Thursday - December 11, 2008

EXTREME TORTURE OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS. AND IT IS TORTURE MAKE NO MISTAKE.

Must be a generational thing.  Music?  Gotta be joking. 
Tell ya what though.  If I had to listen to this crap I’d most likely break in two seconds.  Which is one second longer then I can take this misnamed junk.

Whatever .... seems another dumb thing that “artists” (artists?) can get up to.  Demand that their music noise not be used by our guys to break terrorists.  Screw em.  They aren’t real musicians anyway. Just damn lucky enough to be born and raised in a time when the young have disposable cash and they need no particular talent musically to make a great deal of money.  Which of course is the name of the game.  I accept that part.
But unfortunately these “artists” begin to believe that what they think or want matters.  They think they can tell the military how to conduct things, they want to advise governments on human rights and who knows what else.

They should stick to making noise and money.  Maybe use their income to take some lessons and learn how it’s done.

Bah! Dope Heads!

The Britney bludgeon, a weapon of torture: Pop stars tell the U.S. military to stop using their songs to ‘break’ terror suspects

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 11th December 2008

Torture: Britney Spears is on the list of artists whose songs are used to ‘break’ detainees in American military camps

In the hands of a teenager with a powerful set of speakers it is a lethal weapon.

Popular music played at extreme decibel levels will already have been judged torture by many a parent.

But a phenomenon that did no more harm than widen the generation gap has suddenly taken on more sinister overtones with reports that ear-splittingly loud music has been used as a ‘sonic bludgeon’ by the U.S. military against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

Human rights groups are protesting that blasting tracks such as Britney Spears’s Baby One More Time and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. into cells at high volumes for hours on end can cause the inmates longterm psychiatric problems.

Now the musicians themselves have joined the fray, furious that their songs are being used to ‘break’ suspected terrorists.

Bristol-based band Massive Attack and Tom Morello, guitarist with U.S. group Rage Against The Machine have joined a campaign against the practice.

According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo bragged that he needed only four days to ‘break’ someone by alternating 16 hours of loud music with just four hours of silence.

The practice has been used often in the ‘war on terror’, with U.S. forces systematically playing loud music to hundreds of its detainees. Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the former U.S. military chief in Iraq, said the aim was ‘to create fear, disorient . . . and prolong capture shock’.

The new campaign is a joint venture between musicians and the human rights group Reprieve, which represents 30 inmates at Guantanamo. There are plans for minutes of silence during concerts and festivals to raise awareness of the issue.

One of the more unlikely protesters is Bob Singleton, whose song I Love You - sung by U.S. children’s television character Barney the Dinosaur - has been used to ‘torture’ detainees.

He said he was horrified that ‘a song designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point’.

Mr. Singleton should wake the hell up and realize the ppl we’re up against would be very happy to, and in fact already have, murdered children all over the globe.  And 9/11 was only a part of what they do.  And they want more.  So up yours Mr. Singleton. 
Be interesting to see what his reaction and that of yet another “human rights” group would be if one of their own were caught up in a terrorist attack.

Schmuck!

FULL STORY HERE

Posted by peiper     on 12/11/2008 at 10:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Celebrities • Stoopid-People • War On Terror •  
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CHRISTMAS CAROLS ARE TOO DARN RELIGIOUS AND SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE. QUICKLY!

ONE JUST HAS TO WONDER, WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE DUMMIES THINKING?

If you think about it deeply however ... really deeply ..... you’re still left scratching your head asking, what are these folks thinking?
We can’t have religious tomes nor carols that smack of ... GASP .... Religion. 

The world is deeply crazy and far too many people in official places are pandering to and encouraging the most bizarre ideas and behavior.  This has nothing to due with freedom of anything.  It has all to do with being stupid. 

Imagine that will ya.  Songs at Christmas (Christ-Mass?) should not have a religious theme.

I just can not imagine my mother’s generation or the ones before, being taken in by this stupidity.  I can’t begin to imagine them accepting this without slapping down the idiots who propose this nonsense.  It’s unacceptable and grossly outrageous. 

School choir forced to pull out of Christmas concert as carols were ‘too religious’

By Andrew Levy
Last updated at 1:34 PM on 11th December 2008

A school choir was forced to withdraw from a Christmas event because organisers branded its carols ‘too religious’.

Around 60 children aged between seven and 11 had spent six weeks practising favourites including Once In Royal David’s City and Silent Night for the Corringham Winter Festival.

But they were let down at the last minute when their headteacher was informed their programme did not ‘dovetail’ with the festival’s theme.

The event ended up going ahead last week with non-religious music and displays from an Irish school of dancing and performing arts students.

The snub was widely criticised yesterday by furious parents and religious leaders who accused the organisers of pandering to the politically correct brigade.

Nicola Hales, 36, whose nine-year-old daughter Rhiannon goes to Arthur Bugler County Junior School in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, said: ‘They must have been practising for about six weeks.

‘All the programmes had gone out with the school’s name on it but we got a newsletter home saying sorry for the confusion. I heard it was because the songs were too religious.

‘It’s ridiculous that you can’t sing religious songs. It’s Chistmas - when can you sing them?’

Another parent, who delined to be named, said: ‘The school was advised by the organisers that the carols they had chosen were not suitable because they were deemed to have a religious theme. The kids were really disappointed.

‘I can’t see how the Christmas carols they were going to sing would have been offensive to anyone.’

The Prayer Book Society, said ‘winter festivals’ were threatening traditional Christmas celebrations.

Chairman Prudence Dailey added: ‘These politically correct winter festivals seek to make Christmas part of a ‘multi-faith’ mix and hark back to pagan winter solstice observance.

‘They see Christmas as merely a local seasonal event and miss its central religious significance at the heart of national identity.

‘Perhaps organisers would benefit from reading the Book of Common Prayer and discovering what winter festivities are in fact about.’

Father David Rollins, of St John the Evangelist Church in Corringham, added: ‘It’s rather disappointing. Christmas is a major Christian event.’

The school’s headteacher, Sue Morris, said pupils had taken part in ‘a great deal of rehearsal’ before they were informed the songs ‘would not have dovetailed into the event’s theme’.

‘There was no time to reorganise the choir’s planned programme and we thought it best we did not take part,’ she added.

The non-religious event was planned by Corringham Town Festival Partnership, even though the area is in Thurrock, where 75 per cent of the population described themselves as Christian in the 2001 census.

The next biggest religious group was Muslims, who make up one per cent of the population, followed by Sikhs, who account for barely half of one per cent of residents.

A spokesman for Thurrock Islamic Education and Cultural Association said: ‘I don’t think any Muslims would be offended by carols.’

There has been growing concern in recent years at the burgeoning politically correct attitude to Christmas because of concerns that people of other faiths will be offended or feel excluded.

Councils have started celebrating winter festivals or wintervals, businesses are banning staff from putting up Christmas decorations and there is a thriving industry for cards with non-religious themes.

Last year the Bishop of St David’s in Pembrokeshire, the Rt Rev Carl Cooper, warned political correctness was destroying the meaning of Christmas.

‘Teachers and other public servants have become paralysed with fear and political correctness. They need to regain confidence in our culture and traditions,’ he said.

The chairman of the Corringham Town Festival Partnership yesterday made the bizarre claim carols had been dumped because the winter festival was meant to be ‘upbeat’.

‘It was nothing to do with being politically correct or anti-Christian, it was a Christian celebration,’ he said.

CAROLS

Posted by peiper     on 12/11/2008 at 10:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Religion • Stoopid-People • UK •  
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AMERICA TO BLAME FOR BRIT FINANCIAL CRISIS?  NOT ACCORDING TO THIS MAN.

Tis indeed good to see at least one person defending us against the left here.
Funny how subjects that put me to sleep when I was much younger, like say,30, 40, 50, 60 hold my interest now.
Though to be really open and honest on this blog I should confess it’s mostly the wife who keeps up.  She reads the financial page and sort of like Uncle Jay explains the news, but minus the humor, tells me what it all means.

Gordon Brown must blame himself, not the USA
The Prime Minister’s finger-pointing is an attempt to disguise his own culpability.

Irwin Stelzer
Last Updated: 8:08AM GMT 11 Dec 2008

Enough! It’s time to put an end to Gordon Brown’s ridiculous blame game. As the Prime Minister tells it, Britain’s woes started in America. Like some strain of flu, America’s problems found their way across the ocean to London, and from there to the rest of the British economy. Cheers from the Left, eager to rubbish America and to resurrect their leader’s reputation.

Unfortunately for Mr Brown, neither his claim – he told Parliament yesterday, “Not only have we saved the world”, modestly eschewing the “I” word – nor his Macavity act can survive scrutiny. It is beyond question that Britain’s problems stem in part from its fractured regulatory system, with responsibility split between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority, and the Treasury. A close study of the relevant documents fails to reveal that this system was forced upon Brown by the US authorities. No, it sprang full blown from the brains of Chancellor Gordon Brown and his sidekick, Ed Balls.

Then there is the first manifestation of Britain’s problem, the run on Northern Rock. A further search of the archives fails to produce any proof that malevolent Americans slipped into the Northern Rock boardroom and forced the directors to write mortgages in excess of the value of the underlying properties, or persuaded them not to check the ability of potential borrowers to repay their loans. It was British, not American, regulators who found Northern Rock’s business model perfectly acceptable.

Nor is there any record of American advisers whispering into the Prime Minister’s ear: “Dither, dither, something might turn up.” The indecision in the face of the Northern Rock and subsequent crises seems to have been a purely Scottish disease that afflicted Nos 10 and 11, rather than a virus imported from America.

Then there is the question of all those subprime mortgages that originated in the United States – they did – and were combined into securities that were sold to financial institutions eager to boost profits. If there is proof that US bankers jetted to London and forced British banks to buy these asset-backed securities, I have been unable to find it. Without that, we have to assume that Britain’s banks saw an opportunity for profit, guessed wrong, and were never pressed by the regulatory authorities appointed by Brown to tighten their risk-management procedures.

Which brings us to what perhaps is the more important point: Brown’s insistence that Britain is the best situated of all countries to face the economic headwinds, and to recover once they have abated. One reason offered is that before the downturn, the Government created three million jobs.

Unfortunately, masses of those were in the public sector, where productivity is far below the private sector, where unreformed work practices are the norm, and where non-jobs are often mere substitutes for the dole. Then there is the uncomfortable fact that the UK labour market attracted millions of foreigners, but not the millions of British nationals who find themselves too stressed, too back-achy, or too tempted by generous benefits to accept low-paid work. This is not to say that everyone receiving benefits is able to work; but no one, including Secretary of State for Work and Pensions James Purnell, doubts that millions are. This crushing weight on the productive sector will make it very difficult for Britain to return to long-term sustainable economic growth.

Britain’s recovery will also be slowed because its potential entrepreneurs, the economy’s real job creators, must cut through miles of red tape, face the risk of retroactive increases in taxes, and somehow market products to heavily indebted consumers who have to get their balance sheets in reasonable shape before returning to the high streets.

Finally, there is Britain’s fiscal condition. Instead of using the good years to pile up surpluses to spend in the lean years, Brown decided that he had conquered the business cycle – no more boom and bust. There is no minute of any meeting to suggest that the American economists and businessmen with whom the Prime Minister was so fond of being photographed tried to persuade him that he had indeed discovered the magic formula that could end business cycles. The hubris was home-grown. Which leaves Brown in the position of being forced to make clear that tax increases are in Britain’s future – not a prospect that will encourage spending. Franklin Roosevelt promised to attack the Great Depression with a policy of tax and tax, and spend and spend. Brown is promising the reverse: to spend and spend, and then tax and tax. Economists agree that when consumers know measures to induce spending are temporary, that higher taxes are in their future, they do not respond by spending their windfalls.

None of this is to deny that developments in an economy as large as America’s have an impact on its trading partners and other countries. Or that America’s bankers mismanaged risk. But it remains an incontestable fact that the Prime Minister is pointing a finger at America to conceal his mishandling of the British economy and, lately, the futility of some portions of the stimulus package he has crafted. Gordon Brown’s search for a villain might better take him to the nearest mirror than to Washington, DC.

DON’T BLAME AMERICA

Posted by peiper     on 12/11/2008 at 09:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • UK •  
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   Wednesday - December 10, 2008

Get one now if you can

An evening spent surfing, comparing and taking notes lead to an interesting conclusion: the sporty cars available today perform just as well as the best of the late 60s muscle cars, and are nearly the same size and weight. Plus they get double the gas mileage, give off just about no emissions, actually stop and turn corners, are many times safer in accidents, and they don’t rust or break down. We’ve come a long way baby. If you can afford to buy a sporty car, now may be the best time ever to do so.

All of this started with a spam email from Bloomingdale’s. Bloomie’s has exclusive access to the very first 200 Infiniti G37 convertibles, which won’t be available to the rest of us for a number of months. So if you have to have one, you have to go and put your cash down with Bloomingdale’s.

So I’m thinking, a G 37? What happened to the 35? Turns out Nissan bored out it’s venerable V-6, and with a tuned exhaust and their version of variable valve timing, this little chunk of aluminum turns out 330 net horsepower at the tires, and 265 lb/ft of torque. So that’s a pretty good pony number obviously, but the torque rating seems a bit off compared to what I remember about all those old V-8s from my childhood.

So it’s off to Wiki and Google ... and I find out the difference between gross hp (bhp) and today’s real world net hp. Back in the 60s not only did the car companies probably fib about their engine’s power, they took the ratings straight off the crankshaft, often without any basic engine accessories (like an alternator or an exhaust system) attached. Several sources say you need to shave 100 or more hp off the old big gross numbers to get to today’s net numbers. So there isn’t any perfect way to compare the old and the new numbers, unless you can take a factory perfect 1970 SS Chevelle and put it on a modern dynamometer. Assuming, of course, that you can find 100 octane leaded gas to run it on.



Anyway, all that poking around was kinda fun, and here’s what I found:

1970 Chevelle SS454

Engine: 454 cubic inch V-8 - 7.4 liter
Horsepower: 450
Torque: 500 lb/ft
Vehicle Weight: 3260 lbs
Vehicle Wheelbase: 112 - 109 inches
Vehicle Length: I can’t find this number, but I’d guess 200 inches
Vehicle Width: 72 inches

0-60 times: 6.1 - 6.5 seconds
Quarter mile time: 13.45 - 13.7 seconds
mpg: you have got to be kidding me



2009 Infiniti G37

Engine: 227 cubic inch V-6 - 3.7 liter (exactly half the displacement!)
Horsepower: 330
Torque: 265 lb/ft
Vehicle Weight: 3770 lbs
Vehicle Wheelbase: 112.2 inches
Vehicle Length: 183.1 inches
Vehicle Width: 71.8 inches

0-60 times: 5.4 seconds
Quarter mile time: 14.0 seconds
mpg: 17 city, 26 highway



So there you have it. The absolute king of muscle cars, the baddest of the bad. The 1970 SS Chevelle with the 454 LS6 engine. Loses the stop light race to the G37 but wins in the 1/4 by about half a second (about 9 car lengths at 103mph). It shouldn’t be possible! The new cars have far less horsepower, half the torque, and they weigh as much or more! Something ain’t right.

Oh, if you have another $8000 or so to spend, the BMW 335i will beat the SS in the 0-60 race, and tie it in the quarter, same time and speed. And that one gets 20/29 mpg.

And both of these new cars are “family haulers”. Serious modern performance cars like the latest Corvettes, M-series Beemers, and those AMG Mercedeses blow the G37 into the weeds. This conclusion didn’t make sense to me at first. But then I realized that the real difference was in the drivability. Sure, the 454 was a rip snortin’ monster. Stuck into a car with poor brakes, a soft suspension, a less than ideal frame, bias ply tires, etc. Not to mention the peaky nature of the old carburated engines compared to today’s computer controlled fuel injected wonders. Getting traction in the Chevelle was an art. You probably aren’t even allowed to spin the tires in the Infiniti. It’s wasteful and non-green.

Funny thing though. I’ve taken these new zippy cars out for road tests. No question that they get up and move. But it just doesn’t feel the same. You don’t notice it, they just go. And then you look down at the speedo and notice you’re going 90. No wheelies, no smoking the tires, no getting sideways, no roar from the exhaust or mechanical cacophony from under the hood. Heck, you can’t even see the gas gauge visibly moving. I miss those things.

a bunch of source links below the fold

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2008 at 10:04 PM   
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
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Barack Obama may get lost inside a moral maze.  From the Times, UK.

FIRST >>> Shoot the lawyers who would represent these sleaze balls.  Interesting article anyway and appeared yesterday.  I just couldn’t get it posted in time.

And as usual naturally, I get a bit hot under the color when foreigners bring the subject of Guantanamo Bay up.  Why the heck is it their business?

Barack Obama may get lost inside a moral maze
Bronwen Maddox: Commentary

“Martyr me” — that has been the challenge by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, since he first appeared publicly in a Guantánamo court in June. Judging by his attempt to make a guilty plea yesterday, he and the Bush Administration have one thing in common: they want his trial — or simply, sentencing — to go ahead as soon as possible.

That might be convenient for Barack Obama, even though it is an offence against the principles of a fair trial which he has promised to uphold in his attacks on the Guantánamo policies. But the case may well spill into his term and present him with messy decisions when he wanted to take a simple moral stand.

Lacking the capture of Osama bin Laden, the trial of Mohammed and four others is the best the Bush team can do to display success in the 9/11 hunt. But yesterday’s hearings show why the camp and “military commissions” (special new courts for the trials) prompted such criticism of the US.

The first charge against Guantánamo is that the US has used it to detain hundreds without trial, denying them historic rights to challenge captivity. Until Mohammed and a dozen others arrived in the past two years, it held no one obviously more senior than bin Laden’s driver.

Mohammed is one of only a handful even to be charged. But the commissions represent an unfair trial, depriving defendants of rights they would have in US military or criminal courts. There, evidence from torture is inadmissable, but the commissions have simply reinterviewed prisoners — such as Mohammed, who were tortured, by most definitions — to claim that the evidence is “clean”. Yesterday also showed that crucial questions remain unsettled after seven years, such as whether prisoners can fire their Pentagon lawyers, denying themselves representation.

If the commission accepts the guilty plea, passes the death sentence, and Mohammed is executed before January 20, then he will get his wish to be a martyr. But if not, then Obama will find that shutting the camp is the trivial decision. The hard one will be whether to overturn a death sentence on the self-proclaimed architect of 9/11, and then to press ahead with the trial, in US courts, of a man tortured by US agents.

THE TIMES

Posted by peiper     on 12/10/2008 at 11:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Obama, The One • UK •  
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Police Machine Gun Sent To Granny.  Not exactly the kind of gun Drew and crew have in mind tho.

Police Machine Gun Sent To Granny

1 hour 54 mins ago

A grandmother has told of her terror at opening a parcel she had been expecting - only to find she had been sent a police machine gun.

Catherine Roots had been expecting a horse harness to be delivered to her home in Winfrith, Dorset.

But she got a nasty shock when she saw a black Heckler and Koch weapon staring back at her.

The package was delivered by mistake and should have been sent to firearms officers at a nearby police HQ.

Police later explained a gun supply company made a mistake with the postcode when they sent it to Dorset Police HQ in Winfrith near Dorchester.

Instead of sending it to DT2 8DZ, a clerk wrote down Mrs Roots’ postcode, which differs only by a single letter.

Mrs Roots, who is in her 50s and runs a smallholding, said: “I was absolutely and totally shocked, and petrified.

“If it had got into the wrong hands the consequences wouldn’t bear thinking about.

“After I contacted the police two armed officers turned up and they were as shocked as I was.”

Mrs Roots was later told the weapon was in fact a realistic-looking training gun that fires infra-red beams.

Assistant chief constable Adrian Whiting, of Dorset Police, said: “Because this item isn’t actually a firearm it is lawful for the company, the suppliers, to use a courier as they did.

“I hasten to add if it was a real firearm we would transport it by hand, making sure that no such error like this could occur.

“The item is perfectly safe and can’t cause anyone any harm but it does look like one of our firearms.”

Dorset Police is now seeking assurances from its unnamed supplier that such a mistake could never happen again.

GUN GRANNY

Posted by peiper     on 12/10/2008 at 11:03 AM   
Filed Under: • UK •  
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No Christmas For You!

Foamy the foul mouthed rabid squirrel from Ill Will Press sounds off against the holiday nay-sayers. It’s like a whole week of Bill O’Reilly rolled into 2 minutes. Foamy is awesome, though his helium powered voice is a little hard to understand at times.

h/t to Rancino, purveyor of fine graphics and wild stuff found on the ‘net.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2008 at 10:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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Sign of the Times

www.cheaperthandirt.com

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2008 at 10:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One • Politics •  
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Hacked USB Cable

I like this.  You still need to encrypt it, but I love the “security by obscurity” aspect.

Your Flash-Drive’s Been HACKED!


We’ve got the tiniest flash-drives, and we’ve got flash-drives that are hardened against attack. Now, we’ve got flash-drives that look like they’ve been hacked! Imagine yourself, sitting in a coffee-shop. You pull out your venerable laptop, and fire it up. You may not realize it, but there are jealous eyes on your hardware. They see your computer and size you up. Is the computer you carry worth trying to steal? Are you enough of a threat to them? The mental-calculations proceed apace. That is until you reach for your flash drive.

You pull from your bag a seemingly torn and frayed piece of USB cabling. Immediately, your potential miscreant raises an eyebrow. Exactly what does he think he’s going to do with that cable? Grinning like a madman, you plug your phantom USB device into your computer, and happily continue on with your work, apparently oblivious to your devices obvious lack of connectivity.

It appears to all around you that you are, indeed, mad. In fact, what you’ve really done is plug in a 2 gigabyte flash drive that’s masterfully disguised as a frayed and broken USB cable. You’ve managed to make it appear that you’re insane, and as all thieves know - never EVER screw with an insane person.


Features

• 2GB flash drive cleverly disguised as a frayed and broken USB cable
• Easily transfer and store files, photos and music
• USB 2.0 with 1.1 backwards compatibility
• Mac, Windows and Linux compatible, of course

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2008 at 09:34 AM   
Filed Under: •   
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Bionic Arm

Dean Kamen, who I spoke about here, has come up with a way to help our soldiers who have lost limbs.

Segway Inventor Builds Bionic Arm for Wounded GIs

The man behind the Segway scooter has a new invention: bionic arms for wounded soldiers.

Called the “Luke Arm” after the prosthetic hand sported by Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” movies, Dean Kamen’s device is lightweight, self-contained and fully capable of picking up grapes, baby bottles, even electric drills.

Kamen says the Department of Defense approached him and his company, DEKA, in 2005 about the project, not the other way around.

“This guy visits and basically says, ‘Look, we’ve had 1,600 kids go over [to Iraq] and lose an arm. Two dozen have lost two,’” Kamen tells Newsweek in a story for next week’s issue. “‘At the end of the Civil War, we gave them a hook on a stick. Now we give them a hook at the end of a plastic tube.’”

The Luke Arm has four fingers and an opposable thumb, and was designed to be controlled by muscular movement in the wearer’s remaining limbs.

But thanks to neurological advances in “targeted renervation” by Dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the Luke Arm can now connect directly to motor nerves, meaning it can be controlled purely by thought alone.

And the nerve connections are two-way: The wearer gets “force feedback” about his own grip and movements, allowing him to pick up an empty water bottle without crushing it.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/10/2008 at 07:37 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Medical • Science-Technology •  
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   Tuesday - December 09, 2008

Illinois Governor BUSTED

This isn’t the Chicago Way we had in mind!

Gov. Rod Blagojevich (DEMOCRAT)and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested today by FBI agents for what U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald called a “staggering” level of corruption involving pay-to-play politics in Illinois’ top office.

Blagojevich is accused of a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy, including alleged attempts by the governor to try to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama in exchange for financial benefits for the governor and his wife. Blagojevich also is accused of obtaining campaign contributions in exchange for other official actions.

Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning--one day shy of his 52nd birthday.

Horry Clap!

Blagojevich and Harris were arrested simultaneously at their homes at about 6:15 a.m., according to the FBI. They were transported to FBI headquarters in Chicago. Blagojevich is slated to appear at 1:30 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan today, according to Randall Samborn of the U.S. attorney’s office.

On the issue of the U.S. Senate seat that Obama resigned Nov. 16, federal prosecutors said they had numerous recorded conversations of Blagojevich discussing the merits of potential candidates, including their abilities to benefit the people of Illinois as well as the financial and political benefits he and his wife, First Lady Patricia Blagojevich, could receive.

And it gets worse ...

The charges include historical allegations that Blagojevich and Harris schemed with others – including previously convicted defendants Antoin Rezko, Stuart Levine, Ali Ata and others – since becoming governor in 2002 to obtain and attempt to obtain financial benefits for himself, his family and third parties, including his campaign committee, Friends of Blagojevich, in exchange for appointments to state boards and commissions, state employment, state contracts and access to state funds. A portion of the affidavit recounts the testimony of various witnesses at Rezko’s trial earlier this year.

Hoo ooh ... you know what I’m thinking? Let’s see how long it takes to pull Daley into the net. And then ... nah, that’s as far as it will go. EVER. No stain will touch the sandals of The One.

Much more over at Michelle Malkin’s blog.

Horry Clap!!

Posted by Drew458     on 12/09/2008 at 04:14 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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Dropping Like A Rock

Gas cost $1.63.9 for regular here the weekend before last, at the end of November. Last Tuesday it dropped 7¢ to $1.57.9. This afternoon the price fell to $1.49.9. That’s 16¢ in 9 days. That’s almost a 10% drop. In under two weeks. At this rate ... gas will cost about $1.05 a gallon when Bush leaves office. We’re already at “historic” 5 or 6 year lows. $1 a gallon? I can’t remember that far back in time. Good thing Bush destroyed the economy with all of his failed policies, otherwise people would be really happy with this.

We’re already past my own “magic point” where I can fill my little Saturn’s tank for under $20. When I can do it for $15 (ie gas costs $1.36.9) I think I’ll have a party. My guess is that I’d better start inviting folks now, because the party will be in about 12 days.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/09/2008 at 03:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Oil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Prices •  
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This has gone too far

Hey, ya know, if I’d wanted to just fly somewhere and then stay in a hotel, I wouldn’t have booked an expensive round the world cruise in the first place!

A cruise ship will evacuate passengers before sailing past the Somali coast and fly them to the next port of call to protect them from possible pirate attacks, German cruise operator Hapag-Lloyd said Tuesday.

An official with the European Union’s anti-piracy mission said separately that it would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships — the first such deployment of military personnel during the international anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

The MS Columbus cruise ship will drop off its 246 passengers Wednesday at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah before the ship and some of its crew sail through the Gulf, the Hamburg-based cruise company said in a statement.

The passengers will take a charter flight to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 150-meter (490-foot) vessel in the southern Oman port of Salalah for the remainder of a round-the-world tour that began in Italy.

Hapag-Lloyd said the detour was a “precautionary measure,” given rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia that recently has targeted cruise ships as well as commercial vessels, including a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million in crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weapons.

Pirates last week fired upon the M/S Nautica — a cruise liner carrying 650 passengers and 400 crew members — but the massive ship outran its assailants. Other ships have not been so lucky. Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 of them since NATO deployed a four-vessel flotilla on Oct. 24 to escort cargo ships and conduct anti-piracy patrols.

The Hapag-Lloyd cruise company planned the detour for its passengers in order to heed a German Foreign Ministry travel warning, after the German government denied the cruise company’s request for a security escort through the Gulf, company spokesman Rainer Mueller said. As long as the travel warning is in effect, he said, “we won’t travel through the Gulf of Aden with passengers.”

The EU launched its anti-piracy mission five days early on Tuesday, before it takes over for the NATO ships next Monday. The EU mission will involve six ships and up to three aircraft patrolling at any one time, and will station armed guards aboard the most vulnerable cargo vessels, such as ships transporting food aid to Somalia, according to the British naval commander in charge of the mission.
...
The NATO anti-piracy mission has also focused on escorting the U.N. aid agency’s chartered vessels, helping some 30,000 tons of humanitarian aid reach Somalia since Oct. 24.

In addition, about a dozen other warships from the U.S. 5th Fleet based in Bahrain, as well as from India, Russia and Malaysia and other nations are patrolling in the area.
...
Jones welcomed an offer from Japan to contribute a vessel to the one-year EU mission. It is the European Union’s first naval endeavor, though the bloc has conducted 20 peacekeeping operations.

Britain, France, Greece, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands will contribute at least 10 warships and three aircraft, with contingents rotated every three months.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/09/2008 at 02:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
• Comments (7) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Gun Porn

Now that Kim has retired, it’s up to the rest of us to put the firearms information out there. I will leave it to the other blogs to cover the scary black rifles and the more mundane firearms. My interest in guns tends towards the unusual and unique. I also appreciate beauty but I don’t like excess. So I won’t focus on the plastic or plain vanilla guns, and I probably won’t show too many of the guns that are so fancy you wouldn’t dare shoot them. Highly figured wood, an excellent finish, and a moderate amount of engraving are about as far as I go. Orphaned cartridges and gun designs also float my boat.

Here is one you might like. It’s about at the top of my “fancy but shootable” scale. It’s a restored and improved 1876 Winchester chambered in .45-75. The .45-75 is a real oddball round. It was probably the first bottleneck “high powered rifle” cartridge designed in America. It was developed as attempt to get the big Army contract. The Army was using the single shot Springfield “Trapdoor” rifle at the time, chambered in the blackpowder .45-70-405. This was plenty enough gun to shoot indians and the horses they rode in on, but the single shot rifle left a lot to be desired when the going got hot; a repeater was needed. Problem was, the only repeating rifles in those days were lever action guns that fired relatively puny cartridges, and none of them had an action long enough to handle the “big” (2.55") .45-70 round. So Winchester made the .45-75; a shorter fatter cartridge that looked like a bigger version of their earlier .38-40. It produced nearly the same ballistics as the .45-70 - a 350 grain bullet at 1350 feet per second - but would fit in the rifles they knew how to make. The Army wasn’t impressed. Their testing showed that the bottleneck cartridge idea doesn’t really work with blackpowder; it just raises pressures with no real increase in velocity. So Winchester put the rifle out for sale on the civilian market, where it was quickly found to be more than enough gun to shoot buffalo with, or anything smaller. Which means anything with feet, as buffalo are rather huge beasties. 132 years later, the .45-70 is still a very popular cartridge. The .45-75 died out in less than a decade. You can still buy ammo for it, but it’s really expensive.

So on to the rifle. This one was restored and improved by Turnbull Restorations. Doug Turnbull is a master gunsmith. Obviously.

The receiver is engraved with a period #10 style engraving pattern with a full body bull moose on the left side plate of the receiver.  The remainder of the receiver is engraved with beautiful detailed scroll work.  The receiver, hammer, lever and butt plate are finished with original Bone Charcoal Color Case Hardening.

The stocks are 3X fancy American Black Walnut with beautiful figure and are checkered with a period correct Winchester factory “H-pattern” checkering.

All this can be yours, for a mere $16,500.

GET ME OUT OF HERE ...

Posted by Drew458     on 12/09/2008 at 01:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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