Thursday - April 08, 2010

A SUGGESTED READING LIST FOR OBAMA …

H/T Europe News via American Thinker

An Islamofascist Reading List for President Obama

American Thinker
By C. MacLeod Fuller

There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts. - La Rochefoucauld

Fresh from the battlefield of solving America’s healthcare conundrum, President Obama has gamely refused to let the sun set upon his dogged determination to single-handedly transform life’s realities into hallucination.

Today we receive the latest good news out of the Obama Administration that the twin problems of Islamic jihad and Islamic fascism no longer threaten the world—the President is banning use of such terminology from National Security documents, briefings, and interoffice post-it notes.

Like Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians in Slaughter House Five (whose response to war was ignoring it, and whose only form of reading a book filled with symbols which represented pleasant thoughts and events), President Obama resides in a comfortable world of politically correct delusion, convinced cheap rhetoric is more powerful than the haute couture of suicide vests and murderously transformative, politically-based theological zeal.

Both the President and 300,000,000 Americans (not to mention Europeans, Australians, Indians, Central and South Americans, etc.) would be better served if, rather than alienating Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Obama instead turned to combating the doctrinaire nightmare quite explicit in its 14-centuries-long quest to replace Western Civilization with Islam and sharia.

Herewith, a suggested reading list to get the President and his advisors started.

link to the list above

Posted by peiper     on 04/08/2010 at 02:58 PM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •  
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Another Cup of Tea

One way to find your local event: the Tax Day Tea Party website.

Need an idea for a protest sign? How about making a copy of one of these bumper stickers?


I think I’ll be timely, and go with this one. No VAT. That’s Value Added Tax for you Americans, a 10% federal sales tax that Obama’s goons are now considering.

If Tea Parties even make the news this year, the story will be that the attendance is down nationwide. Duh, yeah, because they are all scheduled for 2 hours starting at noon on Thursday. Most folks with jobs can’t take that long a lunch break.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/08/2010 at 12:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Government • Taxes •  
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Oh how PC.  The newspaper is simply calling them Romanian mobsters, but we know what they are.

Don’t we?  I mean besides being mobsters. Yeah. Them again.  A rose by any other name.

The unique European/British plague.

Of course, there was a time for a few years between 1939 and 45 ......... oh well.  One can hope but that’s about all one can do.  But the tide won’t be stemmed.

Police swoop on gang of modern-day Fagins who ‘sent kidnapped Romanian children to steal on streets of Britain’

By Mail Foreign Service
08th April 2010

British police have arrested more than 30 Romanian mobsters accused of sending an army of snatched children to beg and steal on the streets of Britain.

Police estimate that more then 170 youngsters as young as seven have been trafficked to the UK by the gang.

Scotland Yard officers working with local anti-Mafia cops in Romania this morning took part in a series of raids in Tandarei, a gangland heartland in the south of the country.

More than 300 officers searched 34 homes and properties in the co-ordinated dawn searches.

Police confirmed the operation had taken place this morning.

Police say the modern-day Fagins forced their young victims - snatched from poor gypsy communities - to beg in Britain and go on pick-pocketing and shoplifting sprees.

Mob bosses set them up with bogus documents and homes in London and other big cities and then put them to work on the streets threatening their families at home if they tried to flee.

MAFIA? YEAH. RIGHT.

Travellers offered £50,000 interest-free council loans to buy sites

By Luke Salkeld
Last updated at 12:30 AM on 08th April 2010

Travellers are being offered interest-free loans funded by the taxpayer to buy their own land.

The new project will give groups of travellers ‘mortgages’ of up to £50,000 to buy acres of fields on which to settle.

They will then repay the loans over a timespan of their choosing, without paying a penny in interest.

‘Singling out this one community for loans is grossly unfair, particularly if some do not pay their share in council tax and violate planning regulations

THE REST HERE

Posted by peiper     on 04/08/2010 at 09:16 AM   
Filed Under: • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters •  
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   Wednesday - April 07, 2010

That Wasn’t So Taxing

Yay, I got the taxes all done.

Boo, I owe the feds more money than I get back from the state.

Yay, it’s only a little bit of money. Much less than I spend on beer in a year.

Yay, having high speed internet makes it so easy to download forms and instructions. No more running to the library or Post Office hunting for paper copies. Plus it’s all neat and tidy.

Boo, New Jersey built their digital tax form exactly like their paper form, which means each digit of each number goes in it’s own little box. Which means most of the time spent filling out the form is eaten up by hitting the tab key. At least the federal forms are two column entries: dollars and cents.

Boo, can’t you work macros into Acrobat forms? I was certain that you could. Digital tax forms should do the adding up for you. Heck, you should get the “forms kit” as a zip file that has one of everything, or an open source built-in relational mega-macro, so that you could select the forms you need, download them in one shot, and have the amounts automatically populate the other forms as you go.

3 Yays, 3 Boos. Looks like a draw. Which means I win. I think.

Until we meet again next year, tax forms!

And ... most importantly ... I have plenty of ink in my printer, black and color. And enough paper. No more frantic trips to Staples at the last second either! I think we even have stamps.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/07/2010 at 06:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Taxes •  
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I don’t know where to start on this

Yes, I want to post on Obama’s completely unnecessary, unprompted, brain fried, and utterly stupid remaking yesterday of the USA’s nuclear arms policy.

It’s so wrong that I don’t know where to begin. Sure, dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of other bloggers raced to their keyboards and hammered out the obvious: he just gave away the store. He just made all the little tinpot dictators a little bolder. He just made America a whole lot less safe. This is so obvious to me, and to you, that my even mentioning it would be patronizing. Wouldn’t it? Or has everyone completely forgotten what atomic detente is all about? Sure, sure, Cold War is over, Soviet Union is gone, the splodey dope terrorists are so small scale and inept as to be beneath snide contempt except for their occasional minor successes. But there are rogue states out there, crazy dictators that NEVER respect or even understand a gesture of kindness or even one of common sense. To them, any and every gesture and statement that isn’t strongly belligerent is a sign of weakness and lack of will. Not only do they always choose the strong horse, they can’t see that any other horses even exist.

Here is nuclear arms policy in a nutshell:

Obama just gave all of that away. Because he felt like it. No other country was pressuring him. There have been no huge uprisings of citizens against MAD-level WMD or policies. (sure, sure, the same old hippies have been carrying the same old protest signs for generations, but who ever listens to those unwashed morons?). So this was a bit of a surprise.

Do we have too many nukes? Probably. How many is enough? I’d bet 2500 would do it. So we can get rid of quite a lot of them. But let’s make sure that the ones we keep are fully modernized, fully functional, properly hardened and redundant, properly secured, and properly dispersed. Because people fuck with us, and we never know. This means we continuously research ways to build better weapons. And better delivery systems. Always. And when we have a better design, proven and ready to go, we can take the heart out of some old bombs and put them in the new ones. It’s not like uranium and plutonium wear out in a few decades. The stuff is good for geologic epochs. So it’s really stupid to call a halt to research, even when it looks like we have vastly superior systems, because the rest of the world catches up to us by stealing our stuff. It’s called spying, and they are really good at it. We aren’t. Hell, their best spies are our best engineers and physicists. So much for the benefits of all those H1-A visas.

Making a policy statement about who we will nuke, and for what reason, what provocation, is just plain stupid. Making a statement that says specifically where we won’t retaliate with nuclear weapons just opens the door for attacks of those natures. Purest idiocy, especially since we can’t/won’t secure either our own borders or our own population.

Did Obama think that he was putting the squeeze on Iran by his little exception for rogue states? Did he rewrite, dumb down, and fundamentally change US WMD policy for the worst as some kind of “nuanced” sanction against Ahmadumjihad? Smooth move Mr. Dodo if he did. That didn’t last even 24 hours.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided Obama on Wednesday, depicting him as an ineffective leader influenced by Israel to target Iran more aggressively.

“American materialist politicians, whenever they are beaten by logic, immediately resort to their weapons like cowboys,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech before a crowd of several thousand in northwestern Iran.

“Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended,” Ahmadinejad said in the speech, aired live on state TV.

Wow. Obama the cowboy. Even I’m insulted by that one, and I only dreamed of being a cowboy when I was a small boy. Real cowboys must be fuming.

You can, and probably already have, read story after story on the many ways that this new policy is wrong. They’re everywhere. And they are all correct. Here’s a short list of some of the better ones:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/06/obama-makes-biological-warfare-more-attractive-to-terrorist-states/
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/06/president-obama-imperils-our-nations-security/
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/07/missing-the-target/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=284199fad4-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100406/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_us_nuclear

It was a really dumb move, for no real reason, and it makes the US weaker while making the international mad men that much stronger. And he did all this before the Soviets kinder, more gentle Russians signed their copy of the new START treaty. With the option to opt out of it if they felt like it. Gosh, such a strong negotiator our President is.

This guy makes my eyes bleed and my head explode. I just can’t deal with it. And we’ve got nearly 3 more years to go.

Here’s a picture of Reese Witherspoon looking really nice and fresh on a spring day. Just to remind me that some things can still be done properly.



UPDATE:

Seems that The Mustache of Truth had pretty much the same reaction that I did. He’s just so much more eloquent than I am.

The President’s New Nuclear Policy [John Bolton]

The Nuclear Posture Review is deeply troubling in many respects, starting at the conceptual level with its unfounded assertion that the need for American nuclear deterrence has declined. By further unilaterally limiting the circumstances in which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons to protect itself and its allies, the Obama administration is in fact increasing international instability and the risks of future conflicts. By abandoning the reliable replacement warhead project, and drastically limiting programs to ensure the safety and reliablity of our existing nuclear stockpile, the president is risking our security and obtaining nothing in return. Nuclear proliferators, as well as countries with chemical and biological weapons programs, can only welcome these further unforced American errors on the road to nuclear impotence.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/07/2010 at 10:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •  
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   Tuesday - April 06, 2010

Same Old Same Old Samho

While Pieper got to cover the Rescue At Sea story, I got the less dramatic one. Sunday Somali pirate mooks captured the South Korean oil tanker Samho Dream. [yes, it’s the sam ho’ dream we all have: I want to get rich!]. While a Korean warship is in pursuit, so far nothing has happened. The tanker, chock full of crude, was bound for the USA.

A supertanker carrying about £104 million of crude oil from Iraq to the United States is believed to have been hijacked by Somali pirates.

Similar seizures of oil supertankers in the waters off the coast of lawless Somalia have yielded ransoms as high as $5.5 million.

A South Korean navy destroyer was rushing toward the supertanker but its highly volatile cargo prevents crews from carrying guns on board or even lighting cigarettes while on deck.

The South Korean-operated 300,000-ton Samho Dream is believed to have been seized Sunday when the South Korean navy received a call from the vessel saying three pirates had boarded it and then lost contact.

At the time, it was about 930 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden. It has 24 crew - five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos.

A maritime analyst doubted the South Korean warship would launch an assault on the pirates believed to be holding Samho Dream because such action would put the crew at great risk.

So it looks like One Up, One Down. One ship rescued, one ship taken. Business as usual. But I couldn’t help having a couple ideas while looking at the pictures of both these ships. Like ... hmm, wouldn’t the bridge wings on the Dream, sticking way out there into the breeze, make great mounts for some kind of ball turret weapon? Nothing too sophisticated ...

Every ship welds on a couple of gun tubs fore, aft, and midships. No guns, just armored tubs. But places where a standard gun, like the quad 20mm Oerlikons pictured (WWII vintage!), could be quickly attached. When your ship goes through the Suez Canal, (or around the Cape of Good Hope, or going west past the southern tip of India, or at whatever points you want,) the passing of which imply that your ship is sailing into pirate waters, the navy that represents the nation that is the destination of your cargo mounts 4 to 6 guns and brings a crew of gunners aboard. All you have to do is feed them and bunk them. When your ship exits the pirate waters, the guns get dismounted and go back to that navy. For added security, if a pair or two of high speed davits were mounted, then your cargo ship could swing aboard a pair of manned modern PT boats, and just carry them along. Pirates come snooping around, launch the boats and engage them. Sink them? No, just disarm them, and attach a homing device so you can follow them back to the mothership. Then torpedo that one. It’s what PT boats are for.

The other upside is that very quickly every ship would have those gun tubs welded on, and like air marshals on jet planes, the pirates couldn’t tell which ships had the real guns, and which were merely using them to store a few shorter lengths of 5” pipe. Especially if most of them did have the real guns, and one ship in four held onto it’s weaponry past the standard disarming points. Just in case some pirates got the smart idea not to attack the ships until they were unarmed. Pretty soon, no pirates. And lots of dead ones. Every cargo ship at sea would be a Q-ship. If somebody could develop a PT boat that fit inside a full size shipping container, then the ruse would be even better. One or two containers lashed to the deck but rigged to the ships cranes would really give those water rats pause. Is there an armed and armored attack boat in there, or not?

Oh well, that’s Drew dreaming up a cheap and effective solution. It’s not like 20mm guns are a dime a dozen throughout the world. Oh wait, they are, aren’t they? Old tech stuff. But more than enough for pirates in fiberglass boats, with 3 times the range of an RPG-7. It would probably save the navies money, and the armed guards on board would cut the insurance cost to the ships. And if your destination nation didn’t have a navy ... well, you could hire our guys for a nominal fee. Sure, but what about International Law?? Ok, put a bit of yellow “Do Not Cross” tape across the doors to the gun tubs, and have each gun mount registered as a naval auxiliary ship all by itself. That way the cargo ship is just carrying the “little ships” for the navy as a favor, but those “ships” themselves would be recognized as military “vessels”. Shades of gray, but legal, and that’s what color you’d paint them too.

And if that’s too nuanced for ya, know that Malaysia now has actual Q-ships.




Updated before I could hit the Publish button:

The South Korean navy destroyer Chungmugong Yisunshin, shown here, has caught up with a supertanker hijacked by Somali pirates with a cargo of crude oil worth as much as $170 million ... though it is unlikely to launch an assault on the ship due to the highly volatile nature of the cargo, reports the Associated Press.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/06/2010 at 01:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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UPDATE WITH PIX, SOMALI PIRATES CAPTURED. THE BAD NEWS. THEY’RE ALIVE.

MORE PIX HERE AT SOURCE

Dutch marines abseil on to a hijacked cargo vessel to rescue its crew and arrest 10 Somali pirates

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 5:15 PM on 06th April 2010

Firearms at the ready, six Dutch marines abseil from a Lynx helicopter on to the deck of a cargo vessel being held to ransom by ruthless Somali pirates.

These pictures capture the precarious moment the commandos boarded the German merchant ship, the MV Taipan.

Marines board the German vessel MV Taipan where 10 armed pirates were waiting on board

Posted by peiper     on 04/06/2010 at 12:59 PM   
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Dutch marines rescue German vessel from pirates

Wow ... now that is a switch.  Gee, I’m so happy they didn’t cause any boo-boos to the pirate vermin. Jeesh.  Why oh why can’t they kill the bastards?
It’s become a game. A dangerous one I know, but the vermin don’t have too much to worry about beside arrest. Do they?  Yeah, a few have been made to stop breathing, but nowhere near enough to make what they do too dangerous. And so they go on. And on.
Times and attitudes have sure changed.

Dutch marines rescue German vessel from pirates off Somalia

Deutsche Welle 6 April 2010

A German container ship has been freed from pirates off the coast of Somalia. A Dutch frigate, part of the EU’s Atalanta anti-piracy mission, recaptured the ship and arrested the pirates. The crew were unharmed.

Dutch marines on Monday intervened to free a German container ship that had been attacked by pirates earlier in the day. The Dutch Defense Ministry and the EU’s anti-piracy mission Atalanta have both confirmed the rescue.

The “MS Taipan” vessel was attacked roughly 500 nautical miles east of the coast of Somalia while en route from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa to Djibouti.

Dutch sailors from the “Tromp Lynx” frigate tried to negotiate a peaceful release, but when this failed they stormed the vessel and arrested 10 pirates. Dutch authorities reported that one of their sailors was injured in the fight, but none of the 15-strong crew were harmed (...)

SOURCE FOR MORE ON VERMIN

Posted by peiper     on 04/06/2010 at 11:31 AM   
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IZ DIS DE WAY TO LEARN KIDS IN SKOOL WHAT WILL LOOK MAYBE FOR FUTURE JOB? education?

Oh boy. Where to begin?  To think that there are people in authority who think this way and can have influence on education is not only scary, it is bizarre beyond all understanding.  Is it April 1st again?  How could any adult buy this crap? 

One of the things need doing here as folks know, is clearing up our categories. Here I am mentally adding another one called, YOU COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP.
Or similar wording.

Since this is a post is on education I will mention in passing that a report I saw today calls for teachers to smile at pupils and that is NOT a suggestion. It looks to become a new rule if I read correctly.  Also, some teachers are complaining about having to be reviewed when applying for their job, by kids between the ages of 11 and 16.  ? Could you have made that up?  Bizarre world the unfortunate Brits have built for themselves.  PLEASE, do not believe that all Brits are this stupid. They aren’t.  It’s a different culture with different traditions and a long standing belief in fair play which has been turned against them. There’s so much to explain but I’m the wrong person to do it.  Six years here have not made me any kind of expert on England. But I know folks are disgruntled, many hate the socialist govt. they have but don’t trust the cons any more then the lefties of the Labour Party. They call the Tories, Labour Lite. So that shows you the pickle they are in.

Sorry to be so long winded but I feel strongly about this place, even if it isn’t my country, and I hate to see it doomed.

Pupils who plagiarise from the web will get bonus marks

Michael Deacon uncovers some of the forthcoming initatives to make education more pupil-centred.

By Michael Deacon

Telegraph

School days are the best of your life. Well, unless you’re one of the staff. Teachers are complaining that their authority is being undermined by contentious initiatives intended to “empower” pupils. At one school in Kent, pupils have been given iPhones on which to email senior management with feedback on teachers’ “performance”; in other schools, pupils get a say in the hiring of teachers.

Staff will not be comforted by a confidential report I’ve uncovered from the Institute for the Development of Innovation-Oriented Teaching Skills (IDIOTS). It lists forthcoming initiatives that are as far-sighted and progressive as the above. Here are its highlights:

• Teachers must discontinue their antiquated practice of penalising pupils who do not give so-called “correct” answers. The concept of “correct” answers is elitist, as it discriminates against pupils who do not know them. Instead, pupils should be rewarded for demonstrating qualities such as imagination (for example, imagining that 6x4=32) and original thinking (for example, thinking that the capital of France is Africa, or that Winston Churchill invented the potato).

• The custom of grading pupils according to the merit of their work is divisive, as it fosters the outdated belief that it is better to be “clever” and “hard-working” than “stupid” and “lazy”. All pupils should be awarded identical grades, irrespective of ability.

• To avoid stigmatising pupils, teachers should refrain from employing negative terminology. Instead of telling a pupil that his answer is “wrong”, the teacher should tell him that it is “factually divergent from the norm”. Instead of calling a pupil “disobedient”, the teacher should call him “behaviourally unorthodox”. Instead of writing in the register that a pupil was “late”, the teacher should write that the pupil’s attendance was “deferred”. And instead of telling a pupil that he has “failed”, the teacher should tell him that he has “passed”.

• The teaching of history will be abolished, on account of its backward-looking focus on the past. In its place will be a new, more up-to-date and relevant subject known as The Present, the study of which will consist of the continuous monitoring of Twitter feeds.

• Pupils found to have plagiarised essays from the web will be awarded bonus marks for having demonstrated technological expertise.

• Finally, teachers should not inhibit pupils’ creativity by insisting that they follow arbitrary and obsolescent rules; for example, punctuation, spelling, homework deadlines or the law.

IDIOT SOURCE

PS:  Not that it has anything to do with the subject here.  A young man in college and a brain for sure has won a contest with his team of other very bright scholars. He really is smart and he is head of his science fiction club at school.  You might say he is their ‘chairman’ unless you’re very pc in which case the word used these ridiculous days is, ‘chairperson.’ Pretty stupid huh?  Well BMEWS, here’s another I could not make it up.
The young fellow in question is referred to in the press as, ‘CHAIRBEING.’

Posted by peiper     on 04/06/2010 at 05:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Education • UK •  
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   Monday - April 05, 2010

EASTER SERVICE FROM WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL

These shots are from Ch.1 TV.  I didn’t even know Ch.1 was in town to broadcast this from Winchester till today. Thought you’d find of interest anyway.

Here’s a link to BBC, Ch.1.  I don’t know if ppl outside the UK can watch or not. Let me know.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED, THIS RUNS AN HOUR

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL, EASTER SERVICE

PS: Those slabs you see are graves going back hundreds of years. Many hundreds. Jane Austen is buried here.

Posted by peiper     on 04/05/2010 at 02:55 PM   
Filed Under: • Religion •  
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Frightened people with cause and the Path to Self-Censorship. Welcome to the new century.

H/T RIGHT SIDE NEWS

I said so much so often, I can’t find any new words.

And judging by this, it ain’t over re. the toons.

The Cartoon Jihad and the Path to Self-Censorship

by David J. Rusin -
Islamist Watch

Islamists do not wish to debate their opponents; they wish to silence them. This means demonstrating the high costs, whether legal or physical, of speaking out. Recent news items show how the fear of violence can drive capitulation - and, therefore, how violent Islamism can advance, rather than inhibit, the work of stealthy, nonviolent Islamists to crush free speech.

Following the global riots of 2006 and a flare-up two years later, caricatures of Muhammad once again are stirring jihadist passions. Two Chicago-area Muslims were charged last October with planning terror strikes against those involved in the publication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. New Year’s Day then saw an attack on the home of Kurt Westergaard, creator of the infamous bomb-in-the-turban illustration.

Earlier this month, Lars Vilks took his turn in the crosshairs, as arrests derailed a plot to murder the Swedish artist known for his crude sketches of Muhammad as a dog. To get a sense of what life is like for Vilks, consider that “his home in southern Sweden now contains a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders, a secure space to hide in, and an axe which will allow him ‘to chop down’ anyone breaking in through his windows.”

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but it is more than a little suspicious that the spate of recent plots has coincided with a clear uptick in cartoon-related cowardice:

A Danish TV program’s efforts to raise funds for Haiti hit a snag when auctioneers refused an utterly uncontroversial illustration donated by Westergaard. “We must recognize that the terror threat is still of such a character that we can’t predict the consequences of a sale,” the organization explained as it treated the artist as a pariah.

Link to the rest:

Posted by peiper     on 04/05/2010 at 02:07 PM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA •  
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Wardrobe Malfunctions

Filed under Things that don’t matter but are fun anyway”. Oh wait, never mind, I got rid of that category.

March Madness comes down to the final four not just in basketball.

If you follow the gossip pages, Hollywood, or the world of the fashionistas, surely you’ve heard of the blog GFY. Go Fug Yourself. Lots of pics, lots of snark, and never ending coverage of the absurdly dressed rich and famous. “Fug” means “Effin ugly”, a couture ensemble that’s so bad it becomes newsworthy.

Every year there is a competition. Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s teh fugliest of them all?

This year was a major surprise, as reigning fug queen Bai Ling was beat out in the semi-finals by singer Rhianna, while on the other side of the pyramid major fug contender Lady Gaga went down in a landslide to Kanye West’s arm candy/human pit bull/space alien Amber Rose.

So now it’s down to Amber vs. Rihanna. Get your votes in today.

This kind of thing is so meaningless. But it’s fun. I’d had my bets on perennial favorite fruit loop Bai Ling, but she lost badly, simply because she wasn’t trying very hard this year at all. You can’t take fug for granted; girl, you has to own it!

Go and vote, and be aghast at the amazingly awful outfits.



In other completely unrelated news, Russel Crowe has a Robin Hood movie coming out next month. Directed by the same guy who did Gladiator, Ridley Scott, it’s sure to be a gritty festival of Dark Ages gore, with lots of arrows, spears, and general chopping off of bits. Plus Cate Blanchett as Marian. Sounds like a plan to me!

A bowman in the army of Richard Coeur de Lion, virtuous rogue Robin Hood rises from an unlikely background to become a hero to the impoverished people of Nottingham and lover to the beautiful Maid Marion

Posted by Drew458     on 04/05/2010 at 02:02 PM   
Filed Under: • Hollywood •  
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Taliban Attacks US Consulate

Taliban suicide squad attempts to storm US consulate in Peshawar

Taliban fighters using rocket-propelled grenades, car bombs and suicide vests have attempted to storm the United States consulate in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Five security guards were among seven people killed during the raid in Peshawar and there were several explosions in the area which caused nearby buildings to collapse.

Six militants in two Toyota Corolla cars, laden with explosives, managed to pierce the city’s most heavily-guarded complex, which houses the provincial intelligence headquarters, the American consulate and the homes of several local ministers.

One eyewitness, Hamidullah Jan, said the attackers had successfully penetrated the consulate compound. He said he heard an exchange of gunfire followed by two loud explosions.

Hasan Ali, 25, who was being treated for abdominal injuries from the blast, said he saw the first explosion and was running to safety when a second and third explosion “shook the entire area”.

Senior North West Frontier Province minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour, whose home is 200 yards from the scene of the raid, said he saw six dead bodies, four of whom he said were the remains of terrorists and that suicide vests were close by them.

A Taliban spokesman later claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said targeted the United States consulate in revenge for American drone attacks which have killed a number of senior militant leaders, including the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud and his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud.

“The co-ordinated attack involved a vehicle suicide bomb and terrorists attempting to enter the building using grenades and weapons fire,” American officials said in a statement from their embassy in Islamabad.

There were no reported U.S. casualties in the attack and it is not known if the consulate, situated in a heavily fortified area of the northwest town, suffered any damages.

The Taliban wasted little time in claiming responsibility for the attack as spokesman Azam Tariq told Reuters news agency, “Americans are our enemies. We carried out the attack on their consulate in Peshawar. We plan more such attacks.”

The security barrier near the consulate gate was damaged, and shells from rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades were left lying in the area, which was sealed off by Pakistani police and army, witnesses said.

Police said of the two car bombs, one exploded at a checkpoint 50 metres from the consulate while the other - laden with about 100kg of explosives - went off close to the consulate gate.

At least three blasts were reported and a firefight between security forces and the attackers followed.

Pakistani television showed security forces firing their weapons and clouds of smoke rising over the garrison area of the city, close to the Peshawar offices of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which was bombed last November.

Stunned that the terrorists had managed to get as far as they did — given the multiple layers of security around the mission — shopkeepers in the nearby downtown Sadar area downed their shutters as security personnel cordoned off roads leading to the consulate and the Peshawar headquarters of the ISI which had faced a similar attack last year.

The blast was so powerful that it formed a huge crater in the road and brought down a boundary wall. Claiming that they had struck at the U.S. mission to avenge the drone attacks in North Waziristan, the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP-Pakistan wing of the Taliban) TTP spokesman told AFP that there would be more such attacks on “any place where there are Americans’’.

In August 2008, the top U.S. diplomat at the consulate survived a gun attack on her armored vehicle. Three months later, gunmen shot and killed an American in Peshawar as he was traveling to work for a U.S.-funded aid program in the region.

The last attack against a U.S. mission in Pakistan was in Karachi in 2006 when a militant rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the car of an American diplomat near the consulate, killing him and three others.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/05/2010 at 01:02 PM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • War On Terror •  
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The English Channel’s status could be reduced to that of a mere creek if Brussels has its way

I hope this is nothing more then a very late April Fool joke.  And even then, it isn’t funny.  Assuming it’s true and I really have some doubts, the sooner this country pulls out of the EU the better it will be.  I might be in a minority for thinking so but I hate what’s happened to this country over the years. 

Invited for coffee and visit this morning with friends back from a four day visit to Italy. More specifically, Florence.  Interesting to learn that while the Italians are members of the EU, they casually ignore rulings and laws passed outside their own country.  In fact, they don’t pay much attention to the rules passed in their own country either.  Seems like only the Brits even make an attempt to obey while other countries obey so long as it doesn’t get in the way.  Older generation of Brit a mostly law abiding citizen you might even go so far as to say, Germanic in attitude to rules.  ??  Lyndon? How far off am I?
So they went to Italy and were surprised to find how many people were still smoking everywhere, even where they weren’t supposed to.  Those folks apparently don’t take well to being told what to do in their personal lives where govt. has no place.  Which is not to say they do not have their share of left wing, we know what’s best for you PC libtards.  But so far at least, they’ve managed to hold on to their sovereignty, thus rejecting an EU super state.

Good for the Italians.  Bravo Italy.  Meanwhile back here in the UK (or maybe not so U) there is an election coming up and the politicians who ALL want to stay in power and others who want on board the gravy train will of course take note and make political hay out of this.  The various parties are engaged in promise making and proposals as all those slippery folks do at election time everywhere in the world.  Cept maybe Italy. (?)

How Eurocrats want to spend £1.1m changing the English Channel’s name to ‘Le Pond’

By Gerri Peev

Without it there would be no British Isles, no White Cliffs of Dover and Captain Matthew Webb would never have found fame as a nifty swimmer.

Yet the mighty English Channel’s status could be reduced to that of a mere creek if Brussels has its way.

Officials want to rename it ‘the Anglo-French Pond’ as part of a plan to bolster the notion of an EU superstate.

More than £1million, much of it coming from the British taxpayer, is being spent drawing up a new map to be distributed to schools and bureaucrats.

It defies centuries of history by wiping out current national borders to foster ‘cultural
identification’ between regions and encourage greater integration.

Under the plans, Southern England, from Cornwall to Kent, is joined with northern France and becomes known as the TransManche zone.

Its capital is Paris and it has its own socialist president, Alain Le Vern.

The West of Britain is parcelled off with parts of France, Spain and Portugal as part of a new Atlantic region.

Eastern Britain along with Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway
becomes the North Sea region.

And Scotland breaks away from Britain to become part of the Northern Periphery with parts of Norway, Greenland, Iceland and Finland.

The mapmakers state: ‘The channel has become a zone of multiple interacting and overlapping activities.

‘It is a shared space, a small Anglo-French internal sea; the interplay of activities both on and around what has become known as the Anglo-French Pond.’

Eurocrats admit they are trying to undo the work of the geographer Ptolemy, who named the Channel Oceanus Britannicus in the second century AD.

They declare: ‘A 1,000-year period, beginning with the Norman invasion of England, now nears its end as that same island becomes physically linked to the continent of Europe.’

The Tories accused the Government of backing plans to erase Britain’s history.

Communities spokesman Caroline Spelman said: ‘Labour ministers have already sought to replace England and its shires with government office regions.

‘Now British taxpayers’ money is being used literally to wipe our nation off the map, erase 1,000 years of history and downgrade the English Channel to the insulting status of a pond.

‘A Conservative government will scrap these Euro plans and save the English Channel.’

fly to the source

Posted by peiper     on 04/05/2010 at 08:26 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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