Introduction to the HogLog

What you will and won't find on here -- and why this is going to be the place to bookmark if you like aviation books.

[UPDATE]: Contact me at kevin at network impossible dot com.

Posted at 09:35 PM     Read More  

 That Famous "Voltaire" Quote...

..ain't. 

You know the one, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," right?

As it happens, it's not a Voltaire quote -- at least, no one has been able to run it down in the 18th Century French intellectual's works. But it's attributed to him with grim regularity. 

So who was it? And why did it get linked to Voltaire? Answer overleaf.

Posted at 01:24 PM     Read More  

 Long time, no blog...

 ...well, things have been busy. And the iBlog software is absolutely horrible (and still, essentially, unsupported and unmaintained). So it's been in the "too much hassle" pile to move the whole thing over to some more reliable system, ideally one that's entirely web-based. Problem is, of course, they all have their own deficiencies. 

There have been a number of events worth blogging about, not to mention going on six months' arrears of Today in SF History. 

Posted at 12:43 AM     Read More  

Vets' Charity a Scam... says... Charity Head

The latest in an ugly series of "charities" that's been exposed as a scam run to benefit its insiders at the expense of the people it's supposedly helping is... the Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation. And it's been exposed by none other than the national head of the Order, retired SF officer Henry Cook. With key assists from his deputy Joe Palagyi and ABC's Brian Ross.

Cook found, once elected to the Order's board, he had no ability to control the separate Foundation, which parasites on the good name of the Order in order to provide cash and perks for insiders. He not only couldn't stop it, he couldn't even watch it happening -- Richard H. Esau Jr., the head of the MOPH Service Foundation, a separate corporation from the MOPH itself, banished Cook from its financial meetings.

The MOPH Foundation routinely gets F marks from watchdogs like the American Institute of Philanthropy (see also the .pdf statement to Congress here) and isn't rated by Charity Navigator which doesn't even consider it a charity. Why? Because of the tens of millions raised by the Foundation, most of it sticks to Esau's, his cronies', and his fundraisers' fingers and hardly anything gets spent on wounded vets. 

Not all veterans' charities are a rip-off. The Special Operations Warrior Foundation for instance, is... well, read the link to see how a good charity's numbers should look. The SOWF also does something many vets' charities don't, it also provides educational benefits for the children of SOF warriors who die in training accidents like this one. Accidental death is always waiting in the wings when you're an operator... the slightest error by anyone and your ticket gets punched, and most charities neglect these victims in favor of the higher-profile war KIAs. But when Carlo Meth's kid is old enough, the SOWF will be able to help with college if needed. Unfortunately, for every SOWF there's a couple of MOPH Foundations, so I return you to the jeremiad in progress. 

Posted at 09:34 PM     Read More  

Back from Hiatus!

HogLog hasn't been dead (or even pining for the fjords!) but it may have looked that way. I was away for some three weeks and unable to make any updates since Wright Brothers Day (12/17). Consider it my own personal Writer's Strike!

I missed some really worthwhile blogging subjects, but also was prevented from pontificating on some bleh ones. So for you, Dear Reader, it's probably a wash. 

At this writing, I have updated Today in SF History (the site's most popular feature, except for the long-moribund Plane Porn) through December, 2007. When I get back to the blog I'll bring SF History current.

There's nothing in the extended entry, so don't "read more."

Posted at 06:09 PM     Read More  

The Bee is Back! GyroBee, that is.

"I didn't know it was gone." But the website for the popular open-source ultralight gyroplane was taken down by its designer, Dr. Ralph Taggart. The rest of Ralph's life had made it impossible for him to keep up with the site, so he reluctantly pulled the plug. 

For a less-loved project, that probably would have been the end. But GyroBee builder Kandace Rawlings reported the end of the site on the Rotary Wing Forum. And forum member Tim O'Connor swung into action, setting up the domain name www.TheGyroBee.com and hosting the site, initially with archived material retrieved from the Internet Archive. Ralph came through and sent the files to Tim, and the data will soon be live. Tim is hoping that a Bee enthusiast will step up as a site admin volunteer. 

The GyroBee is not important because it was an ultralight gyroplane or because it's a novel machine -- it owes a debt both to Bensen's original gyrocopter and to Martin Hollman's original Bumble Bee ultralight -- but because it was the first aviation project to use the open-source ethos and procedures from the software development world. In the long run, this may be seen as a much bigger development than it is today -- already, an open-source continuation of the Rutan Long-EZ, called (what else?) the Open-EZ, is in development by a team of enthusiasts, led by Jon Matcho of New Jersey. 

Posted at 10:59 PM     Read More  

This is just sad.

From Craigslist here: 

---

Reply to: pers-470513808@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-06, 10:25AM EST

 A fried in need is a friend indeed.
I am not going to hide it or deny it, I am facing foreclosure. Are you?
If you think about it, if we pool together, we can save on house, either mine of yours, whichever it's better, we can co-own it, buy it back from the bank at a discount, and then once the market turns, we can sell it, make a lot of money, and we could go our own ways if we want to.
But why not trying to fall in love while we are roomies and co-owners?

I am a tall, long haired blonde, BBW, two great kids, gainfully employed in the beauty industry.

• Location: Randolph and surroundings
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

  PostingID: 470513808

---

Sheesh.

Posted at 08:15 AM     Read More  

Were was I being when I wasn't being here?

Hello all... my interest in daily blogging was recently overwhelmed by a death, as it were, in the family. Jeff Calero, team leader of one of our ODAs, was KIA in Afghanistan and I've had to help with the funeral arrangements. It's over now, and Jeff was laid to rest with full military honors, awarded several medals by the two generals who attended, and posthumously promoted to Major (he was on the list before his death intervened, and had been putting the promotion off to stay with an ODA). 

Several family members agreed with me that he'd have been embarrassed by all the attention. I may or may not write more about this, but I've put a couple of links after the jump so you can learn a little more about this great American and the family of great Americans whence he came. One thing that is not in the links is that almost every male in the family was a proud veteran, and two cousins also served in SF.

The links may make him sound like Superman (and I picked these links because the stuff in them is generally true!), but for Group, he was an average guy. Which is to say, there are many things in Group, but no average guys. So every loss really, really costs us. 

RIP Jeff, and God bless your family and friends. See you on the other side.

Posted at 10:06 AM     Read More  

Robin Moore in Hospital

Robin Moore, the celebrated novelist and the only civilian to ever complete Special Forces qualification (thanks to his college buddy, a guy named Robert F. Kennedy, cutting some red tape for him), is in hospital. 

He'll be 82 on Wednesday, and he's fighting esophageal and lung cancer (as well as dealing, as he has for years, with Parkinson's disease). The docs say they've beaten the esophageal tumor and have a shot at the lung one. According to his wife, Helen, he's still in there fighting.

You might want to send him a card. 

Posted at 02:14 PM     Read More  

How many in Special Forces?

The Army knows, of course, how many soldiers it has at any one time in Career Management Field 18, Special Forces, and how many soldiers are in each Group and even on each team. These numbers are, of necessity, secret, as they provide a hint to national capabilities and perhaps even intentions. But the question I ask myself is: how many have there been, total? And this turns out to be no secret but a considerably more difficult number to catch hold of, than the secret one is. 

A clue came across my desk recently, in a note that said Friday's SFQC class was the 231st graduating class; that tells me that the total number of qualified Special Forces soldiers that ever were, can probably be constrained to a range between about 12,000 and about 45,000 men. These numbers seem extremely large, until you realize that SF has existed for over fifty years (since 1952), and many millions of eligible have cycled through the Army in that span of time. 

Of that quantity, nearly a thousand have been slain in combat or died of other causes while in combat zones. It is a hazardous undertaking. 

Posted at 12:58 PM     Read More  

Update on the Atlantic City Phony

Am I prescient or what? Not really. These frauds are just all of a type, and drearily predictable. And according to Bob Levy's lawyer, Edwin Jacobs*, the fake Vietnam hero had been in hiding in a Somerset, NJ, clinic, dealing with "mental health issues."

In New Jersey politics, lying is a mental health issue? What's normal? But the "rehab" thing seems to have surprised some locals. Why? 

What I said here was (emphasis added): 

Stop me if you've heard this next bit before. As it turns out, the Mayor's Special Forces history is as phony as a casino's intimations of easy money. After an attempt to have city employees threaten the reporters working on the story, he's done the usual criminal politician thing: lawyered-up and decamped, apparently, to "rehab."

Good luck. You can rehab addiction. You can't rehab crooked.

I followed that up (somewhat redundantly) here, saying:

For now, he's lawyered up and run off to play the rehab card.

Levy, who wangled his way into the mob rule (or is that Mob rule?) of Atlantic City, viciously attacked veterans and newsmen who suggested he was a fake. (Links in the old story). But they were right, and when he was exposed, he ran like the rabbit he really is, not the SF soldier he pretended to be. 

* I'm not sure whether Levy's lawyer Edwin Jacobs is well-known Mob lawyer Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., who aggressively defended Philadelphia Mafia overlord Joe Merlino, but it would figure, wouldn't it? (note: Update overleaf)

I still haven't seen a story that identifies his political party. You know what that means. 

Posted at 11:07 AM     Read More  

Dead Ché Day 2007!

And bad cess to him. 

Yes, I just mentioned his capture and demise in yesterday's Today in SF History post. So? He was captured on the 8th and capped on the 9th. He's still dead and I'm still glad, and doubly so that my regiment had a hand in it.  

Apparently I'm not the only one (apart from the survivors of some 10,000 murdered Cubans) that wishes the shade of Ché ill. Here's a splendid splenetic splash on the libertarian magazine Reason's weblog. 

And cited therein, back in 2002, Reason reviews Ché's long-suppressed diary from the Cubans' inept attempt to foment revolution in the Congo, an even more spectacular failure than Bolivia (and one in the thwarting of which, I am proud to say, my regiment also took part).

Overleaf, my comments on his Bolivian diary, and two Ché mysteries.

Posted at 09:19 AM     Read More  

Stolen Valor: Atlantic City Follow Up.

As I posted yesterday, the Mayor of Atlantic City, Bob Levy, campaigned as a Vietnam veteran and ex-"Green Beret."

Turns out, he was a decorated VN vet, but never in SF.  Apparently his CIB is also bogus and there are some indications he was scamming compensation for bogus disabilities from the VA. Looks like he's going the way of all Atlantic City pols, up the river.

For now, he's lawyered up and run off to play the rehab card. Here are some news stories.

As is usual with Democrats who commit crimes in office, the news stories don't say what his party is. Imagine that.

Overleaf, I have numerous links to various details about the tale of this corrupt phony. 

Posted at 09:00 AM     Read More  

Missing Parts in Action

A couple of years ago I read a book by then-Captain David Rozzelle, an Army officer who left a foot in Hit (pronounced heat), Iraq; by the book's end, Rozzelle had returned to combat. 

Now-Major Rozzelle is working with his fellow amputees at Walter Reed and has a team of thirty fellow amputees ready to compete in the 23rd Army Ten-Miler today in Washington. 

The name of the team? "Missing Parts in Action." 

In a short blog item at the Weekly Standard, it's clear Rozzelle is very proud of "his" wounded warriors. But his greatest pride might be in the fact than none of the amputees from this war has committed suicide (a problem with previous wars). That's right, since 2001, none of them. 

(nothing in extended entry)

Posted at 12:00 AM     Read More  

A Corrupt Phony, a Closed Airport

Rarely do two of my peculiar interests -- aviation and Special Forces -- come together with the vigorous bang they did this week in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Atlantic City itself is a convergence of sorts -- a Mob convergence. It has a double dose of Mafia catnip: New Jersey, and gambling casinos. Accordingly it reaches stratospheric levels of mobbed-up-ness: a large part of the city council is under indictment at the present time. (Just like any other time, apparently). And bribery is a way of life. 

Enter the mayor. Bob Levy been one of the guys working to turn oceanfront airport, now-closed Bader Field, into a cash cow for one group or another of connected mobsters, er, developers, er, gaming executives. Er, sorry about the threedundant stutter there. After all, he was a man of proven integrity, he told us, based on his Vietnam service in Special Forces. 

Stop me if you've heard this next bit before. As it turns out, the Mayor's Special Forces history is as phony as a casino's intimations of easy money. After an attempt to have city employees threaten the reporters working on the story, he's done the usual criminal politician thing: lawyered-up and decamped, apparently, to "rehab." 

Good luck. You can rehab addiction. You can't rehab crooked. Claiming you were in an elite military unit to dip yourself in their hard-earned respect -- a phenomenon now called Stolen Valor thanks to this eye-opening book -- is ipso facto crooked.

Posted at 08:52 AM     Read More  

Is this Stupid or What?

OK, so the Boston Globe tells us that a student at Zoo Mass (UMass-Amherst: home of grade inflation, rampant PC, the jihad against the Minuteman mascot as a "racist, sexist white man with a gun", and the lowest academic standards in New England) was so upset with a C grade that he sued, inter alia, the university, the graduate assistant that taught the course, the department head, and the university ombudsman (who had given him advice he did not take: essentially, grow up and get over it). 

His concern: one low grade would keep him from his ambition of, you guessed it, going to law school. 

A judge has banged his gavel and pronounced ixnay on the awsuit-lay, but Brian Marquis is threatening to appeal. 

Then what -- he will hold his breath until he turns blue?

Marquis, by the way, is fifty-one years old. (And he's a paralegal. His career's been on a hell of a trajectory, hasn't it?) 

It apparently hasn't occurred to him how this childish snit of a lawsuit will look to the law schools he wants to attend... then again, given the nature of the law schools' product of late, maybe he's just the kind of infant ambulance chaser they're seeking. 

Posted at 06:33 PM     Read More  

Dumbed-Down Citizenship Test: Harder to Fail, English Optional

The polyperverse disaster that's the Bush administration's immigration policy strikes again. 

Questions from the current citizenship exam are challenging. They can stump ill-prepared college students (and rattle some adults' cages as well). But that's interpreted as an "obstacle" to a more-welcoming policy. 

A hard exam just doesn't fit with the Open Wide to Criminals and Terrorists policy that Bush espouses, so they've dumbed the exam down -- way down. No more hard questions.

The official line is this: "to go beyond memorizing historical facts and instead grasp the fundamental meaning of being an American."

Any time educrats talk about "fundamental meaning," "deeper understanding," or "going beyond" anything, the experienced ear hears "a massive simplification is in the works."  In point of  fact, the real reason is here:

"More than 92 percent of the pilot group passed the test on the first attempt, far higher than ... the current exam."

How hard is it? They have to get sixty percent. Specifically, "Would-be citizens are asked 10 questions, and an immigrant must answer six correctly to pass the civics portion." In other words, to pass an applicant needs to get one more question than half right and half wrong.

There's also an English language portion, but there's a loophole the size of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building which will make sure that most applicants get a pass on it... "The test is administered in English, except for longtime residents over a certain age, who can take the test in their own language."

Posted at 03:40 PM     Read More  

Larry And The Hysterical Women 

Larry Summers has a problem with women. Not just any women, though: hysterical women. We all know the type: the ones that tee off on something trivial to throw a colossal hissy fit, screaming, screeching and hyperventilating. 

Summers is a former Secretary of the Treasury (in Clinton's second term), former World Bank chief economist, and former Harvard president. He's a conventional but imaginative free-market theorist, whose research has always been grounded in the scientific method (which makes him rare among social scientists and liberal-arts types). He's received a number of awards and is considered a likely future Nobel Prize recipient in Economics. (The one Economics prize that has so far eluded him is often presented late in a recipient's life as the capstone to a career. Economists avoid unseemly haste). 

His term as Harvard President was turbulent and ultimately ended early when a hysterical woman overreacted to an academic argument of his; and now he has been rudely dis-invited from a speaking engagement at UC-Davis when (go figure!), a hysterical woman overreacted to the news he was coming. 

Posted at 09:13 AM     Read More  

"None of It is True"

In this case, it isn't the warrior who's phony, or who's telling stories. It's his sister. 

Meet Joe and Bree Laro. Joe is a soldier recently returned from the war. Bree is his sister, a student at the University of Tampa. 

Bree told friends, and then a reporter for the student newspaper, bloodcurdling tales of Joe's combat experience -- and finished with him missing, probably blown to bits, after an explosion in Iraq. The story got Bree some attention and sympathy from well-meaning folks on campus. 

It also got back to Joe, who's not missing at all, and wasn't even in Iraq (he was in Afghanistan). He visited the website of the campus paper, The Minaret, and in the comments section, asked them to take their story down. They talked to Joe on the phone, then talked to Bree again -- and got several different implausible stories from her. 

That's the problem with telling lies: you have to remember which lies you told to which people. 

Posted at 01:22 AM     Read More  

Stolen Valor: Lex Busts a Phony

Neptunus Lex is a nasal radiator, I mean, naval aviator, which is one of those crazy critters whose flying career includes the equivalent of being shot from a catapult like a circus performer gets shot from a cannon. His blog is a darn good read. And he's just performed a public service and has saved me from needing to use more of these recycled pixels.

He's busted a trash-talking phony. 

In this case, an anonymous poster ("maccabee") at DailyKos posted a jargon-loaded "diary" (as Kos calls it) talking about an imminent US attack on Iran, with all kinds of 'truthy' details. Site owner Markos Zuniga (who is himself an Army veteran) has called BS on the thing and deleted it, but Lex's takedown of this nonsense is worth a read. I caught many errors in the now-deleted post, but as an Army guy and one of those sissies that lands on terra firma, I can't debunk this crapola with the authority of Lex. Enjoy his post. You can probably figure out from context what the two letters are of the signal flags he raises at the end of his post... not Bravo Zulu, if you need a hint. 

Posted at 04:50 PM     Read More