Tuesday - November 10, 2009

not a happy camper

You haven’t heard from me in a couple of days. With reason.

We’ve been trying to buy a house. We’ve been turned down by 2 banks already. Banks we’ve had accounts with for years. Not because we can’t afford the mortgage or make the down payment, but because we don’t have enough recent credit history. Apparently you can’t borrow money if you don’t owe anyone else any money, and aren’t in the habit of borrowing money. Living debt free and plastic free is the wrong way to go.

But, no worries, the real estate company has a financial arm. And they told us twice we were pre-approved! Twice! So we went with them. Fine, WTH, even though it cost us an extra 0.25%. But when the nitty met the gritty, 2 weeks out from closing, they’re on the phone with us saying we can’t give you a mortgage because when they run my wife’s credit score using her middle initial, they don’t get anything back. It doesn’t matter that they already have 2 credit reports on her, same SSN, but without that initial. Or that she has bank accounts and bill history both with and without that initial. Go figure.

So we’re doing what we can, but it doesn’t look good. Maybe we can get the power company, the landlord, the phone company to write us Good Faith letters, and with any luck in another 45 days they’ll make another decision, hopefully in our favor this time. Meanwhile the seller can just go stew. If this falls through we’ll be out a couple thou for the various fees and things.

Banks suck. There are no actual people with functional brains working in them. Merely computers and their unreasoning android masters. Personally, I feel that they don’t want to lend money to anyone, and now that the First Time Home Buyer’s Credit has been extended, they’re going to just sit back on their well padded and bailed out asses and chill.

UPDATE: The real estate finance people are full of shit. I just pulled my wife’s credit report, using her middle initial, and paid for a credit score thingy. And it came right up, from all 3 agencies. Why are they lying to us?




But we kicked hiney at bowling league Monday, taking all 7 against the 1st place team, which should knock them down at least 2 slots and bring us up 3 or more. The oil conditions were new, and they just couldn’t adapt. We suck anyway, so it was all the same to us. We had fun, they lost their minds. Mwaaahahahahaha!

Posted by Drew458     on 11/10/2009 at 04:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Can’t imagine what Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s motivation could have been.

I’ve had this in my inbox for a couple of days. Didn’t mean to ignore it and even though it may seem a rehash, actually it’s a pretty good read.
I don’t believe there’s a one of us here who would not agree.

Meanwhile, here counting hours till they wipe the stain of his miserable presence from the planet.  Of course I’m referring to that dark skinned fellow known as the DC sniper. Notice how well I control myself and haven’t used the dreaded ‘N’ word yet.  Even if that’s exactly what he happens to be.
I wish they’d only give the bastard enough to put him in a deep sleep, but then let him wake up in his coffin. Now that’d be justice. Won’t happen tho. Darn.

Hmm. Can’t imagine what Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s motivation could have been
November 8th, 2009
By james delingpole

Nor it seems can the liberal mainstream media.

I was watching BBC’s Newsnight when the story broke of a killing spree at a Texas military base and instantly wondered – as I’m sure did 99.99 per cent of its other viewers – whether this had anything to do with the Religion of Peace. Then a news update came in that the suspect’s name was ‘Hasan’. But the BBC’s reporter hastened to reassure us that there was “no evidence” to suggest this was an act of “terrorism”. Phew! Perish the unworthy thought.

Even today, the MSM is treading on eggshells regarding the killer’s possible motivation.

Here’s the Independent:

A motive for the shooting was hard to pin down last night. However, there were reports that Hasan, who was trained also in psychiatry and medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, was preparing for deployment to Iraq and was not happy to be going there. He had previously worked at the Walter Reed veterans hospital outside Washington.

Yeah, that would be it. You don’t want to be deployed to a combat zone so you do what any sane officer does under the circumstances. Not resign your commission obviously, but tool yourself up and take out a dozen a so of your unarmed comrades.

The BBC’s website takes a similar line, though it does at least (presumably in breach of all BBC guidelines) cheekily slip in the “M” word:

It is not clear what motivated the attacker, named as 39-year-old military psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

But some reports said the US-born Muslim was unhappy about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Interesting use of that word “unhappy”, mind.

The Guardian meanwhile, has a brave stab at the ‘trauma-crazed war vet goes tonto’ line, with the help of one of Hasan’s relatives:

One of Hasan’s cousins, Nader Hasan, told reporters the major was dreading going to war, having counselled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Next to the story, it provides a link to the story of another US veteran – Sergeant John Russell – who did just that, killing 5 of his comrades in May. Unfortunately, as it is forced to admit in a more detailed analysis, can’t have been traumatised by combat because, er….

He was not a soldier returning from deployment in either Iraq or Afghanistan, suffering from stress or combat fatigue. Hasan, although 39 years old, has never served in a war zone.

But that doesn’t stop the Guardian speculating desperately:

Instead, his horror of war came secondhand. He was a psychiatrist who listened to the harrowing stories of his comrades at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, and latterly at Fort Hood, Texas.

Ah yes that will be it. A bit like passive smoking, the Major was suffering from passive combat stress.

My favourite example of liberal squeamishness, though, comes from the New York Times. Sure towards the bottom of its report, it manages to slip in such not-altogether-irrelevant details as Hasan’s former imam’s claim that he was “very serious about his religion” (so much so that he hadn’t been able to find a sufficiently fundamentalist wife) and that a man with the same name as him was under investigation from the FBI for putting up enthusiastic postings on a Jihadist website about the joys of suicide bombing.

But not before having first blamed those far more likely causes – white racism…

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

And, yes, of course, that old favourite – passive combat stress:

Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. “He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

H/T

jamesdelingpole.com

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2009 at 02:11 PM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Military • RoPMA • Terrorists •  
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LAW AND DISORDER AGAIN. AGAIN. AGAIN.  GROPE YOUNG GIRL, PAY SMALL FINE PASS JAIL.

Hey. Home Free .. Gremlin wins again. Again.

Give me your tired, your ........ oh wait. Wrong country but same BS.

Judging by the amounts of fines here, I guess we know where their priorities are re. law and order and dare I use the word, justice?

A MIGRANT worker who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old was fined just £20 - the day before the girl’s dad got a £50 parking ticket.

Rulanas Kochanauskas, 31, pounced on the youngster as she walked home across a footpath and groped her breasts.

The teenager ran home in tears and alerted her 40-year-old dad.
With the help of his daughter he tracked down Kochanauskas to a shopping centre, got him in a head lock and called cops.

The migrant, thought to be Lithuanian, initially denied the assault but later admitted a charge of indecently touching a girl aged 13 in a sexual way without her consent.

An interpreter had to be hired when he appeared in court in Ludlow, Shrops.

But magistrates fined him £20 and ordered him to pay his victim £80 compensation. The girl’s dad was furious when next day he was given a £50 ticket for parking “inappropriately” at a supermarket.

The dad, who cannot be named to safeguard his daughter’s identity, said: “It’s a disgrace. I thought the least he’d get was a suspended sentence. It cost the court hundreds of pounds for an interpreter.”

SOURCE

I want to relate the following on the subject of priorities and justice.  Just shows how twisted things get.

Regular readers here know about the drunk who was so plastered that he relieved himself on a war memorial a few weeks ago.  He didn’t do it as an intended insult btw. He just hardly knew where in the hell he was.  He only knew he had to pee and so he did.  Well, he was caught on camera and it raised a storm here.  People were understandably outraged and so they should be.  The newspapers stayed on the story for several days fanning more public outrage and writing editorials and reprinting the photo.  It was even the subject of radio panel shows that week.  And what most missed because the focus was mostly on the war memorial and desecration of same, was that his drunkenness was part of a programed mass bar crawl, organized by Carnage,UK.  Think about that. 

And while you’re thinking about that ,,, and back on war memorial desecrations, please take a look at this.

All the work of vandals, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.  War memorials are being desecrated by thieves and vandals at the rate of more than one a week.  Figures released on the eve of Remembrance Sunday revealed how thugs are casually vandalising plaques, statues and stone crosses.
Since the country paused to commemorate the war dead in November last year, yobs have damaged at least 56 war memorials.

Well now, in answer to this outrage and it is exactly that, authorities are now calling for a jail term of up to ten years for this kind of behavior.
Ten years?  I don’t think that’s enough but ok. Ten years it is.  Ah but .... how about this, which is where I started this post except I got long winded.
PLEASE think about this along with all the above.

Recently, a drunk outta his skull ‘yoot’ attacked two women in broad daylight.  He hit one of them so viciously that she has lost an eye. The doctors could not save it.  Just another attack on a stranger by another stranger.  Daily life here these days.
He’s being sent to jail, as you’d expect.  BUT ... he got SIX YEARS.  I am not in favor of vandals destroying property whether it’s private or public. I favor cutting off a hand in fact.  But why is the desecration of a memorial worth ten years (and it is) but a woman’s eye is only worth six?
And you know damn well he will NOT do six years.

THUGS CAN DO THIS TO INNOCENT PEOPLE, YET ONLY GET A CAUTION!

In each case the victim was savagely beaten, bottled or even bitten.
But each attacker was let off with a slap on the wrist.
A TV probe to be shown next week reveals the scale on which offenders are being given cautions to unclog the courts - sparking accusations that it is justice on the cheap.

Last year 38,952 offenders received a caution for ABH - a charge that could carry a jail term of up to five years

Monday’s investigation highlights ex-air hostess Lauren Smith, who was battered at a party by a stranger who bit a chunk out of her arm.
Lauren, 25, said: “The police said it was ABH and I thought he’d go to prison. Then they told me he’d admitted everything and they were giving him a caution. I said, ‘It’s unacceptable. How can you give him a slap on the wrist?’”

John Guest, was beaten up in his own home - but his attacker got a conditional caution and was told to pay £200 compensation.
John said: “It cost more than £200 just to clean my carpets. It has left me feeling utterly disgusted.”
It was only when John’s case was reviewed by judges that the sentence was increased.
The Government insists cautions help unburden courts and free up cops to deal with more serious criminals.

Well then ... I guess these two aren’t thought to be “serious” enough. How much worse does it have to get?

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2009 at 09:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Daily Life • UK •  
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KEYSTONE KOPS NOW BAN THE USE OF THE TERM, ‘GANG RAPE’ AS BEING TOO “EMOTIVE”

Well what can I add to this?  ??  ???  I’m thinking - I’m thinking. 

It is not a funny subject but it is hard not to make some sort of wise crack about how stupid it appears.  Instead of gang rape they want to use,
‘multi-perpetrator rapes’ instead.
I guess that’s what it is okay but it somehow doesn’t have the force of the other term. Would it make a difference to a jury?  And maybe instead of ivory tower “academic studies” the authorities should have done an in depth study among women and especially victims. Or maybe it makes no difference what they call it.  The guys who do it all need to be given a close shave with a dull razor or a pair of garden shears.

Scotland Yard has instructed officers not to use the phrase ‘gang rape’ to describe such crimes because it is too ‘emotive’ a term.

By Stephen Adams
Published: 7:00AM GMT 10 Nov 2009

Under new guidance, they have been told to refer to sex attacks that involve more than one culprit as ‘multi-perpetrator rapes’ instead.
The move has been criticised by the Plain English campaign as “politically correct nonsense”.
Almost six years ago Sir John Stevens, then the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, ignited a row by objecting to use of the term ‘gang rape’ in an article by The Daily Telegraph, choosing to refer to it as “group rape”.
Now the force has taken the decision that the phrase “multi-perpetrator rape” should be used as the “overarching term”, following academic research.

In his report ‘Multi-Perpetrator Rape and Youth Violence, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Yexley admitted that the “common parlance” for such attacks was “gang rape”. But he argued that did not mean it was the right phrase to use.
He wrote: “‘This is an emotive term – but it is used widely in the public domain.

“There have been instances in the past where the term ‘gang’ has come to mean different things – either groups known to each other, criminal networks or peer groups.”
His report, for the Metropolitan Police Authority, followed academic research into the “cultural context” of gang rape, commissioned by the that showed many instances of ‘gang rape’ did not involve gang members.

He continued: “When examining rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, it should be noted that the number of offenders involved and the methods used by assailants, vary.
“Analysis on such offending is primarily based on victim testimony and any other supporting evidence, so links to ‘gangs’ cannot necessarily be established.”

However, Chrissie Maher founder of the Plain English Campaign, said: “I am disgusted to my very bones and weep for the victims of gang rape.”
She added: “Jargon has been used to hide and confuse all sorts of things, that’s why Plain English Campaign was started. But using jargon clean up crime is the last thing I ever expected to see.

“Ask any victim – rape is an emotive crime – it deserves an emotive term not some sterile, politically correct nonsense.”
Others welcomed the move, saying gang rape had been used for too long as an inaccurate shorthand for a variety of attacks.
Dr Nicole Westmarland of Durham University, former chair of Rape Crisis and an academic expert on the issue, said many ‘gang’ rapes did not involve gangs at all.

But she thought the term ‘gang rape’ was still worth using when gangs were involved.
The police report also highlighted that there number of gang rapes in the capital is growing, that the age profile of victims is getting younger, and that a greater proportion of the victims are black.

There were 93 such crimes reported in 2008-9 compared to 71 in 2003-4. Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of victims are now aged 19 or under, compared to 48 per cent in 1998-9. The proportion of black victims has also doubled over the last decade, from 17 to 34 per cent.
A Metropolitan police spokesman confirmed the report did amount to new guidance.

She said: “Recent academic studies have suggested that the term ‘Multiple Perpetrator Rape’ should be used as the overarching term for offences involving two or more perpetrators.”

TELEGRAPH

A LAST MINUTE ADDITION TO THE SUBJECT OF RAPE.

100 rapists are let off with a caution: The serious offences that never come to court

By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 10:22 AM on 10th November 2009

More than 100 rapists have been let off with a police caution, it was revealed yesterday. The 111 cases included 66 incidents of child rape.

The extent to which police forces have handed cautions to rapists, whose crime carries a maximum sentence of life in jail, was made public as Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced a full-scale review of the system of punishing crime with cautions and on-the-spot fines.

MORE ON THIS HERE

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2009 at 07:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • UK •  
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American muslim says … No Pity for victims at Ft. Hood.

My thanks to LyndonB for this .... I don’t often get to boot this early or check my inbox but did today.
This is audio only and is only one minute.  But it shows a mindset among these life forms.

Lyndon had this to say, and he speaks for me so I’ll not add anything.

I came across this on a site called Biased BBC

The enemy within.......

I know this may sound a bit off the wall but in the not too distant future, certainly sooner in Britain than the US we are going to be in open war with these people and their barbaric death cult. There has been hardly any mention of the victims of this mad mullah atrocity just bleating about a backlash against all the “peace loving” muslimes. It makes me sick. One of my friends has a son who is based at Fort Hood. Fortunately he was visiting family at the time, but it brings it home to you when it’s people you know that may be involved. I seriously think we will have to have a voluntary repatriation system for these people before it’s too late.

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2009 at 06:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Military • Religion • RoPMA • Terrorists • War On Terror •  
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Tired of reading how 1984 is here? Well, State to ‘spy’ on every phone call, email and web search

Picked up the morning paper from the floor today and the front page headline caught me cold. Kinda like being slapped in the face by a wet fish.
If not that then something close to it.  I think this is scary and if passed will cause many to become a wee bit paranoid.  Not the bad guys cos their moto is always, What? Me worry?

I don’t think I have to worry about where I’ve been on line but the idea of snoopers just isn’t comfortable. And as for emails. Well, and I only just thought of this now.  I suppose I could end up on some radar somewhere due to things I’ve written to friends on various topics. I am NOT as you folks know, a pc person at all.  But given the world we live in today, which is not at all a world I like and I doubt you do either, I suppose things I write in emails might raise some concerns in some ppl.  Why hell, I’ve even had some BMEWSers come down on me like a ton of bricks so I can imagine what the authorities might think.

Oh well, at my age ....  What? Me Worry?  (hmmm maybe I shouldn’t have said that last one)

Every phone call, text message, email and website visit made by private citizens is to be stored for a year and will be available for monitoring by government bodies.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM GMT 10 Nov 2009

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they have contacted, when and where, as well as the websites they have visited.

Despite widespread opposition to the increasing amount of surveillance in Britain, 653 public bodies will be given access to the information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the ambulance service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to obtain the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Ministers had originally wanted to store the information on a single government-run database, but chose not to because of privacy concerns.

However the Government announced yesterday it was pressing ahead with privately held “Big Brother” databases that opposition leaders said amounted to “state-spying” and a form of “covert surveillance” on the public.

It is doing so despite its own consultation showing that it has little public support.

The Home Office admitted that only one third of respondents to its six-month consultation on the issue supported its proposals, with 50 per cent fearing that the scheme lacked sufficient safeguards to protect the highly personal data from abuse.

The new law will increase the amount of personal data that can be obtained by officials through the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which is supposed to be used for fighting terrorism.

Although most private firms already hold details of every customer’s private calls and emails for their own business purposes, most only do so on an ad hoc basis and only for a period of several months.

The new rules, known as the Intercept Modernisation Programme, will not only force communications companies to keep their records for longer, but to expand the type of data they keep to include details of every website their customers visit, effectively registering every online click.

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, CLICK HERE

The powers that be tell us that,

authorities will not be able to view the contents of these emails or phone calls, they can see the internet addresses, dates, times and identify recipients of calls. 

Posted by peiper     on 11/10/2009 at 05:45 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Government • UK •  
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   Monday - November 09, 2009

UNCLE JAY AND THE LATEST NEWS ………..

HOW ‘BOUT DEM BUMS?  LOL.  I see Brooklyn here.  Kinda miss the old Dodgers before LA. Hell, Miss the old Dodgers in LA too. When Steve Garvey played with em.

Enough of that.

Here’s a very good Uncle Jay I thought you’d enjoy.

Cheers All

Posted by peiper     on 11/09/2009 at 09:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Humor •  
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We were fools to think the fall of the Berlin Wall had killed off the far Left.

She’s wrong about “they’re back.”
Because the SOBs never left us.  And haven’t some of us been bitching about the enemy screwing us from within for a long time?

I have wondered for a long time, just how it was possible for the left to be so well organized, that they have managed to bring us to this place we now find ourselves in.  Well, I think Melanie Phillips has answered my question.

I have posted her entire editorial here, rather then only part of it .  She really has nailed it.
Now where do we go from here?

I HOPE YOU WILL READ ALL OF THIS!

We were fools to think the fall of the Berlin Wall had killed off the far Left.

They’re back - and attacking us from within

By Melanie Phillips
Daily Mail
Monday Nov 9 2009

Twenty years ago today, supporters of freedom and human rights cheered and wept for joy as the Berlin Wall was torn down by jubilant young Germans.

To so many, that heady day seemed to herald the emergence of a better world. The spectre of communism had finally been laid to rest. Liberty had triumphed over tyranny.

The end of the Cold War even led some to proclaim that this was ‘the end of history’ - which was to say that liberal democracy was now the dominant and unchallengeable force in the world.
East German border guards looking through a hole in the Berlin wall

The collapse of communism was actually a slow-burning process. Its moral and political bankruptcy became obvious decades before that glorious Berlin day in November 1989

However, the 9/11 attacks on America tragically proved this to be absurdly over-optimistic. The eruption of radical Islamism revealed that, while the West may have been rid of one enemy in the Soviet Union, another deadly foe had risen to take its place. So much is, sadly, all too evident.

But what is perhaps less obvious is that communism did not just vanish in a puff of historical smoke. The Soviet Union was defeated and fell apart, for sure. But the communist ideology that fuelled it did not so much disintegrate as reconstitute itself into another, even more deadly form as the active enemy of western freedom.

SUBVERSIVE

Soviet Communism was a belief system whose goal was to overturn the structures of society through the control of economic and political life. This mutated into a post-communist ideology of the Left, whose no-less ambitious aim was to overturn western society through a subversive transformation of its culture.

To grasp the extent to which this has in fact taken place, we have to go back in time to well before the moment the Berlin Wall fell. The collapse of communism was actually a slow-burning process. Its moral and political bankruptcy became obvious decades before that glorious Berlin day in November 1989.

For many communist fellow travellers, the scales fell from their eyes when the Hungarian uprising was crushed in 1956. Others, over the years, lost faith not just in communism but in its less radical sister, socialism, as their core tenet of ‘equality’ proved itself in a myriad different ways to be the enemy of freedom and justice, with market forces appearing to carry the torch of liberty instead.

But as communism slowly crumbled, those on the far-Left who remained hostile towards western civilisation found another way to realise their goal of bringing it down.

This was what might be called ‘cultural Marxism’. It was based on the understanding that what holds a society together are the pillars of its culture: the structures and institutions of education, family, law, media and religion. Transform the principles that these embody and you can thus destroy the society they have shaped.

This key insight was developed in particular by an Italian Marxist philosopher called Antonio Gramsci. His thinking was taken up by Sixties radicals - who are, of course, the generation that holds power in the West today.

Gramsci understood that the working class would never rise up to seize the levers of ‘production, distribution and exchange’ as communism had prophesied. Economics was not the path to revolution.

He believed instead that society could be overthrown if the values underpinning it could be turned into their antithesis: if its core principles were replaced by those of groups who were considered to be outsiders or who actively transgressed the moral codes of that society.

So he advocated a ‘long march through the institutions’ to capture the citadels of the culture and turn them into a collective fifth column, undermining from within and turning all the core values of society upside-down and inside-out.

THIS STRATEGY HAS BEEN CARRIED OUT TO THE LETTER

The nuclear family has been widely shattered. Illegitimacy was transformed from a stigma into a ‘right’. The tragic disadvantage of fatherlessness was redefined as a neutrally-viewed ‘lifestyle choice’.

Education was wrecked, with its core tenet of transmitting a culture to successive generations replaced by the idea that what children already knew was of superior value to anything the adult world might foist upon them.

The outcome of this ‘child-centred’ approach has been widespread illiteracy and ignorance and an eroded capacity for independent thought.

MISDEEDS

Law and order were similarly undermined, with criminals deemed to be beyond punishment since they were ‘victims’ of society and with illegal drugtaking tacitly encouraged by a campaign to denigrate anti-drugs laws.

The ‘rights’ agenda - commonly known as ‘political correctness’ - turned morality inside out by excusing any misdeeds by self-designated ‘victim’ groups on the grounds that such ‘victims’ could never be held responsible for what they did.

Feminism, anti-racism and gay rights thus turned men, white people and Christians into the enemies of decency who were forced to jump through hoops to prove their virtue.

This Through The Looking Glass mindset rests on the belief that the world is divided into the powerful (who are responsible for all bad things) and the oppressed (who are responsible for none of them).

This is a Marxist doctrine. But the extent to which such Marxist thinking has been taken up unwittingly even by the Establishment was illustrated by the astounding observation made in 2005 by the then senior law lord, Lord Bingham, that human rights law was all about protecting ‘oppressed’ minorities from the majority.

None of this is to say there has been a giant, organised conspiracy to undermine Britain in this way. Admittedly, some Left-wingers did so conspire, but many others bought into these ideas for different reasons.

Of particular importance was the demoralisation of the British ruling class by the loss of Empire and the indebtedness of Britain to America at the end of World War II - a profound loss of cultural nerve that made the Establishment vulnerable to any ideas, however outlandish, that promised to bring about the New Jerusalem.

These ideas gained general traction within the intelligentsia, the universities and the media - which is why the BBC is so institutionally skewed towards political correctness.

TOTALITARIAN

However, the terrifying fact is that they form a totalitarian mindset that replicates the way communist societies clamped down on any other than permitted views. Thus the intolerance - or even arrest - of Christians opposed to gay adoption and civil union, or the vilification as ‘racists’ of those opposed to mass immigration.

This mindset also led to the belief that a sense of nationhood was the cause of all the ills in the world, precisely because western nations embodied western values. So transnational institutions or doctrines such as the EU, UN, international law or human rights law came to trump national laws and values.

But the truth is that to be hostile to the western nation is to be hostile to democracy. And indeed, with the development of the EU superstate we can see that the victory over one anti-democratic regime within Europe - the Soviet Union - has been followed by surrender to another.

For the republic of Euroland puts loyalty to itself higher than that to individual nations and their values. It refused to commit itself in its constitution to uphold Christianity, the foundation of western morality.

Instead, it is committed to moral and cultural relativism, which sets group against group and guarantees supreme and antidemocratic power to the bureaucrats setting the rules of ‘diversity’ and outlawing all dissent from permitted attitudes.

When the Berlin Wall fell, we told ourselves that this was the end of ideology. We could not have been more wrong.

The Iron Curtain came down only to be replaced by a rainbow-hued knuckle-duster, as our cultural commissars pulverise all forbidden attitudes in order to reshape western society into a post-democratic, post-Christian, post-moral universe. Lenin would have smiled.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 11/09/2009 at 06:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Commies • CULTURE IN DECLINE • FREEDOM • History • UK •  
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Rare Edison Electric Pen to be sold …… 1st invention in the world to use an electric motor.

That’s what it says in the morning paper.
Did you folks already know about this invention?  WOW ... What a mind Edison had. There’s a better illustration in the hard copy but the Telegraph didn’t put it on line. Darn.  So I went looking and found a few photos.

There’s an illustration here that shows two jars ...  but the hard copy shows one jar that looks like a mason jar with a motor inside.

From The Telegraph

One of the few remaining Edison Electric Pens that was the first invention to have an electric motor is to be sold.

In 1875 Thomas Edison launched the pen to allow multiple copies to be made from the same handwritten manuscript - although the typewriter soon made it redundant.

The machine for sale that belonged to a collector is in full working order and comes with the associated Edison Mimeograph Duplicator.

The pen’s stylus would make 50 punctures per minute, perforating the paper with thousands of tiny holes.

This paper would then be placed into the duplicator and ink would be spread over it, creating as many copies as was desired.

Run off a wet-all battery in a glass jar, the pen was initially a hit, being sold all over the world.

At the time it was boasted that up to 15,000 copies could be made from the same stencil, with up to 15 possible in every minute.

Sales literature at the time from the US stated: “The apparatus is used by the United States, City and State Governments, Railroad, Steamboat and Express Companies, Lawyers, Architects, Engineers, Accountants, Printers and Business Firms in every department of trade.”

It added: “It is especially valuable for the cheap and rapid production of all matter requiring duplication...”

Originally the whole system could be purchased for 40 dollars, and there were different sized duplicators.

Uwe Breker, who runs an auction house in Cologne in Germany, expects to raise nearly £10,000 from the sale.

He said: “The Edison Electric Pen still works today, but you can use a modern 4.5 volt battery to power it.

“There are only thought to be about two dozen of these in the world and most are in museums so it is very rare for one to come on the open market.

“The electric pen was the very first item to be driven by an electric motor and is one of the earliest items of Edisonianan available to collectors.

“On August 8, 1876, Edison was granted U.S. patent number 180857 for his new invention.

“It sold well all over the world but the development of the typewriter reduced demand for it considerably.”

The is to be sold at Breker auctions on November 21.

Edison’s Electric Pen
1875: the beginning of office copying technology
by Bill Burns
Edison’s electric pen was the first electric motor driven appliance produced and sold in the United States, developed as an offshoot of Edison’s telegraphy research.

Edison and Batchelor noticed that as the stylus of their printing telegraph punctured the paper, the chemical solution left a mark underneath. This led them to conceive of using a perforated sheet of paper as a stencil for making multiple copies, and to develop the electric pen as a perforating device. US patent 180,857 for “autographic printing” was issued to Edison on 8 August 1876.

The electric pen was sold as part of a complete duplicating outfit, which included the pen, a cast-iron holder with a wooden insert, a wet-cell battery on a cast-iron stand, and a cast-iron flatbed duplicating press with ink roller. All the cast-iron parts were black japanned, with gold striping or decoration.

The hand-held electric pen was powered by the wet-cell battery, which was wired to an electric motor mounted on top of a pen-like shaft. The motor drove a reciprocating needle which, according to the manual, could make 50 punctures per second, or 3,000 per minute. The user was instructed to place the stencil on firm blotting paper on a flat surface, then use the pen to write or draw naturally to form words and designs as a series of minute perforations in the stencil.

Later duplicating processes used a wax stencil, but the instruction manuals for Edison’s Electric(al) Pen and Duplicating Press variously call for a stencil of “common writing paper” (in Charles Batchelor’s manual), and “Crane’s Bank Folio” paper (in George Bliss’ later manual). Once the stencil was prepared it was placed in the flatbed duplicating press with a blank sheet of paper below. An inked roller was passed over the stencil, leaving an impression of the image on the paper. Edison boasted that over 5,000 copies could be made from one stencil.

The electric pen proved ultimately unsuccessful, other simpler methods (and eventually the typewriter) succeeding it for cutting stencils. But Edison’s duplicating technology was licensed to A.B. Dick, who sold it as “Edison’s Mimeograph” with considerable success. The company is still in business today as an office products and equipment manufacturer.

http://electricpen.org/

All photos come from electricpen.org

Posted by peiper     on 11/09/2009 at 05:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT • Science-Technology •  
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Fort Hood shooting: FBI to investigate reports gunman said non-Muslims should be beheaded

Except for the act itself, almost nothing has sickened me more then seeing this bastard’s photo in our morning paper today, wearing the uniform of the US Army.
When I first heard about this and heard the muzzie name, like all of you I wasn’t much surprised.  And this scum was born in the USA. Doesn’t matter does it? 

Kudos to the lady cop who brought him down of course and NO criticism of her intended. NONE!
But I have to ask those of you who know more about weapons then I do, which is all of you I believe, how was it possible to shoot this bastard four times and not kill him?  Are police in Texas issued pea shooters for sidearms?

Another question.  If these statements are true, and I guess we have to believe they are else where did they come from; what was our internal security doing?  The cops?  Homeland Security?  Someone. Anyone.  If a flag was raised, why was this creep still wearing our uniform and allowed access to our base and access to weapons?

The FBI will investigate a report that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America’s Fort Hood military base, told colleagues that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.


By Nick Allen in Fort Hood
Published: 7:30AM GMT 09 Nov 2009
Fort Hood shooting: FBI to investigate reports gunman said non-Muslims should be beheaded
Maj Hasan, armed with two handguns including a semi-automatic pistol, walked into a processing centre for soldiers deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he killed 13 and injured more than 30. Photo: GETTY

He is also said to have told other doctors at one of America’s top military hospitals that non-believers were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire.

The comments are said to have come during an hour-long talk Maj Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given a presentation focusing on an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Maj Hasan appeared to agree with.

It is the latest in a series of “red flags” about Maj Hasan’s state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America’s largest military installation, on Thursday.

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.

Another, Dr Val Finnell, who took a course with him in 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, did complain about Hasan’s “anti-American rants.” He said: “The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty.”

I’m not posting the entire article.  You folks back home are probably being flooded with the story already.
My source for this is the Daily Telegraph. 

Posted by peiper     on 11/09/2009 at 04:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Military • Outrageous • RoPMA • Terrorists •  
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   Sunday - November 08, 2009

Weekend Oldies

Yeah, I know, I promised to do this each week. Sue me!

Here’s my personal favorite Warren Zevon song. Werewolves of London is good, but Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner is far better.

I’ve never been sure of this song. Didn’t care when I was young, but now? I’m thinking the Kinks are singing an ode to the transgendered:

But listen and decide for yourself…

Before you mention this Peiper, I did just notice he met her in a club in Soho. Think I’ve answered my own question.

Next up: ABBA. In period dress. Guess this is a tribute to Queen Elizabeth 1.

Lastly, in 2007 I was in the audience in Branson. Jim Stafford did Spiders & Snakes.

A bitter-sweet memory. The Skipper and I were supposed to meet up on my way home. He didn’t answer his phone. 

Posted by Christopher     on 11/08/2009 at 09:03 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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Weekend Women Redux

I sent this to peiper, who declined to use it because it’s obviously too hot…

BTW peiper, she has a nice hat also. Don’t you agree?

So, below the fold, Mrs Christopher.

Posted by Christopher     on 11/08/2009 at 07:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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A Rhetorical question

So, I’m watching The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Now, I know it’s fantasy. But still, you have to have some basis in fact.

Reepicheep is leading the mice. He draws his obviously well-made rapier.

And here I went wrong. I started thinking things like: who forges mouse-sized rapiers in Telmarine-occupied Narnia?

Posted by Christopher     on 11/08/2009 at 07:00 PM   
Filed Under: • wierd stuff •  
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A Class Act

Former President George Bush and his wife Laura visit Fort Hood, spend hours visiting the wounded. No press coverage wanted. Compare that to the classless pretender’s “Oh, and another thing, there’s been this massacre in Texas” bit glued on to the end of his closing notes talk at some indian conference. Sunnuvabeetch couldn’t even be bothered to finish one talk then go outside to the porta-podium to make a separate delivery. He sure supports the military right down to the bone, don’t he?

Class vs. trashtastic.

No time to post today; here’s the link at Flopping Aces: http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/11/07/george-and-laura-bush-visit-victims-of-fort-hood-shooting-in-private/

Posted by Drew458     on 11/08/2009 at 12:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One •  
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