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Sarah Palin knows how old the Chinese gymnasts are.

calendar   Monday - May 31, 2010

IDF earned a whole pile of pizzas this morning

Hooray for Israel

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IDF stops hippies and armed terrorists hell-bent on killing their soldiers

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After IDF was forced to board ships that refused to turn back and attempted to run their blockade

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IDF wins “Courageous Restraint” for only killing 9 or 10 and letting 600 others live

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LetsFreeGaza — May 31, 2010 — See how we attacked them as soon as they landed on deck!!!! Look closely, we decked one of them with a crowbar!!!


IDF naval personnel encountered severe violence, including use of weaponry prepared in advance in order to attack and to harm them. The forces operated in adherence with operational commands and took all necessary actions in order to avoid violence, but to no avail.

Early this morning, IDF Naval Forces boarded six ships attempting to break the maritime closure of the Gaza Strip. This happened after numerous warnings from Israel and the Israeli Navy that were issued prior to the action. The Israel Navy requested the ships to redirect toward Ashdod where they would be able to unload their aid supplies which would then be transferred over land after undergoing security inspections.
During the boarding of the ships, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs. Additionally one of the weapons used was grabbed from an IDF soldier. The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose.
As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, as well as live fire.
According to initial reports, these events resulted in the deaths of nine demonstrators and seven naval personnel were injured, some from gunfire and some from various other weapons. Two of the soldiers are moderately wounded and the remainder sustained light injuries. All of the injured, Israelis and foreigners have been evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Israel.

This was not a humanitarian sail, but a violent provocation directed against us,” said Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Avi Benayahu. “We were attacked with clubs and long knives.”

Yep, that’s how I look at it. As others have said, it was a “whale wars” moment. But, hey, stupid: mess with the Navy, you’re going to get yours.

Short video clips broadcast on television stations showed demonstrators clubbing the navy personnel with metal bars and showed at least one Israeli commando firing.

Israeli military officials said demonstrators attacked the navy personnel with knives and live fire and seized at least one of the soldiers’ weapons.

Did Israel step in it? You betcha, because the entire game was rigged that way in advance. No matter what they had done they were going to be portrayed as the aggressors by most of the world’s media. Guilty until proven guiltier. So, IMO, it’s a damn shame they didn’t kill more of them.

Listen up you dirty hippies: The bit of land called “Gaza” is part of the nation of Israel, and it’s their right to say what gets in or out. Break those rules and they have every right to kill you on the spot.

I am out of patient with this bullshit, and it’s time to strike back. Hard, harder, hardest. 5000 protesters try to break the blockade and drown at sea? Tough shit. Not a tear’s worth of sympathy for a single one, and I hope they all die screaming. This bunch? Gosh, well maybe if the Turkish ferry wasn’t full of Turkish members of the Muslim Brotherhood, with whom IHH (International Humanitaire Hilfsorganization; the CIA has known they are a terrorist front group since 1996 or earlier), the Turkish sponsor of the ship, is closely associated ... terrorists in other words ... maybe if they hadn’t brought weapons with them and attacked the IDF when boarded, then this wouldn’t have happened.

As far as I am concerned, the “free Gaza” protest movement is a front for a terrorist group. They proved that today. Willing dupes at the least. So please, go buy some more cheap boats and try it again. Next time I hope the IDF uses the big guns. Why be stupid and put your soldiers at risk, armed primarily with paint guns? Use torpedoes, missiles, and large caliber artillery instead. Smart bombs from 30,000 feet. There’s a war going on out there, and thank G_d Israel has the nads to actually fight it.

UPDATE: via Theo’s, from Double Tapper, from The Muqata, who got it from IDFSpokesperson: some of the weapons taken away from the “peaceful” protesters on board the ferry Mavi Marmara:

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Not shown: fire bombs, smoke grenades, gas masks, slingshots, bags bottles and piles of rocks, dozens of metal pipes, etc. This was a deliberately precipitated incident and the people on board the ferry were prepared for, expecting, and looking forward to killing the IDF. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Please visit The Muqata for a superb minute-by-minute recap of these event, with videos, pics, and links galore. One of my favorites from there:

10:15 PM One last Flotilla terror boat reported on the way after being delayed. Could be the “Rachel Corrie”. Maybe the IDF will flatten it like a pancake.

a not so favorite quote, from PMW, but one that shows the reality ... that you won’t see from the MSM:

The following is the transcript from Al-Jazeera TV:
Reporter: “Despite the Israeli threats and several unexpected delays, the arrival of the ships at the meeting point before sailing to the Gaza Strip inflamed the emotions and the enthusiasm of the participants.”
Visuals from Gaza flotilla ship of young Muslims shouting Islamic battle chant invoking the killing and defeat of Jews in battle:
“[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!”
[Khaibar is the name of last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army and it marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia in 628.]
Reporter: “While singing songs reminiscent of the Palestinian Intifada (Palestinian terror war against Israel, 2000 - 2005), participants expressed their longing to reach Gaza.”
A participant: “Right now we face one of two happy endings: either Martyrdom or reaching Gaza.” [Based on Islamic call before battle: “Either victory or Martyrdom”.]
[Al-Jazeera TV, May 29, 2010]

Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV chose to glorify flotilla participants who shouted the Islamic battle cry by broadcasting an interview with a university lecturer who referred to them as “those with faith and will.”

...

Al-Jazeera also reports that before the confrontation, flotilla participants announced that they would use “resistance” against Israel.  Mukawama (resistance) is the Arabic term used by Palestinians to refer to all violence against Israel, including suicide terror.

“The flotilla includes hundreds of Arab and foreign solidarity activists from more than 40 countries ... They have announced their determination to use resistance to any attempt at piracy by the Israeli occupation.”
[Al-Jazeera website, May 29, 2010]

So no, MSNBC et al, this wasn’t an “Israeli Raid against peaceful protesters”. This was a defensive action against a known radical group bent on violence. Pizzas all around for the IDF ... and next time sink them all and leave them for shark bait.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/31/2010 at 09:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Israel •  
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Memorial Day…some history

I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve learned much about Memorial Day this year. In my defense I’ll claim we have too many holidays for too few good reasons. Memorial Day is not one of those holidays. There is a good reason for it.

Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

A caller to the Rush Limbaugh show last week got me interested in this. The caller was an old veteran who was promoting Memorial Day poppies. He said that 50 years ago everybody would have a poppy and now…? Rush seemed to know what the caller was talking about but didn’t explain it. Poppies? I had to look up Memorial Day and poppies.

In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need. Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children’s League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans’ organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their “Buddy” Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.

Artificial poppies to wear on Memorial Day are still being made by disabled veterans. That’s what the caller was promoting. I unfortunately don’t remember if it was the American Legion or the VFW. Regardless, get a red poppy to wear today.

Sorry, should read my own post, eh? It was the VFW. I was trying to remember what the caller said.

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Saturday at work our supervisor got on the intercom to ‘thank all veterans this Memorial Day weekend…’

Faux pas? Ignorance? Who knows? I quietly went to him and reminded him that Memorial Day honors those who died in service to their country. It does NOT honor veterans. Veteran’s Day is observed for those like myself. And I don’t even count myself as a veteran: I never saw combat. To me a veteran has been in combat. I did serve six years in the Navy and was honorably discharged. I served, but I’m not a veteran.

My supervisor was man enough to get back on the intercom and correct himself. He added that we should all pray for those who’ve lost husbands, fathers, sons, daughters, during the current war.

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And finally, I just have to include a link to Mark Steyn’s website today. The article is not written by Mr. Steyn but is an excerpt from one of his books. It’s an article about the creation of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (Note: not the Battle Hymn of the Democracy)

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Christopher   United States  on 05/31/2010 at 04:14 PM   
Filed Under: • EditorialsHistoryHolidaysPatriotism •  
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calendar   Sunday - May 30, 2010

All The World’s A Stage …

And All The Player’s Must Play Their Parts ...



“Break The Siege” “Aide” flotilla closes on Gaza as Israeli Navy steams out to intercept.


The Audacity of the Free Gaza Flotilla
Breaking the Israeli Siege of Gaza May Lead to an Attack at Sea, Detention Camps and Deportation

by Ann Wright

By the time you read this, we will be on the high seas of the Mediterranean (we hope the seas will not be too high).

Our two U.S. flagged Free Gaza boats, will join two other passenger ships, a 600 passenger ship from Turkey sponsored by the Turkish humanitarian organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) and a 50 passenger ship from Athens sponsored by the European Campaign Against the Siege and the Greek/Swedish Ships to Gaza campaign, to sail to the shores of Gaza to break the Israeli naval blockade of the 1.5 million citizens in Gaza.

Four cargo ships from Ireland, Greece, Algeria and Turkey, will carry a total of 10,000 tons or 2 million pounds of construction materials for the housing of 50,000 made homeless during the 22 day Israeli attack on Gaza that killed 1440 Palestinians and wounded 5,000.

Many of us would like to see our boat renamed “The Audacity of Hope” as that is what we want to see from the Obama administration-- courage to challenge the Israeli government on the siege of Gaza.  It would be a really brave, bold move as every U.S. presidential administration since the formation of the State of Israeli in 1948 has blindly given free-rein to Israel in whatever actions it wishes to undertake no matter if the actions are a violation of international law.  The carte blanche given to Israel by the United States has been dangerous for Israel’s national security as well as for the national security of the United States.

Probable reaction of Israeli Navy Ships-Bow shots, ramming or boarding

In less than 48 hours, the Israeli Navy will probably fire U.S. made ammunition and rockets in international waters over the bows of two U.S. flagged boats and one Greek boat with U.S. citizens aboard as well as citizens from 13 other countries and over the bows of the Turkish 600 passenger ship. 

Sorry, didn’t mean to make you gag with the above jizz-fest. Oooh, look at us, boldly sailing into harm’s way for peace! We’re the Freedom Flotilla Coalition even! Oooh, it could get nasty, but we’re so brave! Oooh, the dramas, the glory! Look how righteous we are, won’t this make a great story to tell next semester back at the all-organic vegetarian non-discriminating food co-op at college? Ooh, we’re such totally cool radical activists!!! Plus, we’ve even got Noam Chomsky on board!!

It’s a total crock of crap. So is this, albeit a little bit less so:

Israeli gunships head to sea to block flotilla

HAIFA, Israel – Israeli gunships headed out to sea Friday to stop a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists from reaching the Gaza Strip, the military said, setting the stage for what could become a dramatic showdown on the high seas.

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said the country was prepared to stop the flotilla “at any cost.” He called the aid mission a provocation and urged the international community to show understanding for the tough response.

“We really have all determination and political will to prevent this provocation against us,” he said. “I think that we’re ready at any cost ... to prevent this provocation.”

Military officials said an initial group of gunships went out to sea Friday to prepare for the flotilla’s arrival. But plans to dispatch additional gunships were put on hold late Friday after reports that the flotilla had encountered mechanical problems, military officials said.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said the gunships would remain in port until the flotilla got closer.

The military says it will intercept the ships, escort the vessels to shore and give the activists the choice of deportation or going to jail. Israel says that after a security check, it will transfer the cargo to Gaza through the United Nations.

Officials say they hope the situation will be resolved peacefully, but they are prepared to use force if necessary. Masked naval commandos have been trained for the mission, and Israel has built a large makeshift detention center in a southern port to process the activists.

Guess which ship is the big cargo hauler on this grand flotilla? Why, it’s none other than the freshly painted MV Rachel Corrie, that I wrote about 5 weeks back! And what was the plan then, if not agreed upon by both parties but certainly public knowledge?

the ship would be forced to dock in Ashdod, where the cargo would be unloaded and searched, and if found to be of a humanitarian nature, sent to Gaza via land crossings.

... and that is exactly what is going to happen. But first all the players have to take the stage, play their little roles, and hope for some attention from the press. Well, they got some. A little. At first they had to make their own press releases ...

[Istanbul, Turkey – 22 May, 2010] Amid cheers and waving of Turkish and Palestinian flags, the second ship to join the Freedom Flotilla left Istanbul this afternoon. Sponsored by the Turkish humanitarian organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), the ship will carry 600 passengers to Gaza as part of the ‘blockade busting’ flotilla. It joins eight other boats coming from three other countries carrying 10,000 tons of supplies to the Palestinian people, supplies that have been denied to them by Israel.

Boats will meet in the Mediterranean, then turn toward Gaza to arrive at its beseiged slice of beachfront by the end of May. Free Gaza Movement’s MV Rachel Corrie is already on her way from Ireland and is presently off the coast of Portugal loaded with cement, paper and supplies for school children and medical equipment.

But eventually the world press, or at least the busy pens in the UK, having nothing better to do this weekend, gave them a few column inches ...

Gaza aid flotilla to set sail for confrontation with Israel

Israelis promise to stop eight ships carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid, 800 activists and politicians from more than 40 countries

A flotilla of eight boats carrying thousands of tonnes of construction materials, medical equipment and other aid is preparing to sail to Gaza in the next few days, setting the scene for a confrontation with Israel which has vowed to prevent the ships breaking the blockade on the Palestinian territory.

Three cargo ships and five passenger vessels plan to meet up in international waters between Cyprus and Gaza Strip before heading towards Gaza City. The Israeli military is expected to stop the flotilla and divert it to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
...
Mark Regev, the Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, said: “It is strange that human rights activists are acting as apologists for a regime that is brutally repressing human rights. Hamas oppresses women, gays and Christians, has crushed independent media and destroyed all political opposition.” He added that 15,000 tonnes of aid was allowed into Gaza every week.

Dozens of boats manned by Israeli citizens took the water at the weekend in protest at the aid flotilla.

Gaza hopes to welcome blockade-busting flotilla

Preparations are under way in Gaza to receive a convoy of ships that is trying to break Israel’s economic blockade of the Palestinian territory. The ships, carrying up to 10,000 tonnes of aid and human rights activists from around the world, will try to reach Gaza on Sunday. Israel is adamant it will not allow them into Gaza.
...
Israel has called the flotilla “a cheap political stunt” and the government’s press officers have been working hard all week to brief journalists that it is unnecessary. Israel says it allows 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid into Gaza every week.

While the Israeli authorities have indicated they want to minimise the risk of violence, Israeli media reported yesterday that they are prepared to take over the vessels by force if they ignore warnings not to cross from international waters into a 20 mile exclusion zone enforced by Israel along Gaza’s coast.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the participants of mounting a “cheap publicity stunt” and said that if they had been “really interested in the well-being of the people of Gaza they would have accepted the offers of Egypt or Israel to transfer humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, along with the other 15,000 tons sent every week.”

Israel has previously said that if the flotilla agreed to head for the port of Ashdod it would send the aid supplies on to Gaza. Ordinarily, supplies to the Gaza strip are subject to a strict blockade that excludes most commercial goods, although those conditions would not necessarily apply to the flotilla.

What’s in the cargo? Well part of it is 180 motorized wheelchairs. For all the poor disabled children. Except that Gaza has no paved roads or electricity. My guess is those wheelchair motors and battery packs will be turned into robotic bomb delivery systems inside a couple days. Fire extinguishers fill another pallet in the hold; their steel cases make perfect bomb shrapnel. And crutches - all made from metal tubing, not wood. Quite a lot of “dual use” stuff, if you look at the manifest that way. I don’t expect them to make it past the security search in Ashdod.

So we have our little bit of theater, but like yet another Die Hard movie, everyone knows the entire plot, script, and ending before they even go to the show. Kinda silly, isn’t it? Aengus links to a bunch of Flickr pics.

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Aye, they’re taking Aengus too laddie!


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/30/2010 at 12:06 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsIsrael •  
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calendar   Saturday - May 29, 2010

Aww Crap

Actor Dennis Hopper died about 3 hours ago. Prostate cancer. He was 74.

This sucks.

Actor Dennis Hopper, whose 50-year film career spanned such classics as “Rebel Without a Cause,” “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet” died Saturday following a battle with prostate cancer, Reuters reported. He was 74.

Hopper died from complications related to the cancer at his home in Venice, Calif., at 8:15am PT and had friends and family by his side, friend Alex Hitz told Reuters.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/05/29/actor-dennis-hopper-dies-suffering-prostate-cancer/


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/29/2010 at 05:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Celebrities •  
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Those Lying Losers At NASA

“GREENHOUSE" Belongs In The OUTHOUSE



NASA has been fudging the earth’s energy calculation ... for 40 years!


Climate Sceptic Scientists’ Growing Confidence

Thanks to Siddons and his co-authors of ‘A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon,’ the world now has scientific evidence to show the greenhouse gas theory (GHG) was junk all along.

As the truth now spreads, an increasing number of scientists refute the greenhouse gas theory, many have been prompted by the shocking revelations since the Climategate scandal. The public have also grown more aware of how a clique of government climatologists were deliberately ‘hiding the decline’ in the reliability of their proxy temperature data all along.

But NASA’s lunar temperature readings prove that behind that smoke was real fire. Some experts now boldly go so far as to say the entire global warming theory contravenes the established laws of physics.

How NASA responds to these astonishing revelations may well tell us how politicized the American space agency really is.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to CBullit for the reference post and CMBlake6 for the h/t.

Just a day or so ago I read a piece somewhere on how the New York Times blithely ignored the ClimateGate story until just recently, and most of the MSM followed suite. Or only ran pieces on those “whacko” deniers and their crazy ideas, stories that supported AGW, or tried to make the whitewash of the Phillip Jones investigation look like the real deal. Now that just about all of Europe has been there, done that, and discredited the entire thing, months ago!, it’s finally starting to leak into the US MFM. And now we have pretty strong evidence that the entire greenhouse gas theory was bogus, and was known to be bogus, 2 generations ago. So expect Fox News to run this story ... around Christmas.

Meanwhile, Ocommieba and his assclownposse continue to try and push for Cap and Trade Crap’n Traitor, the Ponzi scheme bill made to save the planet from the evil Man Made Global Warming and it’s eviller Carbon Footprint.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/29/2010 at 12:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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calendar   Friday - May 28, 2010

Under The Bus, PLEASE!!

Counter-Terrorism Czar Is A Total Dhimmi



Dump this loser, pronto.



The president’s top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used to describe America’s enemies.

Except that jihad IS America’s enemy. And that pisslam is an illigitimate relgion.

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of “political, economic and social forces,” but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in “religious terms.”

Horseshit. The “political, economic, and social forces” that cause violent jihad are culturally induced, because pisslam sucks ass and all the countries where pisslam holds sway suck ass even worse. They can’t stand it that the entire rest of the world, even including deepest darkest Africa, is at least 1000 years more advanced then they are. Since their culture won’t allow them to question or reject their phony religion, this drives them nuts, so they strike out against the rest of the world. This is like shooting your neighbor because she owns a new BMW 740 while you get by with a 1978 Volvo 240 held together by duct tape. What makes it even worse is their awareness that a large number of those pisslamic countries are swimming in oil money, yet none of it trickles down to the poor fellah in the street or gets used to improve anything in the nation. This drives them even crazier. Then they look next door and see that the Israelis are getting rich while living in a pile of dust and rocks with no natural resources at all, doing it all by hard work and intelligence. That puts them right over the edge, and they just about self-ignite.

He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not “terrorism,” because terrorism is a “tactic,” and not terror, because terror is a “state of mind”—though Brennan’s title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word “terrorism” in it. But then Brennan said that the word “jihad” should not be applied either.

“Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan said.

Let’s ignore that their “holy” books say that murdering men, women, and children, or capturing them and making them slaves, is exactly what jihad against the infidel is all about. Yeah yeah yeah, introspective personal enlightenment, yadda yadda yadda. Sure. But if you want to get your 72 raisins, get out your scimitar and get chopping. The surah of the sword ranks first, and the ko-ran makes the call to violence more than 100 times.

Brennan defined the enemy as members of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and “its terrorist affiliates.”

But Brennan argued that it would be “counterproductive” for the United States to use the term, as it would “play into the false perception” that the “murderers” leading war against the West are doing so in the name of a “holy cause.”

“Moreover, describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism—that the United States is somehow at war against Islam,” he said.

We may not be at war with them, but pisslam is at war with us. And they tell us this, and have told us this, every single day since about 1972. Time to face a little reality here, doncha think?

The comment comes after Brennan, in a February speech in which he described his respect for the tolerance and devotion of Middle Eastern nations, referred to Jerusalem on first reference by its Arabic name, Al-Quds.

“In all my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together,” Brennan said at an event co-sponsored by the White House Office of Public Engagement and the Islamic Center at New York University and the Islamic Law Students Association at NYU.

Al-quds”??? Mofo, not only should you be tossed under the bus, you should be put right in front of the tires so that you’ll be the first one squashed if the thing ever moves forward.

Horry Crap. This loser is at the top of the pyramid. We are doomed.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/28/2010 at 07:18 PM   
Filed Under: • War On Terror •  
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This Time I Was Nice

I just got another phone call from the RNC. They wanted to thank me for my unflagging support and wanted to tell me all about the great things they were doing in DC and wouldn’t I consider contribu ...

And I cut the guy off. I told him that, while I was a card carrying Republican, I was far more in the Tea Party camp these days. That I believed in smaller government, lower taxes, much lower spending, personal responsibility, freedom, and rules and regulations that encouraged job growth in the USA, including manufacturing. Things that the Republican Party once stood for but not anymore. I told him that I was sick and tired of seeing John McCain as the face of the GOP because I consider him a Democrat. That Steele ought to step down over his “can’t find a reason for black folks to vote GOP” remark. I told the guy on the phone that I would save him some time, because they weren’t getting a cent from me until they could show me several senators and congressmen with backbone, leadership, and actual fiscal restraint who would not cave or pander. That when they could move the party, it’s chairman, and it’s elected members back towards their Radical Republican roots, back to what the party was supposed to stand for, as espoused online by Michael Zak and on radio and TV by Glen Beck every single day, then out would come my checkbook. Until then don’t bother me.

He was trying to tell me how much so and so was against Obamacare. I cut him off, asking why the whole darn bunch of them hadn’t torn the bill to shreds both in the legislature and in the press, pointing out it’s blatant unconstitutional and Socialist aspects. Why hadn’t they pushed their alternate plan, or fought to table the whole bill until a bipartisan agreement could be reached that even said what the problems were? And to heck with Obamacare, where were they when McCain-Feingold was drafted? How could they NOT have immediately proposed a new constitutional amendment when the awful Kelo decision was handed down? Don’t give me one issue, I told the guy, give me a platform that I can believe in and steady, daily evidence that your members stand squarely on it. In the mean time don’t waste my time: the current bunch are all Democrats. They only look conservative because the present crop of Democrats are all Communists.

He suggested that I look into Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, do my research, and I might be able to get behind her. I said I would when I could, that I took it as a positive sign that I never heard a word about her on the MFM. And then I wished him good luck and hung up.

The last time they called me 2 years ago I gave them both barrels, with enough salty language to pickle a barrel full of herring. My politics haven’t changed a jot. I’ve just given up on the GOP.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/28/2010 at 06:09 PM   
Filed Under: • RepublicansThe New Conservatives •  
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Bear With Us

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A black bear that strayed onto the Pfizer campus in Pearl River [NY] today was safely captured this afternoon after a two-and-a-half-hour encounter, according to Orangetown police.

Police were told around noon today that the bear, a 150-pound male black bear, was wandering around the sprawling Pfizer campus off Middletown Road. Several town police officers went to investigate and they followed the bear until it climbed up a tree, according to Police Chief Kevin Nulty.

Police called state environmental officers for assistance and a biologist went to Pearl River to help with the bear’s capture. Nulty said that while the bear was in the tree the state biologist was able to shoot the animal with a tranquilizer gun.

Volunteers from the Pearl River Fire Department had been called in to assist police and set up a safety net to catch the bear. Nulty said the bear fell from the tree and landed in the net after being tranquilized.

Nulty said no one was injured and that the bear was not hurt during its capture. The bear, estimated to be about 18 months old, did not have a tag that would indicate it had been captured and recorded previously by state scientists. Nulty said the bear was to be tagged and would be set free in the woods of Sterling Forest in Orange County.

Once upon a time this “Pfizer campus” was owned by the American Cyanimid and was called Lederle Labratories. They made sulfa drugs during WWII and employed thousands of people. It’s a big factory and research campus with dozens of buildings and a parking lot the size of a farm. This is the place where all the polio vaccine was made back in the day. Centrum vitamins these days, and lots of other drugs. Some years later American Cyanimid became Amercian Home Products, who became Wyeth, which for a while was Wyeth-Ayerst. Corporate ownership doesn’t really matter here. I’m just mentioning it to highlight that the campus has been in place a very long time. Since 1907 I believe. I’m pretty sure of that date, since I grew up less than a mile away from the place. It’s located in the western heart of NYC suburbia, along the second busiest road in the county, next to a busy rail line, surrounded by fully built up towns. It is not rural. It’s not out in the woods. There aren’t any woods. For miles. And yet ... bears!

Don’t buy into the “encroaching habitat” lie. It’s not true. There wasn’t a bear for 100 miles when I was a kid. Now they are everywhere. They have learned to adapt. They have learned that suburbia is easy living. Heck, even though this little incident took a fire truck, 6 cop cars, the Animal Control guy, and probably the local Game Warden to solve, they made nice-nice with the bear by using a tranquilizer dart and sent him up to Orange County to go bother somebody else, hopefully Paul Sr, Paulie and Mikey from OCC.

Young bears go walkabout in the spring. If this one came down from the Sterling Forest area, or down from Harriman Park, it means he wandered through more than 30 miles of backyards and neighborhoods and busy streets and shopping malls before being spotted and captured. There are two grade schools within 2 miles of the Pfizer campus. One of these days these suburban bears are going to become a real problem.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/28/2010 at 05:27 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
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calendar   Thursday - May 27, 2010

High Tech Hunting Bullet

Supercavitating Bullet Comes To Market



Woodleigh Introduces “Hydrostatically Stabilised” Dangerous Game Bullet



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That picture may not look like much to most folks, but there is an impressive amount of science behind this bullet. What you are looking at is the dawn of the 7th generation of consumer firearms projectiles. Not only is this bullet “green”, it can also shoot through water for a considerable distance, which no other bullet has ever been able to do. When used against dangerous game - very large animals that may be actively trying to kill you while you are actively trying to kill them - it is designed to out-penetrate every other kind of bullet on the market and to create a larger wound channel than any other “solid”. It’s the best of all worlds in it’s own little specialized niche. Woodleigh is a bullet making company in Australia.

This is an elephantine post about an elephant bullet. If you don’t want the technology lecture and the history lesson on bullet design you can skip ahead to the end. Or go on to the next post, which may have titties. Or not.


In the beginning, back before John Moses Browning (PBUH) created the world as we know it, there was the lead ball. You poured a charge of black powder down the long thin barrel of your musket, wrapped a bit of greased cloth around the big lead ball, and stuffed it down the tube. When fired, it accelerated to about 900 feet per second and generally went forward. If the distance was very short, say less than 75 yards, you would hit what you were aiming at, mostly, and the big soft lead ball would put a large hole in it. Providing that what you were shooting at wasn’t really thick; unrifled muskets don’t put any spin on the ball, so the round bullet isn’t stabilized at all, and has no forces acting on it to help it burrow in in a straight line. But lead is soft, and that 3/4” diameter ball squashed itself out to 1 1/2” across on impact, and created a pretty damn big, if shallow, hole. And that was enough. Unless you were hunting bears or lions or big angry buffalo, in which case you wanted half a dozen friends along with their own muskets so they could shoot too. And then you could all run in different directions, and hope that the critter chose to chase someone else.

At some later point rifling was invented. Exactly like the threads on a screw, but with a much longer spiral, rifling imparts an axial spin to a bullet as it is fired down the barrel. This made that ball fly much straighter, which allowed those primitive boomsticks to have some degree of accuracy for the first time. The spinning also caused the ball to penetrate much further, or at least straighter. It was a big step forward. Now you only needed a couple of friends along.

Pointed bullets came next. Conical projectiles, the Minie ball. Paper patching, lubricated grooved bullets, better metallurgy, better casting, harder alloys of lead and tin and antimony, a bit of aerodynamics, and soon thereafter reliable weather resistant metallic cartridges, repeating rifles, smokeless gunpowder with a whole lot more energy. There was a tremendous technical leap forward in the 30 year period from 1860 to 1890. So much progress that the old raw lead bullet could not (literally) take the pressure, and would smear itself to pieces inside the barrel upon firing.

So the chunk of lead got squeezed into a copper jacket. “Gilding metal”, a soft and smooth brass alloy, soon replaced copper. A few years later it was found that the “spitzer” shape, a pointed bullet with a mathematically derived pointed ogive on the front, was highly aerodynamic. This allowed bullets to to be accurate to extraordinary ranges and to retain considerable kinetic energy all the way there. The modern rifle was born. 110 years ago.

In the interim folks have fussed and tweaked with the design of the bullet. A longer point, a shorter point. Flat base, tapered base (ie boat tail) Exposed lead tips vs. full metal jackets. Lead cores cast in place in their jackets, glued in, electrochemically bonded in, locked in place with swaged grooves. Different thicknesses and hardnesses of the metal jacket. Bronze points, plastic points, steel and tungsten rods inserted in the lead cores. All attempting to build a bullet that worked the best on a certain sized creature at a certain velocity range. And with pretty good success too; there is an amazing variety of very effective bullets on the market today, so many that it’s almost work trying to figure out which one is the best for your hunting trip. Bullets have become highly specialized.

A few decades ago solid copper and bronze bullets came on the market. This is where the “green” part comes in, tangentially. Environmentalists have been quite successful in getting lead shotgun pellets banned in many places. Lead has always been used for shot pellets and for bullets, because it is very dense, malleable, abundant, and cheap. But when you shoot at some birds with your shotgun, not all the pellets hit. Some fall to the ground or into the water, where a poor little birdie or fishy might eat them. And get lead poisoning. It’s a helluva stretch, but it is just barely conceivable. And it shows you just how much political power the anti-gun, anti-hunting brigade really has. So the shotgun ammunition world is moving away from lead shot, using steel, bismuth, or tungsten pellets instead. The bullet makers can read the writing on the wall, and now lead-free, solid copper alloy bullets are all the rage.  Primers don’t even use lead styphnate (C6HN3O8Pb any more because that’s a “toxic explosive” and you mustn’t be exposed to even microscopic amounts of lead vapor. God forbid actual lead. So let’s use copper bullets. “Problem” solved.

So, while “green”, copper bullets have a whole pile of issues of their own. Copper is much less dense than lead, so a bullet of a certain size and shape will weigh a lot less. Which means that at equal velocity it will carry much less kinetic energy; it will not have as much power. Conversely, copper bullets of equal weight to their lead cored counterparts will be much longer, and may not chamber properly in the magazine or the chamber throat of the firearm. Sure, easy, seat them deeper into the case. But that takes up a lot of internal volume that the gun powder used to use. Copper is also much harder than lead, and solid copper is much less malleable than the thinly jacketed bullets we’ve been using for 100 years. This makes the engraving process - the act, upon firing, where the suddenly accelerating bullet is forced out of the cartridge case and into the barrel’s rifling lands and grooves - much more difficult, and that raises chamber pressures. Chamber pressure is what you get when you light off a charge of gun powder inside your gun. The stuff burns real well and turns from a handful of powder into a huge volume of white hot gas in half a millisecond. This pressure pushes the bullet down the barrel. The pressure exerted is tremendous, sometimes reaching a peak of 65,000psi. While the steel used in a modern rifle can withstand more than 120,000psi, the brass case of a cartridge has an elastic strength of no more than 75,000psi. So you can see where jacking up the engraving pressure by 10 to 20,000psi could lead to problems. Back to the drawing board.

The solution came from looking forward into the past. At first, various lubrication coatings were tried. After all, that worked for cast lead bullets 120 years ago. “Moly” (molybdenum disulphide) was tried, along with Teflon™ and several others. They worked. Sort of. They were good at reducing friction as the bullet traveled down the barrel, but couldn’t do a thing to reduce engraving pressure. A better fix was needed. And the fix was found by Gerard Schultz of GS Custom Bullets of South Africa. Who looked forward into the past, and realized that the “driving band” technology used on artillery shells for the last 150 years could be used on bullets too, but only if those bullets were cut on a lathe. Driving band technology? WTH? Artillery shells are made of iron or steel. Both of which are much, much harder and less malleable than copper. It is just about impossible to engrave one on the steel rifling in a cannon barrel without wearing the barrel out in a very short time. So artillery shells are made quite a bit undersize relative to the barrel they get fired in. They are all “bore riding” designs. (to make a rifled barrel, first you bore a hole in the steel, then you cut away the rifling grooves from the outside of the hole. This means that a rifled barrel actually has two hole diameters, the bore {or “land"} diameter, and the slightly larger groove diameter. On a rifle that difference is usually about 0.008”. On a cannon barrel it can be nearly half an inch for the big guns) The shells get a few copper bands tightly wrapped around them at the factory, and it is those driving bands that get engraved with the rifling. And also seal the bore so that the powder gases don’t leak past the projectile. Think of them as the rings on a piston. It works great, but the concept was impossible to apply to bullets, especially small ones. Once Schultz pointed out the obvious fact that they could be added to lathe cut bore riding design bullets everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. GS Custom still does it best by using the most minimal and most aerodynamic bands, but the squared off bands the other companies use work almost as well (see the picture at the top of the page), and are probably less expensive to make. The Barnes company turns the concept inside out and just cuts a few grooves in their copper bullets. That works too. The whole idea works because copper and it’s alloys are much firmer than lead, and a few driving bands are enough to properly support the bullet in the barrel. Using just enough support for the bullet results in a whole lot less friction in the barrel and allows for much more normal engraving pressures. Problem solved.

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a driving band bullet from GS Custom

So, two problems down, several more to go. I’ve already mentioned that copper bullets are longer for a given weight, shape, and diameter. This gives them what physicists call a “longer moment arm”, and in the real world that means that they have to be spun a bit faster to be properly stabilized. Very long nose ogives, like the Von Kármán-Haack design on the GS Custom bullet shown, give great aerodynamics but also require more spin. So the gun makers have begun to build rifles with faster pitch rifling. You AR-15 shooters know all about this already, but it’s carrying over to other barrels as well. The ancient Greenhill Formula, used to determine the minimum rifling pitch for a bullet in the air, is dead, dying, or at least needs some extension. Not that it really matters too much, as the gun makers have been using faster and faster rifling pitches for a long time now. And it turns out fortuitously that faster twist allows any bullet to penetrate it’s target in a straighter line. Well duh, really, since flesh is many times denser than air ... and Greenhill can be extended to show that the optimal twist rate for shooting in water is about one turn in 3”. So the 1:9 to 1:12 twist rate most barrels have today is much more effective than the 1:66 to 1:20 twist rates from way back when. But if you are building a rifle to shoot these long modern lead free bullets you want as tight a twist as you can get. 1:7 to 1:9 is about right for most situations. Problem solved by the barrel makers.

Are we ever going to get to the freakin’ supercavitation bit Drew? Jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick, you wrote a whole friggin’ book just to get this far. Yeah, I know. This is one of those long winded posts that I write about things that really interest me. The ones where I’ve done hours and hours of research and have dozens of links I won’t even use. But I’m doing my best to boil it all down so that readers who don’t know beans about firearms will understand why the Woodleigh bullet I’m writing about really is such an exciting advance. Bear with me, it’s coming soon. I’m trying.

The theory of supercavitation is not new. It exists because all fluids, from air to water to flesh, can be considered laminar in nature. Layered. Aerodynamics is the study of how to minimize the disturbance to those layers. Supercavitation theorizes that by abruptly disturbing a small fluid layer out ahead of your moving body a laminar pocket can be formed that will smoothly go around your moving body and thus drastically reduce the friction that would otherwise act upon it while it moves through that medium. In other words it will go faster for longer with less drag. It’s real. Dolphins use it. They actually fly through the water inside a curtain of micro-bubbles of air. The military has been using it for a long time now on missiles and certain types of artillery shells. These days there are torpedoes that travel through the water at over 230mph. And that’s slow compared to the Mach 1 rocket driven torpedoes under development. Supercavitation works.

But the theory has been difficult to apply to bullets. Let’s face it, even the big ones are still pretty tiny things. When your moving body is hardly a third of an inch in diameter and only a little over an inch long ( and spinning at 300,000rpm ) there isn’t much room for strapping on high-tech doodads. Even the Navy’s RAMICS projectile, 30mm in diameter, is much larger. So it had to come from design.

As far as I can find out, much of the fundamental work of developing a supercavitating hunting bullet was done by Norbert Hansen about a decade ago. He may have had quite a lot of knowledge gleaned from the military, but he worked things out with math, patience, and a really good lathe. And it worked.

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Hansen’s original Super Penetrator bullet



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A later design. Compare the nose shape to the Woodleigh bullet at the top of the page. Nearly identical.

So now we are finally back to the Woodleigh bullet. Solid copper alloy. Driving band bore rider technology for minimal barrel friction. Short ogive nose for reduced tumbling and normal rifling. Supercavitation design for maximum penetration. Lead-free “green” design. Pretty damn impressive. As I said, it’s the dawn of the 7th generation of bullets. And it works.

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Why does anyone need a supercavitating bullet in the first place? Because elephants are about 8 feet thick. And Cape Buffalo are about 4 feet thick. And you rarely get a perfect broadside shot, so you need every last bit of penetration you can get.

Ok, so why not use a blunt? A flat nosed, non-expanding solid, whether it’s a hard cast Elmer Keith style, or one of the high-tech blunts that GS Custom makes?

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left: Keith style hard cast bullet right: GS Custom flat nose bullet

Because, as the picture on the right show, either one of them will deform. And while that deforming, called mushrooming in the world of bullets, will carve a large wound channel, it will slow the bullet down tremendously and imbalance it. Which means eventually it will bend from it’s path while penetrating. Which means you might be aiming at the heart, but the bullet winds up in the tail. This happens frequently when shooting at the largest of creatures. Also, standard blunt bullets like this only create a permanent wound channel slightly larger than their own diameter, unlike typical expanding bullets. You might find it harsh to think about, but an ethical hunter wants to create the largest possible wound in the creature he’s shooting, to kill it as fast as possible. Modern expanding bullets do a fantastic job of this, but at the cost of overall penetration. Which is fine, as deer and antelope are barely a foot to a foot and a half thick. You don’t need all that much penetration for a broadside shot at them, but you do want to “use enough gun” so that your bullet will reach their vitals from any angle and have enough oomph left to do the job. Bullet selection is always a trade off. Always. But when you may have to shoot through 7 or 8 feet of angry animal to get to the killing zone, you want every last bit of straight line penetration you can get. And if you can get a bigger permanent wound channel in the process, all the better. The supercavitating bullet drives straight through, creates a larger wound channel than a typical blunt, and then the leading pressure wave tears out a massive chunk of flesh on exit. That’s as good as it gets. It’s probably useless on deer, but bullets are a very niche item these days. In it’s own niche, I think this one is supreme.

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To me, the first bullet in the gel pack photo above is obviously a Barnes XFN. Obvious because that’s exactly the size and shape of a wound channel that the XFN bullet makes. If you would like to learn about how bullets actually work on game, the whole world of terminal ballistics, and why Woodleigh’s “hydrostatically stabilised” name is a deliberate misnomer that caters to a poorly educated shooting audience, please spend an hour or two and read the Terminal Ballistics treatise written by my digital friend Ulf. You will never think of bullets the same way again, guaranteed. Or you just click here, zoom to the very end and look at the picture, where you’ll see that his test results diagram of the Barnes bullet is exactly like the top one in the above picture.

You can read a bit more about the Woodleigh bullet in their new catalog. Click here. But be forewarned that there are some pictures of bloody dead animals in it, including the large chunk of flesh I mentioned above. Come to think of it, if you follow the links from Hansen’s pages you will see some blood and guts too.

If you’ve read through this whole post, and followed the links and read those pages and done the same for a few of the links they contain, you should now consider yourself an expert on the behavior of bullets at the target end of things. For a whole lot of information on how they behave in flight and in the gun, plus a huge pile of info on reloading and the capabilities of most of the safari cartridges new and old, pick up a copy of Art Alphin’s Any Shot You Want loading manual and read it several times. You can learn about the art of paper patching online, or you can pick up a copy of Paul Matthews The Paper Jacket if you can hunt one down. It’s the very best, but it’s out of print right now. Amazon has a few copies left.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/27/2010 at 02:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun ControlHigh Tech •  
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calendar   Wednesday - May 26, 2010

Summer League Confusion

Well, I think we won 5 out of 7 last night. It’s hard to say.

Last week, I figured we were beat bad, 2-5. But it turned out that our new guy didn’t have an established average, so the scorekeeper went with what he rolled, which cut 42 pins off of our team total. And that turned the ex post facto handicap around to our advantage, so we are on the books as having won 5-2.

Going into last night, it looked like we were picking up 56 pins worth of handicap. But it turned out that 2 of the guys who had played on that team last week were just subs. Temps. They weren’t back this week, and won’t be on that team, but they did pick up Mel Jr. I know Mel - there’s a whole family of them, and he’s actually Mel Senior even if his name is Mel Jr - from way back. And the 4th position became a vacancy. Recalculate everything, and we ended up giving away 46 pins in handicap instead. It didn’t matter, as my wife pulled out a 200 in game 2, and our anchor Rex really came through at the end of game 3. So we took two games, plus wood, for a 5-2. Next week that team will replace it’s vacant slot with Mel Jr’s son Mel 3. And yes, there is a Mel 4 out there, although he’s still in diapers and won’t be old enough to bowl for a few years yet. Then again, maybe Mel Jr’s daughter will join up instead. Mel-isa. Slight shortage of names in that family.

I sucked. I’m so tired of that. Time to clean my ball and try and get a bit of practice in. I’m crossing the 2nd arrow, using an angled approach, trying to roll to the outside of the breakpoint box. But instead of turning my hand from the wrist and snapping the ball off inline with the swing, my hand goes slow and I wind up pushing the ball down the line my turned hand is in. Which means straight down the old 2nd arrow line, and in. Low angle, low rev: low results. So I try to “git ‘er out there” by delaying my release a bit. That kinda works, giving me the line I want and enough revs to get the job done, but the ball tends to stay airborne for a good 10 feet and often breaks late because of that. Must slow down my approach. Must NEVER pull my elbow back. MUST figure out when to pull my thumb out, and to pull it out fully. Must complete the follow through and not jerk to a stop. Bad habits are hard to break.

So we think we did well. We’ll have to see how the secretary scores things ... I’m not sure if Mel’s book average from 2 years ago will be acceptable, in which case he was rolling for average last night, and I really have no idea what impact that will have, since I didn’t keep a copy of everyone’s scores.

I’m also thinking that this Tuesday night league might be dying this year. We’ve got 8 teams. On paper. I’m not sure that 2 of them even came last night. Maybe they prebowled. Whatever, it’s summer league. But the Wednesday group has a solid 18 teams. Yeah, there’s an imbalance. And with a 15 week season, 8 teams is the perfect size for a league. Play each team twice, then one night for finals.

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/26/2010 at 01:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
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Ooooo Weee!

Austin Texas to host Formula 1 races starting in 2012

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Austin, Texas will be the site of the 2012 U.S. Formula One Grand Prix, according to the website of F1 boss, Bernie Ecclestone.

Speed.com reports that the prestigious event will take place at a purpose-built facility, and promoted locally by Full Throttle Productions, a company with ties to the popular NASCAR racing series

The agreement calls for the race to take place in Austin each year through 2021. The 2012 event will be the first Formula One race held on U.S. soil since the 2007 U.S. Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It will mark the second time that the series has visited Texas, having taken part in a street race in Dallas in 1984.

I think this is great. It’s high time F-1 had a dedicated track in the USA. And the 2 years it will take to build the thing will give US race fans time to get used to an entirely new concept: turning right.

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/26/2010 at 12:51 PM   
Filed Under: • Sports •  
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Gliding Into Retirement

Atlantis: 32 and 0



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After 32 flights, space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to earth this morning. The Atlantis will now be retired, although it will be prepped as the backup/rescue flight for the final two remaining shuttle missions .

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla-- Space shuttle Atlantis, switching from spacecraft to aircraft, landed successfully in Florida this morning at 8:48 am, wrapping up what could be its final voyage into space as NASA’s shuttle era draws closer to its end.

The landing marked the conclusion of a 12-day resupply mission to the International Space Station. It was the third-to-last mission for the U.S. shuttle program and is scheduled to be the last for Atlantis. NASA’s other two shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour, will make their final flights in September and November.

On its path to Kennedy Space Center, Atlantis crossed the Florida Everglades and headed north, passing over Lake Okeechobee where it triggered dual sonic booms as it slowed to subsonic speeds. Commander Ken Ham aligned Atlantis with Kennedy’s southeast to northwest runway 33, where the ship touched down.

Aboard Atlantis with Ham were five astronauts—pilot Dominic “Tony” Antonelli and mission specialists Garrett Reisman, Piers Sellers, Stephen Bowen and Michael Good.

“The odometer currently reads about 120 million miles,” Bowen said of the well-traveled orbiter.
While this is the last scheduled flight for Atlantis, there is a chance the shuttle could fly again. The orbiter is slated as the emergency rescue vehicle for the final planned shuttle flight, the STS-134 mission of Endeavour. If something goes awry during that trip, Atlantis could be launched to rescue the crew.

As soon as Atlantis hit the ground, crews began work to refurbish the vehicle to ready it for that potential rescue launch.

NASA and some lawmakers have been lobbying to turn that rescue mission into a full-fledged extra shuttle flight, one which could deliver more spares and supplies to the space station in June 2011. But the White House has not yet approved adding the extra shuttle flight to NASA’s current mission roster.

Atlantis’ current mission, STS-132, is NASA’s 132nd orbiter flight and the third of five shuttle missions planned for this year.

Well done.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/26/2010 at 12:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Space •  
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calendar   Tuesday - May 25, 2010

Wasted Time

5 Somali Pirates On Trial In Netherlands

Five Somali men are due to go on trial in the Netherlands today for robbery on the high seas, in what will be the first modern piracy trial in a Dutch court.

The men were held in January 2009 after allegedly trying to capture a cargo ship registered in the Dutch Antilles.

The ship’s crew held off the attack off the Horn of Africa with flares until a Danish navy frigate intervened and sank the pirates’ boat.

The five men are being tried in Rotterdam under a 17th-century law against “sea robbery”, although defence lawyers will reportedly argue that they cannot be convicted due to lack of evidence.

“The boat they were in is at the bottom of the sea,” their lawyer Jan Ausma told De Volkskrant. “And the Danish helicopter crew did not see anything either.”

Yeah, I agree. No evidence. Ignore what the Danish Captain has to say, him and his phony videos. So put them back where you found them. In the water, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They leave.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/25/2010 at 07:07 PM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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The Hippies ARE In Charge

NATO suggests Courageous Restraint Medal

For the heroic act of not fighting the enemy

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This can’t be happening.

A proposal for a new “combat” medal honoring “courageous restraint” is being floated around the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, Afghanistan. The brain child of British Major General Nick Carter, commander for the Regional Command South of the ISAF, will be awarded to service members who hold their fire to save civilian lives, even if their lives or the lives of their comrades are at risk.

The new medal is being touted as a way to prevent civilian casualties. Now let this sink in:  Brother O’s politically correct military is actually proposing a combat medal for soldiers who make a conscious effort to avoid a combat action.

The military’s rules of engagement in Afghanistan have become so emasculated that commanders are now considering the creation of a medal awarded for not using lethal force during war.

NATO Commander General Stanley McChrystal is currently reviewing the “Courageous Restraint” medal, which was suggested by British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter following an incident where U.S. soldiers fired on a bus carrying Afghan civilians.

The idea is being reviewed at Headquarters ISAF,” said Lt. Col. Edward Sholtis, the spokesman for Gen. McChrystal. “The idea is consistent with our approach. Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians. ... That restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

However, restraint hasn’t translated into progress on the battlefield. A recent report from the Pentagon revealed that violence in Afghanistan is increasing – up 87% from last year – and that more districts support the Taliban than did six months ago (none of the 92 districts surveyed actively support the Karzai government while 42 are sympathetic to the Taliban). While our forces build infrastructure, provide medical care, and show restraint on the battlefield, the Taliban acts like barbarians – intimidating, raping, and murdering. Yet when our troops act in self-defense, Afghans gather in protest, chanting “Death to America.”

As Gen. McChrystal wrote in a July 2009 directive: “The Taliban cannot militarily defeat us – but we can defeat ourselves.” When we reward troops for not defending themselves – and take away their air and artillery support – that appears to be exactly what is going on.

McChrystal, who is leading coalition forces in Afghanistan, told reporters during a press conference at the Pentagon today that the military does not need a new medal to recognize a particular kind of valor.

Today, in reply to a reporter’s question about the rumored medal, McChrystal said the military already has “a number of ways to recognize courage.”

“I think courage in uniform can come under enemy fire in the most traditional ways or if you come under actions that may not be as expected or as traditional and involve killing,” he said. “It may involve protecting civilians.”

He referred to a photo that came out of the fighting in Marjah, in which a Marine is seen using his own body to shield an Afghan man and child from harm.

“He wasn’t shooting anyone, he didn’t kill any Taliban,” McChrystal said of the Marine, “but I would argue that he showed as much courage as any that I’ve seen on the battlefield.”

“So when you talk about courage, I don’t think we need a ‘different’ medal to differentiate different kinds of courage.”

So General McChrystal’s response is that the Army already has enough medals, and that they can use one they already have for this new “category”? Sickening.

This morning I learned that the friend of a son of a friend of mine, a 19 year old kid straight off of Paris Island, got blasted by an IED in Afghanistan very recently. One minute he was on patrol, the next time he opened his eyes he was in a hospital bed in Bethesda. It looks like they can save his leg and most of his face, but he’s going to be missing part of his ear. If the military is going to start giving out awards for not fighting, why is this young man even over there?


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/25/2010 at 06:20 PM   
Filed Under: • MilitaryWar On Terror •  
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On: 03/20/21 11:00

meaningless marching orders for a thousand travellers ... strife ahead ..
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Tracked at Casual Blog
[...] RTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPL [...]
On: 07/17/17 08:28

a small explanation
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Tracked at yerba mate gourd
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On: 07/09/17 07:07



DISCLAIMER
Allanspacer

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
  1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
  2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
  3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
  4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.


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GNU Terry Pratchett


Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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