Thursday - July 14, 2011

Losing Safely

We had a bad night at bowling. Phooey.

Bill has realized that his super cranker style of palming the ball is giving him tendinitis. Bowler’s forearm. I’ve had it myself. It means you’re doing things wrong, putting too much effort into throwing the ball. And he has; he’s been using an ancient plastic alley ball, but putting so many revs on it that it hooks like mad. So he’s decided to be a stroker, and is using a second hand ball he picked up for $10 and had drilled for him in the conventional style.

That’s kind of a mistake. If you go the stroker route and you want the ball to hook, or even flare, you want a fingertip layout. He’ll figure that out eventually. It makes a huge difference.

So he’s back to square one, learning the whole game over. And his scores reflect that. He went from throwing 170-230 games to throwing in the 90s. Ouch. That really annoyed him, no kidding, so he tried bowling harder to make things better. Rocketing the ball down the lane. Twisting his hand all around trying to get some action on the ball. Mistake. It was like looking into the past for me, as this is exactly what I went through several years ago. Ease off Bill. Slow down. Be gentle. Let the ball do the work. Get the ball out there, and turn your hand late. Turn your wrist, not your shoulder. Come through the ball, and “answer the phone”. Ha, I didn’t listen either when people told me that stuff. It took me a long time to embrace those methods. But gosh it was a shock to me when he over-rotated, go this thumb stuck in the ball, and threw it straight up in the air and into the gutter. I haven’t done that one in years.

The rest of us had a bad night too, hardly even making our averages.

We played the last place team, 4 raw beginners who roll in the very low 100s. We gave them a handicap that was far larger than the average of their best roller. They didn’t have a great night either, but we sucked worse, so they won. They took the first game by a dozen. They took the second game by 8 I think. We came back in the third game, and if we could have rallied and won by 20 or so we would have taken wood and split the night 4-3. But we couldn’t, even though I went 23 over on that round. We won game 3 by 4 pins but didn’t get wood, so we went 5-2 for the whole night.

The good news is that losing to this team won’t really change anything. An extra 5 points for them won’t hurt us, and we still have enough margin to hold on to first place for another week no matter what. Our poor showing will drop our averages a couple of points, which will only help us hand out less handicap to the next team we play. I’m hoping Bill quickly learns the laid back down-and-in stroker line and gets his numbers back where they belong. It’s more fun that way, and I don’t want him injuring himself trying to win a silly game. It’s not worth it. But I do want to win.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/14/2011 at 08:35 AM   
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Wednesday - July 13, 2011

Service For Wednesday

Long before Terry Pratchett dreamed up the Nac Mac Feegle and had Paul Kidby paint them going into battle, the Highland Regiments served faithfully in the trenches of the First World War. Doggerel poet Robert W. Service was there, serving in the Ambulance Corps. Finding himself alive at the end of that conflict, he mixed humor and the horrors of war together to find out what it takes to really, really piss off a Scotsman. The result was The Haggis of Robert McPhee, a bit of verse soaked in the Feegle-ish phraseology of Robert Burns, in which our two heroes are sent out past the wire to gather information on the enemy. Severely wounded by a sapper’s mine, one blinded and one with his legs shot off, they work together to get back to their own lines, driven the whole time by the thought of the care package dinner awaiting them, with the promise of a drink of whisky. When another shell hits that meal just as it’s ready to serve, the whole regiment goes over the top in a mad act of revenge. It was of course January 25th when this happened.

Humor in uniform, ages before Reader’s Digest.



Speaking of things a wee bit Scottish ...

The Haggis of Private McPhee


“Hae ye heard whit ma auld mither’s postit tae me?
It fair maks me hamesick,” says Private McPhee.
“And whit did she send ye?” says Private McPhun,
As he cockit his rifle and bleezed at a Hun.
“A haggis! A HAGGIS!” says Private McPhee;
“The brawest big haggis I ever did see.
And think! it’s the morn when fond memory turns
Tae haggis and whuskey—the Birthday o’ Burns.
We maun find a dram; then we’ll ca’ in the rest
O’ the lads, and we’ll hae a Burns’ Nicht wi’ the best.”

The whole thing is here below the fold:

Posted by Drew458     on 07/13/2011 at 02:42 PM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy • Humor • Military •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

I approve!

I approve of this result: Ice Cream Truck Driver Shot and Killed

I can’t tell you how often I’ve wanted to do just that. Daily I’m bombarded by ice cream trucks blasting ‘HELLO!’ to me. I’m sure they in violation of all OSHA regulation regarding broadcast sounds.

I remember ice cream trucks fondly. When I was a kid, the ice cream man would park on a block, and then turn on his music. Softly. But loud enough that we kids knew he/she/it was there, and could lobbie Mom or Dad for funding.

Here, I can hear them coming three blocks away! I don’t want to hear ‘Hello…’ again. As if we didn’t notice your lack of manners.

Yes, this happened in Dayton. Not a part of town I’m familiar with. But…open season on annoying ice cream trucks?

If they’d do the way they did when I was a kid–no problem. As it stands–my hat’s off to whoever did the deed.

Posted by Christopher     on 07/13/2011 at 10:29 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Daily Life •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Not a Good Day at Duxford

Duxford Imperial War Museum was hosting its annual and hugely popular Flying Legends event on Sunday when the accident happened.

The crash involved two planes, one being a P-51 Mustang and the other a Skyraider.

Dutch photogrpaher Johan Boerman captured this amazing image of the pilot of the P-51 parachuting to safety.

The pilot of the other plane was uninjured, managing to land his heavily damaged plane.

David Quinton, from Woodhurst, who shot the footage below, said he was watching the display from a field in Thriplow and recording the planes with an HD camcorder.

“We didn’t realise what had happened at first,” he said. “We were just hoping everyone was ok. Because it was so low we didn’t know if the parachute would open.”

Another eyewitness said: “The P-51 is the aircraft that has crashed with the pilot managing to leave the aircraft and parachute to safety with the plane coming down on the perimeter of the airfield out of site of the crowd.

“The Skyraider managed to make an emergency landing with a large portion of the starboard wing missing.

“An announcement later from the tannoy informed everyone that the pilot of the crashed plane had landed safely and walked to the ambulance.”

The planes were taking part in an annual Flying Legends show in Cambridgeshire when they clipped wings over agricultural land.

The accident sent one plane plummeting to the ground and forced its pilot to bale out before parachuting to safety. The craft, reported to be a P-51 Mustang, came down to the south west of RAF Duxford, just after 5pm on Sunday. The second plane was able to fly on and land, no one was injured.

Mark Brown, a pilot from Warminster who witnessed the crash, told CambridgeFirst how the second aircraft, a Skyraider, lost a “large chunk of its wing tip” which fell to the ground. He said the crash happened after three planes formed a triangle before peeling off to the left.

“As they did that the leader and the one that was following clipped each other,” he said. “It went into a bit of a dive then sorted itself out. The other aircraft dived away from the airfield. They were only about 100 feet at this point. “Then we saw someone jump out and a parachute open.”

Others described seeing “large chunks of metal” fall to the ground before one entered a dive and hit the ground behind some trees.

A spokesman for the show’s organisers, Imperial War Museum Duxford, said: ’The pilots of both aircraft are safe and have been treated by the Ambulance Service.

‘The cause of the incident will now be investigated by the Air Accident Investigation Branch and the museum is therefore not able to comment on the likely cause.’
...
A spokesman for the AAIB said: ‘The Air Accident Investigation Branch is aware of the incident and are sending a team to investigate’.

The Flying Legends airshow at the aerodrome, home of the Imperial War Museum Duxford, featured Spitfires flying together with ‘Buchon’ Messerschmitt-style fighters for the first time since the making of the famous 1968 movie Battle Of Britain.
...
Today, the aerodrome is one of the Imperial War Museum’s five sites across the country, where exhibits too large for its London headquarters are stored, restored and displayed. Over the weekend, more than 55 aircraft participated in the war plane displays, which were jointly organised with the Fighter Collection.

It was the first time the Hispano Aviación HA-1112 M1L ‘Buchon’ single-engined fighters had flown alongside Spitfires since the filming of the famous Battle of Britain movie, scenes of which were filmed in the skies over Duxford.

All the links above have the video, but the last link, to the Daily Mail, has the best photos. Warbird air crashes at the Duxford show are not uncommon. It seems they lose one or two old planes every few years. This time the pilots got out safely; that isn’t always the case.

Not being a pilot, from what I can tell from the video is that the idea was for the 3 planes to all do a hard banking turn to the left so that at the end of the turn they would be all in a line nose to tail. The first Mustang pulled up and banked, then the second one waited a second to make his move, then the Skyraider went. Looks like the plan was for the Skyraider to turn inside the other two and go from last in formation to first. His wing clipped the first Mustang partway through the turn, which caused the Mustang to go into a flat spin off camera to the right, at which point the pilot ejected. I think the planes were a good bit higher than the 100 feet the witness guessed; it takes time for a parachute to open and in the first picture above you can see that the chute is jut blossoming and the pilot still has several hundred feet to go before hitting the ground.

h/t to Lyndon B

small update: Cllr Andrew Wallis posts the story and points out that this crash was at the very very end of the show, after wave after wave of planes flew by for the finale. A Fokker DR-1 Triplane also had a minor ground loop on landing and nosed over. No injuries. Theo has the promo video featuring a good number of other planes but not the crash. It has great footage of the Triplane dancing in the sky and turning around practically in it’s own length. Which is possible when you can fly at 30mph instead of 400mph. Nice.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/13/2011 at 09:16 AM   
Filed Under: • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

FYI

I’ve not been posting much because we’ve been busy.

See, my wife’s Mom suffered a major stroke on June 24. She passed away on July 10, without regaining consciousness.

Anyway, we’re busy. Mother-in-law owned mucho rental properties. And property taxes are due July 17.

My wife is the executor of the estate. Mother-in-law didn’t keep very good records. 

Posted by Christopher     on 07/13/2011 at 06:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Personal •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Tuesday - July 12, 2011

I give up

I’ve been trying to create some fun rollovers for the past two days. I can’t make them work properly. The ones built with Javascript don’t run at all within the post frame on this old version of ExpressionEngine. The ones built using CSS mostly work, but don’t seem to line up properly. I tried both the background image offset on hover method and the hide the foreground image on hover method.

Phooey.

So here are a couple of thumbnails that link to much bigger images. That I can do.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/12/2011 at 02:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Too Right

Posted by Drew458     on 07/12/2011 at 08:31 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

a coffee, a coffee. my castle for a coffee.  oh never mind.

The ole knee seems to be having trouble holding me up. Sort of. OK not that bad really but damn bothersome.

Had electrician here all day yesterday.  The old place needed rewiring to bring up to code.  I can’t describe what there was before.  The old boxes from the 20s thru the 50s in place and just plain not too good.  So, there was a lot of stuff to move out of the way ahead of time.  Things (trust me) are way different in an old English house built in 1924, from similar homes built in the states, depending of course on what part of the states you’re from.  So, the switch over to new fuse boards and additional outlets is time consuming and exhausting for us both.

They do things a bit different here for sure.  For example, they do pick up the debris left behind but do not clean up anything. That is, the brick dust on the counters closest to the work area. And they don’t haul away the leftover crap.  Some do but some don’t or don’t have a license to haul commercial trash.  Howz that fer weird?
Yeah really.  If you put some junk in your car to haul to a dump say, it’s residential and ok.  But if the electrician puts the same thing in his van that he has hauled from your house, it becomes commercial waste and he has to be licensed under threat of a large fine.  Well, he has the license but still asked us to dispose of the waste. There isn’t really that much. Just a medium sized trash bag is all.  So I will have to hide that bag in the middle of next weeks garbage pick up.  It’s all bagged of course but I am just a bit worried about the weight.  If the pick up folks find the wires and old boxes and such in our bin, we could be in hot water.  I guess I’ll split it up into two separate loads for two separate pick ups.  Gee, it’s so much easier back home. But these folks are determined to save the planet.  All by themselves if needs be.
He’s back today installing a couple of extras I wanted, but I had no idea it might take so long.  Can’t use our kitchen yet. Yikes.  No coffee, no tea, no nothing.

Electrician had to go into the small attic.  Yuk.  pretty nasty up there. Tight fit with wiring underneath what little installation there is, exposed nails as the attic was never finished with flooring or anything. Just one small platform I had put in years ago to hold excess luggage and a few boxes. While up there, the holder for his mobile phone opened as he worked and came away. It fell somewhere down into the cavity of the house, far below and between the walls.  Gone bye,bye. 

He’s still here, and I wish I’d had breakfast before he arrived. I just wasn’t hungry. Then. Ah … not to worry.  I have Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter on hand. 

Stay Tuned.

Posted by peiper     on 07/12/2011 at 05:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Sunday - July 10, 2011

Expect the Unexpected

Such a non-surprise: this month’s pitiful job numbers are most likely hot air. How unexpected!

The Labor Department officially announced that only 18,000 jobs were created during the month of June compared to May’s levels. That’s considerably below the 157,000 jobs that payroll-processing firm ADP said on Thursday were added by companies in the private sector.

Our economy is said to need at least 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with people entering the workforce. So even job growth of 150,000 isn’t good enough.
...
Now for the really bad news: that 18,000 gain announced by the government yesterday isn’t real.

For one thing, the number of jobs increased in June only because the Labor Department simultaneously revised downward the number of jobs that existed in this country during May. It’s like moving the fences at Citi Field so the Mets players can hit more home runs. It might make Jose Reyes feel better, but it doesn’t actually make him more powerful.

Without the fence-moving operation in the May employment report, the June number—yesterday’s number—would have shown a decline of 26,000 jobs.

And that’s the good part of it. It gets worse, unexpectedly.

Does anybody actually believe the official job numbers anymore? We’ve had several years now where every month’s dismal numbers are “unexpected”. Same goes for the real estate market. Real unemployment is close to 20%, and underemployment is at a similar level. All you need to do is look around you to see that. Well, assuming you don’t live inside the DC beltway, where everyone has a really great high paying job. With the government. Which has added more than 1 million “workers” to the payrolls in the past couple years. Somehow though that’s not unexpected.

Who do they think they are fooling?  (you know, other than TV talking points puppets like Kirsten Powers and Chris Matthews?)

I could have run this post last year, or the year before that; things haven’t changed a bit in all those months. What did you expect?

update

some unexpected reality ...

The unemployment rate increased to 9.2% in June, the Labor Department reported, but if the recession hadn’t pushed so many people out of the labor market it would have been much worse.

The duration of unemployment continues to increase and sat at an average of 39.9 weeks in June. More than four million people who want jobs, or nearly a third of the unemployed, have been out of work for more than a year. Those are the people are hanging in and looking for work, but a large number have given up altogether.

The share of the population in the jobs market, called the labor-force participation rate, fell to 64.1% last month — the lowest level since 1984 when women were still just beginning to enter in full force. The participation rate peaked in 2000 and has been steadily declining since as the effect of women taking full-time jobs plateaued and Baby Boomers began to retire, but the decline accelerated sharply during the recession. The participation rate was 66% at the start of the recession and 65.7% when the recovery started in June 2009. If the participation rate were still at that level, the unemployment rate would be more than 11% right now.

With nearly a third of the unemployed out of work for over a year, it makes their reintegration back into the labor market more and more difficult. People out of a job that long tend to lose skills and experience long-term effects on their lifetime earning power. It’s even harder to reintegrate workers who have dropped out altogether.

There’s also a problem of underemployment. A comprehensive gauge of labor underutilization, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification by the Labor Department, accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or who can’t find full-time jobs. That number shot up in June to 16.2% from 15.8% a month earlier.

So had the labor force not shrunk, the U-6 would be what, 18%? 20%?

And I call BS on that “People out of a job that long tend to lose skills”. Maybe your ability to swing a hammer is down for a week, but you come right back. So does your ability to write computer code, or to close sales calls, or work the appointment book or the rivet gun.  Stop with this “chronically unemployable” crap already. The one or two weeks your company will “suffer” from a re-hire’s decreased production will probably be more than made up for after that because of their increased drive to hold on to that job. The vast ranks of the unemployed are not worthless throw-away losers. They certainly bring more to the table than the fresh out of school never-before employed.

There is a huge evil afoot in this country that gets next to no attention. The “middle age castaways” or whatever you want to call it. Hundreds of thousands of people, millions maybe, who did a job for 5, 10, 15 years and then got cut, who can’t get work because all the hiring attention is on a) kids fresh out of school, or b) currently working “experts” stolen from other companies. This is age-ism, and it is rampant. And terribly short sighted.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/10/2011 at 07:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • Government •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - July 09, 2011

Gonna get me some

NJ Wildlife Team Captures Big Black Bear In Suburbia
This is the 7th time this bear has been tranquilized and removed in 18 months

The New Jersey joke is that the bear has been doped so many times he’s developed a drug habit

Bear in search of romance shot out of tree with tranquilliser for SIXTH time as he wanders into yet another town

The lengths that some will go to for love.

A bear, known as number 6131, was finally captured by wildlife officials after leading them across an entire state in his search for a mate.

The team finally caught up with the male, black bear up a tree in a front garden in East Brunswick, New Jersey. He was brought down with a tranquilliser dart and fell into a net held by Department of Environmental Protection staff.

He has already been found in six towns in the past year and each time released back into a state wildlife park.

Kim Tinnes, a wildlife expert who helped capture the bear, said: ‘Probably in the course of a week he’s travelling over 100 miles.

‘I’ve got 30 years with the state and I don’t think we’ve ever trapped the same bear so many times in so many urban situations.’

Like, wow man. Stoner bear contemplates nirvana as the dope takes effect again

h/t to Peiper, because the story is running in the UK Daily Mail !

Ok, it’s in the NJ papers too. On about page 300.

EAST BRUNSWICK — It’s a bear developing a monthly habit. Two months ago it was in Hightstown, Mercer County, and last month near Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township.

Today, the same bear was tranquilized and captured on Tompkins Road in East Brunswick, the sixth time in less than 18 months wildlife officials have been called out for the animal.

What’s the Jersey solution?

“Take him for a ride.”

What, like to the Meadowlands, and dump his body like the mafia does?

“No! Eh, whaddaru, stupit? Wassamadda witchu? Take him down the shore!”

The last time he was captured, the bear was taken to a wildlife area in Upper Freehold. This time, he’ll go farther away.

“We’re going to try to find a different location for him, so he won’t come back,” Burgess said.

Officials decided that this time, the bear will go to a wildlife management area in New Egypt, which is in Ocean County.

Actually, New Egypt is where Fort Dix and McGuire AFB are, down in the Pine Barrens, so let the military deal with now if they have to. But the ocean is within a day’s walk for this fellow if he wants.

I think they should take him up north to Butler, which is just swimming with bears. Then maybe he can find himself a lady bear. My bet is that he’ll be back up there in a couple weeks anyway. This bear is a regular New Jersey commuter. Maybe they should have hooked him up with E-ZPass instead of a tracking collar.

Oh, and East Brunswick is where Rutgers University is. It’s not even close to rural. It’s about as built up as non-urban NJ gets.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2011 at 10:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Humor •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

The Last For Now

One last Fast and Furious post. It’s a tidal wave, m’kay? No, noth this post, just the deluge of information coming in now that people are crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s.

Phoenix news agency runs serial numbers of gun bust, traces back 73% of guns to F&F. All 5 arrested gun runners are non-American; 4 are illegals.

PHOENIX - The ABC15 Investigators have linked an additional 43 weapons recovered during a Phoenix traffic stop to the controversial Fast and Furious ATF case.

According to court paperwork, Phoenix Drug Enforcement Administration agents discovered the guns in mid-April. They pulled over a vehicle near 83rd Avenue and Interstate 10, near the Phoenix and Tolleson border.
...
Four of the suspects are listed as undocumented immigrants. The fifth suspect had been admitted to the United States under a non-immigrant visa, according to court documents.
...
Agents recovered at least 59 weapons during the bust. The ABC15 Investigators found 43 are connected to the Fast and Furious case with certainty.

We reviewed official ATF Suspect Gun Summary documents – a sort of “watch list” for suspicious gun sales and gun buyers. We matched serial numbers within the ATF documents to gun serial numbers contained within the federal court documents.

Most of the recovered weapons connected to the Fast and Furious case included Romarm/Cugir GP-WASR 10/63 UF Rifles and Romarm Cugir Draco pistols. Agents also recovered at least one FN Herstal pistol.

The “Romarm/Cugir GP-WASR 10/63 UF Rifles” is a Romanian import knock-off of the Soviet AK-47. It was not originally a converted military weapon, it was built as a semi-automatic. With a folding stock and a minimum length barrel, it is a fairly short weapon. Once considered total crap, Romanian AKs have been better lately because they have gone over to using ex-military receivers.

The “Cugir Draco pistol” is an AK-47 pistol. No stock, and a pretty stubby 8-12” barrel. Beats me how it gets called a pistol since it still has the rifle’s forearm in place, which makes it a two handed firearm. These are very short guns, perfect for drive-by shootings or for hiding under a jacket prior to robbing a liquor store.

A Draco pistols was used in the ambush that killed ICE agent Jaime Zapata on February 15. Read the link - it sure looks like that particular gun was part of the arsenal sold to Los Zetas, though a month before agents began their “sting” investigation.




I really wonder just how many thousand guns our government funneled into the hands of the drug gangs. 1800 from the Phoenix office, 2500 from the Tampa office ... who can say? 10,000? 20,000? 100,000? The only people with the government records are the government!

I’ve read elsewhere that the ATF is pretty much shut down at this point. That right now the only thing they’re doing is busting people for fireworks. Ya think?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2011 at 03:50 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

brit soldiers told not to fire on taliban.

An absolutely insane way to run a war but then, what the hell would I know about running a war.

I have to feel doubly sorry for Brits.  In the last couple of days, they lost two soldiers shot by a very professional sniper. One shot got them both. Damn.
I believe the Brits know who he is, but can’t nail the bastard yet.  I’m sure they will.  I sure hope so.  Brits are not dumb, they’re tough and they are professionals as well.  But sorry to say some things are so screwed up and they are being made to fight with hands tied.
Take a look at this sad damn fix. 

Soldiers told not to shoot Taliban bomb layers

British soldiers who spot Taliban fighters planting roadside bombs are told not to shoot them because they do not pose an immediate threat, the Ministry of Defence has admitted.

By Andy Bloxham

They are instead being ordered to just observe insurgents and record their position to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.
The controversial policy emerged at an inquest into the death of Sgt Peter Rayner, 34, a soldier from the 2nd Batallion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment who was killed in October last year by an improvised explosive device as he led a patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Wendy Rayner, 40, disclosed that in the days leading up to his death her husband been told that it was not his job to attack insurgents laying bombs.
Mrs Rayner, who lives with their young son in Bradford, told the inquest that the insurgents were being allowed to get away with the murder of British troops.
She said: “They are not allowed to fire on these terrorists. If they can see people leaving these IEDs, why can’t they take them out? One officer even told him ‘I am an army Captain and you will do your job’.

“We have lost too many men out there, they had seen people planting IEDs yet could not open fire or make contact with them. I believe strongly if people had taken on board what he was saying more he might have been here today.”
Under the Geneva Convention and the nationally administered Rules of Engagement the 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan are told they can only attack if there is an immediate threat to life.

A key part of the MoD’s counter-insurgency theory holds that it is more important to win over civilians by not killing innocent people than it is to eliminate every potential insurgent.
One officer who has recently served in Afghanistan said that if a soldier wanted to ascertain if an insurgent was an immediate threat, he would have to approach him and expose himself to greater risk.

He said: “A British soldier manning a checkpoint at night might watch a man digging a hole for an IED 100 metres away and would not try to shoot at him. It’s a ludicrous situation.

“There has to be an immediate threat to life and that’s a hard thing to prove. An IED does not count as an immediate threat.

“The Americans are different – their Rules of Engagement are pretty liberal. If they even suspect someone of laying a bomb, they can shoot them.”

Afghans routinely dig holes in river banks to store meat because there is no refrigeration and farmers often dig at night because it is cooler to work.  The Taliban bomb layers take advantage of this to spread confusion. They set roadside bombs where farmers work and villagers store meat, and they also pay civilians $10 a time to dig a hole.

If the civilian is shot, it is a propaganda victory for the Taliban, and if the hole is not discovered by soldiers, it can be used later for a roadside bomb.

The existing policy of “courageous restraint” was led by the US General Stanley McChrystal 18 months ago and has been repeatedly criticised for leaving soldiers fighting “with one hand behind their backs”.

At yesterday’s inquest, after the acting Bradford coroner Paul Marks recorded a verdict of unlawful killing, Mrs Rayner urged the MoD to “let our soldiers be soldiers”.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “Troops in Afghanistan are required to exercise restraint when dealing with this threat as the use of deadly force is not always appropriate when there is a risk of collateral damage.

“The aim of this policy is to avoid innocent civilians who may be in the vicinity.”

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 07/09/2011 at 12:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Terrorists • UK • War-Stories •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

never thought i’d see this. gypsies refuse council cash.

I never thought I’d see this and for those who read BMEWS and are aware of my feelings on the subject (not warm and fuzzy), it comes as quite a surprise.
In a conversation with a close friend yesterday, I was accused of being a cynic.
In truth, I am and no less so now.  However, after reading this I can understand the worry of the gypsies here.  This particular group is not all that far away from our town.  It isn’t in our neighborhood, don’t want to imply that. But still.

Gipsies refuse £1m boost to site because it might attract travellers

A group of gipsies is demanding that a council spends £1million on “good causes” rather than improve their caravan site because they fear travellers might be attracted to it.

By Andy Bloxham

Kent County Council planned to spend the money redeveloping the site near Aylesford which would increase the number of caravan sites from eight to 26.
But the current residents of the site claim that introducing new families would “cause a lot of tension”.

They insisted they would “stand up for our rights” when the plans go to a public consultation.

The proposals would see an increase in the number of pitches, upgraded washing facilities, a new playground for children and the construction of a screen around the site to reduce road noise from the busy A20 nearby.
The council announced the proposals earlier this week and said a planning application would be put to councillors later this month.

Public consultation will begin in August if councillors vote to approve it and work could start as early as April next year.
A spokesman for the travellers said: “We’re dead against the development.

“Moving loads of new families here could cause a lot of tension.”
He said the travellers living on the caravan site at the moment “get on well with locals” and said new families moving in would create “tensions” that could threaten that relationship.  He added: “Why can’t the council give the money to a better cause and leave us alone?”

Another traveller, who has lived on the site for more than 20 years, said: “We want to keep ourselves to ourselves.”
A third said: “We will all oppose it. We will go to the public consultation and we will stand up for our rights.”
One local resident who lives near the site but declined to be named said: “The travellers there at the moment are pretty good and I can understand how they don’t want an influx of new people as they have got used to life as it is.

“But it is astonishing they are actually opposing this as the money will ensure the place is totally revamped.”
There are estimated to be between 15,000 and 30,000 gipsies living in Britain.

Under race laws, gipsies are defined as a minority ethnic group and are therefore eligible for certain types of special treatment to meet their specific needs.
In 2009, NHS trial guidance was launched which recommended giving gipsies priority in hospitals and GPs’ surgeries to try to reduce inequality

SOURCE

I am no expert in the field, but I really question how the people who deem this group an ethnic minority, or ethnic anything, can do so when many “travellers” are Irish.
Most of the others who come from across the channel are Eastern European and I believe they are Caucasians as well.  Perhaps Lyndon will comment on this if I have it wrong.  I think the liberal left needed to make nice, diversity comes into play as well, and so they made a “Special Group” out of these folks.  And as you see by that last line above, they are to be given special treatment to accommodate their special status. Including hospital and doctor priority.  If they have been “unequal” then surely it’s only because they have made themselves so by their lifestyle and free choices.
Whatever … at least with one story I can find myself without anything to bitch about where these folks are concerned.  And that’s a good thing I guess but you know …
Stay Tuned.

Posted by peiper     on 07/09/2011 at 10:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

The Smoking Gun

Absolute proof that Gunwalker / Fast & Furious was official government policy at least as far back as March 24, 2009. Here’s their own press release:

The full video is at CSPAN

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and Deputy Attorney General David Ogden held a news conference to announce the U.S.-Mexico Border Security Policy. They spoke to reporters and answered questions about plans to send about 500 more agents and equipment to the nation’s southwestern border and Mexico to fight Mexican drug cartels and keep violence from spilling over into the United States.

There is no question whatsoever that everyone from the very top on down was aware of this. Which means Holder absolutely lied to Issa’s investigation. Under the bus!

And of course the obvious follows: here comes Obama’s new anti-gun measures. Not done by law. Who needs that? They’ll be done by presidential directive.

WASHINGTON (The Blaze/AP) — Six months after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the White House is preparing to propose some new steps on gun safety, though they’re likely to fall short of the bold measures activists would like to see.

Spokesman Jay Carney said that the new steps would be made public “in the near future.” He didn’t offer details, but people involved in talks at the Justice Department to craft the new measures said they expected to see something in the next several weeks. Whatever is proposed is not expected to involve legislation or take on major issues, like banning assault weapons, but could include executive action to strengthen the background check system or other steps.

More fun: The ATF started all this with Operation Gunrunner back in 2005, and by 2006 it was national policy. Read their own public document:

To help combat firearms trafficking into Mexico, ATF began Project Gunrunner as a pilot project in Laredo, Texas, in 2005 and expanded it as a national initiative in 2006. Project Gunrunner is also part of the Department’s broader Southwest Border Initiative, which seeks to reduce cross-border drug and firearms trafficking and the high level of violence associated with these activities on both sides of the border.
In June 2007, ATF published a strategy document, Southwest Border Initiative: Project Gunrunner (Gunrunner strategy), outlining four key components to Project Gunrunner: the expansion of gun tracing in Mexico, international coordination, domestic activities, and intelligence. In implementing Project Gunrunner, ATF has focused resources in its four Southwest border field divisions. In addition, ATF has made firearms trafficking to Mexico a top ATF priority nationwide.
The OIG conducted this review to evaluate the effectiveness of ATF’s implementation of Project Gunrunner. Our review examined ATF’s enforcement and regulatory programs related to the Southwest border and Mexico, ATF’s effectiveness in developing and sharing firearms trafficking intelligence and information, the number and prosecutorial outcomes of ATF’s Project Gunrunner investigations, ATF’s coordination with U.S. and Mexican law enforcement partners, ATF’s traces of Mexican “crime guns,” and challenges that ATF faces in coordinating efforts to combat firearms trafficking with Mexico.

Heck, that document shows that they even did analysis, and concluded that to better their operation they would have to increase the amount of information they were already sharing with other law enforcement departments:

The success of Project Gunrunner depends, in part, on ATF’s sharing intelligence with its Mexican and U.S. partner agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Although ATF has shared some strategic intelligence products with each of its partner agencies, it is not doing so systematically and consistently. ATF does share tactical intelligence regularly with the DEA and DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP).3 However, ATF has not provided Mexican law enforcement with intelligence it requested on firearms trafficking patterns and trends, including trafficking routes and distribution points where guns are crossing into Mexico.

I think it’s time to stop playing “I didn’t know nothing ‘bout that” at all levels of the government. They knew. They ALL knew. Years ago. The only real question is who knew that the actual execution of this project was so idiotic, or who knew when it went bad when it went bad.

Because it went bad, and there’s no doubt about that. Perhaps it was bad from the beginning, and not one LE type in even one branch of government had the smarts to see that the plan was deeply flawed from the inception.

Oh, more fun ... but I’d take this with a grain of salt, as I’m not sure about the veracity of the Prison Planet web site, and I realize that a bandito will say anything under interrogation by the federales south of the border: Mexican cartel says it bought guns DIRECTLY from US Government:

Los Zetas Kingpin: We Bought Guns Directly From U.S. Government
One of the kingpins of the infamous Los Zetas drug running gang has told Mexican federal police that the group purchased its weapons directly from U.S. government officials inside America, a revelation that will only serve to heighten suspicions that the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious program was a deliberate attempt to undermine the Second Amendment by stealth.
...
according to the testimony of Rejón Aguilar, one of the original seven members of Los Zetas who was recently captured by police, in some cases Mexican drug gangs did not have to wait until the firearms reached the border – they purchased guns directly from the US government itself inside America.

In an interview with Mexican federal police that was later uploaded to You Tube and translated, Aguilar sensationally blows the whistle on how the Zetas’ weapons were obtained straight from U.S. federal authorities.

“They are bought in the U.S. The buyers (on the U.S. side of the border) have said in the past that sometimes they would acquire them from the U.S. Government itself,” Aguilar told police.

Crap, there’s still more. I can’t get to the bottom of this damn story because it just keeps getting bigger by the hour. From AmmoLand, the online news page of the Shooting Sports Federation - essentially the voice of the gun industry it seems - comes the story that once Melson is gone, the new ATF chief will be anti-gun zealot and Chicago crony Andrew Traver. The audacity of these bastards is limitless. Caught with a great big bear trap snapped across their asses, they still push their agenda as if nothing has happened at all. That’s gall enough to be divided into 1000 parts, not just the usual 3.

ATF acting Director Kenneth Melson has been conspiring with king corruptocrat Eric Holder to walk thousands of high caliber rifles across the border. These firearms were then handed off to drug cartels, while the two buddies sat in their offices in Washington DC. Unfortunately, their political scheme had some pretty big collateral damage. Besides the collection of guns that ended up in the possession of violent Mexican gangs, the ATF ran into bigger problems. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry ended up dead – shot down by the very guns the ATF was sneaking across the border!

“Project Gunrunner” is the perfect storm for Obama. First, he’ll get to act like the good guy when he kicks Melson to the curb. Then, while everyone is cheering that Melson is gone, he will sneak Andrew Traver in as Director of the ATF. They’ll at least have two things in common - Chicago-style politics and Chicago-style radicalism.

There is no excuse for Obama to use an unthinkable tragedy/bizarre scandal to push yet another one of his far-left nominations. He is DELIBERATELY nominating Andrew Traver – a man who has demonstrated over and over again that he is anti-gun, anti-self-defense and anti-freedom.

Marvelous.

Posted by Drew458     on 07/09/2011 at 10:48 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

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

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner