BMEWS
 
Sarah Palin is the reason compasses point North.

calendar   Tuesday - June 28, 2011

There Goes the Neighborhood


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Posted by Christopher   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 07:10 PM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE •  
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Nice


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 12:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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Never Enough For Obama

This is a Smart Car. You may have seen them around. It’s the tiniest little thing you’ve ever seen with a windshield; the Smart Car has a 73 inch wheelbase, is just over 5 feet wide, and is less than 9 feet long. With it’s 1 liter, 3 cylinder engine that makes just 70hp and gives the two seater an anemic 12.8 second 0-60 time, the Smart Car delivers 33mpg around town and 41mpg on the highway.

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According to Obama, this vehicle is way too big for you, way too powerful, and gets terrible gas mileage.


Obama: 56mpg for 2025



WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is considering a fleetwide average of 56.2 miles per gallon for all new cars and trucks sold in the US by 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported late Saturday citing two people briefed on the matter said.

The proposal would roughly double current fuel-economy targets, and would likely raise the price of some cars by several thousand dollars.
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US officials presented the proposal to representatives of Detroit auto makers last week to determine the costs of such a proposal, said one of the people briefed on the matter. This person emphasized that the 56.2 mpg figure was floated as a means to kick negotiations among California, environmental groups and the auto industry into the final phase, and that the numbers could change.

The administration has said previously that it is looking at requiring cars average between 47 and 62 mpg by 2025.

Environmental groups and the state of California have pressed for the 62 mpg target or something close to that, while the industry has lobbied for a target on the lower end of the administration’s range.
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The targets for 2025 would build on the administration’s requirement that autos average 35.5 mpg by 2016.

Fleetwide average. That means that he wants cars and minivans and light trucks that deliver far, far greater mpg than average, to balance out what few larger or more high performance vehicles are allowed to be sold. Which could mean that the above vehicle, which looks like a frog with wheels attached, could be the SUV of the future. Because it gets such awful gas mileage.

Now that’s the Change I’ve been Waiting for.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 12:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsOil, Alternative Energy, and Gas Pricesplanes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
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Blame Those Tricksy Joooos

Propeller Cut Off Gaza Flotilla Ship



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The Juliano, a boat planning on joining the Gaza flotilla challenging Israel’s blockade, was sabotaged in a Greek harbor…
A ship jointly owned by Swedish, Greek, and Norwegian activists hoping to join a flotilla of activist vessels challenging Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza, had its propeller cut while in Athen’s harbor today. A spokesman contacted by the Monitor said that the damage was a deliberate act of sabotage.

Israel and its allies have been working hard to head off the planned flotilla, which is hoping to enter the waters off Gaza in the next week. Col. (ret) Ann Wright, who’s organizing a US vessel named the Audacity of Hope for the flotilla, says her ship has been detained in Athens on spurious charges that it’s not seaworthy. She says that charge was made by an Israeli legal group.

Now the Juliano is held up. Mikael Löfgren, a spokesman for Ship to Gaza Sweden, says the damage was discovered at 6:30 in the evening Athens time today, and that divers probably cut the propeller in the past 24 hours.

“The reports I’m receiving is that it’s certain that it was sabotage,” says Mr. Löfgren, reached by phone in Sweden. “The propeller and [propeller shaft] has been cut and we have divers that have filmed the damages. Experts have said there’s no doubt” that the damage was deliberate.

He says that repairing the damage will take a few days. As to who is responsible, he declined to speculate. “We simply don’t know who did it, but it’s obviously a hostile act,” says Löfgren.

The Swedish activists say the propeller shaft of the Juliano was cut off in Piraeus and that it would take a couple of days to repair the damage. Swedish activists said the propeller damage was discovered late yesterday.

Norwegian delegation leader Torstein Dahle said today that “someone is willing to go to great lengths to stop the flotilla from sailing”.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/gaza-flotilla-ship-sabotaged-activists/story-e6frfku0-1226083709940#ixzz1QZwGin1U

How much do you want to bet that this was completely self-inflicted? That’s an old old trick the far left never tires of. Hell, I remember when I was in college, and whenever the Jewish Student Union, the Black Student Union, the Haitian Student Union, the Wymyn’s Student Union, the Islamic Student Union (of course there never was a White, Male, or Christian Student Union - that would be racist!) wanted some attention, they’d wake up to find their little offices covered in hate speech graffiti or with broken windows. And every single time it would turn out that the actual perpetrators were the members of that Union themselves. Of course, since they were symbolically “acting out” fears of the “repression” they were certain they received in the real world, these thuggish acts never got them arrested or expelled or even sent to years worth of counseling.

Besides the Juliano - named after Juliano Mer-Khamis, the Arab-Israeli actor, director and political activist who was shot dead in the West Bank town of Jenin in April - boats from Greece, France, Italy and Spain are also among those joining Freedom Flotilla II. Two cargo vessels will carry medicines, a fully equipped ambulance car, and cement.

But of course. This is par for the course. Like the M/V Saint Pancake, all flotilla ships must be named after martyrs to the cause.

According to Mikael Löfgren, press coordinator of the organisation, it is not known who was behind the attack in which hostile divers destroyed the propeller housing and severed the two propeller axles beneath the boat.

“We didn’t catch anyone in the act, so we can’t be 100 percent sure, but we have our suspicions,” said Löfgren to The Local.
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“All we know is that Israel is doing everything in its power to slow us down,” said Norwegian spokesperson Torstein Dahle to Norwegian daily Dagbladet.
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The ship Juliano is jointly owned by the Swedish, Norwegian and Greek Ship to Gaza organisations. It is one of the smallest boats in the Freedom Flotilla and has room for 25 passengers.

( no wonder I couldn’t find it on the international ship registry sites. It’s a frickin motor boat, not an actual commercial ship )

In a first comment Ship to Gaza spokesperson Mattias Gardell said:

“It’s one thing for a foreign power to press the Greek government to delay our voyage with red tape. It is quite another thing for enemy agents to operate on Greek territory. It is high time for the international community to put their foot down and say: Enough!”

So I have some serious doubts about the authenticity of this story. Sure, maybe the Israelis are sending you a little message. Maybe. Maybe you should listen. As far as I can tell, there is no truth at all to the rumor that the IDF has been spotted buying up horse’s heads from around the Middle East. Capice?

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 08:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsIsraelTypical White People: Stupid, Evil, Willfully Blind •  
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What do you get when you cross Star Trek with Tolkiein

You get the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins!

The sad fact is, when Leonard Nimoy did this, he’d never read Tolkien’s works. He had no idea of what a ‘hobbit’ was. I have this on Nimoy’s own words. I’ve read his autobiography “I’m Not Spock”. I’ve also read the follow-up autobiography: I Am Spock!.

Somebody has the same vinyl LP that I have. Leonard Nimoy is a passible singer as he covers songs like Green Grass.


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Posted by Christopher   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 09:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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Greece Is The Word

Greek unions start Athens austerity protests

ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators began gathering in front of the Greek parliament Tuesday at the start of a two-day strike to protest against painful cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

With Greece teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, parliament is due to vote this week on a package of spending cuts, tax increases and privatizations agreed as part of a massive bailout aimed at averting the euro zone’s first default.

Following weeks of protests and rolling strikes, ADEDY, the public sector union representing half a million civil servants and GSEE, which represents 2 million private sector workers, are stepping up pressure on deputies before the votes.

Transport and public services were hit, schools were shut and many shops and businesses were closed, while the streets of central Athens were virtually deserted.

“We expect a dynamic and massive participation in the strike and the march to the center of Athens. We will have 48 hours of working people, unemployed, young people in the streets,” ADEDY’s leader Spyros Papaspyros told Reuters.

Deep in deficit and unable to borrow on financial markets, Greece depends on international support to keep going. A default would spread contagion around the 17-nation single currency area and cause a deep shock to the global economy.


And The Word Is STUCK ON STUPID

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
- Margaret Thatcher



Prime Minister George Papandreou appealed to lawmakers late Monday to back the austerity measures in two votes on Wednesday and Thursday, which he said represented the final chance for Greece to get back on its feet.

Although the socialists have a majority, with 155 deputies in the 300-seat house, some MPs have warned they may vote against the austerity plan.

The austerity plan has caused deep anger among Greeks disillusioned with years of political corruption and inefficiency and now bitterly resentful of the conditions imposed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
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In a sign the discontent has spread well beyond the union movement and far left, the Greek Confederation of Commerce (ESEE), a trade association of retailers, also rejected measures its leader Vassilis Korkidis denounced as “predatory.”

It urged shopkeepers to raise Greek national flags at their stores and announced an Internet campaign to convince cabinet members and MPs to renege on the austerity plan.

Greece is stuck in its worst recession since the 1970s, with a youth unemployment rate of more than 40 percent and public finances shattered by a debt equivalent to some 150 percent of gross domestic product.

Gosh, maybe if they could actually start producing something the world wanted to buy they wouldn’t be in such dire straits. Maybe if they started selling dinner plates instead of smashing them, you know? And maybe if the entire country wasn’t one vast collection of sinecures, no work jobs, price supports, useless government departments, and people on the dole they’d have some way out of this mess.

But even when the reality hits the spoiled little infants in Greece will not accept it. No, let’s protest. Let’s riot. Let’s set things on fire and kill people again to prove to the government that we won’t take any cuts in the handouts purchased with borrowed money lying down. Let someone else pay the bill, 20 years down the line. Problem is, there is no someone else. And the bill is due today.

This is what happens when generations live high on the hog off of future earnings and the bill comes due. You can’t run an economy like a ponzi scheme. Is anyone in DC listening? Hello? Oh, sorry, they’re not. They’re too busy playing golf and eating fried fat in Africa.

How about - purely as a lesson and a warning to others - the EU kicks Greece to the curb? Let their creditors seize whatever assets they can. Toss the country out of the EU, which they never should have been allowed to join in the first place. Nations can’t file for Chapter 11. The Repo Man comes along and collects territory instead of the sofa and TV. Maybe they should sell the Athenians to the Persians once and for all, because there are no 300 to save an ungrateful Greece this time around. No wait, that would put even more terrorists in Europe. Crap. Ok then, turn Greece into the debtor’s prison of Europe. For 5 generations they’ll be doing all the scutwork, until “Greek” is synonymous with “maid” “pool boy” and “factory plod”. The only problem with that is that there won’t be any more Greeks after the 3rd generation. In which case they’ll cease to exist, and Europe can just seize the land and the buildings and use the whole country as a holiday time share. No tipping the maids and the pool boys!

Harsh? Utterly. But if Greece gets a pass, what will Spain and Portugal do? Nothing.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/28/2011 at 07:49 AM   
Filed Under: • EconomicsEUro-peonsMiscellaneous •  
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calendar   Monday - June 27, 2011

Awesome, Chicago Style

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Blagojevich Convicted of Trying to Auction Off Obama’s Senate Seat

Ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich found guilty on 17 of 20 counts, including all charges related to an attempt to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

CHICAGO—A jury convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Monday of nearly all the corruption charges against him, including that he tried to sell or trade President Obama’s old Senate seat.

Blagojevich had faced 20 charges, including the Senate seat allegation and that he schemed to shake down executives for campaign donations. He was convicted on all charges regarding the Senate seat.

Jurors delivered their verdicts Monday after deliberating nine days.

Blagojevich had testified for seven days, denying wrongdoing. Prosecutors said he lied and the proof was on FBI wiretaps. Those included a widely parodied clip in which Blagojevich calls the Senate opportunity “f------ golden.”

Jurors in his first trial deadlocked on all but one charge, convicting Blagojevich of lying to the FBI. Blagojevich already faces up to five years for the lying conviction.

So, of the 21 charges, he was found guilty earlier of 1 of them, and has now been found guilty of 17 more. Running Guilt Total: 18 out of 21. Will they now re-try him for the 3rd time to get a conviction of the 2 deadlocked charges??

Blagojevich was arrested in December 2008, after the FBI had wiretapped hundreds of his telephone calls at work and home. The Illinois Legislature impeached him a month later.

Both trials hinged on whether the former governor’s bold ramblings to aides and others on the telephone was just talk, as he insisted, or part of “a political crime spree,” in the words of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Before a national audience, the Blagojevich saga exacerbated Illinois’ reputation for graft. The convictions mean Blagojevich is the second Illinois governor in a row facing a prison sentence for corruption. His predecessor, former Gov. George Ryan, is serving a 6 1/2 year sentence.

Oh well. Now, how about going after Jesse Jackson junior and Obanjo himself? They had a part in this too you know.

Can we get a bunch of Republicans to sing outside the courthouse? “na na naa na, na na naa na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” WTF, that’s what the scumbag left did for Bush at the inauguration. It would only be fair, and much more fitting, to give this felon a bit of a serenade.

Lock him up for 20 years, and that’s after he turn’s State’s Evidence to reduce his jail time by ratting out his cronies. 20 years is a gift: he could go in a maximum of 345.

The 11 women and one man reached the verdicts on their 10th day of deliberation in the trial, which began April 20. As the verdicts were read, Blagojevich turned to look back at his wife, Patti, who dropped into her seat. None of the jurors would look at the defendant as the verdicts were being read.

He was found guilty of all 10 counts involving wire fraud—each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The other 10 involved extortion and bribery. Most of the counts have a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

The jury acquitted Blagojevich on one count of bribery and was unable to reach verdicts on two counts of attempted extortion.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/27/2011 at 04:22 PM   
Filed Under: • GovernmentCorruption and GreedMiscellaneous •  
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calendar   Sunday - June 26, 2011

A Summer Evening In Clinton

We had our first aerial visitors of the season this evening. It was a pretty nice day, fairly dry after the last few days of rain, not too hot, with just a slight breeze. And that means it’s time once again for the evening balloon races.

They launch from the parking lot of a nice restaurant a couple miles to the west of us, and play fox and hounds while floating eastwards across the county. I don’t know if it’s because of the lay of the land - it’s pretty flat between here and the restaurant, except for the slight rise of the hill we live on the backside of - but once or twice a year the balloons seem to have a bit of trouble maintaining altitude right about the time they get to my back yard.

So when I hear that magnificent throaty FFFFWWWOOOOOOOOSHH I know it’s time to grab the camera and run outside.



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They got away this time. Sometimes they don’t, and we’ve got the balloon squad running all around bringing one down and deflating it. Not today. Today they turned those massive burners on full blast and rose up and over the roofs, just barely!, and went on their way. By the time they’d drifted over the 3rd row of buildings they were probably 75 feet up.

My neighbors are so blase they didn’t even go and look. Me? Out there in a flash. Hot air balloons are kind of like leprechauns; if you catch one when it comes down in your yard you get a free bottle of champagne instead of that fabled pot of gold. So I pay attention. Just in case.

More pictures below the fold. I don’t know why the zoom feature seems to push things back so much. The building in these pictures couldn’t be 75 feet away, and hot air balloons are pretty darn huge. But somehow most of the sense of presence that makes them so magical is lost in these pictures, except for the last one, which is also a link to the fullsize image, which does have the magic.

See More Below The Fold

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/26/2011 at 07:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily LifeFun-Stuff •  
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Double Trouble

UPDATE, Christmas Day 2011:

It has come to my attention, from direct contact with friends of Brooks Papineau, that the jihad angle of this story may be false. Everyone in the news media based their stories on one report released by the Sheriff’s office.  A little bit of internet research shows that the man was given a Christian burial and is not remembered as a convert to jizzlam AT ALL.

Brooks Lawrence Papineau of Key Center, WA, born May 10, 1957, passed away unexpectedly June 15, 2011, at the age of 54.

Brooks was a Kitsap Peninsula native who graduated from West Bremerton High in 1975. Brooks served his country two years in the Army National Guard and five years in the Coast Guard. He worked at the U.S. Postal Service for the past 27 years.

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Funeral Mass will be held at Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church

I have had a lengthy email conversation with one of his friends, going back and forth several times, and that has sown the seeds of doubt. It is just as likely that the “he had a koran and was converting” is not only a misstatement but an outright lie. A veteran, a postman, and a gun collector? On the West Coast? Heck, that sounds like the core thesis for another “rogue soldier - government trained killer - goes on killing frenzy” storyline for an NCIS episode on TV. I am making no accusations: I am merely saying that the Sudden Jihad Syndrome meme that went viral in the press and across the internet could be not just accidentally false, but deliberately false. And if it was deliberate, then the question you have to ask yourself is WHY. Why would someone make such a statement ... in a part of the country where they spit on disabled veterans during parades ... where we saw those “protesters” marching some years ago with their “We support the troops when they frag their officers” banner ... where half the cop shows on TV are filmed and written, and the “rogue soldier” theme gets used at least once a week by at least one of them? Ahem.

So let me make myself very clear here: the news stories IMPLIED jihadism. The guy’s friends say that’s BS. The man was given a Catholic funeral and burial. Will the RC church do such a thing for an actual convert? I don’t know, but I have my doubts. I have NO INFORMATION AT ALL that this was a “bad shoot” or that anti-military attitudes or anti-postal worker attitudes had anything to do with it. I just tossed those out there because they are not impossible, especially not in that corner of the nation ... though to be extra fair, it could be very wrong for me to paint Tacoma Washington with the brush that properly covers the Olympia Washington area. I’m not from there, I’ve never been there, but I know that certain parts of that state - see Sondra K’s blog, right? - are over-the-left-horizon nutso. So anything is possible.

For all I know, the statements about the man’s mental health, his driving record, and his drinking habits may also be wrong. As his friend has written, this entire story is based on ONE press release by the police.

I am waiting for more information from his friends that will help clarify this situation. It will never be a good situation; a man is dead. But there is no reason to support a false meme (or several of them), and the little I’ve found so far is enough to cast reasonable doubt on that. Not proof, but reasonable doubt ... against a misstatement/misunderstanding/malicious rumor/bit of emergency CYA perhaps. Welcome to the digital age; that’s about the best I can do right now. It’s not like we’ve never seen a smear campaign go on before. Herman Cain, Robert Bjork anyone?

If and when I get more information I will consider it and may edit out large parts of this story. Until such time it stands, but it would be irresponsible of me to not stridently point out that one, several, or nearly all the parts of this story may be wrong or false. Give the deceased a fair shake, because he can no longer speak for himself.

Merry Christmas.

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Not sure how to title this one. Is it

Postal Worker Goes Jihadi?

or

Jihadi Goes Postal?

KEY PENINSULA, Wash.—A man who was fatally shot by Tacoma police during a traffic stop early Wednesday morning pointed a gun loaded with armor-piercing bullets at the officer who stopped him and was carrying a large amount of ammunition in his truck, the Tacoma Police Department said.

Wednesday afternoon, the Medical Examiner’s Office identified the man as Brooks Papineau of Gig Harbor. He died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

“The driver exited his vehicle armed with a gun, and the officer opened fire, striking the subject,” said Mark Fulghum of the Tacoma Police Department.

When police searched Papineau’s truck, they found a large amount of ammunition and additional ammunition magazines.They also said they found a Koran and several books on converting to Islam.

Police said Papineau went home sick from his job at the U.S. Postal Service at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Pierce County sheriff’s investigators say it appears the armed man who was killed by a Tacoma police officer during a traffic stop did not fire his handgun.

Spokesman Ed Troyer says the semi-automatic gun was loaded with bullets that can pierce body armor. More ammunition was found in the man’s pickup truck along with a sword, pepper spray, an English version of the Quran and book on the rights of non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

The man was identified by the medical examiner’s office as 54-year-old Brooks Papineau of Gig Harbor.

Troyer says he smelled of alcohol and had a history of drunken driving.

The officer who fired at Papineau is a seven year veteran of the Tacoma Police Department. She was not hurt in the confrontation. Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer says investigators learned the driver lived in the area, had a history of drunk driving stops, and mental health issues.

So we’ve got a mental case postman with alcohol issues who appears to be a recent convert to islam. And we all know how extra motivated recent converts to anything are.

The good news is that the off duty cop stopped this drunk from doing who knows what, and reacted fast enough to a bad situation to save her own life.

I looked at more than two dozen articles on this incident, and the most I could find out was that he pulled a semi-automatic. Suicide by cop perhaps. But I could find out nothing about the “armor piercing ammunition”. No surprise there. Real armor piercing pistol ammo is damn rare stuff. The truth is that regular bullets shot from medium powered handguns will shoot right through the less expensive Level I police vests; Level II vests won’t always stop the higher powered handgun bullets. Low powered centerfire rifle bullets will also penetrate these vests, and bullets shot from any kind of hunting rifle more potent than great-grandpa’s .30-30 will go through any vest other than the top rated military models. And those might be defeated by actual high powered magnum rifles firing actual armor piercing bullets. No vest is truly bulletproof, because there are always bigger and stronger bullets. But your typical money saving Level I cop vest is only good for stopping bullets of .38 Special power or less, and while that’s better than no vest at all, it isn’t really much protection. So almost any bullet would be judged armor-piercing against a vest like that, and the media just can’t resist this kind of thing.

The koran in the car along with books about converting and about dhimitude is getting just about no attention, naturally. To the media, it’s no different than having a couple of those pamphlets the Jehovah’s Witness folks leave on your doorstep.

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/26/2011 at 12:49 PM   
Filed Under: • GovernmentGuns and Gun ControlRoPMA •  
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Sunday Bits

Not much from me today; I’ve got work and plenty of things to do around the home. Tomorrow won’t be much better; we’re going to visit the SIL as she recuperates from her surgery. That will be a long quiet day, but there is the promise of large quantities of decent take-out Thai food.

Are you sleeping too well at night? Get your copy of Subversion, Inc. and you may never sleep again. It’s all about ACORN and Alinksy and other nefarious community organizers and assorted commies who have not really gone underground at all and continue to rig elections and work against the things that America is all about. I think that’s all covered by the umbrella concept of “fundamental change”.

America is under siege as radicals determined to pulverize the U.S. Constitution deliberately bankrupt the nation, destroy the electoral system, and drive the economy into the ground.

How do you destroy a great nation? Sap its citizens’ self-respect and encourage civil unrest. It’s no coincidence that the welfare rolls are exploding everywhere and there’s no end in sight. An appalling 1 in 7 Americans now receives food stamps and there are 70 bloated federal welfare programs. The failed War on Poverty that started in President Lyndon Johnson’s time has cost taxpayers a staggering $16 trillion - and President Obama, who killed the welfare reforms of the 1990s, wants to spend $10 trillion more! To help distribute the wealth even more, radicals handcuffed banks and forced them to give mortgages to people on welfare who had no chance of paying it back. This isn’t so-called social justice: it’s slow-motion national suicide.

How did a country with a respect for economic freedoms unparalleled in all of history ever get to this point? Marxist professors and agitators Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven spent their lives trying to destroy “the system” -American capitalism and democracy-- in order to drag the country kicking and screaming into a socialist nightmare. They thought that if Americans could be strong-armed into going on welfare in large numbers radical change would surely follow. Liberals worked hand-in-hand with Communists and other extremists to undermine the American system by giving activists taxpayer money to bring it down.

Come again? Even now most Americans don’t realize that their taxes subsidize radical activist armies like those created by the late “professional radical” Saul Alinsky. These revolutionary organizations flourished and became a permanent force to be reckoned with on the nation’s political landscape. They’re still on the scene today.

Another epic read for your VRWC bookshelf, $14.25 at Amazon.




The Wall Street Journal has an article in favor of fracking those deep deep gas shales, and debunks several of the fear memes the antis are putting out.

The Bakken formation, along the Montana-North Dakota border, is thought to hold four billion barrels of oil (the biggest proven estimate outside Alaska), and the drilling boom helps explain North Dakota’s unemployment rate of 3.2%, the nation’s lowest.

All of this growth has inevitably attracted critics, notably environmentalists and their allies. They’ve launched a media and political assault on hydraulic fracturing, and their claims are raising public anxiety. So it’s a useful moment to separate truth from fiction in the main allegations against the shale revolution.

• Fracking contaminates drinking water. One claim is that fracking creates cracks in rock formations that allow chemicals to leach into sources of fresh water. The problem with this argument is that the average shale formation is thousands of feet underground, while the average drinking well or aquifer is a few hundred feet deep. Separating the two is solid rock. This geological reality explains why EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, a determined enemy of fossil fuels, recently told Congress that there have been no “proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

Lisa Jackson is not terribly competent IMO, but she is a major tree hugger. Maybe she hasn’t got the latest talking points list from Alan Colmes and the Sierra Club yet. But the WSJ post is helpful if you need to defend this new way to get at a nearly infinite amount of energy right under our own feet.




Subverting Nature - another 10 minute read from the WSJ. And another book review, but why you’d need more data than this article has is beyond me. Inexpensive sonograms come to the Turd World and the result is that the abortion rate shoots way up for women carrying female fetuses. This has been going on for quite some time now. What happens when you raise a population that has tens of millions of excess males who stand no chance at all of getting a wife? Bad things like crime and wars. And slavery and forced prostitution. The downstream effects aren’t covered that much in this essay, but they’re easy to think about. China probably has 50 million young men they have no use for right now, and they’re building up their army and navy at an amazing rate. Heck, they could arm these guys with chopsticks and it would be a force big enough to take over half the world. That is, until they met up with the 30 million excess guys from India armed with spoons.




While Peiper tries to get his back to behave, here’s a nice bit of fluff from the UK. The event was serious, and the writer gives it all due respect, but the photographer must have been on loan from the fashion department.

Kate in command: Duchess of Cambridge does dress uniform as she carries out first military role as a royal
The Duchess of Cambridge took on her first military role as a royal today as she handed out operational medals to members of the Irish Guards. Alongside the Duke of Cambridge, who is Colonel of the Irish Guards, Kate presented medals to soldiers who have recently returned from serving in Afghanistan. A royal aide said the Duchess was very pleased to be undertaking the role for a regiment ‘so close to her husband’s heart’.

The 1st Battalion Irish Guards returned in April from a six-month tour in Afghanistan where they were deployed to 22 different locations in Helmand Province, tasked with developing the Afghan Army. Six soldiers returned home two weeks before the royal couple’s wedding day and had ceremonial duties to perform in London on the day.

The Duke of Cambridge spoke of his ‘pride and humility’ today as he presented the medals.

She didn’t actually wear a uniform, she just chose an outfit that was perfectly coordinated to the dress uniforms around her. And the newly married couple did look super spiffy. Good for them for looking elegant and razor sharp while doing their duty.

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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/26/2011 at 11:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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calendar   Saturday - June 25, 2011

I Forgot The Milk

Saturday Brunch



3/4 lb of good thick sliced bacon

4 medium Russet potatoes
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp finely ground black pepper
1/3 cup flour, but only use half of it at first
1/4 cup milk
1 heaping tablespoon finely chopped yellow onion

I just had to give in to the ‘tater pancake urge this morning. Got out the old kartoffelreibe and made up a small batch while the bacon was frying. So good, and so filling.

Take a 1/4” slice off the middle of a big yellow onion, then cut that in half. Chop that up and it’s about the right amount. Chop the other half and set it aside. Scramble a large fresh egg in the bottom of a mixing bowl, then add salt, pepper, and half of the flour. Mix it up. Put the kartoffelreibe (wire mesh potato grater) over the bowl and scrub the peeled raw potatoes back and forth until your arm gets tired. Switch arms and finish the job. Mix it all up. It should be a pinkish-beige runny mess, thinner than pancake batter and a bit lumpy. If it’s really runny add a little more flour.

Heat up an iron griddle. Take a teaspoonful of bacon fat and pour it on the griddle. It will start to smoke a bit almost instantly. Pour about 1/3 -1/2 cup of the batter right on top of it. Now make a decision: do you want crispy pancakes or chewy ones? If crispier wins, push the batter down with a fork and spread it as much as you can. For chewy, just leave fork it around until you’ve got a pancake sized semi-flattened lump. Another spoonful of fat for the next pancake, another dollop of batter. On a good hot griddle the pancakes will be ready to turn in about 2 minutes. You want them lightly browned. Flip carefully, and cook the other side.

Serve them slathered with butter along with sour cream and the extra chopped onions on the side. Or try them with applesauce and powdered sugar. I go with the butter and sour cream, and find I usually have to add a little more salt and pepper.

You will have to play with the recipe a bit over time. You don’t really need the flour, and as I found out this morning, you don’t really need the milk. But you want to balance the moistness of the potatoes against the thickness of the batter, so a little milk or a little more flour will change the density of the finished pancakes quite a bit but only alter the flavor a little. But if you write things down as you experiment, you’ll be able to repeat it when you get them the way you like best. I like them best with just a hint of onion flavor and a strong taste of just barely cooked potato.

This recipe made 8 nice sized pancakes. 4 per person with a few slices of bacon, a generous wedge of cantaloupe, and good strong coffee makes a very filling solid breakfast.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/25/2011 at 01:59 PM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
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Worrisome

I’ve discovered Ann Barnhardt’s blog. I read the entire thing, every post, as far back as early May, and there wasn’t one part that I found myself disagreeing with.

I don’t want to be the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and I don’t want to be fitted for a tinfoil hat, but in an era where delusional conspiracy theories like Operation Gunwalker actually turn out to be true, how can you know where to draw the line? The line between crazy and real gets more blurred every day; it takes a tremendous amount of research and analysis to get the facts straight on any single issue, and we have hundreds of issues to deal with. Who has that kind of time, given that it takes a good understanding of dozens of issues to form a proper “big picture”.

So ... here we go:

Double Red Alert
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - June 24, AD 2011 9:01 AM MST
Two HUGE intel leads in my email box this morning from way-back contacts that I’ve had for years, that are actually somewhat connected concepts.

1. File this one under “Now It All Makes Sense”. A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY THEIR LAND.

Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmground. Destroy people’s communities and homes. Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap. Those evil sons of bitches.

2. Speaking of evil sons of bitches, George Soros appears to be “investing” in farmground through the same puppet company that he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business. The company is called Ospraie Capital Management and is buying up farmground in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner.

Bottom line: Soros, through Ospraie, is buying up farmground. Please also note that the hotlink citation above is dated June 26, 2009. My contact says this has been going on for two years - and also remember what I told you about farmground prices inflating wildly, especially in Illinois. I have personally confirmed farmground in Illinois selling for $13,000 per acre within the last month, whereas that same kind of ground in Illinois was going for $5500 per acre the day Obama was inaugurated.

Ms. Barnhardt runs a capital management business and is deeply involved with the buying and selling of agrarian products. According to her, cows (excuse me, cattle - this is not my area of expertise! Yet!) are a losing proposition right now. To me that means that there will eventually be less of them for sale. Which means less food.

I did a few hours worth of looking things up and reading the other day before I posted that story about the environmentalists subverting the goals of the Army Corps of Engineers, and how the flooding in the heartland is difficult to accept as being accidental.  As far as I can tell that story is true. And now we have this.

There will not be much of a wheat harvest this year from the hundreds of thousands of acres that have been flooded. If the farmers who work that land go out of business and the land goes fallow there won’t be any harvest at all for next year. You don’t need to watch Glen Beck to realize that the price of food is about to skyrocket, even though the price of food is nearly double what it was just 4 or 5 years ago. Other than vegetables, EVERYTHING runs on grain. Government has mangled agribusiness. It started with farm subsidies generations ago (under our first commie president FDR), grew with government price fixing for things like milk, protectionist legislation for things like sugar etc., but it really ramped up with the ethanol subsidy on corn. That tipped the heavily laden scales, and the thumb (ethanol subsidy) is still pushing down. That’s all a mere drop in the bucket compared to how bad it’s going to become if the dark intent implicit behind the Big Picture behind Barnhardt’s post is correct. Remember the food riots around the Turd World a couple years back when they found they could no longer afford corn meal and flour? Wait till they start in your own neighborhood. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

When (not if) the economy collapses, and physical or digital money becomes worthless, the only asset of real worth will be land. If Marxists (either in government or government approved private hands) control that land and the food grown on it, we lose. As I have said before, genocide via starvation is the easiest solution to get rid of the opposition. And it’s an old old formula for the far left. Ask an Armenian. If you can find one. The greenie wet dream is to have about 3/4 billion people on the entire planet. Their people of course. And some slaves to do the work - our children and grandchildren.

On the other hand, come the collapse, it will be VERY easy to pin the blame on the evil capitalist farmers, even though it was purposeful long running government action that lead them astray. So once they’ve all been put up against the re-education wall and shot, the rest of us proles will all have to do our mandated civic duty and ride the government run trains out to the fields to plant, and then later to harvest, the crops by hand. Without the aide of Gaia-hating machines. Just like the “free” citizens of the USSR used to have to do, or be shot. Or starved. Hey, it’s “for our own good”.

Sharpen you sickles comrades. A totalitarian agrarian economy is only one step above barbarism, and barbarism says that the only thing that is yours is what you can hold onto by force. None of it works if the proles and the peasants “demand” reform and have the strength to get it. As revered Chairman Mao used to say, political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Eventually the Eloi will rise up. Or go down fighting.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/25/2011 at 11:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat LeftistsEconomicsCorruption and GreedScary Stuff •  
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calendar   Friday - June 24, 2011

Kncok Off The BS

We have plenty of reasons to be unhappy with Obama’s opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to supply half the missing Libyan oil supply in accordance with the IEA’s decision. They demanded 60 million barrels worth, and Obama is going to come through with 30 million. I hope and pray that that oil is NOT going to be exported, and instead used right here in the USA. As it is, it replaces just over 6 months of all the crude we import from Libya, which is not very much. Call it half a VLCC tanker ship full per week, when the USA uses 10 VLCC tankers full per day. Rail all you want about this being an artificial impact on the commodity price or whatever. I agree. Get cranky and storm about how this is nothing more than political glad-handling; a desperate move to boost his flagging poll numbers. I agree.

But let’s not make up lies out of whole cloth about it. We don’t need to.

I am not familiar with the Washington Examiner. I don’t know if they are the local equivalent of an honest and honorable New York Times, or if their usual headlines feature Bat Boy and the Ghost of Elvis. That doesn’t matter. Instapundit links to an article they printed wherein Jim Adam, president and CEO of the Offshore Marine Service Association, is all upset that Obama is willing to let the Jones Act slide if needed to move that crude.

The Jones Act, as you know, is an old piece of protectionist legislation that demands that American ships and American crews ply the seas up and down our coastlines. For safety reasons, of course, since those foreigners never bother to build good ships or equip them properly. Whatever. It’s law, and it was this law that kept those foreign flagged cleaner ships idling when we had the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. President Bush waived it temporarily after Katrina so that supplies and aid could be brought in faster. Obama is willing to let it go to help move the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. And that has Jim Adam all upset.

Obama resolutely refused last year to waive the Jones Act in order to allow the DEME and other equipment offered by foreign nations to be brought to the Deepwater Horizon cleanup. An operation that could have been completed in four months instead stretched into nearly a year.

But this week we have learned that under certain well-defined conditions Obama is more than willing to set aside his reservations about waiving the Jones Act. And those conditions have mainly to do with the fact Obama wants to be re-elected in 2012.

Among the biggest obstacles to Obama’s re-election effort is the prospect that gas will still be around $4 a gallon next year. So what does Obama do? Not only does he authorize using 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he waives the Jones Act to allow foreign crewed ships to deliver the SPR oil to U.S. ports.

That decision left Jim Adam, president and CEO of the Offshore Marine Service Association, bewildered and angry. He issued this statement:

It is mind-boggling that the president would jeopardize national security by letting foreign owned and operated ships transport oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to and from American ports. (Ironically, the President had earlier cited Libyan unrest as a national security emergency in order to tap those reserves.)

I would think he’d know better. I would think that journalists, especially those from the Gulf States, would know better. This is a red herring, a species I didn’t know swam in the Gulf. And it took me all of two minutes to figure it out. In other words, he’s lying out his ass.

Fairly Reasonable Proof:
The US Government created the Strategic Petroleum Reserves back in the mid-70s, after the great a-rab Oil Embargo. They built them under Texas and Louisiana by hollowing out salt domes. Remember, back then we were not only protecting ourselves against crazy OPEC, we were still Fighting Communism, and oil is as strategic an asset as there can be. So the government built a bunch of gigantic self-sealing holes deep underground. And then they built miles and miles of pipeline to a good number of the local refineries. Underground, well protected, high volume pipeline. Just in case the Russians or the Chicoms should start sinking our tankers in the Gulf during a war. That’s what the Strategic Reserve is for. It’s not for topping off your Camry. It’s to make sure our jets and our tanks have the fuel they need to blast the Reds. It’s for war. And real, end-of-days national emergencies. Like Obama’s poll numbers getting too low. Heck, if there was another blue dress in the White House we’d be bombing Bosnia again.

From the Department of Energy:

imageStorage locations along the Gulf Coast were selected because they provide the most flexible means for connecting to the Nation’s commercial oil transport network. Strategic Reserve oil can be distributed through interstate pipelines to nearly half of the Nation’s oil refineries or loaded into ships or barges for transport to other refineries.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve caverns range in size from 6 to 35 million barrels in capacity; a typical cavern holds 10 million barrels and cylindrical in shape with a diameter of 200 feet and a height of 2,000 feet. One storage cavern is large enough for Chicago’s Sears Tower to fit inside with room to spare. The Reserve contains 62 of these huge underground caverns.

So the storage caverns are right there, right in the middle of the main American crude oil world. Right along the coasts, with piers and pipes already in place. And we already have an existing pipeline network to most of the refineries. Now, one guess as to where most of the refineries are? Go on, take a guess. What, you say they’re in the same area? Woo-hoo! You win!!

According to Wikipedia, 14 of the 20 largest refineries in the whole US of A are located in either Texas or Louisiana. The combined processing capacity of those 14 refineries can eat up that 30 million barrels worth in barely 6 days.

Who would like to bet that when the US government laid that infrastructure pipeline from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve salt domes to the refineries and the national oil distribution network, they went for the low hanging fruit first and connected up to the local refineries? Someone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? I think you’d be foolish to bet against that.

Oh, and if some of that oil just absolutely, positively needed to be moved by ship, we already have an entire little navy of “lighters”. American ships, Americans crews. Lighters are “normal” sized oil tankers of “only” half a million barrels capacity, and they exist because almost no deep water ports exist in the United States. They are “little” oil tankers that go down only 13 meters below the surface, as opposed to the gigantic ULCC and VLCC tankers that draft 20 meters or more. Those giant ships don’t come in to port, and they don’t sail up the Mississippi. No, they offload their oil to half a dozen or so lighters, and those ships take it upriver and into port. And they do this transfer at sea, right off the Texas and Louisiana coastlines. And should they have to go to the other big refineries in California, those lighters are small enough to be within Panamax standards. Which means they can fit through the Panama Canal. Just in case there isn’t a pipeline to the west coast. Yeah right.

Lightering
In many situations, the tanker is too large to enter the load or discharge port. The most prominent example is the USA which has almost no ports which can accept drafts in excess of 13 meters. A fully loaded VLCC will have a draft in excess of 20 meters. A ULCC can have a draft of as much as 25 meters. When these ships bring oil to the United States, they almost always have to off-load their cargo to a smaller tankers at sea. The smaller tankers, called lighters, then actually deliver the oil to the refineries which in some cases are well in-shore. For example, the Exxon refinery at Baton Rouge is 200 miles up the Mississippi River.

This process is called lightering. Lightering normally takes place 20 to 50 miles offshore. The lighters typically have a cargo capacity of about 500,000 barrels. Thus, a VLCC will offload to about four lighters in a single discharge, and a ULCC to as many as six. The lighters have a deadweight of about 80,000 tons. Their loaded displacement is about the same as a nuclear aircaft carrier. They are bigger than the largest ship afloat in 1960. The lighters may be small compared to a VLCC or a ULCC, but they are big ships.

A VLCC tanker holds about 2 million barrels of oil. The United States uses around 20 million barrels of oil per day. 10 ships full. 4 to 6 lighters per VLCC. Give the lighters a couple days to sail from their loading point to the refineries, some time to pump out their cargo, and time to sail back ... call it a 5 day turnaround ... this implies that there are at least 225 lighters in operation. Probably more than 300. Operating in the exact same area as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Assume a few of them are sitting around idle for lack of Libyan oil ... it’s pretty obvious that not one foreign vessel will be needed to move a single drop of this oil. Not one. And the guy in charge of the Offshore Maritime Service Association should know better. Moving oil and moving oil men is his world.

Knock off the bullshit.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/24/2011 at 09:15 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Taxi Flashback

One from John Cox, former political cartoonist

image


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 06/24/2011 at 08:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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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:
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