Monday Mourning & Keep reaching for the stars, Casey

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1.  SF-86—Loading the deck, in your favor. Contributor Sean Bigley explains, “Obviously, starting with favorable facts on the record is much easier than trying to argue unfavorable facts late in the process.  But not everyone has that luxury. Where the facts are not necessarily in your favor, much can be done with proactive planning to minimize the impact of bad facts on your clearance.”

2.  A job strategy for women Vets. Contributor Tranette Ledford advises, “For cleared women veterans, it’s not so much a jungle out there as a labyrinth. . . . a disproportionate number of men compared to women employees in numerous fields, responsibilities on the home front that may delay the job search, and military skills that are sometimes difficult to translate to hiring managers.  For those reasons and a host of others, cleared women veterans need a well-crafted job search strategy for getting hired.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1.  ISIS 201. TheEconomist.Com explains, “The scale of the attack on Mosul was particularly audacious. But it did not come out of the blue. In the past six months ISIS has captured and held Falluja, less than an hour’s drive west of Baghdad; taken over parts of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province; and has battled for Samarra, a city north of Baghdad that boasts one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines. Virtually every day its fighters set off bombs in Baghdad, keeping people in a state of terror.” See also from AP, “US Embassy in Baghdad to send some personnel outReutersAdvancing Iraq rebels seize northwest town in heavy battle,” Aljazeera.Com’s “Photos released of Iraq ‘mass execution,’” DefenseOne.Com’s “A Guide to ISIS, the Group That’s Tearing Up Iraq,” and, finally, from Reuters, U.S. considers talks with Iran as Iraq insurgents advance.”

2.  al Qaeda in Afghanistan—guess who’s back. Khaama.Com reports, “Al-Qaeda fighters and supporters are a big threat to peace and stability of Afghanistan and it will affect the region soon. Al Qaeda affiliates from Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, China and Uzbekistan are participating regularly in attacks on Afghan military forces and pose ‘a direct terrorist challenge’ for Afghanistan, south and central Asia and the global community, UN experts said in a new report.”

3.  Bergdahl bounce—flat. AP’s Deb Riechmann reports, “Despite securing the release of five top detainees from the prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, there are few indications that the Taliban will head into peace talks with the Afghan government any time soon. The peace process is virtually on hold anyway until it’s clear who will succeed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.”

4.  Vets helping Vets. DefenseOne.Com contributor Martin Kuz reports, “The program’s emphasis on veterans looking after their own mirrors a larger trend in the treatment of war’s unseen wounds. Peer support, to invoke the clinical term, has taken hold in recent years as nonprofit groups and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) confront the military’s deepening mental health crisis.”

CONTRACT WATCH

1.  Armored vehicle market shift and growth. DefenseNews.Com’s Awad Mustafa reports, “The global armored vehicles market is projected to reach $28.62 billion by 2019 with the primary drivers being in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. . . . the advent of sequestration in the United States, the ending of the Afghan war and European budget cuts have led to a drop in armored vehicle demand in those markets, but the Middle East is expected to boost vehicle procurement significantly over the next 10 years and offset anticipated reductions in the US and Europe.

2.  The Superior Supplier Incentive Program. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “The Defense Department’s acquisition chief on Friday released a ranking of the top 30 supplier units within the contracting industry as part of a continuing effort to improve the government’s largest procurement operations by curbing costs and professionalizing the workforce. . . . Designed to help industry ‘recognize its better performers’ based on past performance and evaluations by program managers, such a list is planned for all the services beginning to build incentives, [Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank] Kendall told reporters. ‘The industry people who will respond the most will be the ones at the bottom,’ he said.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1.  Chinese hackers—they’re coming for you. VentureBeat.Com’s Richard Byrne Reilly reports, “These days, security experts are near-unanimous in their agreements that Chinese hackers are coming for your data, if they want it. High on their shopping lists are American aerospace, military, intelligence and technology secrets, intelligence officials told VentureBeat.”

2.  Direct digital synthesis—GPS satellite updates. MilitaryAerospace.Com editor John Keller reports, “Direct digital synthesis is a way of producing an analog signal in digital form and then performing a digital-to-analog conversion. Because operations primarily are digital, this process can offer fast switching between output frequencies, fine frequency resolution, and operation over a broad spectrum of frequencies. With advances in design and process technology, today’s direct digital synthesis devices are compact and draw little power. . . . Direct digital synthesis is gaining a reputation for generating analog signals efficiently because today’s single-chip integrated circuits can generate programmable analog output waveforms simply and with high resolution and accuracy.”

3.  Your own personal drone. VentureBeat.Com’s Jordan Novet reports, “You don’t need a friend to carry a camera to catch all those gnarly extreme-sports moves anymore. You just need this drone and a GoPro. A Kickstarter campaign to fund the first batch of drones from startup Squadrone System is raking in money fast. The goal is $50,000. It debuted today, and people threw more than that at the campaign within two hours of its launch.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1.  Next: “Josh Earnest has spent the last half-decade jotting notes during each White House press briefing, deconstructing what went right and what went wrong, just outside the glare of the TV cameras. Now he is about to find out if the dutiful note taking and occasional turn behind the microphone have paid off as he takes over the briefing room podium and becomes the public face of the Obama administration. . . . His quiet confidence is rooted in years as the behind-the-scenes source for information in an insular White House, cultivating goodwill among reporters increasingly peeved about their lack of access to Obama. But don’t expect a lengthy honeymoon for the man blessed with the most fortuitous name of any White House press secretary.”

2.  Whip it: “The race for the next House Republican whip is wide open. And like other internal GOP fights, this one could get ugly. Candidates for whip and their backers worked through the weekend to build support, but it’s not clear if the current leader—Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise—has the votes to win it outright on the first ballot. Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois is close behind, while Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana is trying to cash in on unhappiness with the other two. For now, it’s a wide-open three-way contest that pits conservatives against not only the establishment—but other conservatives. And the battle highlights some of the broader splits in the party.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1.  “We Never Should Have Left Iraq.” Slate.Com’s Reihan Salam argues, “There are precious few people who’ve been right about Iraq from the start. One of them is Brent Scowcroft, who had served as national security adviser in the first Bush administration. Americans had two big opportunities to listen to Scowcroft on Iraq. We blew both of them.”

2.  “The Pros and Cons of U.S. Drone Strikes in Iraq.” DefenseOne.Com’s Stephanie Gaskell argues, “Too much ground has been lost, the enemy has grown too large, and available support from the Maliki government is too absent for armed drones to be a decisive weapon against angry hordes. . . . Our drone options in Iraq would be better, in other words, had we planned for a situation like this earlier. Now, the mess is too big for the robots to clean up after us.”

THE FUNNIES

1.  Sucks to be you.

2.  Tough world.

3.  Have it your way.

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.