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calendar   Tuesday - June 07, 2011

No kidding

Obamacare Round 2:

1 in 3 Employers Will Drop Health Benefits After ObamaCare Kicks In

Thirty percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering health benefits to their employees once the main provisions of President Obama’s federal health care law go into effect in 2014, a new survey finds.

The research published in the McKinsey Quarterly found that the number rises to 50 percent among employers who are highly aware of the health care law.

more here

This is not news. This is what the VRWC said when this garbage first was put forward. We actually read the bill. Or at least the important parts. And Republicans understand how business works. It is cheaper for any mid-sized or larger company to pony up the $2000 fine and let the government be the health insurance provider.

Hey, in 3 years, will it be news when the insurance companies start going out of business? Because that will be Round 3. Face the truth: without the policy income generated by those millions of corporate policies, the health insurance companies are going to shrivel up and die.

And then Big Brother will control, co-opt, and commandeer the entire insurance industry. And guess what will follow? Who wants to be the first to say the “DP” word? And guess which party will immediately try to cut costs by using the “die quickly” ploy?

Idiots. My country is run by deceitful morons. The Communists have taken over. Can we start the revolution YET???

“And in just 5 days we begin the fundamental transformation of America” ... into a gulag police state.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/07/2011 at 01:39 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
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DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE EVIL BUT STUPID FOR SURE. IT’S A WHITE THING

Oh come on. It must be okay because it’s billed as “art.” And as a general rule, mostly white. Why on earth is that? 

As if this crap isn’t bad enough, how’s this?  It’s funded by the taxpayer. Yup. Sure is.
Look what you get for your money folks.  Are ya proud?  Jeesh.

There is never any good reason to publicly fund ‘The Arts.’ What folks enjoy and accept (even if in bad taste) will rise to the top and enjoy some kind of success.
All funding for the so called arts does, is fund losers who haven’t the talent or the appeal to the masses of people.  But they are generally nothing more then exhibitionists who might never be noticed, but for public funding.

I’m greatly surprised that not one of these guys got his jewels twisted or punched.
Maybe this audience enjoyed the exhibit.  If so, doesn’t say anything good or encouraging about the future.

More pix at the link.

Naked dancers jumping on the audience?This sort of trashing of manners is an assault on our values
By QUENTIN LETTS

Luke Jennings, dance critic of The Observer, should sue Sadler’s Wells theatre for assault. Last week he was watching an avant-garde show called Un Peu De Tendresse Bordel De Merde. Naked male dancers ran into the stalls, rubbed their crotches in people’s faces, parted their buttocks within inches of women’s noses and generally behaved like apes.

There is a line between artistic shock and shocking art. The thuggishly nude show at Sadler’s Wells proceeded to cross it. One of the dancers, spotting Mr Jennings, tried to steal his pen and notepad. Mr Jennings gripped tight to them.

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The dancer, outraged that someone was declining to kowtow to all this nudist japery, retaliated by pulling off the Observer man’s glasses and spitting on them gobbily. He handed them back ‘with a sneer’ (and a slimy smear) before returning to the stage, his pleased-with-itself sausage and veg flapping around for all to see.

Groan, it’s naked-art-scandal time again. Trivial? In some ways. But not for the first time, communal respectability is being challenged by insistent, egomaniacal coarseness. That is worth our attention.

Once again a state-subsidised theatre — Sadler’s Wells receives £2.5 million of our tax money a year — is securing itself some attention by flashing the flesh.

Recently we had masturbation, homosexual rape, male nudity and a hanging-by-testicles at the publicly funded Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.
There was also some harmless dangling of Sir Ian McKellen’s grandfather-clock pendulum when he played King Lear at the RSC.

Only last week we had a striptease scene, male and female, in the greedily commercial production of Much Ado About Nothing which stars David Tennant.

Was Shakespeare’s loveliest romantic comedy enhanced by a muscular youth baring his smooth gluteus maximus? Not for me — the human body is not a revelation. We all have one, and most of us have seen a fair few in our time.

To the go-ahead crowd of our public theatres, however, nudity is a taboo crying out to be broken. Nudity is — gasp! — a dare.

They have in recent years tried the same thing, to laws of diminishing returns, with bad language, violence and general oafishness.

Dumb down, dirty up, crassify, despoil the bourgeois aesthetic: it is the same thinking that shortly before the Bolshevik revolution saw the Russian futurists shout the anti-traditional slogan: ‘Throw Pushkin and Tolstoy overboard from the steamship of modernity!’

Sometimes stage nudity is nothing more than ‘celebrity gets kit off’, as happened when Anna Friel briefly disrobed in Breakfast At Tiffany’s in 2009, and Daniel Radcliffe flashed his Harry Potters in Equus in 2007.

Jerry Hall slipped off her negligee in The Graduate 11 years ago. Poor old Jerry. She thought she would attract admiration on a par with that of Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room, but the moment was a dud. ‘Two fried eggs in the gloaming,’ as I wrote at the time.

The Kidman moment inspired a colleague to speak of ‘pure theatrical Viagra’, but stage nudity is often terribly unsexy.

The London stage has been going this way for some time. Much of it springs from faux egalitarian self-loathing among the privileged intellectuals who run our playhouses. They agonise over the fact that the majority of their audiences are prosperous, polite, middle-class types. They try to shake them up by giving them something ‘edgy’ and ‘political’.

You can tell a lot about a society from what it holds dearest in art. What are its ideals of line, word, movement and sound? These inform you about that society’s esteem for order, its approach to love, its notions of beauty.

On this basis, 21st-century Western civilisation is in the final twitches of decadent collapse.

The very phrase ‘public morality’ may be one that the Left dislikes. It may be something our defamation judges want to destroy with their injunctions.

But without a code or recognised manners and, yes, morals, without discretion and respect and a sense of beauty, we might as well chuck in the whole thing and hand the keys of the Tower of London to Al Qaeda.

That is why I hope, for once, that lawyers are hired and The Observer’s dance critic takes Sadler’s Wells to court. Sue the pants off them, Luke. They like it that way.

READ MORE, SEE MORE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/07/2011 at 10:07 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINETypical White People: Stupid, Evil, Willfully Blind •  
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wake up america.

I am aware that every country of any consequence will spend monies promoting themselves to other countries.  Nothing sinister about that. Heck, we do it and have been for a very long time.
But there is I think, a difference between that, and the following article.  I make no claim to rocket science friends.  I’m no more well read then most and no less so. But I have been somewhat concerned over much time, about influence from foreign quarters and especially from the EU.  If you’ve been here long, you’ve already seen what I’ve had to say and what my concerns are.  And ok, I admit it cos I can’t hide it. I’ve become somewhat paranoid on the subject of America becoming more left, more socialist and closer to European thinking. And if you believe there isn’t much to worry about, then you are asleep.

You might find the comments online after the article of some interest.  Seems there are a number of Brits who are concerned as well.  Many of them have fears of becoming so integrated within the Eu that they will lose their country entirely.  They are right to worry and the clock is ticking.
For us as well.

More than £3million has been funnelled to American universities to promote the benefits of European integration

In US dollars the figure below would be $32,912,986 at the current rate of exchange.


How EU spends £20m a year promoting left-wing causes in the U.S.

By TIM SHIPMAN


Brussels is pouring nearly £20million a year from its human rights budget on lecturing the Americans on left-wing causes.

The EU Human Rights Fund is intended to help promote Western values in the developing world. But a shock report has found at least £17million of cash – around £2million from British taxpayers’ – has been ploughed into promoting the pet causes of Eurocrats in the U.S.
It is being spent on promoting abolition of the death penalty, discussion of climate change, green energy, and the International Criminal Court – all controversial subjects in the U.S.

The study by the Heritage Foundation, a centre-right Washington think-tank, found a further £4million has been ploughed into pro-EU propaganda in the U.S., including funds for advertising and publicity material.

More than £3million has been funnelled to American universities to promote the benefits of European integration and a further £3million to think-tanks who want to study EU affairs.

The European Commission’s own accounts show millions have also been paid to unnamed individual opinion formers in the U.S.

The report’s British author Sally McNamara said: ‘It is impossible to justify EU human rights budgets being spent in one of the world’s freest nations.’
Tory MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘The U.S. was founded by North Americans fed up with Europeans interfering in its internal affairs.

‘The U.S. as a country has done more to bring liberty and human rights to the world than anyone in Europe. They don’t need any lessons from Brussels.’
Stephen Booth, research director of the Open Europe think tank said: ‘The EU has absolutely no mandate to wade in to politically sensitive debates in the U.S.’

SOURCE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/07/2011 at 08:50 AM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peonsScary Stuff •  
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Do You Need A Sword Permit In NYC?

FALL ON IT



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“Yup, that’s my wee-wee” says Democrat Senator Anthony Weiner “and I have no plans at all to resign.”

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a rising star in Democratic politics who many believed would be the next mayor of New York City, admitted on Monday to having had inappropriate online exchanges with at least six women, and repeatedly lying about sending a sexually suggestive photograph to a young woman over Twitter last month.

After a week of sometimes indignant public denials and insistence that he was the victim of an Internet hacker, a weeping and stammering Mr. Weiner, 46, acknowledged at a news conference that he had sent the photo of himself in his underwear to the woman, a college student in Seattle.

The six-term congressman from Brooklyn said he had broken no laws and would remain in office, calling the matter an “aberration from which I’ve learned.”

So not only is this guy a philandering dirtbag, he’s a lying philandering dirtbag. Way to go Brooklyn, you sure elected yourselves a wiener whiner winner. I’m certain that he will continue to do a wonderful job as the people’s representative, now that he has no standing, no honor, and has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a dishonest amoral loser.

Once upon a time in the laudable and halcyon days of ancient Rome, a dishonored general or Senator had only one remaining duty owed to the State.

Update: MSM shows leap at chance to be useful idiots as usual and to blame the Right. Don’t expect a single one of these turds to fess up their bias or their mistakes. Didn’t they listen to their own hypocrisy after the Tuscon shooting? What, no? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

Not to be outdone, lefty bloggers may have committed actual crimes to do CYA for their boy. http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/03/daily-kos-sticks-up-for-weiner-by-publishing-identities-of-underage-girls/


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/07/2011 at 08:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsSexStoopid-PeopleTypical White People: Stupid, Evil, Willfully Blind •  
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Stop The Madness Already

You Personally Owe China $534,000




Ok, that’s a slight misstatement. You may not actually owe that money to China, but you owe it to someone. That’s your household’s slice of the actual total US debt. And Obama keeps right on spending, even though actual tax revenues are way way below the anticipated ones. Duh, because the economy remains in the outhouse, heading for another major dip. Unemployment is up again, and the housing market is a total disaster. The USA is about to lose its AAA rating, so the cost of all future borrowing will be far higher. Better start a big veggie garden and begin learning how to be a peasant; Turd World status, here we come.


U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions

[ USA Today ]

The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

Social Security added $1.4 trillion in obligations, partly reflecting longer life expectancies. Federal and military retirement programs added more to the financial hole, too.
Corporations would be required to count these new liabilities when they are taken on — and report a big loss to shareholders. Unlike businesses, however, Congress postpones recording spending commitments until it writes a check.

The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $534,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.

“The (federal) debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn’t take into account what’s owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees,” says accountant Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based group that advocates better financial reporting. “Without accurate accounting, we can’t make good decisions.”

Michael Lind, policy director at the liberal New America Foundation’s economic growth program, says there is no near-term crisis for federal retirement programs and that economic growth will make these programs more affordable.

“The false claim that Social Security and Medicare are about to bankrupt the United States has been repeated for decades by conservatives and libertarians who pretend that their ideological opposition to these successful and cost-effective programs is based on worries about the deficit,” he says.

False claim? And I owe more than HALF A MILLION DOLLARS?? I think we can safely put Michael Lind in the “lying crapweasel” category at this point, oui?

Bring home our troops; let the world handle it’s own problems for once. Park the Navy off the coast of Haifa, guard the Suez Canal. Burn Somalia to the ground after sinking every little boat within 200 miles of it’s coastline. Co-opt the railways for a short while and issue the order to fix bayonets: clear out at least 10 million illegals. Then guard the borders and the coasts. Keep the ones who pick lettuce, but that’s about it. Americans need those jobs. Simplify the tax system and cut the IRS down to about 500 unarmed employees. Throw out every union in every branch of government and renegotiate every job. Your government worker paycheck just got cut by 40% and your benefits halved. Now start the government layoffs: 3/4 of everyone goes, period. Many many federal departments are simply going to be disbanded, period. Being a member of the federal legislature is now a $50,000 a year job, with legal endemnities: to get the job you pledge your assets and your sacred honor. Screw it up - as in not making a budget on time that comes in 25% under the revenue curve, Tweeting pictures of you wee-wee, introducing blatantly unconstitutional bills, taking bribes, etc - and you loose your job and your assets and you go to jail. Give up the War on Drugs: legalize marijuana, and make it a capital offense to be in possession of cocaine in any form, opiates, LSD, methamphetamines, and several other “designer” drugs. Wait, that’s not “giving up” is it, it’s “winning” ... which is something America has mostly forgotten how to do when it comes to wars. Time to learn.

And that’s just a start.

We have allowed Limited Government to morph into an all devouring monster that has eroded most of our rights and has spent us into a nearly bottomless pit. Stop the madness. We need to climb out of that if we can. Maybe we can’t, but we have to make a 50 year attempt. Starting today.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/07/2011 at 07:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Government •  
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calendar   Monday - June 06, 2011

EYE CANDY

Real women make real eye candy ... curves and more of the same. Nice.

ROBYN LAWLEY

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CANDICE HUFFINE

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DONNA DERRICO ( borrowed from Vilmar for obvious reason)
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TARA LYNN
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NIKI REED

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See More Below The Fold

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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/06/2011 at 10:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
Comments (1) Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

it’s only money

Just recently, Drew focused on aid of a foreign nature and had a few choice words to say. Well, things aren’t too much different over here except the UK hasn’t the economy to support things on the same scale. Or the population of course. So all things being relative, the bottom line is that things suck.

The former bland conservative PM, Sir John Major got on his hobby horse a few days ago, and said he was proud of the foreign aid the UK gives away and suggested that the public should be proud too. Oh right. The public here should be very proud of spending on things like:

£300,000 to NUT.  That’s the National Union of Teachers.  What for? Teaching? Well, in a manner of speaking I guess. The money was to make teachers ...

“Global agents of change.” Say what?  What kind of change?  Climate? Whatever.  It’s only money.

Then there was £241,000 spent on a worthy cause for the kiddies.  Everyone wants to do nice things for kids. In this case, the govt. gave the money to a UK theater company in order to teach the kiddies a Brazilian dance.  Isn’t that nice?  Hey. It’s only money.

The G-8 nations in ‘05 pledged to spend 0.7% of GNI (gross national income) on aid.
Here’s how that broke down among the top 5 last year. 

Britain ..... 0.56%
France ..... 0.5 %
Germany 0.38%
USA ....... 0.21%
Russia ...... 0.05%

Sir John Major: foreign spending isn’t just right - it should make us proud

former Conservative Prime Minister John Major argues that David Cameron’s commitment to aid is bold, necessary and right.

It has become fashionable in some quarters to see the Coalition Government’s decision to protect the life-saving aid budget as a sign of waste and futile modernisation.
The argument runs something like this: the Conservative Party’s commitment to tackling global poverty and disease was never anything more than a handy fig-leaf of modernisation, designed to win over liberal-minded voters; now that times are tough it should be discarded.
And it doesn’t really matter because – in any event – it’s all wasted anyway.
This argument is wholly wrong. Its advocates miss two critical points: first, that our Party’s commitment to Aid pre-dates David Cameron and is based on conviction not calculation; and second, that every pound of Britain’s - still relatively small - aid budget is amongst the best value of any Government spending.
Our party’s commitment to protecting the Aid budget was made six years ago when Michael Howard was leader.

It was driven – not by electoral calculation – but by a sober assessment of Britain’s place in the world, of the immense need in developing countries, and of the significant changes in the
effective use of Aid over the last 20 years.

Right. Lets see what the figures are.
India, with its own nuclear program and space program …
£295 million
Ethiopia
£214 million
Bangladesh
£149 million

Planned growth in the foreign aid budget 2010 - 2011-06-06
£7.8 BILLION
2014 – 2015
£11.5 BILLION

I guess the question always asked is .... where the hell does it end?  The answer naturally is, It Doesn’t!

And then of course there is .....

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But hey .... It’s only money.

UPDATE

In the morning paper on June 7.  I toleya they were nuts.  Not all of them tho as he is taking some heat from the party. Take a look.

Backlash as minister boasts ‘Be as proud of our £12bn foreign aid bill as you are of the Army’
By JASON GROVES, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Lavish spending on foreign aid is making Britain a ‘development superpower’ and voters should take the same pride in it as they do in the Armed Forces and the Queen, a senior minister said yesterday.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell admitted the Coalition was facing ‘bracing’ criticism over its decision to increase aid spending by 34 per cent to £12billion at a time of austerity at home.

But he insisted the money was achieving ‘brilliant’ results and making Britain admired around the world. His comments sparked an angry backlash from Tory MPs last night, with one accusing him of talking ‘complete tosh’.

SOURCE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/06/2011 at 09:50 AM   
Filed Under: • EconomicsInternational •  
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Chilean volcano erupts

You might be watching this on TV but I’m posting it anyway ... Mother Nature.
Watch, now the planet savers led my Mr Bore will add this to their catalog of of doomsday predictions.

Whatever


When all hell breaks loose: Lightning tears the sky apart above the glow of the Chilean volcano

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 1:04 PM on 6th June 2011


Flames reach up to the heavens as lightning flashes criss-cross the sky.

These extraordinary images show the full force of Mother Nature as a Chilean volcano erupts for the first time in 50 years.

Ash has been thrown six miles up into the sky and the South American government has ordered the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Winds fanned the ash toward neighbouring Argentina, darkening the sky in the ski resort city of San Carlos de Bariloche, in the centre of the country, and its airport has also been closed.

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Bunch of spectacular time lapse photos and story HERE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/06/2011 at 08:26 AM   
Filed Under: • Art-PhotographyNature •  
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playboy bunnies and idiots on parade

Why bother with an old and most likely boring article. Again. Well because ....  it gets me seeing red damn it.

While these are NOT the very best looking I’ve ever seen (Asian girl the best of this lot), this is not an eye candy post.

Do these young women look like they are badly put upon?  Do any of them, appear as though they are being forced to wear the costume and work for Playboy?
Are they free in this 21st century to make their own decisions for good or ill?

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So why do self important gas bags like these fraken idiots on parade, believe they have a right to decide for the women who choose to make money and wear a sexy (to many) costume?  Why do femi-nazis insist what they do is degrading to women? Do they speak for ALL women everywhere?
But take a look at what some of these scuz bags look like themselves.

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I’m not certain if that ugly, stupid looking creature is male or female. But I’d say that’s far more demeaning then any Playboy Bunny.

Take a look here.  Does the lady with Hef look hard done by?  The sign the stupid idiot holds says she’s “Hopping Mad.” Take a good look at the chubby jerk.
Could this ever hope to be anything close to a Playboy girl?  Don’t think so. But she apparently doesn’t think any other female has a right to be either.
It’s idiots like these that really piss me off.

On the other hand, in the case of the chunky youngster below, it’s probably the only time in her life that she’d be able to wear any sort of bunny wear.

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So in case you haven’t guessed by now, the new club opened last night.  Naturally, femi-nazis and other like minded pug ugly females who will most likely never achieve the rank of Goddess, are picketing and protesting other’s women’s rights to do that very thing.


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 06/06/2011 at 04:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-PeopleUK •  
Comments (5) Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Motivator Monday!

It’s been awhile since we did a motivator post. Got some good ones. Most of them are even SFW!

imageJohn Edwards, former Presidential candidate
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Dolphins abandoning Earth. Vogon alert! Don’t forget your towel!
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Hey, she’s got my Mossberg!
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So…where’s the right phuk?
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I wish I’d known about the owners manual before I said ‘I do’
seperator

I’ve got many more, but that’s enough for one post.


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Posted by Christopher   United States  on 06/06/2011 at 12:54 AM   
Filed Under: • Motorvators •  
Comments (3) Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

calendar   Saturday - June 04, 2011

Good Timing

Practically the very same day that we hear that shipping insurance costs are skyrocketing due to pirate activity, the US Navy announces that a new group of sailors have learned how to park their boats. Big deal? Yes! These are not just any boats, but the boats of the Riverine Squadrons. And they learned to park them inside other ships, while those ships were at sea. Say what?? Yup, it’s kind of like landing a helicopter inside a cargo plane, while it’s flying. Only wetter, lower, and a bit slower.

Riverine Forces Make History with Well Deck Certification

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A Riverine Command Boat from Riverine Squadron 2 departs the well deck of USS Oak Hill
after the completion of a Riverine well deck certification in the Chesapeake Bay, May 31.

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (SW) Michael R. Hinchcliffe, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command Public Affairs

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS)—Sailors from Riverine Squadrons (RIVRON) 2 and 3 made history when they successfully completed the first well deck certification for the Riverine Command Boat (RCB) and Riverine Patrol Boat (RPB) aboard USS Oak Hill (LSD 51) May 31.

“What this proves is that, once and for all, we have the capability with the Riverine Command Boats [RCBs] and Riverine Patrol Boats [RPBs] to bring them on board the well deck of a ship,” said Capt. Christopher Halton, commodore of Riverine Group 1. “With us being able to sustain operations out of the well deck, it opens up a variety of mission sets for the Riverines, from counter piracy missions, supporting amphibious operations or providing force protection for LCACs (Landing Craft, Air Cushioned) operating back and forth to the beach.”

With completion of the well deck certification, the boats have the ability to deploy worldwide aboard an amphibious ship in support of the maritime strategy.

“Once the last boat was clear of the well and it was clear that the events of the day were successful, my well deck team broke out into spontaneous cheers and applause,” said Cmdr. David Bauer, commanding officer of USS Oak Hill. “They knew the importance of what they had just done. It was a very moving moment.”

The Riverine Force, part of Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, is a combat-arms force that performs point defense, fire support and interdiction operations along inland water ways to defeat enemies and support U.S. Marines and coalition forces.

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“The RCB was designed with the focus of being a mobile command and control boat, with the ability to control smaller Riverine boats up river,” said Cmdr. Clay Wilson, commanding officer of RIVRON 2. “We’ve kind of pulled it (Riverine mission) out towards the coastal environment right now to fill Riverine needs and the craft has proven to be capable of doing more then just inshore missions.”

The PCB is the small semi-rigid flotation collared special ops craft we’re all familiar with. If you can’t make out the one by the ramp in the above picture, click here for a huge version of a similar pic. They are built by SAFE Boats for the Navy and the Marines in several sizes and configurations. The one is the the picture looks quite small, like it was based on their Oswald model, only with inboard engines and jet thrusters. SAFE Boats also builds the PCB, which is a licensed version of the Swedish CB90. It’s a 49 foot long 50mph gun platform that can carry 2 dozen troops for almost 500 miles, and only draws a couple feet of water. Note how the two in the photo are armed, one fairly bristles with barrel stabilized .50 BMGs, M60s, and mini-guns, the other one appears to have a small autocannon or grenade launcher on top. Both have flush mounted dual .50s in front, controlled remotely from the cockpit. The Oak Hill is a Harpers Ferry class Dock Landing Ship, which means it was built for amphibious warfare, and carries several helicopters on the back, a number of high speed hovercraft or riverine craft inside, a bevy of missiles and self defense system, plus a few hundred US Marines eager to get sand in their boots. A bit more than you’d think would be needed to stop a few Somali pirates at sea, but they have to land somewhere with their hostages, right? Wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean? Or, as the Navy puts it ...

If the Stryker armored combat vehicle were a boat, it might be the CB90, a Swedish-designed shallow-water vessel that’s fast, lethal and flexible enough to be an ambulance or a fast-attack craft.
...
Powered by Swedish-built Scania engines, it has a Rolls-Royce jet-propulsion system that allows speeds of more than 43 knots. Meant to operate in rivers and other shallow waterways, it has a three-foot draft.
...
Depending on the mission, it can bristle with weapons from six different mounts. Wood said the boat on order has a remote-controlled weapon mount for a .50-caliber machine gun — or other weapon — on a mast behind the cockpit. It will also have a twin weapon mount on the bow that is controlled from the cockpit, as well as four mounts for crew-served weapons elsewhere on the boat.

As for a possible new set of mission parameters (Oak Hill had earlier served in Iraq but after a South America cruise finally took time out for repairs and maintenance) ... the Riverine group might be a fighting force without a battle right now, which means they could get the budget axe. So matching speedy little gunboat against less speedy, less gunny Somali gunboats may be their salvation ...

ABOARD THE DOCK LANDING SHIP OAK HILL — The prospect of meeting a sleek, armored riverine command boat and its fearsome array of .50-caliber machine guns at sea would undoubtedly induce second thoughts among pirates who prey on shipping in the Gulf of Aden.
...
Riverine force leaders gave the demonstration a thumbs-up. If senior Navy leaders agree, the riverine force could find itself with a new post-Iraq war mission set outside the green-water arena for which it is designed, and the Navy with yet another capability for the flexible and heavily deployed amphibious force.

Next up will be some rough water testing. If these smallish RPBs and RCBs can get in and out of the water wells in open ocean conditions, then the whole dock landing ship group could have a new lease on life chasing pirates from the high seas right up onto the beaches. If not, then it could be mothballs for the motherships, since the patrol boats and the helicopters can ride piggyback on just about any decent size Navy ship. And if the mission plan doesn’t include putting hundreds of US Marines ashore, then these ships could be surplused for now.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/04/2011 at 10:41 PM   
Filed Under: • Military •  
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The True Cost Of Piracy

Want to know who is really profiting from the Somali pirates? The UK is. Because UK based Lloyd’s of London provides the insurance to merchant shipping, and they have just jacked the rates up 30,000 percent. Yeah, you read that right. 300x increase. What used to cost $500 now costs $150,000. And the size of the Pirate Risk Danger Zone has been increased to encompass almost the entire western half of the Indian Ocean, and includes the whole west coast of India. Needless to say, India is not happy. Neither will you be because the cost of everything going through that area by ship (ie oil) will reflect that additional cost. Wonder how much extra tax windfall Whitehall is getting out of this?

India Fights Lloyd’s Expanding Piracy Zone After 300-Fold Insurance Jump

India is lobbying Lloyd’s of London to reverse its expansion of the area judged prone to pirate attacks to cover almost all of the nation’s west coast after insurance costs surged as much as 300-fold this year.
...
The Joint War Committee, which assesses insurance risks, extended the zone in December about 900 miles east as the hijacking range grew.

A reversal by Lloyd’s would reduce insurance costs after some premiums skyrocketed to as much as $150,000 per voyage from $500, the Indian National Shipowners’ Association said, hurting shippers’ earnings.
...
“Typically ships bought insurance for the three days they were moving through the Gulf of Aden—now they have to pay for the additional 10 days” through the Indian Ocean, said Sean Woollerson, an insurance broker at London-based Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Plc (JLT), which specializes in shipping. The larger zone means about 28,000 more journeys a year are liable to higher premiums than the 22,000 made in the old zone, he said.

India’s government and shipping companies gave evidence last month to the Joint War Committee that shows increased Indian naval patrols have driven the pirate threat away. The government will continue to press for the decision to be overturned, Mohandas said in his New Delhi office.

“The freight markets are not in the rosiest of states so if there are additional premiums then obviously you get squeezed,” said A.R. Ramakrishnan, managing director at Essar Shipping
...
The efforts of more than 20 navies, including the U.S., U.K. and China, failed to prevent a record surge in pirate attacks last year. Pirates cost shipping companies as much as $12 billion in 2010, according to the London-based International Chamber of Shipping.

Hamilton, Bermuda-based Frontline Ltd., the world’s biggest supertanker operator, last week said diverting to avoid pirates in the area costs about $100,000 per trip in extra fuel.

I’m pretty sure that $12 billion includes higher insurance costs, added fuel costs, time constraints, ship defense expenses, etc. I have no clue how much in tax money it took to keep 20 navies worth of military ships at sea patrolling the area. Probably 5 times that much?

The piracy insurance costs for the old zone that impacted the 22,000 ships was around $3.3 billion in earnings for insurance companies. The new zone will add an additional $4.2 billion annually in insurance costs to shippers in the region. The 300% increase in insurance costs due to piracy has to date, hurt the region more than it has hurt the global market. That might change though as the piracy zone continues to expand, and in all cases those costs eventually get passed down to the consumer.

This guy is only talking about the added costs relative to the west coast of India, which more than half of that nation’s shipping sails through.

Right now the Somali pirates are having their holidays while the Indian Ocean is having monsoon season and heavy seas. But when the storms let up in another few weeks ...


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/04/2011 at 10:16 PM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! •  
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By Request

From the old inbox ...

Gee Drew, how come you never post pictures of


image
Eden Petty



image
Thayla Ayala


See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/04/2011 at 10:07 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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calendar   Friday - June 03, 2011

It’s like McCarthyism, only without actual Commies

Crowder Gets Blacklisted








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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/03/2011 at 02:55 PM   
Filed Under: • HollywoodHumor •  
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