Saturday - February 15, 2014

U-All Not Welcome Round Here

United Auto Workers Union Stunned by Devastating Defeat in Tennessee

Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have voted against union representation, a devastating loss that derails the United Auto Workers union’s effort to organize Southern factories.

The 712-626 vote released late Friday stunned many labor experts who expected a UAW win because Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the Chattanooga factory to make sales pitches.

The UAW for decades has tried without success to organize a foreign-owned plant in a region that’s wary of organized labor. The loss now makes it even harder for the union to recruit members at another Southern factory.

“If they can’t win this one, what can they win?” asked Art Schwartz, a former General Motors labor negotiator who now is a consultant in Ann Arbor, Mich.

UAW President Bob King, in a 2011 speech to workers, said the union has no long-term future if it can’t organize the Southern plants.

General Motors worker Brent Watts walks to the United Auto Workers union hall in Spring, Hill, Tenn.

Y’all remember Spring Hill Tennessee right? An hour south of Nashville? That’s where Saturns came from. Remember Saturns? The innovative, independent GM vehicle made by non-union workers? Well, until the UAW got in. Which was about the same time that quality took a nosedive and the brand just stagnated for half a decade. And now, Saturns are no more

Good luck VW. Pity you had to redesign the  A4  Passat into a fatter, softer, bigger, Americanized blob-mobile and stop selling one of the greatest practical sized driving machines ever made, but that’s how it goes.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/15/2014 at 12:01 PM   
Filed Under: • Unions-Labor •  
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breast feeding as make believe activity for gender neutral boys? sick and stupid adults of the left

Idiot parents give us this headline this morning.

If Max wants to wear a pink tutu and fairy wings, he can: Parents raise their son as a boy AND a girl so he won’t ‘grow up aggressive’

At the tender age of one year old, how would poor little Max know a tutu from a mini skirt?  He’s a baby for gosh sake and knows only what he is told.

For example, here’s a quote from the article below. See what you make of this.

He swiftly grabbed a blonde-haired doll, sat her in a pink plastic pram, and took her on a short walk, stopping only when it was time to pretend to breastfeed her.

No way a one yr old would play that way, even a little girl that age would not be that aware of breast feeding as a game of make believe. An adult had to teach the kid in this story. 

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of insanity, and I suppose it’s catching on among the politically correct.

If you take a good look at daddy at the link … he appears more feminine than the masculine looking wife.

I had a lot more to say but thought better of it and so will simply share this latest with you.  As to little Max’s “confidence”, I’d make a guess he’ll end up confused if not angry at the parents. 

· Max Price’s parents Lisa and Martin are raising their son according to the technique known as ‘gender-neutral parenting’
· Toddler is happy playing with his collection of toy cars and revels in wearing his favourite dresses and tutu
· Mother Lisa said: ‘Gender stereotypes can be so damaging’
· The couple say they hope their decision will help boost Max’s confidence

By Guy Adams and Andy Dolan

Max Price is a happy, healthy one-year-old boy who spent yesterday morning playing with his vast collection of toy cars, planes, tractors, and dinosaurs.
Dressed in a red checked lumberjack shirt and rust-coloured jeans, he shouted ‘beep beep!’ and giggled with delight while pushing a plastic motorbike around the living room of his family home.

Then, after lunch, a strange transformation occurred.
Max scampered upstairs to his bedroom with his 23-year-old mother, Lisa, and re-emerged several minutes later wearing a dark blue, knee-length dress decorated with pink flamingos.  He swiftly grabbed a blonde-haired doll, sat her in a pink plastic pram, and took her on a short walk, stopping only when it was time to pretend to breastfeed her.

Later in the afternoon, the child collected several more dolls, found a selection of pink toy cups and saucers, and staged an impromptu tea party.
Max, who turns two later this month and lives in Walsall, is being raised according to a radical technique known as ‘gender-neutral parenting’.

It means Lisa and her husband, Martin, 34, encourage him to wear both boys’ and girls’ clothes, and to play with conventionally female – as well as male – toys.
Rather than being worried if he decides not to play football, and asks instead for someone to paint his fingernails with glittery polish, they instead see it as a form of cute self-expression.

‘If Max wants to wear a pink tutu and fairy wings, then he can wear it,’ says Lisa. ‘He’s just expressing himself. I don’t want to put him in a certain box and treat him that way. I want to teach him to be whatever he wants to be. He can pick his own clothes and, as long as they’re warm enough for the winter, I’ll get him whatever he wants.’

MORE TO READ from the Saturday Mail

Posted by peiper     on 02/15/2014 at 05:43 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Stoopid-People •  
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secret secret

Posted by Drew458     on 02/15/2014 at 01:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Eye-Candy •  
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   Friday - February 14, 2014

tweak this ya commies

No pistol grip. No thumbhole stock. No grenade launcher. No bayonet lug. No flash suppressor. No carry handle. And a 7 round, NY legal, magazine.

I’m sure liberals feel this is cheating, just like the simple modifications made to the AR-15 back in Clinton’s day with the first AWB to make those rifles legal. We call it staying in business. They expected their Chinese Take Out menu rules of “one from Column A, one from Column B” to make these guns go away. Not a chance dimwits. Not a chance.

Simple design tweaks are allowing gun makers to get around restrictions New York put in place following the 2012 school shootings in Connecticut, prompting some critics to say the laws were mere window dressing.

New York lawmakers passed the SAFE Act last year, and announced with fanfare that it effectively banned the sale of “assault weapons.” But AR-15s, the most popular type of guns often referred to as assault weapons, are sold in Empire State gun shops, freely and legally. The gun is being marketed by Stag Arms as a “New York-compliant AR-15,” and features a slightly modified stock and no bells and whistles. The gun does not have a pistol grip, for instance - one of the features banned by the act.

“This just shows that the gun prohibition lobby uses symbolic gestures over substance to push their anti-gun rights agenda. Banning guns based on cosmetic features proves that point,” Alan Gottlieb, president of the Second Amendment Foundation, told FoxNews.com.

“get around restrictions” means the same as “comply with the law”, but seemingly from the hoplophobic side of the looking glass. Or perhaps not, but I think this is one time to get extra double uppity over terminology. If pro-murder can be “pro choice” and all the other “code word” PC expressions that must and must not be used, then we can demand this one. “Willingly complies with the law”. yeah, that sounds nice.

In New York, an assault weapon is defined as any semi-automatic rifle that accepts a magazine and has any of a list of ten features, ranging from a pistol-like grip to a flash suppressor to a bayonet mount.
...
“The New York State Police have told us that by removing all of the prohibited design characteristics the rifle is no longer considered an “assault weapon” and is therefore not subject to the registration requirement,” Steve Byron, President of S&B Products, told FoxNews.com.

So there you have it. ”willingly comply with the law” can now mean the same thing as the classic Chinese ”thank you so much for your precious advice” : G. F. Y.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/14/2014 at 02:30 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
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   Thursday - February 13, 2014

now it gets dangerous

Ok, fine, we’ve had our 18” of snow. yee. ha.

Then we had a break for a couple hours, with a bit of wind gusting around. Not enough to really cause drifts, but enough to get some snow off of some branches. All well and good.

Now we’re entering the dangerous phase. It’s warmed up, and is raining. Hard. That’s going to soak into quite a bit of snow and weigh it down. A lot. The roofs already had 6” of snow on them before this storm. So now, what hasn’t slid off is getting heavier by the minute.

While the rain is helping clear the roads right now, if ... no, WHEN it gets cold again, we’re going to have ice everywhere. Just after all the road salt and calcite has been washed away. With some real good luck, we’ll have a couple hours after the rain stops before the temperature drops. Too right mate: it’s barely above freezing right now.

A wintry mix will change to all snow, heavy at times by 9pm. Cloudy and windy. Temperatures steady or slowly rising into the low 30s. Winds NNW at 15 to 20 mph. Snowfall of 3 to 5 inches through 1:30am.

Shit. And then?

So plenty of rain early tonight to wet down and compact the 18” of new stuff we got today, AND THEN it’s going to snow heavily until dawn? Plus a good stiff bit of wind?? And tomorrow it gets cold again.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2014 at 08:07 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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“May Issue” Gets a West Coast Slapdown

A divided federal appeals court on Thursday struck down California’s concealed weapons rules, saying they violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

By a 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said California was wrong to require applicants to show good cause to receive a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

“The right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable firearm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote for the majority.

Thank you judge O’Scannlin, you are a true American.

Judge Sidney Thomas dissented, writing that the good cause requirement limited the number of people carrying concealed handguns in public to those legitimately in need.

“It limits the risk to public safety by reducing the number of guns in public circulation, but allows those who will most likely need to defend themselves in public to carry a handgun,” Thomas wrote.

Unfortunately he has to work with nanny-state pinkos just like the rest of us.

Officials are required to follow the state rules requiring applicants to show good cause and moral character.

The San Francisco-based appeals court said those requirements were too strict and ran afoul of a 5-4 landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2008 that struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban and said law-abiding citizens are allowed to have handguns in their home for self-defense.

The appeals court on Thursday reinstated a lawsuit filed in 2009 by Edward Peruta, who challenged San Diego County’s denial of a concealed weapons permit.

The ruling on Thursday also disagreed with three other federal appeals courts that have upheld permit rules similar to the one in California.

The U.S. Supreme Court often takes cases when federal appeals courts issue conflicting rulings.

Moral character? How the HELL are you supposed to judge moral character in California? It’s probably illegal to do so, because darn near everything morality is based on has been thrown under the bus in PC-insane la-la land. And what constitutes “good cause” in that state these days? Not wanting to be dissed by my homies for having no caps in da hood?

Whatever ... but this is yet another case in point that any and every “may issue” state is in fact prejudicial/racist/elitist/politically biased/unfair. In other words, the law is selectively applied. And that application method makes the law corrupt and wrong. Equal rights and equal application, or flush the law down the low water using, self composting green toilet.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2014 at 05:34 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
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Geography Test

Found this at Rodger’s. Pretty neat: it’s the states realigned by population: the state with the highest population is mapped onto the state with the largest land mass, and so on. So California maps to Alaska, Texas stays in Texas, and New York goes to California.

There are two mistakes on the map. Find them. Right click map for one 4x bigger. Or go to the source.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2014 at 12:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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The Walk of Life

Loved Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits back in college.

Posted by Christopher     on 02/13/2014 at 09:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Music •  
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Pre-Valentine’s Day Weather Massacre: Snowstorm PAX

At 7am it looks like we’ve got about 5” of new snow on the ground, and it’s still coming down with elan. 

I hate snow that falls with elan.

[ Clinton ] Next 6 Hours: Snow will fall at varying intensities. Some of the snow will fall heavily especially around 8am. Cloudy with increasing winds. Temperatures steady near the low 30s. Winds ENE at 15 to 20 mph. Additional snowfall of 4 to 6 inches through noon.
...
Today: Windy. Heavy snow this morning will give way to a wintry mix this afternoon. High 33F. Winds NNE at 20 to 30 mph. Snow accumulating 5 to 8 inches.
...
Tonight: Windy with periods of rain and snow this evening turning to snow overnight. Low 28F. Winds NNW at 20 to 30 mph. 2 to 4 inches of snow expected.

Oh joy, the extra fun double crusty effect. Snow/frozen slop/more snow/more frozen slop ... followed by Friday’s more snow/more slop and then another freezing plunge. Pretty soon they’ll be drilling ice cores out on my patio.

I think we’ll go back to bed for a while. Guess we’ll just pax it in. boo! boo! boo! too

Exactly twenty years ago, another destructive ice storm hammered the South. Over two million lost power and over 80,000 utility poles were downed.

Now the weather wienies are calling this one “a meteorological bomb” because it’s an intensely low pressure storm, dropping pressures 25 millibars in 24 hours. Right. Ok, fine. All I know is I’m starting to feel shell shocked from all the snow, on top of all the previous snow, on top of all the previous snow, on top of the ice which is on top of all the previous snow, which is on top ...

Philly is going to set their own record, “for the first time in recorded history” they are having 4 snow storms in a winter where each one dropped 6” or more snow. Yeah, and we’re not even halfway through February yet. Fargin bastages.

There’s a little “color” article on TV about the lady who is so sick to death of snow everywhere, and so eager for spring, that she made up a bottle of green dye and went out and sprayed her garden. Just to put a touch of color back into her monochromatic world. I hear ya lady, fer shure.

A good quarter of the nation has been hit with this storm, from western Texas across to Georgia and all the way up the coast to Boston and perhaps further. That’s a cloud system about ... 1800 miles long? It sucks for everyone, not just me.

Crivens!! By 9am we had enough new snow on the patio to match the bottom step. The guys came around and shoveled. Yay. By 11 the snow was right back up there. 2 hours. I think the steps are 6” thick bluestone slabs.  Now at 11:45 things have slackened a bit, and the snow is almost even with the second step. That’s 3-4” and hour I think. Horry Clap. And now we’re starting to get some wind. Doomed! We’re doomed!!

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2014 at 07:06 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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   Wednesday - February 12, 2014

These guys are good!

Best cover of ‘Africa’ I’ve ever heard.

Just for comparison, here is Toto’s original version.

Posted by Christopher     on 02/12/2014 at 10:25 PM   
Filed Under: • Music •  
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Its The Only Thing I Can Do

There’s only one thing I can do.

Mix up a double Manhattan, and fire up the grill.

Ok, we had to shovel off the patio, and break about 5” of ice off the grill cover first. But she’s heatin up now, and I’ve got a nice thick sirloin oiled up and warming on the counter.

We did loads of shopping and getting ready. I even went to the library and got a couple of classics out to read. So if the storm whacks us arse over teakettle for half a week or so, it won’t matter. Heck, I even found raw shaved coconut so I can make spicy marinated coconut shrimp. Good. To. Go.

As much as 14 inches of snow could hit New York City and the surrounding area tonight, as the storm that has gridlocked the Southeast comes north.

AccuWeather Meteorologist Tom Kines says the snow will begin to fall around midnight and last through most of Thursday. The latest National Weather Service forecast map shows that the city will likely get between 10 and 14 inches, depending on whether precipitation changes over to rain during the day.

People in New Jersey and Long island will be much luckier, Kines said. He expects they’ll receive just a few inches.

“The commute [Thursday] is going to be slow. Well, it’s always slow, but it will be slower,” he said.

Kines also warns that winds will be heavy Thursday — with gusts approaching 40 mph — so people can expect a lot of snowdrifting.

The storm has brought more devastation to the South. States including Tennessee, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia have received sleet and freezing rain, which has kept everyone off the roads.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie closed state offices Thursday, in advance of Winter Storm Pax, which is expected to dump 6 to 10 inches of snow and sleet on the region Wednesday night into Thursday. Accumulation of up to 14 inches is possible in some areas.

“[Thursday] does not look like a good day in New Jersey,” Christie said in a statement. “We want to keep people off the roads and safe.”

Dozens of schools have already cancelled classes Thursday, with more closings expected.

It started snowing just a short while after I got the cover back on the grill. I am really getting tired of this nonsense, let me tell you. Unless you’re dying of thirst out in California, this has been one major suck winter just about everywhere. Damn that Man Made Climate Change!!

The steak was great though. A nice micro-marbled slab o’ beef, dusted with Greek Seasoning and Adobo, then forked full of holes and wet down with olive oil. Seared up crispy and brown outside, medium rare and super juicy inside, yum. And I captured half a cup of juices off the cutting board, so there will be proper one pan Yorkshire pudding tomorrow. 

Posted by Drew458     on 02/12/2014 at 08:03 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather • Fine-Dining • Humor •  
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The Chocolate Crook

A jury convicted former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday on 20 of 21 federal corruption counts, including bribery, marking a stunning fall for the feisty official who gained a national profile following Hurricane Katrina.

The 57-year-old Democrat, who led his city through the aftermath of the 2005 storm, was found guilty of charges that he accepted bribes, free trips and other gratuities from contractors in exchange for helping them secure millions of dollars in city work while he was in office.

He will remain free on bond while he awaits sentencing. Each of the charges carries a sentence from three to 20 years, but how long he would serve was unclear and will depend on a pre-sentence investigation and various sentencing guidelines. No sentencing date was set.

Nagin, who left office in 2010 after eight years, was indicted in January 2013 on charges he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and truckloads of free granite for his family business in exchange for promoting the interests of local businessman Frank Fradella.

He also was charged with accepting thousands of dollars in in payoffs from another businessman, Rodney Williams, for his help in securing city contracts.

Nagin is best remembered for his impassioned pleas for help after levees broke during Hurricane Katrina, flooding much of New Orleans and plunging the city into chaos.
...
The charges against Nagin included one overarching conspiracy count along with six counts of bribery, nine counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy and four counts of filing false tax returns. He was acquitted of one of the bribery counts.
...
...the corruption spanned the time before and after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.

The charges resulted from a City Hall corruption investigation that had resulted in several convictions or guilty pleas by former Nagin associates by the time trial started on Jan. 27.

Fradella and Williams, both awaiting sentencing for their roles in separate bribery schemes alleged in the case, each testified that they bribed Nagin.

Nagin’s former technology chief, Greg Meffert, who also is awaiting sentencing after a plea deal, told jurors he helped another businessman, Mark St. Pierre, bribe Nagin with lavish vacation trips. St. Pierre did not testify. He was convicted in the case in 2011.

Sorry Ray-Ray ... nobody left to rescue you this time. Not even Obama; if he threw you under one of your own buses, you’d drown.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/12/2014 at 07:40 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Government • Corruption and Greed •  
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Is It April 1st Already???

I am never, ever going hiking in Louisiana. Not ever.

As far as discoveries go, this is a somewhat terrifying one, assuming one has a healthy respect for crocodiles on the ground: They can climb and perch in trees, and really climb, with researchers spotting them more than a dozen feet from the ground.

While anecdotal reports have placed the reptiles in trees in Mississippi, Colombia, and along the Nile, only three references to such behavior appear in scientific literature.

And so researchers set out to determine whether it was a regular practice, observing crocodilians (which includes crocs and alligators) on three continents: Australia, Africa, and North America.

What they found, as reported in Herpetology Notes: Four species were identified as able to climb trees, and were spotted, in once case, as high as 13 feet above the ground—and as far as 16 feet down a branch.

Getting there meant scaling “a completely vertical bank and then [walking] amongst the branches to reach the end of the tree,” wrote the team, led by University of Tennessee researcher Vladimir Dinets.

Another wild observation, per Wired: Along the Nile, crocodiles were seen in the trees as often as some birds were. The crocodiles were observed climbing trees (and, in one case in Australia, trying to climb a chain-link fence) during day and night, typically in “areas where there were few places to bask on the ground, implying that the individuals needed alternatives for regulating their body temperature,” they wrote, per e! Science News.

Abstract. Although arboreality in extinct crocodilians is frequently suggested, the climbing abilities of extant crocodilians have never been discussed in any detail in scientific literature. We present an overview of published and anecdotal information on climbing in extant crocodilians, as well as original observations on four species representing two crocodile genera. These data suggest that climbing behaviour is common among crocodilians and might have multiple functions. The fact that at least some extant crocodilians are capable of climbing arboreal vegetation despite lacking any obvious morphological adaptations for arboreality must be taken into account by paleontologists trying to elucidate behavioural clues from the morphology of fossil taxa.

That kind of arboreality really is an abstract reality!

Posted by Drew458     on 02/12/2014 at 07:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries •  
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Hostile

Posted by Christopher     on 02/12/2014 at 01:31 PM   
Filed Under: • Government • work and the workplace •  
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