Wednesday - October 24, 2012
Gee, no Kidding
(Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
There is simply no way to spin this. The bald truth is right there: the President and the Secretary of State and presumably several other top government people, knew both AS IT HAPPENED and IMMEDIATELY AFTER that the attack on our embassy was an act of terrorism. And then they flat out lied about it to the American public FOR WEEKS.
So, why were the leaders of our nation covering up for terrorists? Why are they in collusion with our enemies? Why are they treating what is pretty much one of the top definitive Casus Belli going as a criminal activity? Didn’t we put that approach behind us forever on 9/12/01?
And when the drone camera footage surfaces, date and time stamped, showing 3 or 4 drones covering things as they happened, transmitting the images to Washington in real time? Will anyone wonder why nothing was done in the 5 or 6 hours that the attacks lasted? When the Navy was just offshore, ready and eager to execute any kind of extraction or confrontation imaginable? What then? Will it even impact the poles? If not abject treason, how is this not total dereliction of duty?
Update: US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice knew too, as well as FOUR HUNDRED security personnel near the tops of multiple federal security agencies.
The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.
Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”
The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”
A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/24/2012 at 08:47 AM
Filed Under: • No Shit, Sherlock • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Wednesday - July 18, 2012
It’s A Start
AKRON, Ohio--Mitt Romney continued his war on President Barack Obama’s ties to political donors, releasing a new television ad Wednesday that attacks the president for routing taxpayer dollars to supporters and overseas companies.
The spot begins with a shot of burning cash falling across the screen.
“Where did all the Obama stimulus money go?” a narrator asks. “Friends, donors, campaign supporters, special interest groups.”
Lucky for me that I already have a post category called No Shit, Sherlock.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/18/2012 at 11:32 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - February 02, 2012
Rlly? Srsly?
New report released by GOP lawmakers suggests top Justice officials had extensive knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious
Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder’s scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, top lawmakers investigating the botched gunrunning operation, claims Justice Department officials in Washington and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the coordination in the early stages of the operation.
Justice headquarters “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged,” the memo reads.
The memo, which contradicts claims by the Justice Department, is based upon interviews, documents and emails involving key players of the operation run by the ATF. The operation allowed some 2,000 weapons cross the border into Mexico and into the hands of cartel members.
Gak, why is this even news?
Is it finally, finally becoming obvious to even the willfully blind that F & F had to be run from the very top, with the involvement of all the major players and all the LEO departments? We figured that one out 7 months ago, and then a short essay by a DC insider on how the system works (meetings, sign-offs, emails, CYA when things are ‘above your pay grade’, etc ) drove the point home. No kidding. It could not have been any other way. DHS, BATFE, FBI, DOJ, and the whole alphabet of agencies probably even including the CIA are in this up to their eyeballs and have been since the beginning. State Department too in all likelihood, right up to the very top (HRH HRC) and that strongly implies White House involvement. “We’ve got something in the works, under the radar” quoth Fearless Reader back in the day.
The media is only starting to bay about Eric Holder. They haven’t even begun to think about Janet Napolitano. It might take them a century to have the epiphany that at least a handful of Senators and Congressweasels are also involved, along with quite a number of top state officials. Fast and Furious was not an accident and it did not operate in a vacuum.
We The People aren’t stupid, and we figured out the obvious months ago: that a large chunk of our federal government and some of our state governments were knowingly involved in a wide ranging action that was this close to being an act of war against a neighboring sovereign nation, all done to further their Alinksi plans to fracture society and to serve as the ultimate example for shredding the keystone piece of the Constitution that protects the rest of it.
It failed. The word leaked out. And now DC is furiously blowing smoke and twisting mirrors as fast as they can. Needless to say, the media is fairly complicit, since this has never been more than a bit of a small scale back burner sidebar story for just a few of the networks. If this shit ever really hits the fan, Holder will be left holding the bag ... and nobody will ever connect the dots to all the other players involved.
Fast and Furious is 1000 times dirtier than Watergate. This should have toppled the whole government. It is the prime example of the hubris in DC and their above-the-law elitist mentality. And for the most part, the mindless sheeple ignore it or are completely unaware of it, because the media doesn’t want to splatter any mud on their masters.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/02/2012 at 09:48 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed • Guns and Gun Control • News-Briefs • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 14, 2011
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Another one for the Obviously Obvious files ...
:eyeroll: How much alcohol a person drinks directly affects how likely they are to have unsafe sex, a new review shows.
On average, every 0.1 milligram per milliliter increase in study participants’ blood alcohol levels raised their likelihood of having unprotected sex by 5 percent, the researchers found.
Canadian researchers looked at 12 studies that examined the link between people’s blood alcohol content (BAC) and how likely they were to say they would use a condom during intercourse. In all of the experiments, researchers had split the study participants into two groups, and asked one group consume alcohol, while the other group did not drink. Participants were then reported whether they would engage in unsafe sex.
The findings help explain why people who’ve been drinking engage in unsafe sex despite knowing better, study researcher Jürgen Rehm, the director of the Social and Epidemiological Research at Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said in a statement. “Alcohol is influencing their decision processes.”
The galling thing is that a whole group of “scientists” got paid, probably for the better part of a year, to do this study.
I’d put in a bid with the EU for funding to study how a lack of drinking water causes dehydration, but I don’t think it would go through given their recent legal decisions. Come on already people, wake the hell up. DUH.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/14/2011 at 08:16 AM
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Health-Medicine • No Shit, Sherlock • Stoopid-People •
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Permalink • Wednesday - August 31, 2011
Welcome To Our World
Iran says cheap “Made in China” Qurans full of typos
Iran’s Organization of the Holy Quran is scolding Iranian publishers who’ve outsourced production of the holy book to Chinese printers.
Apparently, their copies of the Quran are riddled with typos, according to the Tehran Times.
“These tableaus are made quite cheaply in China but are sold for much more than they are really worth to make that much more profit,” said an official with the organization who monitors and evaluates Qurans available in Iran.
The official even urged importers to halt future Quran shipments from China, the Times reported.
If you’re keeping score at home, China is accused of shipping out seafood laden with putrefying bacteria, toys laden with lead, totally fake eggs and, now, tainted Qurans.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/31/2011 at 03:59 PM
Filed Under: • No Shit, Sherlock • RoPMA •
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Permalink • Thursday - June 16, 2011
It’s not rocket surgery
The primary reason that the cost of healthcare is going through the roof is because the paradigm of insurance itself has been completely corrupted and bastardized. This corruption and abuse of the concept of insurance, which is nothing more than risk management and risk pooling, is itself what is artificially inflating healthcare costs.
A secondary cause of health care price inflation that bears a quick mention is indeed the out-of-control malpractice litigation culture, personified by that walking human compost heap, John Edwards. The solution there is simple. Cap malpractice awards and implement a “loser pays” rule to disincentivize frivilous litigation. It’s not rocket surgery.
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Health insurance is meant to be a protection against catastrophic costs and expenses. The operative term here, people, is “catastrophic”.
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The reason that the system of health insurance in the U.S. is broken today is because the concept of insurance itself has been bastardized and corrupted such that the expectation of coverage is no longer merely to protect against catastrophic expenses, but to cover absolutely everything: simple office visits, sore throat, chest cold, minor cuts requiring stitches, heck even setting a broken bone or arthroscopically working on a torn ligament in a knee.
...
You are not entitled to an insurance policy which covers every little thing. In fact, if it is mandated that insurance cover every little thing, including preventative care, then the entire concept of risk pooling collapses in flames. The more the insurance company has to cover, the higher the odds that any given individual is going to have a claim. This would be like demanding auto insurance coverage that would pay out for a car wash if an insect hit your windshield – and not just a $7.00 car wash at the gas station, but a $300 full detail job. If that were the case, the cost of car insurance would become prohibitively expensive. But guys, my example of auto insurance paying out for a $300 detail job after having an insect hit your windshield is not an unreasonable analogue to today’s health insurance market. We have health insurance today that covers acupuncture and cosmetic surgery. If you force insurance to cover PREVENTATIVE care and purely cosmetic or non-medical procedures, then what you are doing is GUARANTEEING that every single participant in the risk pool can potentially have a claim. If every person in the pool is guaranteed or even mandated to have a claim, then it is no longer a risk pool. My God, how can it be that no one understands this?
...
... a zero competition, zero deductible system, which is the goal of ObamaCare. If you think that is going to reduce costs, then apparently Barack Obama isn’t the only person currently smoking crack in this country.
This is a MUST READ article, but for those of you who have to multitask, there are also videos. So it can be a MUST LISTEN post if necessary. Go, and partake.
What a wild idea - medical insurance to cover catastrophic or significant accident or illness.
Nearly as wild would be health insurance possibly extended to cover (partially?) minor accidents or illnesses if they cost you more than X% of your annual income. Say you make $30,000 a year, and you policy comes in after 5%. That’s $1500 worth of doctor visits, medicines, eye exams, etc. In the past 10 years I’ve been to the doctor about once or twice a year. So for me, even if I only made $3,000 a year, I’d barely make that 5% line.
And let’s knock off the BS of calling health insurance “health care”. It isn’t.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/16/2011 at 03:00 PM
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Permalink • Friday - April 22, 2011
how do you tell when a headless man is dead?
I’m not quite certain if this needs to be filed under humor or not.
I don’t think you’d have seen this kind of story even 25 yrs ago. I may be wrong.
‘They’re the experts...’: Police call in doctor to tell them headless man is deadBy Daily Mail Reporter
When police pulled a headless body from a river, you would not have thought it needed a doctor to confirm the person was dead.
But there are rules and procedures to follow. And a medic was duly called in to declare that the man in question was actually ‘life extinct’.
Yesterday a coroner expressed surprise at why a doctor was summoned.
‘Even though there was no head, you had to call him in?’ Dr Shirley Radcliffe asked Det Insp Chuk Gwams.
The officer replied: ‘Yes Ma’am. They are the experts, we are not.’
The inquest heard that police were called to the River Wandle in Wimbledon, South-West London, last June.Two Environment Agency contractors clearing Japanese knotweed from the bank had discovered the headless corpse floating in the water.
It was so badly decomposed, it was impossible to establish how the person had died.
And it was only through DNA tests that police identified him as Polish national Waldemar Drobig, 32, a former baker who slept rough and had previously been arrested for petty theft.
Mr Drobig was born in Sunechow, Poland, and was married with one son, although at the time of his death he had lost contact with his family.
‘The area he was found in, a ledge under a bridge, in summer time is where the local street drinkers tend to congregate,’ Det Insp Gwams said.
Recording an open verdict at Westminster coroner’s court yesterday, Dr Radcliffe said: ‘The cause of death in uncertain.
‘It is not possible to rule out foul play one hundred per cent.’
Posted by peiper
on 04/22/2011 at 06:34 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - April 10, 2011
Eviscerating Lindsey Graham…burning a Koran thrown in for free!
If I’ve learned one thing from these two YouTube posts is that ‘jackass’ is semantically equivalent to ‘Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-INO)’. I’m posting the rest below the fold due to language and violence committed upon a book. Yes, my fellow Americans. You too can witness the burning of a Koran. It’s a shame she doesn’t do the obvious and follow-up by flushing the Koranic ashes down a toilet.
Posted by Christopher
on 04/10/2011 at 10:22 AM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • muslims • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Permalink • Wednesday - September 22, 2010
No Kidding
The decline in American manufacturing is risking the country’s security, experts will tell a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Manufacturing industry experts will appear at a National Security Oversight Subcommittee on Capitol Hill tomorrow to examine the effects the decades-old downturn in U.S. manufacturing may have on the country’s national security.
The committee also will examine the problem of reliance on substandard and sometimes counterfeit foreign-made parts, a dependence stemming from the drop in U.S.-made products, a depleted manufacturing workforce, and outdated technology. That reliance could place the lives of American soldiers at risk, according to information released by the subcommittee.
“We have allowed our industrial base to deteriorate for the last two to three decades. As a result, just in national defense terms, our supply lines for strategic parts and materials have been stretched around the world,” said Jeff Faux, founding president and distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute.
“As you watch globalization move the manufacturing base offshore, in essence you are moving the defense base offshore,” said Robert Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO, “This is dangerous”.
Both Faux and Baugh will testify Wednesday.
The nation’s manufacturers are being seduced by China where they can get more for their money due to an undervaluation of their currency, illegal subsidies, and a lack of enforceable laws regarding, worker rights, and environmental and health standards, Baugh told CNN.
Said Faux, “We have a national security policy that is not connected to our economic policy and an economic policy that is not connected to our national security policy.”
I’ve been saying this for 20 years or more. It’s national suicide.
h/t to Rich K I believe. Nothing wrong with a reasonable amount of imports. But if you don’t grow almost all your own food, develop almost all your own energy, make most of your clothing, most of your medicine, and damn near all your military equipment, then your country is at risk. I’d put steel and lumber at 75% for minimal self-sufficiency too.
Amazing that CNN would run such an article. It’s like, like they’re tired of being cheerleaders for Obama’s Destroy America Now policies.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/22/2010 at 07:33 PM
Filed Under: • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Permalink • Monday - July 12, 2010
And this is news?
Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds
The six-month election recount that turned former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.
That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes—fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.
Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been “stonewalled.”
“We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”
He said his group was largely ignored when it turned over a list of hundreds of names to prosecutors in two of the state’s largest counties, Ramsey and Hennepin, where fraud seemed to be the greatest.
A spokesman for both county attorneys’ offices belittled the information, saying it was “just plain wrong” and full of errors, which prompted the group to go back and start an in-depth look at the records.
“What we did this time is irrefutable,” McGrath said. “We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.
“The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn’t very likely.”
The report said that in Hennepin County, which in includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county’s voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far.
Shit piss and corruption! I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: Every town, every county in every state need to purge their voter rolls and re-register everyone all over again. This time with proper ID, proof of citizenship, SSN matched to the Social Security database, and a criminal background check. A photographic ID card needs to be issued, and no one will be allowed to vote without it.
( I leave it up to you to solve the absentee voter problem, but it isn’t very hard. Make Election Day the last day of Election Fortnight and 80% of absentee balloting would be unnecessary. Clear out those laws that allow for Motor Voters and Lazy Voters: absentee voting is for actual disabled folks and soldiers oversees only. Make the military vote first, perhaps a month ahead of time for those oversees, and put in validation checkpoints along the way so those votes don’t evaporate. That should handle another 10% of it right there. You figure out the rest. )
You provide more information to the credit card companies and the DMV than you do to your local board of elections. But without ensuring that the people who do vote are the people who are allowed to vote and no others, then the system is a fraud. And the results ... see above. And in many other places, like the state of Washington.
This garbage is by no means limited to Minnesota. It’s in your state too. In your county. Right in your own town. Mine too. The people hired by the government to keep the voter rolls clean and up to date do not do their jobs. This is done purposely: the technology already exists and the computer systems are in place. It’s no bet at all that Visa and MasterCard have a far better list of their members than the government has of it’s voters. It’s the same technology too, which means the whole job could be outsourced to Discover, who could do the work for nothing more than a tax write-off. Social Security could do it as well, and so could quite a few other government databases.
Anyone who has ever gone through the background search process while applying for a gun permit or a security clearance knows what I mean. There are databases out there that the rest of us don’t even know exist. Adding just one bit and 4 characters to the NCIC database record - a Y/N flag for whether a conviction denies the criminal the right to vote, and if Y the 4 digit year when that denial expires; 9999 = “never”, and Y2K-aphobes should see that’s good for another 8000 years - and sharing those 1 Y/N value with the elections people when an SSN inquiry is made is all it takes. Heck, many polling places have a cop nearby or on hand, don’t they, and it’s certainly fine for any cop to access that database. Double Heck, just have NCIC build an external hash table and let the elections people access that. Concerned citizens or criminals coming off of probation would be advised to make sure their number is in the clear before the voting starts. You don’t even need a day-month-year code in the NCIC database, since you’d write the table entry code to look at Election Fortnight and judge accordingly. Probation ends in June? You’re in. Ends October 25th? Sorry, you get your voting rights back the year after. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to write code like that. Third graders could probably do it these days.
It really is that easy. The technology is there. Are you kidding? The technology is there so that any citizen ought to be able to walk into any polling station in the country and vote in their local election, and then not be able to vote anywhere else in that same election. All that would take is one more flag bit (voted/didn’t vote yet) at NCIC and a flag-clearing operation run the day after. And that’s one line of code, m’kay? Piss simple stuff here people.
Meanwhile in Missouri it’s the same old dirty story:
Last year, Justice abandoned a case it had pursued for three years against Missouri for failing to clean up its rolls. When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What’s more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who this year is her party’s candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat, contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.
The case made slow but steady progress through the courts for more than three years, amid little or no evidence of progress in cleaning up Missouri’s voter rolls. Despite this, Obama Justice saw fit to dismiss the case in March 2009. Curiously, only a month earlier, Ms. Carnahan had announced her Senate candidacy. Missouri has a long and documented history of voter fraud in Democratic-leaning cities such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Ms. Carnahan may now stand to benefit from voter fraud facilitated by the improperly kept voter rolls that she herself allowed to continue.
Mr. Adams’ allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.
Elected officials should be trotted out to the pillories once per year, everyone from the town clerks or is whoever responsible for the rolls, all the way up to the governor. Are the voter rolls clean, accurate, and up to date (accurate to within 60 days)?
Yes? Great! You may keep your jobs. And your skin.
No? 10 lashes for each of the clerks, and 2 lashes more for each level of administration above that. In some states I think that would mean about 100 lashes for the governor. Punish them, then send them on their way, unemployed. Draw names from a list of unemployed college graduates and give them the jobs at the same pay and benefit level. Call a special election in 45 days to replace the elected officials.
One step towards restoring America is restoring people’s faith in America. Guaranteeing clean elections and up to date voter rolls would go a long way ... and we’d never ever be plagued by an Al Gore “selected not elected” month of hell again. With broadband just about everywhere, and computers already everywhere, it should not take more than about ... half an hour after the polls close for anyone in America to know the exact vote count in every state, county, and town. WTF, they can do it for American Idol. How about doing it for American Democracy?
Posted by Drew458
on 07/12/2010 at 03:55 PM
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • No Shit, Sherlock • Politics •
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Permalink • Saturday - April 17, 2010
Well no kidding
Yet another reason for BMEWS to have the “No shit, Sherlock” category. As in, “tell us something that we don’t already know, m’kay?”
An “external explosion” probably sank the South Korean naval vessel which went down near North Korean waters last month, an investigator says.
“The possibility of an external explosion is far higher than that of an internal explosion,” Yoon Duk-yong told a news conference in Seoul.
He was speaking a day after the stern section of the ship was raised from the seabed. Fifty-eight crew survived, but more than 40 sailors died. Salvage workers found 36 bodies in the shattered hull of the Cheonan, a 1,200-tonne navy gunboat, which sank in mysterious circumstances three weeks ago. Two more bodies were recovered earlier, and another eight sailors remain unaccounted for.
During a briefing in Seoul, South Korea’s investigative team said the sinking of the Cheonan did not appear to have been caused by an on-board accident or by running aground.
“There is a high possibility of an external explosion rather than an internal explosion,” said Yoon Duk-yong, co-head of a state investigation team. “A strong force was applied to the left side of the ship, leaving the hull and iron sheets curved inward. This kind of destruction is caused by an external explosion.”
He said evidence gathered from wreckage showed a low probability that the ship had sunk because of an internal blast, metal fatigue or collision with a reef. The ship’s ammunition room, its fuel tank and diesel engine room were not damaged, he said, noting that there was no indication of an internal fire.
North Korea has for decades disputed its border in the Yellow Sea with the South. Known as the Northern Limit Line, it was drawn by the U.S. military at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
The North cultivates a reputation for hair-trigger belligerence. Last year, it ignored U.N. resolutions by exploding its second nuclear device, launching a long-range ballistic missile and test-firing a number of short-range missiles into international waters.
Given to rhetorical excess, it often threatens South Korea and the United States with “all-out war.” The North has also said it has the ability to turn metropolitan Seoul, with a population of about 22 million and located just 35 miles from the border, into “a sea of fire.”
That is not an empty threat, according to many military analysts.
North Korea has moved about 70 percent of its military units and up to 80 percent of its artillery to within 60 miles of the border, according to the Strategic Studies Institute, a research arm of the U.S. Army War College.
Reprisals? You betcha. But subtle ones. Perhaps the NorKs merchant fleet will start being lost while far at sea after suddenly, mysteriously, losing radio communication. Perhaps the South can leverage the US to stop selling the NorKs fuel oil and food for a few seasons. But don’t expect anything too overt. Not right now.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/17/2010 at 10:18 AM
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Permalink • Friday - September 25, 2009
No Kidding
What, you mean they LIED to us? Golly gee, I’m so upset. Never in my life did I think those pillars of peace and honor would be dishonest, especially about their nuclear program.
Iran has revealed the existence of a secret uranium-enrichment plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday, a development that could heighten fears about Tehran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon and escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the West.
President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain plan to accuse Iran of hiding the facility in an address at the opening of the G-20 economic summit Friday, a senior White House official told the AP.
The official said Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will demand Tehran open the covert facility to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.
Two officials told the AP that Iran revealed the existence of the second plant in a letter sent Monday to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire confirmed receipt of the letter, saying the agency was informed “that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction.” The letter said that the plant would not enrich uranium beyond the 5 percent level suitable for civilian energy production. That would be substantially below the threshold of 90 percent or more needed for a weapon.
Iran told the agency “that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility,” he said. “In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible.”
The officials said that Iran’s letter contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.
But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Tehran and was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.
Iranian officials had previously acknowledged having only one plant — which is under IAEA monitoring — and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.
An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium at its cavernous underground facility outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.
The existence of a secret Iranian enrichment program built on black-market technology was revealed seven years ago. Since then, the country has continued to expand the program with only a few interruptions as it works toward its aspirations of a 50,000-centrifuge enrichment facility at Natanz.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/25/2009 at 07:59 AM
Filed Under: • Iran • No Shit, Sherlock • War On Terror •
• Comments (1)
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Permalink • Saturday - April 11, 2009
Lift Rock, Find America Living Under It
I really hate to admit that the American news media is a bit egocentric, but come on. We’ve been covering the Somali pirate thing here for well over a year. Now that ONE American ship has been hijacked, freed itself and resulted in the pirates having ONE American captive, suddenly it’s all over the news nonstop. Oh noes, what should we do? I just pulled up Fox News, and these are the top headlines ...
Who would have guessed that one of President Obama’s biggest foreign tests in his first 100 days would come from a ragtag band of pirates and a high-seas hostage drama?
Um, we did. Because it was going on for Bush too, and pretty much nobody was willing to man-up and solve the problem
FBI agents planned to interview the crew of a U.S. cargo ship Saturday as the bureau began building a criminal case against Somali pirates who attacked the ship and took the captain hostage.
Boy, if nothing else lets you know that the Clinton Cabinet is back in power, this ought to. Terrorism is back to being a law enforcement issue, so let’s use an enforcement agency that is pretty much limited to national scope to “build a case”. What a bunch of idiots.
At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.
Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.
Dudes, I’m pretty certain I covered this one a full month ago. Where have you been??
On Friday, Somali pirates have recaptured American ship captain Richard Phillips after he jumped from a lifeboat and tried to swim to nearby U.S. Navy ship. The drama was witnessed at some distance by the U.S. Navy, but it reportedly happened so quickly they could not provide assistance. For more on this story, click here.
YOU DECIDE: As the pirate standoff continues, what should the U.S. do? Share your thoughts. Click on “Leave a Comment” below.
Me, Peiper, Christopher, Macker, and about 100 other commenters have figured this one out ages ago. Here’s the simple answer, using no words at all:
I almost feel sorry for people who don’t get their news from the internet. Usually they’re anywhere from a day to a couple weeks behind on global events. But this is almost insulting. Especially since you and I both know that Fox and CNN troll the net to get a large part of their news stories. Let’s sit back and wait another month and then laugh when the news media discovers Obama is a bolshevik, and all his past associates are either commies, crooks, or terrorists. What a hoot that will be.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/11/2009 at 09:17 PM
Filed Under: • News-Briefs • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Permalink • Friday - February 27, 2009
“Just a few changes”
The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.
“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to re-institute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.
“I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.
Well, let me think about this for a second ... NO. More gun regulation in my country to help Mexico? Bite me. Let them solve their own problems. Failing that, invade, kill everyone who looks at us cross-eyed, and push the border south 100 miles to establish a buffer zone.
The big drug bust Holder is referring to did result in quite the haul ...
agents have seized $59.1 million in cash, and an additional $6.5 million in assets, including 149 cars, three aircraft, three maritime vessels and 169 weapons.
... but look carefully: 700-750 arrests, literally tons of cash and drugs. And 169 guns. From 750 people. Who are involved in a war south of the border. Who have a major history of gun violence. 1 in 6 had a gun. How many were “Assault Weapons”? Color me unimpressed. Totally.
Under federal gun laws, gun dealers are not required to report multiple purchases of such weapons because they are classified as rifles. [well, no shit, since they are rifles]
“If you were to go into a gun store and buy 20 of these, there is no requirement by the gun dealer to fill out a multiple sales form,” said the ATF’s Newell. An ABC News investigation found the “mata policia” and a wide range of assault weapons prominently displayed at gun stores along the border in Texas, the state providing the most weapons to the drug cartels, according to the ATF. Under Texas and federal law, there is no waiting period for the purchase of such weapons and no restriction on how many can be bought at a time.
The drug cartels’ weapons of choice include variants of the AK-47, .50-caliber sniper rifles and a Belgian-made pistol called the “cop killer” or “mata policia” because of its ability to pierce a bulletproof vest.
Can I just let somebody else handle the bullshit in that quote for once? You know it’s all a crock. Here is Sword At The Ready, who takes them to task a bit.
And for those wondering what the heck a “mata policia” is, they’re talking about the FN 5.7. FN - Fabrique Nationale de Herstal - is a gun company. They’re the people who own Browning these days I think. They make this little pistol that fires the 5.7 cartridge, the 5.7x23. While that round is thought of as a cut down version of the 5.56 Nato, similar to the old .221 Fireball, it is not. The FN 5.7 uses an even smaller diameter case and is a good bit smaller than even the Fireball. It is the same caliber as any other .22 centerfire, and can push extra light bullets (40gr) to about the same velocity as .22 WMR (magnum rimfire) ammo; just under 2000fps. Big deal. With “regular” weight bullets (55gr) it barely goes 1000fps. Which is about the same velocity a .45 ACP +P handgun can push a bullet that weighs 4 times as much. But the media is in love with this cartridge because it just oozes evil in their otherwise empty minds. Many other people, who actually know something about guns, disagree.
“It’s in high demand by your violent drug cartels, their assassins in Mexico,” said Newell of the ATF. The gun can fire a high-powered round used in a rifle.
Yeah, and so can a .22LR. A puny little “toy” cartridge hardly bigger than a booger which can push a 40gr bullet to 1500fps; this high powered evil armor piercing rifle round used only for assassinations is just a bit more powerful than that. The media’s attitude is the biggest crock of shit in the world.
Holder is an idiot. If you want to stop the flow of guns to Mexico, have the fargin Mexicans do their damn job at the border. And build the fence faster, and guard it better. Don’t even think about pushing another bullshit gun control law on us, especially since you’ve tried this same one before for a solid decade and it didn’t do a damn thing to reduce any kind of crime whatsoever.
I’ve got a better idea for “just a few changes” ... rope, tree, lying communist bastard idiot; some assembly required. Lather, rinse, repeat.
hat tip to Chris.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/27/2009 at 10:47 AM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Guns and Gun Control • No Shit, Sherlock •
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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