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Stop thinking you’re not ready.
Nobody ever feels 100-percent prepared when an opportunity arises.
Most great occasions in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones.

They’d jus’ landed at base after a 48-hour medical support mission. But it didn’t matter as the call, “Nine-line, nine-line, nine-line,” came across the squawk-box.

In less than four-minutes the helicopter and crew were airborne again.

As they reached the hot zone, they learned there was no landing area and would have to hover, taking enemy fire, while lowering Doc into the jungle. As he readied for the drop, carrying a medical bag, an evacuation litter, his pistol and knife, a thought rushed in.

“This could be it,” he reflected as he hooked his harness into the cable and exited the helicopter.

Shortly after stepping of the helicopter’s skid, the cable stopped moving — leaving Doc hanging above the battle.

Doc yelled up at the man, who was leaning out the helicopter doorway, “Get me down before I turn into a fucking piñata!”

But he could only watch the Gunny Sergeant frantically work on the motor to get it running again. A minute passed before the line jerked alive, and continued lowering Doc towards the jungle floor.

As the penetrator broke through the trees, Doc could see the muzzle-flashes from the bullets fired at him. They all missed and once on the ground, he could tell the squad was in bad-shape.

Immediately, he went to work on the Hospital Corpsman who’d been shot through the gut. It was clear that they young man would not survive without emergency surgery.

Doc secured him to the litter, gripped the guide tether to keep it from spinning, and then radioed for the lift to begin. Again shots rang out, missing the wounded Marine.

Aided by cover-fire from other helicopters overhead, within two minutes, the wounded Marine was heading for the nearest aid station.

By the time the helicopter returned, there were two more injured — one Marine who had a sucking chest wound and another with a shattered pelvis. Again Doc worked as fast as possible to package and secure the wounded for rapid transit.

Doc then volunteered to stay and continue the fight. It would be another three-or-so hours before the battle ended and Doc could sprawl out on his rack, to catch some much-needed shut-eye.

It’s puzzling how people who have no real life-skills and even less than stellar dubious achievements are able to get ahead in this world. Take for instance the ‘Reverend’ Al Sharpton.

He sat down with Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal and now the company says it plans to give him a say in how they makes movies. After the meeting, Sharpton claimed Sony would work closely with his ‘National Action Network’ to see it they can come up with a plan to deal with racism.

This is jus’ another form of censorship — and yet it’s okay.

Holidays are here.
Can you hear the Christmas bells?
Jesus is alive!

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s 8-year-old daughter Shiloh appeared on the red carpet for her mom’s new film, ‘Unbroken’ dressed in a suit. She also asks to be called “John.”

It seems the child’s request is causing a raging battle on the Internet. Parents are upset over the kid’s self-identification with the ‘opposite sex,’ while still others are ‘fine’ with it.

Hell, when I was Shiloh’s age, I self-identified as a dog named “Spike” for months, and no one gave a damn.

Boxing great Muhammad Ali has pneumonia. The three-time world heavyweight champion, who is also battling Parkinson’s disease, is in stable condition.

Ali recently made a surprise appearance at the Nevada Division I state football championships at Damonte Ranch High in Reno, December 6. He and his daughter Rasheda Walsh and sister-in-law Marilyn Williams, were there to watch his grandson Biaggio Ali Walsh play.

In the end Las Vegas’ Bishop Gorman stomped the Sparks’ Reed High, 70-28 — and the ‘the greatest,’ may have developed pneumonia.

The bill for President Barack Obama’s late November visit to Southern Nevada has finally been tallied up. Aside from bilking federal tax payers, his trip to explain his executive overreach on immigration cost a whopping $171,499.36 to Nevada’s state and local police.

Henderson police forked-out $143,685.21 for Obama’s November 21-23 trip. Meanwhile, the Nevada Highway Patrol spent $27,814.15 in salary and overtime for 102 people who provided security during some part of Obama’s latest three-day visit – which included a few rounds of golf.

Don’t expect to get any of that money back either.

President Barack Obama held his end-of-year press conference before jetting off to Hawaii for a 17-day Christmas vacation. In it he said Sony “made a mistake” cancelling the release of the movie “The Interview,” after a cyber-attack on the company’s computer system by North Korea, and stated the U.S. will respond “proportionately.”

Proportionately — in this case means — “We have no plans, yet.”

“I think it says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Flacco,” Obama said. “I love Seth, and I love James. But the notion that that was a threat to them gives you some sense, I think, of the kind of regime we’re talking about here.”

James Flacco? It’s James Falco, Mr. President.

Obama also talked about his decision this week to restore diplomatic relations with the communist government of Cuba. However, he side-stepped all the looting and rioting that’s taken place as he touched on race relations, calling what happened in Ferguson, New York and elsewhere a “healthy conversation.”

Evidently Obama’s idea of a ‘healthy conversation’ consists of violent riots, looting, arson and the murder of police.

So much for Nevada’s first commercial UAV test flight demonstration as Sensurion Aerospace’s flagship Magpie crashed seconds after being launched.  Company exec’s opted not to fly it again until they could review control systems and figure out the problem, claiming it probably was an electrical controller malfunction.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval was on hand to witness the failure, but wasn’t fazed.

“This is why we have test,” he said in true progressive fashion. “We didn’t have the benefit of seeing the first flight, and that first flight was successful. I look forward to seeing the video. This is still a great day for Nevada. There was a technical issue, and that’s part of why we’re here. This is testing.”

Nevada is the first state to complete required training and processes to receive a certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration enabling it to conduct its own certifications. That means the nonprofit Nevada Institute of Autonomous Systems, a part of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, can review any company’s unmanned aircraft’s airworthiness and specifications and issue a certificate for it to fly.

I can hardly wait to see how the first commercial test-drive of unmanned cars in Nevada goes.

American’s of all stripes are all worked up over a hack-attack on a movie company and the canceled premiere of one of its films. And while it is important in the larger picture, it’s the smaller, less glamorous events that demand more attention.

On December 4, the House of Representatives passed legislation saying the U.S. “strongly condemn[s] the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.”

Nine days later, the Russian flew around the island of Guam, home to U.S. Naval Base Guam and Andersen Air Force Base, while others flew close to Alaska and Europe. The two Tu-95 Bear H bombers made the flight on December 13; however no U.S. fighters scrambled to intercept the bombers.

A few days earlier, on December 8, two Canadian F-18s intercepted two Bear bombers that intruded into the Alaska air defense identification zone. A day earlier in Europe, NATO jets intercepted Russian Tu-95 and Tu-22 Backfire bombers also conducting provocative flights.

In April 2014, President Obama declared “the United States and Japan are also making sustained progress towards realizing a geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable U.S. force posture in the Asia-Pacific, including the development of Guam as a strategic hub.”

This makes a December 6 incident — this time involving Chinese aircraft flying through Japan’s air space – all the more alarming. Officials say the Chinese Y9 intelligence-gathering plane, the two Y8 early warning planes and two H6 bombers are capable of posing a threat to U.S. personnel on Guam.

The jets were heading to the Western Pacific to take part in a big naval and air combat exercise, where Chinese naval ships also participated. In November both Russia and China announced plans for large-scale joint naval drills in the Pacific during 2015.

These incursions are the run-up to something bigger.  As for the hacking incident, news reports show China may have helped North Korea and that Russia continues to build ties with the hermit nation.