks, plots, and terror funding grows across nation
At least 75 homegrown violent extremists were found to be operating across the United States in 2015, with the largest portion of these individuals pledging allegiance to the ISIS terror group, according to recent figures published by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.
The largest number of homegrown extremists were caught providing material support to various terror organizations, while at least 21 percent of the terrorists were found to be planning attacks in the United States, according to the figures. Continue reading
After the Global Strike Command of the United States Air Force deployed three B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, China’s state-run Global Times said that China has already adopted countermeasures against the US strategic bomber on Aug. 12. Continue reading
If the nuclear negotiations go bad, the U.S. has a backup: Obama can drop the MOP, the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb.
President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran may yet fail. On Tuesday, exactly one week before a June 30 deadline for an agreement, Iran’s Supreme Leader delivered his latest in a series of defiant statements, setting conditions for a deal—including immediate relief from sanctions, before Iran has taken steps to limit its nuclear program—that Obama will never accept. Secretary of State John Kerry warned last week that the U.S. is prepared to walk away from the talks. And even if a deal is reached, the story is not over. The Iranians may break or cheat on an agreement, and try build a nuclear weapon anyway.
That’s why, at least three times in the past year, a B-2 stealth bomber has taken off from an Air Force base in Missouri and headed west to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. For these missions, the $2 billion plane was outfitted with one of the world’s largest bombs. It is a cylinder of special high-performance steel, 20 feet long and weighing 15 tons. When dropped from an altitude likely above 20,000 feet, the bomb would have approached supersonic speed before striking a mock target in the desert, smashing through rock and burrowing deep into the ground before its 6,000 pounds of high explosives detonated with devastating force. Continue reading
Lawlessness: The latest casualties in Eric Holder’s anti-cop race war are two Ferguson, Mo., officers shot at a protest rally. The ambush follows the attorney general smearing the entire Ferguson police force as racist.
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Just hours earlier, Ferguson’s police chief stepped down in response to Holder’s 100-page report claiming Ferguson police engaged in systemic racism against local blacks.
“Nothing in this travesty of a report proves that, and the fact that Justice produced a report so buffoonish, so replete with conclusions unsupported by facts, so lacking in basic methodological rigor, is an embarrassment,” blasted U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Peter Kirsanow, who is black. Continue reading
As people around the world watched news footage of rioting and looting in Ferguson last summer, most overlooked one disturbing detail: Many protesters carried signs and banners with the web address of the Revolutionary Communist Party, U.S.A. The majority of mainstream news outlets may have ignored the fact, but it is undeniable that protesters in Oakland, California; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City, New York, have used the www.revcom.us address extensively.
The Revolutionary Communist Party (rcp) is currently the foremost Maoist party in the United States, though it probably only boasts several hundred members. Its earliest roots stretch back to the Sino-Soviet split of 1962. Favoring the Chinese brand of Communism over the Russian brand, 50 members and ex-members of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (cpusa) split into the Progressive Labor Movement (plm). This Maoist group later split into the Revolutionary Communist Party and Bill Ayers’s Weather Underground. Continue reading
President Barack Obama today introduced his plan for a progressive takeover of state and local policing.
“We have a great opportunity… to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,” he said Monday.
“We need to seize that opportunity… this is something that I’m going to stay very focused on in the months to come,” Obama said, as he touted a new interim report from his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Continue reading
Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, is demanding that the state’s Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon offer a public explanation as to why he told the National Guard which he had previously mobilized to stand down in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday night as the city burned in riots.
On Fox News on Tuesday morning, Kinder told anchor Martha MacCallum that Nixon kept the National Guard away as Ferguson burned—and questioned whether he did so in coordination with top officials from President Barack Obama’s administration. At a Tuesday press conference in response to a question from Breitbart News’ Kerry Picket, Nixon said that Kinder’s questions were “false and absurd” and that “politics has nothing to do with what anyone up here is doing.”
Kinder, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News early on Tuesday evening after the Nixon presser, said that Nixon owes the people of Missouri and specifically Ferguson an explanation as to why he held back the National Guard from stopping the looting, rioting, and burning of businesses and terrorizing of people.
Mark, a veteran of the US Navy, having served in the middle east, has been employed at the Drury Plaza Hotel for approximately the last year and a half. Yesterday, however that employment abruptly ended. Mark says that on Thursday after work he snapped 2 photographs and a short video of several dozen Homeland Security vehicles in the parking garage. He then uploaded them to his Facebook page. In his post he writes “why are all the cop cars here…I wonder if it has anything to do with Ferguson”, he also included the hashtags #Ferguson #NoJusticeNoPeace.
On Friday, shortly after arriving to work at the Drury Plaza Hotel, Mark stated that he was called to the office of Jeff Baker, the General Manager. Upon arriving Mr. Baker advised Mark that he needed to remove the photos and video from Facebook. Mark immediately complied and removed the post. Mark then continued and finished his shift. Continue reading
President Obama met with Ferguson protest leaders on November 5th, the day after the midterm elections. The meeting was not on his daily schedule. He was concerned that the protesters “stay on course.”
What does that mean?
And why is the president meeting with the violent Mike Brown protesters before a verdict is reached in the court case? Continue reading
Haunting images of local police officials using military-issued equipment to quell protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have raised new concerns about the Pentagon’s controversial program to equip local and state police departments with military surplus weaponry.
The program, now under White House review, has been plagued by messy bookkeeping, bureaucratic confusion and scores of missing weapons.
Fusion has learned that 184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon’s “1033 program” for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.
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More troubling yet is the possibility that some of the missing weapons, which were given to local police departments as part of a decades’ old government program to equip cops for the wars on terrorism and drugs, are actually being sold on the black market, Lynch said. Continue reading
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new federal earthquake map dials up the shaking hazard just a bit for about half of the United States and lowers it for nearly a quarter of the nation. Continue reading
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