The Liberty Papers

I've got a post in the works about Rep. Murtha, Gen. Giap, and the role the homefront and media can have in a war, but that's for another day...hopefully that day is tomorrow.

Anyway, just thought I would point out a quite excellent site. It's called The Liberty Papers, and its a place to find extended essays on the subject of life, liberty, and property. Its kind of an offshoot of the LLP Community, and has several No Angst "friends," I guess you could call them, as contributors, including Eric, Brad, Robert, and Perry. I urge you to continue to add Liberty Papers to your blogroll and to check for continued updates, as I have no doubt that there will content of the highest quality defending our inherent rights.

Finally have some time..

First off, thanks to everyone who donated money to Valour-IT. The Team Air Force might not have done as well as we hoped, but every dollar donated is a dollar that will help wounded soldiers communicate with their families.

That said, tonight I'm going to do something rarely done on this blog: delve into my personal life. As I mentioned earlier, I've been involved in the Candidate Training Program for Arnold Air Society (AAS). Well, this week was "Tiger Week," which would be the equivalent of "pledge week" for a fraternity. During this week, we wear our uniform every day, we conduct reville/retreat ceremonies, and we are generally put under quite a bit of stress from all of the Active Members, especially at reville/retreat. On an aside, yours truly was Flight Commander for the reville ceremony this morning...I did an alright job, excepting the time I decided to "take the long way around," giving a column left instead of a column right; let's just say I got grogged good for that one. Moving on, tonight was "Tiger Night," which is the culmination of the training program and of Tiger Week. Unfortunately, I had to miss the opening part of Tiger Night because I was involved with singing the National Anthem at an Air Force Association meeting at the ANG base in Des Moines...more on that later. But I got there soon enough to take part in most of the "fun" activities of the night, which is all I should say about that. But the point of this post is not what went on, its how all of us newly initiated actives feel, which is quite accomplished. It's going to sound a bit stupid to most of my loyal readers, especially knowing my usually pragmatic outlook on life, but to try and explain things better, this is the first time in my young Air Force career that I've really felt a sense of accomplishment over something, and it feels damn good.

It feels good to be able to pin on the AAS rank badge, and it feels really damn good to be able to look at my service coat and see the AAS blue and gold fourragere. It probably sounds rather dumb, but the sense of accomplishment, and more so, the fact that I really accomplished with a team, rather than just myself, is something else. I've been smiling most of the night, and I can't really explain why other than that I'm done with Tiger Training, and that WE did it...not just "I."

If anyone is interested, here's a picture of the newly initiated Actives (formerly Tiger Flight) and our two CTOs; the CTOs are at the left and right of the front row. I'm standing, on the far left. (The picture is actually from one of my CTO's blog.)


Moving on from that, I also sang at the AFA meeting at the ANG base in Des Moines. It went fine, we kicked butt as usual, but the reason I bring is up is that I got to see 6 damn good reasons why I'm going to join the finest Air Force on the planet. Those 6 reasons were 6 Vipers taking off in full burner. At night. Picture an extremely loud, sky-splitting roar, and then a sudden appearance of a huge plume of flame screaming across the sky.
Damn awesome; we even got the Army and Navy members of our military quartet to be impressed.















Not much cooler than that. Unless its an F-22, of course...

CENTCOM

Something I've been meaning to do for awhile is post a link to CENTCOM's website, which is a very good source of unfiltered information from their area of operations. So, without further ado, here's CENTCOM's website. It will be located under the Milblogs section, under the heading CENTCOM. Check them out for unfiltered, relatively unbiased information about Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hotspots in the Middle East and Horn of Africa.

Update on Valour-IT

Here's an Update on Valour-IT...out of the total of $84,000, we've raised $44,220.99. (Yes, I know...some joker for the Army had to throw in the $.99). Anyway, that's the good news. So keep on giving! We've got a week and we're over halfway there.

Time for the bad news. Out of that $41,000 some, Team Air Force has only contributed a paltry $4,625. Yes, that's right. $4,625. That's not even a quarter of our total. So start giving!

Unfortunately, unlike Smash, I do not have a lovely wife to auction. I live on a dorm floor with a bunch of other college students (read: POOR), so that's a no go. Really, I have nothing to offer you, other than the satisfaction that comes with helping to treat our wounded soldiers well.

And quite honestly, that should be more than enough.

So give, please.

Besides, I want to post the finales to these two pictures:

*Well, anyway, blogger is being stupid, so the pictures are of an A-10 and a Harpoon right next to a ship. Give me reason to post the end results.*

It's been awhile...

Well, I finally decided to come out of hibernation. As you might have guessed, college has kept me pretty darn busy, what with all the females and libations and such to be found around here in wonderful Ames, IA. Actually, school was kicking my butt pretty good for awhile, then my AFROTC commitment kicked in...I'm involved with this thing called Arnold Air Society, which is, in effect, a fraternity for member of the AFROTC Corps. Obviously, we don't have a house, and we actually learn stuff and do things, as opposed to just party, but that's the best analogy I can think of. As part of joining AAS, you have to go through the Tiger program, which basically means I get to spend 3 hours every Sunday getting a taste of what Field Training will be like. For those of you that don't know, FT is "one of the best times of your life that you will never want to do again." Put more succinctly, it's a month long boot camp for ROTC cadets. Anyway, I'm getting a taste of that every Sunday, which doesn't sound bad...until you consider the prep necessary. Anyway, my point is that I've been super busy.

But now I'm back, momentarily at least. Not sure how regular it will be, but there's a movement afoot amongst the Milblogs that I needed to help get the shout out about. Valour-IT is an organiztion run through Soldier's Angels that provides laptops with voice-controlled software to injured Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines that are recovering in military hospitals from hand/arm injuries and/or amputations. I can't think of a much more worthy cause than supporting our wounded servicemen and women by allowing them to communicate much more regularly with their loved ones. Please, if you have some spare money lying around, donate. This poor college student was able to find some and give. Not to sound stuck up or parochial, but if I can, I'm sure you can as well. Lex puts it quite well (although my traffic isn't quite up to his.)

Oh, and did I mention that it's a competition? Of course it is...this is the military, after all. It's ALWAYS competitive. The Air Force is going up against the Navy, Marines, and Army. I'm sad to say it, but as of now, we're lagging faaaaar behind the squids, jarheads, and ground-pounders. It's rather unacceptable, methinks. There's no excuse for lagging behind the leathernecks by over $2,000, not to mention the absurd amount that we are behind the Army and Navy. So what are you waiting for? Go donate, and donate to the Air Force!!

Uno Ab Alto!!!!

*The button to donate isn't working, so in the meantime, here is a link to the page that contains said button. And remember...GO AIR FORCE!