The Capt'n be using his spyglass to search out those scalawag political bilge rats, and givm a broadside when they need to be exposed for their skulduggery.
by Staff Sgt. Monique Randolph Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs
7/21/2008 - WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Officials from the Government Accountability Office testified before Congress July 10 here about their decision to uphold Boeing's protests of the Air Force's selection of Northrop Grumman Corp. to produce 179 new tankers that would replace the aging KC-135 Stratotanker fleet.
In its report, GAO officials stated that errors had been made during the acquisition process that could have affected the outcome of the close competition between the two companies, but did not find evidence of intentional wrongdoing by Air Force officials.
"We didn't see an iota of evidence that there was intentional wrongdoing, no evidence of bias, no evidence of criminality," said Daniel I. Gordon, the deputy general counsel for the GAO during the hearing.
Following the Department of Defense's subsequent decision to reopen the bidding process, the Air Force's top acquisitions officer said she is optimistic the proposals will only get better, and both the taxpayer and warfighter will benefit from the new tanker.
"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has made the tanker acquisition a top priority, and I applaud that," said Sue C. Payton, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition at the Pentagon. If we can get cooperation with all the parties, we should be able to award (the contract) in December or January."
Ms. Payton credits members of the Air Force acquisitions team with helping to build such strong proposals from both companies.
"Over the past two years, I saw the most honest, dedicated, hard-working individuals I've ever worked with in more than 30 years," she said. "We shared more information and opened the door for more questions from the offerors than ever before. Acquisitions have extensive regulations, legislative considerations and rules of fair play. It's extremely complex, very competitive and high stakes."
Of more than 100 issues raised in Boeing's protest, eight were sustained by the GAO, she said.
"When the GAO finds fault, it doesn't mean your (organization) is fatally flawed," Ms. Payton said.
The tanker is one of 35 major defense acquisition efforts currently in the works for the Air Force and Ms. Payton said she looks forward to leading those efforts.
Newton's laws are immutable: so is the Airbus's unsuitability for the Air Force tanker mission.
Sir Isaac and the Airbus
Human Events
Jed Babbin
25 July 2008
Newtonian physics - which a professor of fond memory tried to teach me in freshman year of college - prescribes laws that are immutable. Dr. Fred Furst used to say, "The laws of physics are the same wherever you go, and bad things happen when you try to break them." For that reason alone, I'm confident neither Sir Isaac nor Prof. Furst would choose the Airbus 330 tanker for the US Air Force.
I never promised you there would be no math, but trust me: this won't be too bad. We've got to do a little math and a little physics.
Newton's Second Law of Motion defines the relationship between mass (roughly what something weighs), acceleration (not the speed of an object, but the rate at which an object gains speed) and the force required to move a mass at a rate of acceleration: Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. As Freddie Furst said over and over again, "F=mα." About which more in a moment.
The Air Force has a lot of guidelines, manuals and regulations. Pilots - at least those who live to ripe old age - usually go by the book. The book on air refueling operations requires that tanker aircraft be able to perform maneuvers called "breakaways" and "overruns" in just the way the Air Force specifies.
As I described on the Rush Limbaugh Show on July 17, a "breakaway" is a vital safety maneuver which is performed often in training and in flight operations. There's an imaginary envelope around the tanker "boom," the controlled crane-like device projecting from the rear of the tanker that pipes fuel into the receiving aircraft. If you go outside the envelope - say a gust of wind hits, or the fighter is going too fast, or even if it pitches or yaws, twisting away -- the "boomer" (the guy sitting in the back of the tanker who "flies" the boom), the receiving pilot or the tanker driver can call "breakaway," which is supposed to result in several near-simultaneous events.
The boomer pops the boom off the receiving aircraft which then decelerates rapidly and drops about 1000 feet of altitude. The tanker is supposed to be able to accelerate rapidly (to a specified higher speed that varies by type of receiving aircraft) and climb away from the receiver. So now we're back to F=mα.
According to the General Accountability Office decision overturning the contract award to Northrop-Grumman/EADS for the Airbus 330 tanker, "...there is no documentation in the record setting forth an analysis of whether Northrop Grumman's proposed aircraft has sufficient operational airspeed when refueling the [deleted by GAO] to initiate an emergency breakaway procedure."
What the GAO is saying, in its lawyerly language, is that the facts show that the Airbus 330 cannot reach a sufficient speed to pull away from one or more aircraft it's supposed to refuel. And if it can't, there could be a mid-air collision. That may also mean that the huge weight of the Airbus isn't compensated by comparable engine power to enable it to accelerate fast enough to get out of the way. You need an awful lot of "F" to push that much "m" fast enough to get enough "α" for a breakaway, and the Airbus apparently just doesn't have it.
Another part of the Airbus' inability to perform the mission is the "overrun" problem. No, Virginia, we're not talking about cost overruns (those will come but only after the contract is begun). We're talking about how a tanker and a receiving aircraft join up.
Tankers usually orbit above a set position - flying a racetrack-shaped oval that may be thirty miles or more in length - waiting for whatever fly guys are coming by to gas up. When one or more do - say an F-16 - the tanker swings out of its orbit to theoretically come up ahead of the F-16 on the F-16's original course. But sometimes (according to the tanker guys, it's always the fighter jock's fault: you can imagine what the fighter jocks say) the tanker comes out behind.
At that point, the fighter is supposed to drop speed and altitude and - again, that old F=mα thing - the tanker is supposed to climb and accelerate past the fighter to get in position for the boomer to plug into the fighter's nose. But the Airbus weighs too much and apparently can't even go fast enough even if its engines could push it to the required speeds.
According to the GAO decision, despite the fact that the Air Force had told Northrop Grumman that the Airbus apparently couldn't accelerate quickly enough and reach the speed set by Air Force standards to perform an overrun, the Air Force disregarded its own mandatory guideline to keep the Airbus eligible for the contract. And, as the GAO decided, they had no reasonable basis to do so: "...the record does not establish that the [Air Force] had a reasonable basis for concluding that Northrop Grumman's proposed solution would allow its aircraft to obtain the requisite overrun airspeeds to satisfy this...requirement."
So not only can't it accelerate quickly enough, the Airbus apparently has too low a top-speed. Again, this is a problem that cannot be overlooked. Or, as the GAO put it, it was unreasonable for the Air Force to say that the Airbus 330 can refuel all USAF tanker-compatible aircraft in accordance with Air Force procedures.
The Airbus cannot be eligible for the contract award if it can't fly the mission. That's what the Air Force documents said and that's one of the big reasons GAO tossed out the contract award.
And there's a third problem. This one is simple geometry.
Most airfields don't have runways as wide as Dulles International. The NATO standard runway is 147.6 feet wide. When an aircraft breaks down, or if another aircraft has to take priority landing or taking off, a tanker will have to be able to be turned around on the runway.
To do that, one of those small tractors you see at airports is attached to the nose gear, the pilot turns the nose wheel all the way over, and the tractor pulls the bird around 180 degrees. According to Boeing, their 767 tanker can turn around in about 129 feet, which can be done fine on a 147-foot wide runway.
There is no public data we could find on the Airbus' turning radius but one source says that the Airbus website used to state that the turning radius of the A-330 was 143 feet. If the runway is a few feet narrower than the NATO standard, if the Airbus isn't lined up with its right wheels on the farthest edge of the runway and if a lot of other ifs, the U-turning Airbus gets its nose off the runway and probably gets stuck.
Which means you have a runway out of operation until - minutes or hours later - the too big, too heavy aircraft gets unstuck.
It's just like good old Freddie Furst used to say: the laws of physics are the same wherever you go. If F still equals mα (and it surely does) the Airbus 330 can't perform the Air Force tanker mission.
Prosecutors called him a modern-day "pimp." A jury agreed late Friday, convicting Santiago Steven Maese of five felonies in connection with his former Doll House escort service.
After 4 1/2 hours of deliberation, the three-woman, five-man jury delivered unanimous verdicts on four counts of exploiting a prostitute, a third-degree felony, and one count of a pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony. He was found not guilty of money laundering, a second-degree felony.
Following the verdict, 3rd District Judge Randall Skanchy ordered a pre-sentence report and set a sentencing hearing for Sept. 8. Skanchy did not order that Maese be taken into custody, citing his clean criminal record and faithful attendance at court hearings.
Maese showed no reaction as the verdict was read and said he plans to appeal. Prosecutor Chad Platt referred to the verdict as a "victory for the rule of law."
Platt said in closing arguments Friday that despite Maese's sleek businesslike exterior, he is actually a pimp at heart — controlling, demanding and vengeful.
The prosecutor said it was naive to think that Tiffany French Curtis, Maese's former girlfriend and the co-owner of the Doll House escort service, ran the whole show and Maese knew nothing about sex-for-money.
Posted: 2:59 PM- Steven Santiago Maese has grabbed headlines recently for hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller. Veteran prosecutor Kent Morgan was fired in March by Miller for allegedly leaking confidential information to Maese about his pending criminal case. In April, state House candidate Kelly Ann Booth broke off her engagement to Maese and dropped from the race after learning Maese had owned The Doll House escort service. But on Thursday, a 3rd District Court jury was focused solely on the issue of whether Maese used the escort service as a cover for a prostitution ring. Maese, 31, is charged with four counts of exploitation of prostitution, third-degree felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. He is also charged with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and money laundering, second-degree felonies punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Former Doll House escorts are expected to testify that between July 2004 and April 2006, they were encouraged by Maese to have sex with customers, and that they paid a portion of their earnings to Maese and co-defendant Tiffany French Curtis. Curtis, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges, is also slated to testify against Maese.
In a separate case, Maese is charged with third-degree felony witness tampering and stalking for allegedly following Curtis around the Salt Lake Valley in April, and on one day swerved his car in front of her vehicle three times on Interstate 15. During opening statements, prosecutor Michael Colby called Curtis "The Doll House madam" and said Maese was the "pimp." But defense attorney Gilbert Athay told jurors that while Doll House escorts performed "sex acts of all kinds ... they did it of their own choice." He said The Doll House had a policy and procedures manual that prohibited sex acts and allowed the girls only to dance and do specific touching such as backrubs. Athay also emphasized that all the women who would be testifying against Maese "worked as prostitutes." He also said that almost all would testify about deals made by law enforcement and prosecutors to get them to testify. Most were getting their charges dismissed or had received pleas in abeyance, Athay said.
A reporter asked A-Rod what he did to keep in shape. He said exercise, exercise, and more exercise. When asked about what food he eats he said he only eats healthy foods that are on a very strict list. When asked what food would he say was the worst possible thing he could eat that might affect his career, he replied straight faced and said wedding cake.
A-Rod was recently served divorce court documents alleging he was exercising with too many other woman other than his wife.
A former escort service owner charged with running a prostitution ring wants a judge to delay his Thursday trial.
Doll House owner Steven Santiago Maese claims the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office should be disqualified because DA Lohra Miller has a "personal and political vendetta" against him. Third District Judge Randall Skanchy said he would review the issue, but warned Maese, and his attorney, Gilbert Athay, he would likely rule against them. Athay argued that Miller still has hard feelings toward Maese for supporting and assisting recently fired prosecutor Kent Morgan in his failed battle against Miller for the Republican nomination for DA in April 2007. Morgan was fired in March for allegedly leaking confidential information about the Doll House to Maese and is appealing the firing to county officials. Last week, Athay said today, Miller injected herself into the case by ordering prosecutor Chad Platt to refuse Maese any plea deal offers.
The Political Spyglass:7/7/2008 4:36:00 PM
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No Quarter Offered, No Quarter Given. Doll House owner Steven Santiago Maese is a total slime ball and tried to ruin Lohra Miller's reputation by attacking her private family life, along with a nutcase neighbor. DO NOT GIVE AN INCH on this case Lohra, go for it all and make this jerk pay for his actions and exploiting these women "escorts" prostitutes. I wish they still allowed public floggings. I hope he ends up "escorting" a few inmates down at the point of the mountain.
A state legislator who signed a bipartisan ethics complaint against one of his GOP House colleagues is now finding himself in the public eye — and blaming retribution by his own party leaders for it.
Rep. Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan, says he did nothing wrong when he tried to console an upset female intern during the 2008 Legislature.
"I can't believe that the (leaders of the Republican Party) would stoop this low" as to leak the incident involving him to the news media. The Deseret News is not identifying sources who told the newspaper about the incident, but Mascaro said he believes he knows who has talked about it.
Top 10 Replies by Programmers when their programs do not work:
10. "I can't test everything!"
9. "THIS can't be the source of THAT."
8. "It works, but it hasn't been tested."
7. "Somebody must have changed my code."
6. "Did you check for a virus on your system?"
5. "Even though it doesn't work, how does it feel?"
4. "You can't use that version on your system."
3. "Why do you want to do it that way?"
2. "Where were you when the program blew up?"
1. "I thought I fixed that."
Some men and women are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any scalawag who stands between them and unlimited power. You never met a man - or woman - you couldn't eviscerate. You are the definitive Man of Action, the CEO of the Seven Seas, Lee Iacocca in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. You're mission-oriented, and if anyone gets in the way, that's his problem, now isn't? Your buckle was swashed long ago and you have never been so sure of anything as your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off his head if he shows any sign of taking you on or backing down. If one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.
