Tuesday - May 20, 2008

ACHTUNG THWEET THTUFF … HI HO,HI HO, TIS OFF TA WAR WE GO?  Waaaaaa, but no kill anyone.

What a sorry bunch of f!*^&% weenies these folks have become.

NOT LICENSED TO KILL

German Special Forces in Afghanistan Let Taliban Commander Escape
By Susanne Koelbl and Alexander Szandar

German special forces had an important Taliban commander in their sights in Afghanistan. But he escaped—because the Germans were not authorized to use lethal force. The German government’s hands-tied approach to the war is causing friction with its NATO allies.

The wheat is lush and green in the fields of northern Afghanistan this spring. A river winding its way through the broad valley dotted with walled houses completes the picturesque scene. Behind one of these walls, not far from the town of Pol-e-Khomri, sits a man whose enemies, having named him a “target,” would like to see dead. He is the Baghlan bomber.

The Taliban commander is regarded as a brutal extremist with excellent connections to terror cells across the border in Pakistan. Security officials consider him to be one of the most dangerous players in the region, which is under German command as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. The military accuses him of laying roadside bombs and of sheltering suicide attackers prior to their bloody missions.

He is also thought to be behind one of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan’s history, the Nov. 6, 2007 attack on a sugar factory in the northwest province of Baghlan. The attack killed 79 people, including dozens of children and many parliamentarians and other politicians, as they celebrated the factory’s reopening.

Germany’s KSK special forces have been charged with capturing the terrorist, in cooperation with the Afghan secret service organization NDS and the Afghan army. The German elite soldiers were able to uncover the Taliban commander’s location. They spent weeks studying his behavior and habits: when he left his house and with whom, how many men he had around him and what weapons they carried, the color of his turban and what vehicles he drove.

For the rest of this crappy story, link here.>>>http://tinyurl.com/3vwxqs

Actually, it’s not a crappy story. It’s my temper. I read the article and still can’t take it all in.  You really should read the whole thing.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2008 at 07:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Unruly students may have to learn a trade.  (it’s a start but is it too late and too little?)

By Graeme Paton Education Editor

Last Updated: 2:32AM BST 20/05/2008

Pupils excluded from mainstream education will be sent to “studio schools” to learn a trade under Government plans to be announced.
Unruly teenagers will also receive a new curriculum concentrating on the core subjects of English and mathematics – as well as information technology – to ensure they leave school with basic skills.

In a further move, the Government is expected to announce measures to keep pupils at risk of being expelled in ordinary schools.

The move, to be unveiled in a White Paper, comes after comments from Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector of schools, that the gap between the “haves and the have nots” has failed to narrow in recent years. Only one per cent of pupils taught in specialist units, such as those for excluded pupils or hospital schools, gains at least five good GCSEs.

In the White Paper, the Government will unveil a series of proposed reforms to improve education for excluded pupils.

“Studio schools” could be opened as part of a trial, teaching teenagers how to run their own businesses, as well as ensuring they learn practical skills such as plumbing, carpentry and car maintenance.

Plans will be outlined to involve charities and private firms.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families will also unveil a series of reforms to keep problem pupils in the classroom.

Sir Alan Steer, the head teacher of Seven Kings High School, in Ilford, Essex, said last month that excluded children were not always “irredeemable villains”. “A lot of children make mistakes,” he said.

In a report, he recommended schools should be forced to take more badly behaved children – stopping them excluding the worst pupils to boost their positions on national league tables.

http://tinyurl.com/3wrpr6

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2008 at 05:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Two million Britons emigrate in 10 years

Maybe I should have posted this under Drew’s comments.  Not too surprising tho. Lots of folks I run into in conversation tell me they’d leave too if only they could.  Still, from what I read it isn’t quite as bad as LA which has recently been written about as a third world city.  ?  Can that be true?

By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:06AM BST 20/05/2008

Two million British citizens have left the UK in a decade, the greatest exodus from this country in almost a century, new figures will show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) will release figures showing that more than 200,000 Britons emigrated during 2006. That will take the total number who left the country between 1997 and 2006 to 1.97 million.

Another 1.58 million foreign nationals resident in Britain left during the same period.

However, 3.9 million foreigners arrived over the decade, including more than 500,000 in 2006.

The body will publish the raft of immigration figures on Tuesday, as MPs prepare to dismiss the national statisticians’ data as “not fit for purpose” and demand an overhaul of the way population movements are measured.

On Thursday, the Treasury sub-committee of the House of Commons will conclude that the lack of reliable and up-to-date figures for immigrant populations is hampering Government policy both nationally and locally.

ONS figures only go back to 1991, but some historians say the departure of two million Britons in a decade is almost unparalleled in the country’s history.

According to figures compiled by Jay Winter, of Yale University, the last comparable exodus came between 1911 and 1914, when 2.4 million people left Britain. The other significant spike in emigration came in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when thousands of Britons left to start new lives in Australia, Canada and the United States.

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank, has estimated that there are more than 5.5 million British citizens living abroad.

Jill Rutter, a senior migration researcher at the IPPR, said the recent exodus marked “probably the greatest period of emigration we’ve ever seen”.

She said: “A lot of this is people retiring abroad, which is a relatively new phenomenon and is only possible because we are all better off .

“There is also a much more internationalised labour market and workforce — it is now quite commonplace for people to go abroad to work for a year or more.” Immigrants who come to this country, gain citizenship and then leave also add to the total of British emigrants.

Opposition parties say that some emigrants have been driven out of Britain by its high levels of crime and taxation.

“This explosion in emigration is inevitably a reflection of the state of the country under a Labour government,” said David Davis, the shadow home secretary.

http://tinyurl.com/5xn49f

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2008 at 05:45 AM   
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Lady Godivas ride naked through London (Nero plays while Londenium Burns?)

Hard to follow Drew at any time but this bit of drama is heartening cause it shows that even in these times there are people willing to bear bare all for good works and charity.
Oh hell, come on.  Lets be honest.  Although I do not mind looking, the truth is that these folks just needed the right excuse to do what they were just dying to do but didn’t have a legtimate excuse to hide behind.  (grin) But use the ‘C’ word, which can be Charity or Children and away we go.

Here’s Lookin’ At You Ladies.

By Natalie Paris
Last Updated: 4:00PM BST 19/05/2008

Naked women mounted horses to ride through London’s Hyde Park today in a truly unashamed publicity stunt for the film Lady Godiva.

Up to 50 women bared their all, or stripped down to a slim pair of knickers, for a cancer charity supported by the film’s director Vicky Jewson.

For each rider in the saddle, Jewson donated a “Godiva” - cockney slang for £5 - to Maggie’s , a charity that runs information and support centres for people affected by cancer.

Some volunteers sported wigs of cascading curls that evoked the image of the mediaeval lady on her steed - while also going some way to preserving their modesty.

Legend has it that Lady Godiva had long golden hair and portraits have been discovered that may support the theory.

Little is known of her aside from her naked ride through Coventry to obtain remission for the townspeople from the heavy taxes imposed by her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia.

The British film Lady Godiva is a romantic comedy shot set in modern day Oxford in the vein of Notting Hill and Bridget Jones.

It stars Phoebe Thomas Matthew Chambers and James Wilby and was released in cinemas in January.

http://tinyurl.com/6xlrzx

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2008 at 05:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy • Fun-Stuff •  
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   Monday - May 19, 2008

Mail Call !

I get emails ... I get letters ... Peiper once sent me an entire newspaper. This time I got a bunch of clippings from Jolly Old England. Thanks Peiper. It really is time to push the Reset Button over there. Pretty awful happenings in the news over the past couple of weeks ...

• One in five churches will be lost in the next generation through neglect and shrinking congregations.
• Thousands of prisoners ar not completing their probation because there is no funding.
• Meanwhile, prisoners being held in a 200 bedroom “Grade II” manor house with marble and mahogany interior don’t want to escape!!
• Yet at the same time, another 300 cells go unfilled at Birmingham prison because - get this - the prison kitchen can’t offer them a choice of meals, including a special all-veg menu. Hey, how about you get to choose between stale bread and mouldy bread to go with that glass of dirty water?
• Old lady in perfect health goes to nursing home, is dead 4 weeks later from extensive violent abuse. The 84 year old woman was admitted to hospital with a broken collarbone, fractured ribs, extensive bruising all over, and ligature marks on one of her forearms from being tied up. All 8 care workers at the home charged with willfull neglect.
• Army veteran knocked off bicycle and stomped to death for £5 by 4 really retarded looking kids who brag about the crime. Little fuckers mother turns him in (hooray!).
• Girl blown up in her own home, neighbor killed, by girls with liquid explosives.
• Article in the Daily Telegraph bemoans how violence against babies and young children more than doubled last year; author calls for enhanced roles in the childcaring agencies such as NHS, local police and government. Hey, what about the parents? Um, wait. They seem to be 1/3 of the perpetrators. Never mind.
• Another article talks about “Society’s Climate Of Fear”: 5 Christian MPs issued a report “There is a perceived breakdown of trust and this is linked to the claim that there is a climate of fear in society. In the past our poiticians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.”
• “Revealed: the crime wave committed by teenage girls” - Britian is in the grip of an unprecidented crime wave among teenage girls. Crime rates among girls aged 10 to 17 up 25% over a 3 year period. ... recent cases where one girl was stabbed to death by a 16 year old ‘love rival’, a girl, 15, who was jailed for using her cell phone camera to record her 2 drunk male friends beat a man to death, etc. Proposed solutions? Stop selling booze to kids, and plan some “hard hitting” advertisements that warns teens that booze will ruin your looks and your health.
• Gang of teens stomps man to death for fun. Ok, this was from his last letter, but come on. He wrote in the margin “Drew this happens so often these days I’m surprised it even makes the news anymore”
• The 13th teenager murdered in London so far this year was killed while trying to intervene between some violent teen punk, who has already been thrown out of a bakery twice, and the all female staff there that he was harassing. At 6’4” Jimmy Mizen was aged 16 and a day. The punk kid who killed him used a chunk of broken window to slash his throat, and he bled to death right there in his older brothers arms. They were a couple hundred yards away from their home. Speaking on this tragedy, newly elected London Mayor Boris Johnson said “there are too many parents ... who have lost children to gun crime or knife crime ... together we will do something”.

Yeah, how about starting out by recognizing that it isn’t the weapon, it’s the wielders. Gun crime. Knife crime. Glass crime. Boot crime. Bomb crime. Give it the hell up already. It’s your pussy society. Your citizens have no opportunity, your government micromanages every aspect of everyone’s life, your school system sucks ass. Your youth are pampered self-centered messes who have lost all respect for anyone and anything. Gas them all and start over.

Ok Mayor “BJ”, is this just a BJ, or do you have a plan? Now that your city and country has turned in its balls to the socialist EU, and the whole place is wall to wall immigrants who have no desire to assimilate at all. You’ve got a video camera on every damn corner, and ultra-sonic devices to repell kids. But the place has turned into some vile cross between Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies. So, what’s the plan BJ? I really hope you have one. I hope you all have one ... because I’ve got a plan that will work, but you ain’t gonna like it ...

Non-islamic Nearly Sharia Law !!!

• Bring back flogging for all violent criminals over the age of 12. In public. In addition to any fines and jail time.
• Bring back the gibbet for all killers over the age of 15. Use it. Immediate appeal gets the convict judicial review. No legal errors? Hang ‘em.
• Stealing anything worth more than £300 is a Hanging Offense. String up the rotters and leave their bodies for the crows.
• Bring back real hard labor in the prisons. Chain gangs. Sweat shops.
• There will be corporal punishment in school. For misbehavior and for poor academic performance. Flunk a test, any test, and you get cut from all sports teams for the semester. Flunk another one and you get a firm birching. Hey, it kept your grandfather’s ass in line, it will do the same for yours. Mouth off, get thrashed. It’s that simple.
• Ban imports of certain inexpensive common items so that they have to be made in Britain. Then set up low technology factories that put lots of hands to work for low pay.
• Close the pubs Sunday to Wednesday. No booze for sale anywhere before 5pm. No consumption of booze, anywhere, before 5pm. It’s pretty obvious the whole damn country is a bunch of violent bitter alcoholics, who don’t even have God or Guns to cling to. It’s time to sober up.
• Let’s restart that favorite British pasttime, Hating On Foreigners. Start with the ones Over Here. Bloody inferior smelly wogs. Them and their heathen lingo, and stinky cooking. And they breed like bloody rats. And that music! Arrggh!! Keep at it until they leave the country. Then go back to hating on fwance like you’re supposed to. But you guys can find unity through a common enemy.
• No television shows about “lifestyles of the rich and famous” shall be allowed. Horrendously overpaid sports stars and actors will go back to being what they really are: mostly brainless trained monkeys who sweat and screw and play pretend for our enjoyment, hardly a step about street prostitutes and mimes. They are not heroes or role models, and they don’t deserve 1% of what they get paid. You need real role models for your youth, so you damned well better start making some. Starting with their parents, who by the way, are now accessories to their children’s crimes. Just because.

Ok, that’s my instant reaction. I’m certain you guys could find some more ideas to help dear mayor Boris Johnson save London, and then save the rest of England. Before it’s Totally Too Late.

Hey, there’s another idea: Forget the EU. Dump this “UK” crap. Forget being “Britons”. Go back to being English, and see if you can remember why you used to proud of it. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 06:18 PM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs •  
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Sicko

Moore is such a goat dropping. Not to worry for Yon’s sake, he and his lawyers are on it:

Many readers have complained that Michael Moore, in the conduct of his latest crusade against whatever he is against this month, has illegally used one of my photos on the banner of his website. Mr. Moore is not the first to have done so, and my readers can get pretty upset when it happens.

My lawyer has demanded that Mr. Moore take it down.

I usually freely grant use of my work to truthful, peaceful, non-commercial, non-political outlets. For instance, a church group wanted to use one of my photos for their congregation. I was honored and gave it to them freely. On another occasion, a peaceful, non-profit Islamic organization wanted to use the same photo that Michael Moore has infringed upon (Major Mark Bieger cradling a little girl named Farah), and I was honored to contribute to their peaceful cause. I’ve seen grandmothers use my work in technically illegal ways, but since they’re not a big company, they probably have no idea about copyright, and usually use the work in tasteful, appropriate ways, I just smile and say “Go ahead, Ma’am.”

But frequently, big companies and individuals who are knowledgeable of copyright laws filch my work and use it in ways that many readers consider partisan, highly political or incendiary. When this happens, I usually go after the infringer, and so do my readers.

Michael Yon took the photo in Iraq several years ago, after one of those “brave freedom fighters” ( the ones that Moore equates with American Minutemen ) set off a suicide bomb. In the middle of a crowd of Iraqi children. In many ways it is the defining picture of the Iraq war because of what happened:

Farah was killed by a suicide car bomb in Mosul on May 2, 2005. Major Bieger and other soldiers literally risked their own lives to save many children and adults that day, but Farah didn’t make it.

To have such a telling and honorable photograph co-opted for Moore’s twisted propoganda purposes is, as Yon put it, pornographic. Moore is supporting Obama. Because Obama didn’t vote for “Bush’s War”, but McCain and Clinton did. Of course, Obama wasn’t even a Senator then, but why should that basic truth matter to this bloated propaganda hustler?

Michael Yon asks that the VRWC and patriotic internet readers NOT bombard Moore’s website with angry messages. His lawyers will handle it.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 12:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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Algore: Climate Warrior

what a load of crap ...

Former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday told graduates of Carnegie Mellon University they could become part of the next “hero generation” in American history by solving environmental problems.

In a commencement address before a record crowd of about 10,000 people, the Nobel laureate said there had already been two “special generations” of Americans: the one that founded the country and the one that defeated fascism during World War II.

“You, I hope and expect, will be called upon to be part of the third hero generation in American history,” by countering the threat of global warming, he said.

“We face a planetary emergency,” Gore said. “The concentrations of global warming pollution have been rising at an unprecedented pace and have now given the planet a fever.”

Carnegie Mellon had provided “great leadership in confronting what I regard as the most serious crisis our civilization has ever confronted,” partly by becoming a major buyer of retail wind power, he said.

Alternative energy sources such as the sun and wind can replace fossil fuels, Gore said, but “we need one ingredient that you represent. We need political will; we need your dedication; we need your hearts.”

I know that commencement speeches are almost always a boring pile of drivel. But I think this takes things to a new low. A “hero generation”. For “fighting” global warming. Will they get medals for buying solar panels? Green ribbons for bravery for driving their eco-scooters across flyover country? Or will it be “Save 10 fish, get a prize!” campaigns?

Have at it ... I know BMEWS readers can come up with lots of good attributes, activities, and awards for our new generation of heroic Weather Warriors.

For me, posting will be light today. I’ve got windows to clean, lattice to install, etc, for my latest customer. I would have been hard at work already staining their decks, but we’ve had a lot of rain here the past few days, and today it’s quite chilly. You’ve got to have a few days of warm and dry before you put stain on outdoors wood, or else it won’t stick.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 07:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Stoopid-People •  
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Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe: we’ll sue anybody

A New Jersey couple, whose son was struck in the chest with a line drive, is planning to sue the maker of a metal baseball bat used in the game.

Two years ago, Steven Domalewski was pitching when the ball slammed into his chest and stopped his heart. He was resuscitated but now has brain damage and is severely disabled.

The family contends metal baseball bats are inherently unsafe for youth games because the ball comes off them much faster than from wooden bats. The lawsuit will also be filed against Little League Baseball and a sporting goods chain that sold the bat.

An attorney says Domalewski will need millions of dollars worth of medical care for the rest of his life.

The bat maker says while it sympathizes with Steven and his family, the bat is not to blame for the injury.

This is just ridiculous. Yeah, it’s a shame your kid got injured. It really is terrible. But suing the bat company is really stupid. How is it you think the sporting goods store is at fault, when any other store could have sold the exact same bat? Why not sue the parents of the kid on the other team who hit the ball? After all, if that kid hadn’t swung the bat so fast, your kid might still be Ok. And let’s ignore the obvious: another kid with a wooden bat and a faster swing could have hit the ball just as hard or harder.

No, if you have to find somebody to sue here, sue the Little League association itself. I think they set up a rule that says only metal bats can be used, not wooden ones? And they’re the group that didn’t have the foresight to require pitchers, and possibly all infield players, to wear some kind of body armor like the motocross racers wear. Nor did they make a rule that a defibrillator be on hand and that the coaches and umpires have the necessary training to use one. Because something like this happens about once every 20 years or so. They needlessly placed little Johnny at risk, playing such a dangerous sport!!

You’ll lose the suit, but every kid playing baseball in America will then be forced to wear the protective gear. And every team will have the device and the training. Thereby driving up the cost of having your kid in Little League by a huge amount. Thanks a lot. But we’ll all sleep happy, knowing our kids are so much safer now. Until one of the little spazzers trips over the curb in the parking lot and knocks his teeth out. Then the lawsuits will start again.

In the moonbat utopia of America everyone is a victim. Always. Which means that no matter what happens, somebody is going to get sued. Always. I think all parents should be sued, because of the negligence of bringing children into this world full of risk. So nobody should be allowed to have children anymore, for their own good!

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 07:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Stoopid-People •  
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HAS THE NANNY STATE ATTITUDE FINALLY REACHED THE SHORES OF THE USA?

BMEWS readers will note that last week I posted an incredibly STUPID account of Nanny state behavior being adopted by a major supermarket chain here in the UK.

With absolute certainty that it “could not happen in the USA” and if it did the consequences might be dire, I posted sure of my position.

Boy was I WRONG!  I’ve been away from my home country since 2004, and apparently things are in the crapper there as well on this subject.

Where a clerk in a store can refuse to sell to an adult buying liquor just because they are in the company of a minor.  In other words, you’re quilty without a hearing no matter that the minor is your very own daughter. 

I sent that story and my comments to a long time friend in the USA, and got this response.

Must have similar laws here. A friend told me recently she was at a

liquor store with her 20 (soon to be 21) year old daughter. They were

talking about the daughter’s trip to Germany and France and the

daughter was saying how wine is commonly served to older teenagers at

restaurants with their parents - or something along those lines. When

they got to the check out, the clerk refused to sell them the liquor,

saying that she overheard their conversation and it sounded like my

friend was buying it for her underage child. Oh - and the clerk saw

the daughter ‘touch’ one of the bottles. Needless to say, my friend
was both mortified and furious.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 07:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Nanny State • Stoopid-People •  
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   Saturday - May 17, 2008

Strength In Numbers

Breaking news ... no solid details yet ...

Los Angeles police say a man with a rifle has wounded two people at a festival outside a Southern California church.

Authorities say the man opened fire a few minutes before 11 a.m. Saturday during a school festival at St. John Baptist de la Salle Catholic church in Granada Hills.

Officer Norma Eisenman says bystanders may have helped hold the man for police.

Two victims were taken into the church but there’s no word on their conditions or what prompted the attack.

LOS ANGELES — A man with a rifle opened fire at a festival outside a Southern California church Saturday, wounding three people, one of them critically, police said.

Shots rang out shortly before 11 a.m. outside St. John Baptist de la Salle, a Roman Catholic church in Granada Hills, Officer Norma Eisenman said. Bystanders tackled the man and held him until he was taken into police custody, she said.

The gunman wounded three people, Eisenman said. Two were taken to a hospital in stable condition and one in critical condition, she said.

Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said another person was treated for chest pains.

The motive for the attack was not immediately known, Eisenman said.

Church officials did not immediately return calls for comment.

I want to know more. But I like the “bystanders tackled the man and held him” part. Good work citizens. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 02:16 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Guns and Gun Control •  
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Damn Straight Skippy

Hillsdale, Michigan — In the midst of commencement activities last weekend, Hillsdale College unveiled the first statue in the United States of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Dr. Larry P. Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, said in his remarks: “Lady Thatcher’s courage was mated with prudence, a moral and intellectual virtue together, the combination making a character fit to govern itself and other free beings. She is here to remind us that we must go about our examination of the most elevated things in an urgent spirit.”

John O’Sullivan, a former Special Adviser to Prime Minister Thatcher and author of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World, delivered the official dedication remarks. “When Lady Thatcher revived the British economy,” he said, “she was reviving profound social virtues that the British had once exemplified to the world—the Thatcherite ‘vigorous virtues’ such as self reliance, diligence, thrift, trustworthiness, and initiative that enable someone who exhibits them to live and work independently in society.”

Sculpted by Bruce Wolfe, the statue is over six feet in height and depicts Thatcher sitting in a pensive posture.

The statue was made possible by a gift from the Patricia and William E. LaMothe Foundation. It is the third in a series of statues that will form a “Liberty Walk” on the Hillsdale College campus. A statue of George Washington was dedicated in 2003, and one of Winston Churchill in 2004. A statute of Thomas Jefferson will be dedicated later this year.

A most gracious hat tip to Because I’m Right who first posted this story.

I’m glad at least one college in the US has it’s head on straight.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 12:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Education •  
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Aarrgh, Pirates!

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali pirates hijacked a Jordanian ship Saturday in the latest in a string of attacks off the lawless coast of Somalia, the head of a seafarer’s association said.

Andrew Mwangura of the East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program said the attack occurred early Saturday morning. He could not say how many crew were abroad, but said Kenyans, Tanzanians and some Asians were among them.

The pirates had seized the ship not far from Mogadishu and were taking it north, he said.

It is the second time the ship has been attacked. Pirates tried to board it outside the Somali port of Merka last year but the ship, called the Victoria, managed to escape.

Piracy is rampant along Somalia’s 1,880-mile coast, which is the longest in Africa and near key shipping routes connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. There have been more than a dozen pirate attacks this year alone.

Somali officials have blamed Western companies for encouraging the practice by paying ransoms that can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The only Victoria I could find with Jordanian registry is a medium cargo ship ( 4787 DWT ) built in 1979. However there are at least a dozen ships with that name that are not local ferry boats or tug boats. So who knows?

Don’t you just love it how the Somalis blame everyone else for their own lawlessness? What a crock. I think it’s time the UN sent in the blue helmets and solved this once and for all. Burn the place to the ground, everything within 100 miles of the coast. Interdict every ship, and if it has Somalis on board with weapons, sink it on the spot. Running this post every week is starting to lose it’s allure. Somalia is a rouge nation and needs a major smackdown. And nobody anywhere will give a damn if you use insanely excessive force to do it.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 10:40 AM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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I think they should name it the “G Whiz” system

Where do fighter pilots traveling faster than the speed of sound go when they really need to “go”?  Until recently, the answer has been: into a bag.

But it’s not a great solution. “Piddle packs”—heavy-duty bags containing absorbent sponges—have been blamed for at least two crashes over the years, and they’re not always tidy.

A few years ago, after enduring years of complaints from pilots, the Air Force let it be known that it was looking for an answer.

A small medical equipment development company in Milton, Vermont answered the call.

“The DoD put out a list of projects they needed solutions for,” said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Solutions. “Bladder relief for pilots was one of the items on the list and we were looking for a new project,” he said.
...
That project turned into the Advanced Mission Extender Device, known in military jargon as the AMXD.

After four years of testing by the Vermont Air National Guard and the Air Force and about $5 million in government and private funds, AMXD is spelling relief for pilots aloft.
...
The Air Force recently bought its first 300 systems for U.S. pilots around the world at $2,000 each.

My name is better. Otherwise these pilots are going to take an awful lot of ribbing. “Hey Maverick, you got your Extender Device strapped on?”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 09:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Military • Science-Technology •  
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One man, one ticket, one fortune

A lucky lottery player who stopped into a suburban Cincinnati liquor store has a Mega Millions ticket worth $196 million.

Lottery spokeswoman Marie Kilbane said Friday night that the ticket for the drawing was bought from Main Street Wine & Spirits in Amelia in southwest Ohio.

Lottery officials in Georgia say just one ticket won the jackpot. Seventeen players who matched five numbers but not the Mega Ball number will receive second-place prizes of $250,000 each.

It’s the first Mega Millions winning ticket to be sold in Ohio since December 1, 2006, when a winning ticket was bought in Columbus.

The winning numbers for Friday night’s drawing were 4, 8, 15, 16 and 23. The Mega Ball number was 42.

Let’s see, $196 million, minus half for taxes, leaves $98 million. Spread out over 30 years, that’s $3,266,666.67 per year, or $1570.50 per hour based on a 40 hour work week. After taxes. Yup, that’ll do just fine.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/17/2008 at 09:33 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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