Friday - June 20, 2008

EU lifts Cuba diplomatic sanctions (Is this long overdue and about time?  Thoughts?)

Curious to know if you folks think this is past time.

Embargo certainly didn’t get rid of Castro.  In fact, it’s possible that the only reason it’s lasted is due to the very wealthy and very strong Cuban lobby.  Who are as well, politically very astute.

By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 9:15AM BST 20/06/2008
The European Union has agreed to lift diplomatic sanctions against Cuba in the hope of encouraging democracy in the Communist state.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the union’s external relations commissioner, said the decision was designed to encourage changes in Cuba after Raul Castro took over from his ailing brother Fidel.

The gesture was largely symbolic, as the sanctions banned high-level visits by Cuban officials – and they have been suspended since 2005.

However, a summit of EU foreign ministers in Brussels called for several conditions for relations to improve further.

The include the release of all political prisoners; access for Cubans to the internet; and opportunities for EU delegations to meet both opposition figures and members of the Cuban government.

“There will be very clear language also on what the Cubans still have to do ... releasing prisoners, really working on human rights questions,” she said after the decision was announced in Brussels. “There will be a sort of review to see whether indeed something will have happened.”

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the lifting of sanctions in no way meant the EU was getting weak on Cuba, and said that asking for talks with Cuban officials on touchy issues like human rights, or to demand access to political dissidents was the best way to push change on the island.

Washington imposed a trade blockade of Cuba almost 50 years ago.

http://tinyurl.com/3tk5f4

Posted by Drew458     on 06/20/2008 at 07:58 AM   
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   Friday - June 13, 2008

Fight to ‘keep Budweiser American’ begins

Seems only yesterday it was Drew or someone else here who mentioned American companies going bye,bye to foreign investors. Sure hope Bud can fight this off.

Fight to ‘keep Budweiser American’ begins with bid for Modelo

By Jonathan Sibun
Last Updated: 1:26am BST 13/06/2008

Anheuser-Busch, maker of Budweiser, is attempting to thwart Inbev’s $47.5bn (£24.4bn) bid by trying to buy Mexico’s Modelo, in a move which would probably make the US company too big to swallow.

Anheuser put out feelers to Modelo in the past few weeks, after rumours of a takeover approach from Inbev surfaced. Missouri-based Anheuser already owns half of Modelo in a non-controlling stake.

If it bought the rest the enlarged company may be too big for Inbev to buy. Anheuser approached Carlos Fernandez, chief executive of Modelo and an Anheuser director, about a deal in recent weeks, it has been reported.

There would be large hurdles to a tie-up, including Modelo losing its prized independence. Meanwhile, the Missouri governor launched an attack on Inbev’s bid for Anheuser, saying he will “explore every option” to keep the company in American hands.

Matt Blunt said he had ordered the state’s department of economic development “to explore every option and any opportunity we may have to help keep Anheuser-Busch where it belongs – in St Louis, Missouri”.

His stance came despite assurances from Inbev chief executive Carlos Brito that the objective of the Belgian-Brazilian brewer’s unsolicited $65-a-share bid was “to reach a friendly agreement”.

Analysts said Mr Blunt’s move was likely to hold little legal weight, but added that it highlighted the weight of feeling against Inbev’s bid in the US. Trevor Stirling, an analyst with Alliance Bernstein, said it was “probable” that Inbev would be forced to push its bid to $70 but a takeover seemed all but certain.

http://tinyurl.com/6ntuws

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2008 at 12:16 PM   
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And I thought I had hearing problems

... but this guy takes the cake. He must be stone deaf. And blind too I’d guess.

Lee Bradley looked in his loft – and found a colony of Kosovans living in the roof. Party walls had been knocked down between Lee’s home and two adjoining properties to create a living space for several families, with an electric light dangling from the roof. Shocked Lee, 33, closed the hatch and dialled 999. Police raced to his rented house and scrambled the force helicopter – but by the time they arrived the loft dwellers had gone. Lee, his wife Caroline and their four kids had just moved into the £500-a-month terraced home in West Bromwich, West Midlands.

Previous tenant Shirley Graham, 54, said: “I’d heard babies crying but found it strange because there weren’t any babies in the terrace. Now I realise it was coming from the loft. It’s terrifying to think those people were up there right over my bedroom ceiling.”

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2008 at 10:58 AM   
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   Tuesday - May 20, 2008

16,000 Tokyo Residents Evacuated for UXB

TOKYO - A fire official says more than 16,000 people were evacuated from a Tokyo suburb while an unexploded 1-ton bomb believed was defused.  The bomb was believed to have been dropped by the U.S. military during World War II.

The rusty bomb was defused by a team from Japan’s Self-Defense Force in Chofu, on the outskirts of Tokyo, said Tokyo Fire Department official Shigeru Ishikawa.

“Residents stayed at nearby public schools for evacuation,” Ishikawa said. About 16,490 people had to leave their homes for about two hours, he said.

The bomb, believed to have been dropped by a B-29 bomber, was found by construction workers in March.

According to the city, Keio Corp., which is performing work to lay underground rail lines, found the bomb buried 3.25 meters underground near railtracks in the city’s Kokuryocho area on March 27. The firm scanned the area with a metal detector after being told by the owner of the land that something had fallen from the sky during the war and had made a hole in a field.  The one-ton U.S.-made bomb is about 1.8 meters long and has a diameter of 60 centimeters. The bomb is believed to have been dropped by a B-29 bomber that had targeted a munitions facility in the city.

After the bomb was discovered, the Self-Defense Forces took swift measures to secure the area and a security company is monitoring the bomb around the clock.

If the bomb were to explode above the ground, it is estimated that shrapnel and debris could be scattered over a distance of about two kilometers, leading Mayor Yoshiki Nagatomo to judge it essential for residents to be evacuated.

Ah, Bubba Darwin, we miss you already. Just think how you could have “restored” this one.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2008 at 08:53 AM   
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   Monday - May 19, 2008

Mail Call !

I get emails ... I get letters ... Peiper once sent me an entire newspaper. This time I got a bunch of clippings from Jolly Old England. Thanks Peiper. It really is time to push the Reset Button over there. Pretty awful happenings in the news over the past couple of weeks ...

• One in five churches will be lost in the next generation through neglect and shrinking congregations.
• Thousands of prisoners ar not completing their probation because there is no funding.
• Meanwhile, prisoners being held in a 200 bedroom “Grade II” manor house with marble and mahogany interior don’t want to escape!!
• Yet at the same time, another 300 cells go unfilled at Birmingham prison because - get this - the prison kitchen can’t offer them a choice of meals, including a special all-veg menu. Hey, how about you get to choose between stale bread and mouldy bread to go with that glass of dirty water?
• Old lady in perfect health goes to nursing home, is dead 4 weeks later from extensive violent abuse. The 84 year old woman was admitted to hospital with a broken collarbone, fractured ribs, extensive bruising all over, and ligature marks on one of her forearms from being tied up. All 8 care workers at the home charged with willfull neglect.
• Army veteran knocked off bicycle and stomped to death for £5 by 4 really retarded looking kids who brag about the crime. Little fuckers mother turns him in (hooray!).
• Girl blown up in her own home, neighbor killed, by girls with liquid explosives.
• Article in the Daily Telegraph bemoans how violence against babies and young children more than doubled last year; author calls for enhanced roles in the childcaring agencies such as NHS, local police and government. Hey, what about the parents? Um, wait. They seem to be 1/3 of the perpetrators. Never mind.
• Another article talks about “Society’s Climate Of Fear”: 5 Christian MPs issued a report “There is a perceived breakdown of trust and this is linked to the claim that there is a climate of fear in society. In the past our poiticians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.”
• “Revealed: the crime wave committed by teenage girls” - Britian is in the grip of an unprecidented crime wave among teenage girls. Crime rates among girls aged 10 to 17 up 25% over a 3 year period. ... recent cases where one girl was stabbed to death by a 16 year old ‘love rival’, a girl, 15, who was jailed for using her cell phone camera to record her 2 drunk male friends beat a man to death, etc. Proposed solutions? Stop selling booze to kids, and plan some “hard hitting” advertisements that warns teens that booze will ruin your looks and your health.
• Gang of teens stomps man to death for fun. Ok, this was from his last letter, but come on. He wrote in the margin “Drew this happens so often these days I’m surprised it even makes the news anymore”
• The 13th teenager murdered in London so far this year was killed while trying to intervene between some violent teen punk, who has already been thrown out of a bakery twice, and the all female staff there that he was harassing. At 6’4” Jimmy Mizen was aged 16 and a day. The punk kid who killed him used a chunk of broken window to slash his throat, and he bled to death right there in his older brothers arms. They were a couple hundred yards away from their home. Speaking on this tragedy, newly elected London Mayor Boris Johnson said “there are too many parents ... who have lost children to gun crime or knife crime ... together we will do something”.

Yeah, how about starting out by recognizing that it isn’t the weapon, it’s the wielders. Gun crime. Knife crime. Glass crime. Boot crime. Bomb crime. Give it the hell up already. It’s your pussy society. Your citizens have no opportunity, your government micromanages every aspect of everyone’s life, your school system sucks ass. Your youth are pampered self-centered messes who have lost all respect for anyone and anything. Gas them all and start over.

Ok Mayor “BJ”, is this just a BJ, or do you have a plan? Now that your city and country has turned in its balls to the socialist EU, and the whole place is wall to wall immigrants who have no desire to assimilate at all. You’ve got a video camera on every damn corner, and ultra-sonic devices to repell kids. But the place has turned into some vile cross between Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies. So, what’s the plan BJ? I really hope you have one. I hope you all have one ... because I’ve got a plan that will work, but you ain’t gonna like it ...

Non-islamic Nearly Sharia Law !!!

• Bring back flogging for all violent criminals over the age of 12. In public. In addition to any fines and jail time.
• Bring back the gibbet for all killers over the age of 15. Use it. Immediate appeal gets the convict judicial review. No legal errors? Hang ‘em.
• Stealing anything worth more than £300 is a Hanging Offense. String up the rotters and leave their bodies for the crows.
• Bring back real hard labor in the prisons. Chain gangs. Sweat shops.
• There will be corporal punishment in school. For misbehavior and for poor academic performance. Flunk a test, any test, and you get cut from all sports teams for the semester. Flunk another one and you get a firm birching. Hey, it kept your grandfather’s ass in line, it will do the same for yours. Mouth off, get thrashed. It’s that simple.
• Ban imports of certain inexpensive common items so that they have to be made in Britain. Then set up low technology factories that put lots of hands to work for low pay.
• Close the pubs Sunday to Wednesday. No booze for sale anywhere before 5pm. No consumption of booze, anywhere, before 5pm. It’s pretty obvious the whole damn country is a bunch of violent bitter alcoholics, who don’t even have God or Guns to cling to. It’s time to sober up.
• Let’s restart that favorite British pasttime, Hating On Foreigners. Start with the ones Over Here. Bloody inferior smelly wogs. Them and their heathen lingo, and stinky cooking. And they breed like bloody rats. And that music! Arrggh!! Keep at it until they leave the country. Then go back to hating on fwance like you’re supposed to. But you guys can find unity through a common enemy.
• No television shows about “lifestyles of the rich and famous” shall be allowed. Horrendously overpaid sports stars and actors will go back to being what they really are: mostly brainless trained monkeys who sweat and screw and play pretend for our enjoyment, hardly a step about street prostitutes and mimes. They are not heroes or role models, and they don’t deserve 1% of what they get paid. You need real role models for your youth, so you damned well better start making some. Starting with their parents, who by the way, are now accessories to their children’s crimes. Just because.

Ok, that’s my instant reaction. I’m certain you guys could find some more ideas to help dear mayor Boris Johnson save London, and then save the rest of England. Before it’s Totally Too Late.

Hey, there’s another idea: Forget the EU. Dump this “UK” crap. Forget being “Britons”. Go back to being English, and see if you can remember why you used to proud of it. 

Posted by Drew458     on 05/19/2008 at 06:18 PM   
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   Wednesday - May 07, 2008

Congrats to Jenna

I guess I’ve been living under a rock. Not only did I not know Jenna Bush was getting married, this Saturday!!, I didn’t even know she was engaged. Heck, I didn’t even know she was dating anybody. But you know what? I’m kind of glad I didn’t know, because it’s really none of my business. I’m glad that someone in the billion watt glare of the media spotlight has been able to actually live a bit of a normal life.

Aww, isn’t he just so squeaky clean looking? So young, so innocent. I haven’t the slightest idea who Jenna Bush is. I don’t know a thing about her. But she photographs well, and somehow I thought she’d go more for the bad boys. Guess I’m a dope, and her parents raised her better than that. Well done then, Ms. Bush. No Britney or Paris she be. Good.

(AP) Talk about hush-hush wedding planning. First daughter Jenna Bush was the last in the family to know she was getting married.

Months ago, her fiance, Henry Hager, told Jenna’s twin sister that he wanted to propose. Then at the Camp David presidential retreat, Hager asked President Bush and first lady Laura Bush for their daughter’s hand in marriage.

For weeks, the president and Mrs. Bush kept their lips zipped.

Then on Aug. 15, 2007, Hager rousted Jenna at 4 a.m. to go hiking on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine. “It was freezing,” Jenna recalled. “But we got up, and we hiked in the dark for an hour and a half, and then when we got towards the top - with the sunrise - he asked me.”

Officially, the wedding is a private, family affair. The White House has issued no press releases, but the president and first lady have gradually dribbled out details about the nuptials Saturday at their 1,600-acre ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Here’s the lowdown: Jenna, 26, will wear an Oscar de la Renta gown with a small train. More than 200 friends and relatives will attend the outdoor ceremony with dinner and dancing. A tent is being erected at the Western White House. The bride has 14 attendants, who are known not as bridesmaids, but members of the “house party.” Barbara Bush, Jenna’s twin, is the maid of honor. She helped Hager make decisions about the ring. The diamond, a Hager family heirloom, was reset in a ring that also features sapphires.

On Monday, the president disclosed that Jenna will say “I do” near a lake at the ranch - in front of a giant cross made of Texas limestone that will serve as an altar. The cross will be a landmark at the ranch for years to come. The president said that was his contribution to the wedding that the Bushes are trying to keep a low-key affair.

Jenna, the 22nd child of a president to marry while their fathers were in office, has come a ways from her dad’s first year in office when she had a run-in with the Texas law for underage drinking. It was her second offense. Then, during her father’s re-election campaign in 2004, she was photographed sticking her tongue out at the media at a campaign stop in Missouri. The widely circulated photo reinforced the playful side of her personality.

The groom, son of the head of the Republican Party in Virginia, met Jenna during her father’s 2004 re-election campaign. Hager, who graduated from Wake Forest University, worked as an aide to Bush’s former top political adviser Karl Rove and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. Hager, who will turn 30 the day before the wedding, is set to receive a master’s degree in business administration later this month from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

After the wedding, the couple plans to live in a two-bedroom, two-bath town house on the south side of Baltimore where she plans to return to teaching and he will work for Constellation Energy, a power supplier based in Maryland.

Jenna’s mother said Monday that she’s not nervous - and the president isn’t, either.

“I’m very, very excited,” the first lady told reporters. “It’s a very interesting passage of life when you get to that time in your life when your child - first child is getting married. And we’re getting, for us, our first son.”

Wow, a simple affair in Crawford, with a mere 14 attendants. Well I hope it’s a heckuva party, and the young couple get off to a perfect life together. Aide to Karl Rove ... yeah boy, I betcha Henry is a power player in the making. Cool.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/07/2008 at 07:35 PM   
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   Thursday - May 01, 2008

“olds” as “news” again

Haven’t these MSM types figured out that, like diamonds, the Internet is forever? Here’s another one of today’s top stories, being reported around the world, that wasn’t even new news more than a year ago. Does it need some publicity? Sure, why not, it seems like a really promising medical breakthrough. But don’t put it in the “Breaking News” column, cuz it ain’t.

With the help of an experimental powder, a man’s severed finger has regrown to its original length in just four weeks, reports London’s Daily Mail.  Lee Spievack, of Cincinnati, who sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, described the powder as “pixie dust,” according to the newspaper. The “pixie dust” is actually extra-cellular matrix, bursting with collagen and is made from a dried pig’s bladder, the newspaper reports.

Three years ago, Lee Spievack sliced off the tip of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane.  What happened next, Andrews reports, propelled him into the future of medicine. Spievack’s brother, Alan, a medical research scientist, sent him a special powder and told him to sprinkle it on the wound.

Scientists are claiming an amazing breakthrough - regrowing a man’s severed finger with the aid of an experimental powder. Four weeks after Lee Spievack sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, he said it had grown back to its original length. Four months later it looked like any other finger, complete with “great feeling”, a fingernail and fingerprint. The secret to the astonishing regrowth is said to be the powder described by Mr Spievack, a Cincinnati model shop salesman, as “pixie dust”. More properly known as extra-cellular matrix, it is bursting with collagen, the protein that gives skin its strength and elasticity, and is made from dried pig’s bladder. It was developed to regenerate damaged ligaments in horses. “The second time I put it on I could already see growth,” said Mr Spievack, 69.

“Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before it was sealed.” Mr Spievack damaged his finger in the propeller of a model plane three years ago. He turned down a skin graft in favour of the “pixie dust” recommended by his brother, a former surgeon and the founder of the firm that makes the powder.

While it is not entirely clear how the powder works, its developers believe it kick-starts the body’s natural healing process by sending out signals that mobilise the body’s own cells into repairing the damaged tissue. Dr Stephen Badylak, of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, told the BBC: “There are all sorts of signals in the body. We have got signals that are good for forming scar tissue and others that are good for regenerating tissues. One way to think about these matrices is that we’ve taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals which were always there for constructive remodelling.”

In other words, the powder directs tissues to grow afresh rather than form scars.

The New York Daily News is running it too, as are other papers and online news sources. Why not? It’s a great story - this guy cut off his fingertip when he accidently stuck it in the path of the propellor on a running model airplane. By pure luck his own brother is a research scientist working on limb and organ regrowth. Brother sent brother some “magic powder”, actually made from pig collagen, sprinkled it on, and in a month the fingertip grew back. Pretty darned amazing, but it isn’t a new story today. It wasn’t a new story when Esquire ran it last September:

Once upon a time (last month), in a distant land (Pittsburgh), there was a medical breakthrough that could regrow fingers. Happily, this was no fairy tale.

It may have actually been news when MSNBC ran it back in February 2007, but I have my doubts:

Researchers are trying to find ways to regrow fingers — and someday, even limbs — with tricks that sound like magic spells from a Harry Potter novel.

There’s the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back, after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.

This summer, scientists are planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers.

Why am I running on and on about this? Because these are all “professional journalists and reporters” doing exactly what they accuse the pajamas-clad blogosphere of doing - dogpiling (blogswarming) on a story, and just passing it around. Worse, they aren’t even reporting something new. It’s an old story that’s just being recycled. They aren’t even adding anything new. So this is crap work by the MSM, and I’m probably one of the few bloggers who will even spot the recycle. What’s next, Breaking News that President Kennedy was just assasinated?

Posted by Drew458     on 05/01/2008 at 10:58 AM   
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   Wednesday - April 16, 2008

Heads to roll at NY Times

Faced with decreasing circulation, the old Gray Lady has to start scrimping. About 100 jobs are going to be cut from the newsroom, and an unspecified number of workers will be given early retirement packages.

To the staff

About six weeks ago Bill Keller announced that the newsroom would need to reduce its head count by about 100 jobs, as a result of the worsening financial picture facing this newspaper and the rest of our industry. To that end, we put on the table a round of buyouts, and began seeking volunteers among both our Guild and excluded employees.

The window for those voluntary buyouts closes officially next week—on Monday, April 21, for excluded members of the staff, and on that day and the next (Tuesday, April 22), for Guild applicants.

While we will not know the hard count until that time, every effort to handicap the outcome suggests that we are almost certain to fall short of the number of volunteers we will need. If that is indeed the case, as we expect it will be, we will—regrettably—be forced resort to some limited number of layoffs within the core newsroom.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of leftards communists journalists with integrity^tm.

Notice that the link is to the New York Observer. I guess this was another piece of news the Times didn’t think was Fit To Print.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/16/2008 at 04:02 PM   
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   Monday - April 14, 2008

A Crude Posting

Sorry folks, I’ve got stuff to do today. I guess we could have one of those Open Thread things that all the cool blogs have when they run of idea to post about.

I’ll tell you what I’d like to post about, if I had the time. That USGS survey released last week about all the oil hiding in the Bakken Formation up in North Dakota. A few weeks ago this was all wild speculation, though oilmen have known there is oil there since the 1950s. Now the report has come out (with wild rumors that it was actually done several years ago, but got sat on because the author died before he got proper peer review), and the conservative estimate is that there are BILLIONS of barrels of oil there. Recoverable ones, not just calculated quantities. The problem is that the oil is deep, 10,000 feet down and more. But angular or horizontal drilling could get to it. Or could it? Will they even be allowed to drill? Will the enviro-idiots have a fit? Will Native Americans try and claim the whole pie since the oil is under “Ancestral Lands”?

“Technology continues to advance”, Dorgan said Monday. “This is not going to be a red light or green light about oil development in the Bakken—clearly there already is a big green light there. But I think the question is pretty clear: How much of that oil is recoverable using today’s technology?”

A new black gold rush is under way, this time in North Dakota. The potential payoff is huge—up to 100 billion barrels of oil. That’s twice the size of Alaska’s reserves and potentially enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for two decades.

Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada.

But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort. Computer analysis and remote sensing systems, plus smart drills that can probe horizontally or snake left and right, vastly improve the odds of locating new pools and

The government estimated Thursday that up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana, using current technology.  The U.S. Geological Survey called it the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

The Bakken Formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. Companies use pressurized fluid and sand to break pores in the rock and prop them open to recover the oil.

So, what do you think is going to happen? Will someone finally get their butt off the pot and get something done? We’ll need a local refinery or two for this field. Build it. We’ll need quite a lot of pipeline. Build them. I’ve been listening to the hot air coming out of government for almost 40 years about our “energy policy”. Alternate fuels, alternate sources, clean coal, hydrogen power, advancing technology through research, blah blah blah blah BLAH. Times up. FORTY YEARS worth of expensive research. Well, here’s a liquid goldmine, hiding under some of the roughest and least inhabited parts of our nation. GET TO WORK. Take two weeks of spending away from the “War on Terror”, the “War on Drugs”, and “No Child Left Behind” and you’ll have plenty of money to spend on it. I’m all for private business, but maybe, just maybe, “energy” is something that ought to be nationalized? Sound off folks!

Posted by Drew458     on 04/14/2008 at 08:05 AM   
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   Wednesday - April 09, 2008

The best guy wins for a change

No, this isn’t some alternate ending for the Highlander. It’s props for political cartoonist Michael Ramirez, who has garnered another Pullet Surprise for his work.

Ramirez publishes daily at the Investors Business Daily, but you see his most excellent work nearly everywhere. Way to go.

h/t to Michelle Malkin

UPDATE:

BMEWS hears back from the author. That was really nice of him:

Drew,

Thank you for your wonderful e-mail and your kind words.

I am overwhelmed by my good fortune. I have been very lucky in my career and blessed in so many ways. I am but an ordinary person with an extraordinary job that has extraordinary benefits (like these awards) which have in turn, introduced me to so many extraordinary people.

It was nice to be able to bring home the Pulitzer for IBD. I believe we have the best editorial page in the country and they deserve the recognition. The editorial cartoons are but a small part of the effort.

Thank you for taking the time to send an e-mail and for reading my cartoons.

Best wishes to you and all your loved ones,

Sincerely,

-m

Michael P. Ramirez
Senior Editor/Editorial Cartoonist
Investor’s Business Daily
12655 Beatrice Street
Los Angeles, CA 90066
http://www.IBDeditorials.com/cartoons

Posted by Drew458     on 04/09/2008 at 05:46 PM   
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   Monday - March 24, 2008

Let’s play spot the media spin

It’s even more fun than playing “name that party” when reading news stories about elected officials who get caught with their pants down. Spot The Spin makes you figure out the story that the media isn’t telling you. This one is pretty easy. Think pirates and hijackers. Envision a map of the Suez Canal in your mind. Egypt on one side, and who-could-it-be on the other. Now read the story and take a guess what the real story probably was ...

Cairo: An Egyptian was shot dead and two others wounded in an incident involving a US-flagged cargo ship crossing the Suez Canal towards the Mediterannean Sea, reported security officials late Monday.

After sunset, a motor boat carrying three Egyptians approached the ‘’Global Patriot’’ with the intent of selling products when the ship opened fire on it with tracer bullets killing Mohammed Fouad and wounding two others, said an Egyptian navy official on customary condition of anonymity.

A police official in Cairo, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the incident, adding that some 100 other boat vendors had since gathered near the cargo ship and were demanding an investigation into the shooting.

There is a ‘’Global Patriot’’ registered to the New York-based Global Container Lines and, according to the company Web site, the vessel trades between the United States, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the East Africa.

Company representative Homruz Shayegan told AP by telephone from New York that he had no information on the incident. A spokesperson for the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain also had not heard about the event.

According to the Egyptian naval official, the ship had sailed from Dubai and was transporting used military equipment. It had completed crossing the canal and was in a waiting area, known as the Zenobia Lighthouse, in preparation to enter the Mediterranean when the incident took place.

Am I jumping to conclusions, or what? An entire containership filled with second hand, relatively untracable “military equipment”. I bet $100 against half a cup of camel piss that this was an attempted hijacking. Doesn’t matter if the fellahs in the rowboat were real Egyptians, or Pali-terrorists playing dress up. A container ship of weapons, sailing right by the sand dunes they recently blew up miles of wall to get at. It’s a no brainer, I think. But that’s not how the media will report this story, at least for the next several days.

We were just talking the other day about armed merchantmen at sea, and suddenly a US vessel sprouts machine guns, with tracers no less!

UPDATE - pics and some unusual info below the fold

Posted by Drew458     on 03/24/2008 at 09:27 PM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • Terrorists •  
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   Wednesday - March 12, 2008

CNN: Spitzer Will Resign Today

Breaking News: Spitzer to resign within minutes

ALBANY, New York (CNN)—New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will resign Wednesday, his aides said, as he faces allegations—but no charges—that he is tied to an international prostitution ring ensnared in a federal probe. Spitzer’s resignation is contingent on the details of his transition being worked out, aides said.

Also, Spitzer’s lawyers were in discussions Wednesday with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, trying to negotiate a plea deal to avoid prosecution, a source with knowledge of the discussions said.

Spitzer is scheduled to announce his resignation at 11:30 a.m. ET, a source close to the governor said. Spitzer will make a “brief statement,” according to his office. The news conference will be aired on CNN TV and CNN.com Live.

Both Republicans and Democrats were calling for him to leave office Tuesday.

“It is a ‘when’ question on the resignation, not an ‘if.’ He knows that,” a Democratic source said. “Eliot knows he cannot hold onto his job here. He might want to, but he is absolutely aware of his predicament.”

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/12/spitzer/index.html

Guess he must have cut a deal after all.

hee hee ... via Malkin ...

Posted by Drew458     on 03/12/2008 at 11:18 AM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • Politics • Stoopid-People •  
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   Monday - February 25, 2008

NAUGHTY CIA MUST ANSWER TO amnasty intl. and civil rights groups.

Renditions row after CIA plane lands in UK

By Duncan Gardham Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:04am GMT 25/02/2008

A fresh row erupted over the use of British air bases by US authorities as it emerged a plane used by the CIA has landed at an RAF airstrip in the past week.

A Gulfstream IV jet, identified by Amnesty International as a plane linked to the US intelligence agency, landed at RAF Northolt in west London.

The jet, registration N134BR, which flew from Morristown, New Jersey, to Britain, landed on Wednesday and returned on Friday. It was also seen at Luton airport in January.

See now here’s just one of the places I come unglued.  The SOBs publish the plane ID and a big deal gets made.  But we don’t even know for certain, and we shouldn’t, why the plane landed here.  But okay let that go for a minute.
Here’s where I get a bit miffed.  Alright, homicidal re. amnasty intl. and yes I would given a chance.  Here’s another totally unrelated story that has to do with planes.

Did you notice the photograph of the plane’s wing?  The paper BLOCKED OUT the plane ID number. Least that’s the way it looks. But they just HAD to publish the ID of the CIA plane?  That bothers me.
Maybe I’ve gone off the rail again but I see red every time I see the amnasty name.  I don’t think I’d be allowed to post what I’d like to do to that thorn.

Back to the main story:

The plane was listed in a 2006 report by Amnesty, which said it believed the aircraft was being used for the transfer of prisoners by the US. At the time, the Government admitted aircraft chartered by the CIA had landed 14 times at RAF Northolt and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire between October 2003 and May 2004, but denied they had been used in the practice of rendition.

There is no suggestion there were prisoners on board on this occasion but a new review of the so-called “torture flights” is taking place after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, last week admitted to Parliament two flights had stopped at the British base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

A Foreign Office spokesman refused to comment on individual flights but said: “The two flights from the US already identified are the only ones we are aware of.”

The practice of “rendition” involves the legal transfer of prisoners from country to country but “extraordinary rendition” involves by-passing the legal process to move prisoners, allegedly in order to facilitate torture.

Mr Miliband told the Commons last Thursday Diego Garcia had been used to refuel two “rendition’’ flights. One flight stopped at Diego Garcia on the way to the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, while the other was bound for an unspecified country, possibly Morocco.

Mr Miliband said he was “very sorry indeed’’ to have to correct previous statements made by Tony Blair and Jack Straw in 2005, 2006 and 2007 denying rendition flights had stopped on British soil.

The cases involving Diego Garcia had not been disclosed before due to an “error’’ in an earlier US records search.

In each of the two cases, the aircraft involved had been carrying a single detainee - neither of them British - who did not leave the plane while it was at Diego Garcia.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, said: “It should not be down to plane spotters and citizen activists to keep track of these activities.”

“There should be a full and independent inquiry into this country’s role in state-sponsored terrorism.”

source article

Posted by Drew458     on 02/25/2008 at 09:03 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • International • News-Briefs •  
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   Friday - February 22, 2008

HOME OWNER SUED FOR JUNK MAIL …. this really wins some sort of twisted prize!

Got up early as I do every morning, took the morning Telegraph from our mail slot in the front door, took in the milk which they still deliver here to your front door, and many other items offered by the dairy, brought the milk into the kitchen and popped it in the fridge, put some water on the hobb (stove to us yanks)
and opened the paper to the front page.

I haven’t even had my coffee or any other part of breakfast yet.  Soon as I saw this bit of total lunacy ... I had to boot and blog.
Unfreekin’ believababble.  Well, no. It isn’t at all.  Is It?

Home owner sued for junk mail injury
By Richard Alleyne
Last Updated: 2:03am GMT 22/02/2008

A home owner is being threatened with legal action after a woman claimed she trapped her hand in his letterbox while delivering unwanted junk mail.

Joy Goodman, a cake decorator, is seeking damages for personal injury and loss of earnings, claiming the top of her right index finger was severed when she delivered the mail. She claims she needs compensation because she is now unable to carry out her intricate job.

But the home owner vowed to fight the case. Paul O’Brien, 44, a self-employed engineer from Leeds, said: “When I received a solicitor’s letter I thought someone was having a laugh. I actually told them they had sent it early. April Fool’s Day is still six weeks away.

“I just cannot believe someone who came on to my property uninvited, to put junk mail through my door that I didn’t want, can now sue me because they hurt themselves.”

He added: “There is nothing wrong with the letterbox. I haven’t altered it or done anything to it. It’s just like every other letterbox on this estate.”

Mrs Goodman declined to comment, saying only: “It is in the hands of my solicitors.”

A law expert said that householders had limited duties of care to people who went on to their property such as delivery people or postmen.

These duties of care include not having such things as bare electricity cables sticking out, but were not likely to extend to a letterbox providing it was a standard model.

here’s the link >>> http://tinyurl.com/34azss

Posted by Drew458     on 02/22/2008 at 02:38 AM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • Insanity • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • News-Briefs • Outrageous •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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