Monday - May 04, 2009

how did I miss this one?

I am a big reader. Love to read. I go through at least one, usually two books a week. I have lots of authors I enjoy, across several genre, from the silly to the serious. And I’ve been a big Nelson De Mille fan for years. But somehow I’d managed to miss his opus The Gold Coast. And I even gave a copy away, unread!!!, as a gift. Well, I’ve corrected that lapse. And now I think I have to wait a few days and read the whole book over again.

The Gold Coast has been described as Gatsby meets The Godfather, and in many ways it is. But it’s more than that. TGC is one of those books you finish reading, and you realize that the book is much bigger than just the story. It’s an allegory. It’s symbolic. Holds a mirror up to life. Etc, etc, and yadda yadda. But there is a deeper current in there, and I think another trip through the pages might turn it up. Or maybe it’s just a story about churlish and snobby WASPs screwing up their lives in a mid-life crisis.

It wasn’t particularly predictable, although I knew what the redhead was going to do almost from the beginning. But the end of that caught me by surprise.

I had to suffer through Gatsby in High School English. And I hated it. Maybe I should pay that one another visit too. I don’t think Gatsby is something that can be appreciated by a 17 year old.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/04/2009 at 09:00 PM   
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Bullet Points

Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.

“In the last two months it’s gotten very, very difficult to find ammunition,” says Richard Taylor, manager of The Firing Line, a gun shop and shooting range in the Denver, Colorado, suburbs.

“There are a lot of rumors floating around that the present government would like to increase taxes on ammunition. I think [there is] just a lot of panicked buying going on.”

“People are buying cases or whatever they can get their hands on and putting it away, absolutely,” he says. “The only way that this shortage can have to do with it is that people are buying and hoarding.”
...
Jim Minardi, a gun dealer in Lakewood, Colorado, says only a few people are actually hoarding. But they are buying up so much ammo that there isn’t much left on the shelves.

“The minority of our customers are stockpiling ammunition,” Minardi says. “The majority are standard shooters buying what they can.”

Each year U.S. ammo manufacturers make about 8 billion rounds, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry. Current production data won’t be in until late May, but the foundation expects the numbers to be way up.

“In order to keep up with demand for ammunition, manufacturers are working at full capacity, 24-7,” says Ted Novin, an NSSF spokesman. “Currently demand for ammunition is outpacing supply.”

Novin says he believes the reason is clear. “The increase in demand for firearms and ammunition is largely attributable to gun owner concerns regarding the current political climate,” says Novin, referring to the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

“Many of the lawmakers in power have a long history of supporting legislation that violates the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” Novin adds. “Gun owners recognize this and are reacting accordingly.”

A message from Steve Hornady, president of Hornady Ammunition, on the company’s Web site reads:

“Here at Hornady Manufacturing we are breaking our own production records in an attempt to keep up with customer demand. We have added extra shifts, machinery and we are also in the process of expanding our manufacturing plant.”
...
Winchester Ammunition posted a similar statement:

“Winchester Ammunition, like other ammunition manufacturers, has seen the demand for our products increase significantly since last fall. To meet that increased demand, our operations are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Andrew Arulanandam, communications director of the National Rifle Association, says the “unprecedented ammo shortages are widespread, and they affect small and large retailers.”

“We have heard from members across the country in cities and in small towns from California to Maine,” Arulanandam says. “There is a fear that Congress or the new administration will push for a firearm or an ammunition ban, or for a significant increase in excise taxes on firearms and ammunition. We hear this from hunters, target shooters and even from first-time gun owners who fear that there will be an effort to incrementally curtail and eventually dismantle this freedom.”

Let’s see ... 8 billion rounds a year, and there hasn’t been much ammo available since September, and now it’s May. Call it 8 months ... 8/12 = 2/3, 2/3 of 8 billion is 5.33 billion ... Egad. And there’s no way to even begin to estimate the increased production numbers ... but I’ll take a tiny little guess ...

Americans have purchased and stockpiled more than 6 BILLION rounds of ammunition in the last 8 months.

And in other, related firearms news ...

Ruger sales up 55%. Company declares HUGE stock dividend. Profits nearly DOUBLE.

Gross profit rose to $19.5 million from $10.7 million in the corresponding period last year. Operating income surged to $9.4 million from $2.3 million in the same period last year.
Backlog rose to 458,900 units and $136.3 million at the end of the recent quarter from 175,900 units and $47.8 million at the end of the corresponding period last year.

Olin 1Q profits up 25%; due to Winchester ammo sales spike:

“Winchester achieved the highest level of quarterly earnings in its history, reflecting the continuation of the stronger than normal demand that began in the fourth quarter of 2008,” said Joseph Rupp, chairman, president and chief executive, in a statement.

NY state assembly continues to try and push for microstamping gun law. Because “no killer has a right to hide behind a blank shell casing.” Too bad they don’t realize that, if passed, this law could be defeated with a plastic sandwich bag and a bit of duct tape. Or the firing pins could be filed down a bit. Or that such a law could add hundreds of dollars to the price of new guns, and with several hundred million old guns already out there, it will do exactly diddly squat to prevent crime or help track down guns used in crime. And it will cost the taxpayers more billions. Stupid left wing monkeys.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/04/2009 at 03:17 PM   
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Berlusconi demands an apology AFTER wife says she’s had it and wants divorce.

Now this guy I want ya to know and I believe you already do, is Italy’s top guy. He’s their president, their leader, they’re jealous.

Oh before I forget.

UPDATE May 4th.

Mrs. Berlusconi has today filed for divorce and could get half his 4 BILLION dollar fortune. Hey, they’ve been married 19 years.  If he was gonna mess around, the least he could have done was be considerate enough not to embarrass his wife so publicly for so long. 
Hot blooded Latins.  Hmmm. Wonder if the guys extend that excuse to their women?

‘Shameless’ Silvio Berlusconi buys 18-year-old model a gold necklace for her birthday and calls himself ‘her little daddy teacher’
By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 11:49 PM on 29th April 2009

You would think that Silvio Berlusconi’s wife would be thrilled that her busy husband found time to attend an 18th birthday party.
Well she wasn’t - because the party was for someone else’s pretty young daughter.

Mr Berlusconi’s long-suffering wife, Veronica Lario, lashed out after his appearance was gleefully reported in the Italian press.
She said in an email to Italy’s national news agency ANSA: ‘That really surprised me because he has never come to the 18th birthday parties of any of our children despite being invited.’

Veronia criticised Berlusconi in an email to an Italian press agency.
The Italian prime minister, 72, has three grown-up children with Mrs Lario - Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi - and two from a previous marriage.
But he also sees himself as ‘little daddy’ to blonde teenager Noemi Letizia, the daughter of a business associate.
He was the surprise guest of honour at her recent 18th party in Naples, and gave her a necklace and signed photograph of himself.

Yesterday Miss Letizia was interviewed by several Italian newspapers and said: ‘It was a lovely surprise to see the man I call Papi (daddy) at my party.
‘I call him Papi but of course he is second to my father. He gave me a lovely necklace as a present.’

Mr Berlusconi said he wanted ‘youthful new faces’ as candidates for June’s European elections.
He named four targets, none of whom has any political experience: soap actress Camilla Ferranti, 30; TV star Eleonora Gaggioli, 29; ex-Big Brother contestant Angela Sozio, 31; and former Miss Italy candidate Barbera Matera, 28.

In her email Mrs Lario said: ‘Someone wrote that all this is to sustain the enjoyment of the Emperor.
‘I agree with this - what has emerged is shameful trash, all in the name of power.

‘I want it to be made clear that my children and I are victims of this situation and do not agree with it, we have to put up with it and suffer with it.
‘Fortunately for some time now we have had women in politics and business - in the past we had (Margaret) Thatcher and now we have (Angela) Merkel - that is to say women can be involved in politics.

‘Women today are and can be beautiful and the fact that there are beautiful women in politics is not a merit or a demerit.’
It is the second time that she has made a public statement on her husband’s antics.

Two years ago she demanded - and got - a public apology after he told one actress he would wed her if he wasn’t already married and then told another he would run away with her.

Berlusconi babe: Eleonora Gaggioli has been lined up as a prospective candidate for the European elections

Berlusconi demands an apology from his wife as he admits: Our marriage is over
By NICK PISA
Last updated at 4:55 PM on 04th May 2009

Silvio Berlusconi has no plans to seek a reconciliation with his wife and has demanded an apology from the former actress for comments she made.

The Italian prime minister’s wife Veronica said over the weekend she planned to file for divorce, days after publicly criticising Berlusconi’s selection of pretty young women to run in European elections.

Posted by peiper     on 05/04/2009 at 11:36 AM   
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WHY THE HECK DO COUNTRIES AND STATES NEED POET LAUREATES? WHAT’S THE POINT?

Hey, ya have to make allowances for us barbarians. I don’t understand this stuff and if you do for heaven sake explain it to me so I can quit looking silly here.  I never understand what these folks are saying and I strongly suspect not even other poets do. But many pretend to follow the bouncing ball
wherever it goes so they can can feel superior. Or if not that, then at least “in the know.” And to pay them almost $10,000 a year? Come on. That’s taxpayer money.  Alright. It’s arty stuff.
But I buy NONE of it.

I am not posting the entire article and in fact darn little of it but here’s a link to it all. If you really care and some may. To each his own but I don’t think the taxpayer should have to fund some artists ego.  ART STUFF

Carol Ann Duffy: The original good line girl
Feisty, nosy and tough, the new laureate is a bisexual single mother who promises to be a ‘poet of the family’

From The Sunday Times
Daisy Goodwin

When Carol Ann Duffy rang on Monday to say she was going to be the new laureate, I was thrilled, not just at the success of a friend but because she is my favourite living poet. The week brought a flurry of press reports about her “dithering”. Anxious, I called her as she was getting out of a taxi. “Dithering!” she said, laughing. “I’ve just been to the hairdressers! Of course I’m taking the job.”

She is passionate about education and the importance of teaching poetry in schools and says listening to a poet at an impressiona-ble age can permanently transform the contour of a child’s imagination. I suspect one of the reasons she has taken on the laureateship is so that she can kick up a serious fuss about the teaching of poetry in schools.

She should know. “Last summer an invigilator called Mrs Schofield peeped over a GCSE candidate’s shoulder and read my poem

Education for Leisure, which contained the lines, ‘Today I am going to kill something. Anything. / I have had enough of being ignored and today / I am going to play God.’ And because she didn’t understand it, and took it literally, she complained to the examining body.” Carol Ann didn’t get mad; she got even, and has written a poem, Mrs Schofield’s GCSE, about the numerous stabbings in Shakespeare.

OK .. Here’s the wonderfully arty-farty hugely intellectual deep gobbly-gook.

The banned poem

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets . . .

. . .There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
he cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
the pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

From Education for Leisure

Had enough?  OK ... how about this?

I’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, absolute,utter grade A pillock.

What’s so poetic about that? And is it worth £5,000 a year?
Why does the country need that?  Except for her salary, who gains anything?
Besides, I thought times were supposed to be tough right now and there was supposed to be some govt. belt tightening. Oh right.
Only those who must pay for poets must tighten their collective belts else where’s the money gonna come from?

Posted by peiper     on 05/04/2009 at 10:46 AM   
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OUT OF AFRICA?

OUT OF AFRICA?

It appears that the very wealthy professional liberal Madonna, who it is rumored might also be a singer, is having a bit of a problem adopting another black child from Malawi.  Either Madonna just likes the idea of matching bookends, or maybe she feels that the boy she has already adopted might like company growing up in a white world with another kid of his own race.

Apparently, the Material Girl has an mo of pretty much getting what she wants, when she wants it. Except perhaps a stable marriage. Whatever.

It must be some sort of a rush to have her money and be in a position to indulge your shop til you drop fantasies by shopping for people and buying a couple of children.  However, there is a fly in the ointment and poor Madonna may have a problem with latest acquisition.

Seems the father of the little girl, whose name is Mercy, has filed for custody, arguing that the pop star “ lacks the morals to bring up his child. A court has already denied the 50-year-old Madonna the chance to adopt Mercy.  As well, the people there are a bit miffed that after taking one kid she’s back for another, and accuse her of thinking she can just walk in with all her money and buy their kids.  There is a bit of a class and race thing going on, and I guess many of the folks who cannot rub two pennies together very well are a bit envious.  Others praised her for giving a small boy a chance of a good life in the West. Like there are no dark skinned children already in the West who could benefit from her magnificence.

The father of Mercy is critical of Madonna’s appearances “almost naked on stage.” He said:
“I don’t want my daughter to grow up like that. Women who respect themselves, cultured women, do not go about half naked.”

While he may have a point to make it hasn’t been reported just why his daughter was not in his custody to begin with, given that the mother died in childbirth.

I guess we will have to stay tuned to this one just to see if the aging pop star will win her fight to have the present ruling overturned on appeal. 
I have a gut feeling that it is not little Mercy, she’s that concerned about.  It is all about winning and getting her way. She does not like to be thwarted.

That’s what I think and unless someone can offer something else, I’m stickin to that.

Posted by peiper     on 05/04/2009 at 08:24 AM   
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The Times Headline reads: Democrat joker Al Franken to hand Obama control of Senate.

AND THAT REALLY DOES FRIGHTEN ME BIG TIME. PLEASE ...PLEASE!
Won’t someone rid us of his presence?

Democrat joker Al Franken to hand Obama control of Senate

Sarah Baxter
The Times

A COMEDIAN who had a walk-on part in the Rutles film spoof of the Beatles is poised to deliver a 60-seat super-majority to the Democrats in the Senate as President Barack Obama consolidates his grip on the levers of power.

Al Franken, 57, a satirist turned Democrat politician, is expected to be proclaimed the winner of the protracted race for the US Senate in Minnesota, in time to give Obama a free hand to appoint a Supreme Court replacement for retiring Justice David Souter without fear of Republican blocking tactics.

If Franken wins, Obama will hold an unassailable majority after Senator Arlen Specter’s sudden defection from the Republicans to the Democrats last week. A 60-seat majority would deprive the Republicans of the ability to scupper appointments and legislation by filibustering.

Norman Coleman, the Republican former senator, last week asked the Minnesota supreme court to count an extra 1,359 ballots, but his own side has all but conceded that Franken will win. “Most of us think that is going to happen,” said Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s surprise choice for secretary of state, has been mooted as a wild card appointment to the Supreme Court, but she would have to abandon any remaining presidential ambitions – an unlikely prospect.

Franken, a former presenter on Air America, the left-wing radio station, has been uncharacteristically quiet during the six-month recount. He holds a 312-vote lead over Coleman out of a total of nearly 3m.

Tad Devine, a Democrat consultant and friend of Franken, warned that his party’s softly-softly tactics would not continue indefinitely.

“Our side has not kicked into gear yet,” he said. “There has been a deliberate strategy not to make a big deal of the recount but if it drags on into the summer, we could raise the stakes and force the race to a conclusion.”

Franken’s vote will be needed not just for the Supreme Court appointment but also for healthcare reform, earmarked for the autumn. It is ironic for a comedian to wield so much power, Devine noted, “but Franken is certainly comfortable with irony”.

Al’s gags

Franken’s quips include:

“When the president [Bush] said he was against nation-building, I didn’t realise he meant our nation.”

“Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”

“I’m interested in politics for all the wrong reasons – I’m interested in the entertainment value of it.”

Even an enemy can often be amusing.  But being very scary is something else again. And this guy does frighten.

Posted by peiper     on 05/04/2009 at 07:33 AM   
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CONGRADULATION DUE FOR MERELY HAVING MADE IT THIS FAR PAST THE USE BY DATE.

Dateline England .. May 4th 2009

Back in another time almost beyond memory but not quite all the way back, I looked at age 40 as ancient and it was incomprehensible to me that anyone could be that old and still breathe.  Forty?  Come on.  What was there after that age?  Well, 50.  OMG ..50?  Do folks really live that long? Jeez. What the heck next? Oh, just little things like middle age spread and suddenly finding your pant size has ballooned from 36 (how long ago?) to ...
Never mind. I am not gonna say. 
And please let us not even bring up hair loss.  That was the unkindest cut of all.  I miss my hair more then I do my yoot.

But 60 didn’t look so ancient anymore and 40?  Sheesh.  Kids.  At least when you reach 72 which I have done today.

On my mom’s side, grandfather was gone by age 69 I think. Not certain.  Grandmother at 68 and mother about 68 or 69. 

Yeah, I know there are a few geriatric supermen, Jack Lalanne comes to mind and he’s 94. WOW.  But the reason you know about those folks, and how many can you really name? Is because there are so damn few of them.  If they were common, you’d not be able to pick out one name to remember cause then they wouldn’t be outstanding.

So anyway ... never thinking I’d make it this far I woke up surprised this morning and realized I had.  Well past the use by date to be sure, but here.

So as long as I am here let me tell ya there ain’t nothin’ GOLDEN about what some call, the golden years. BS!  They most certainly are not.
Which does not mean I’m ready to jump off the nearest curb, of which there aren’t any to be seen hereabouts anyway.

I went looking for names I might know who were born on this date and at first was disappointed.

For example ....
Audrey Hepburn, Brussels Belg, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, My Fair Lady

Oh wonderful.  A liberal’s liberal. Someone who thought the aclu was something worth contributing to. I should alter my birth date to hide that bit of embarrassment.

But then I found ...
Roberta Peters, New York City, operatic soprano, New York Met ... and
Luther Adler, New York City, actor

Now I do know who these were, even if not aware of their politics. I was never an opera fan, don’t even much like their confusing browser.
Luther Adler was a very well know supporting and character actor and a damn good one. He was hardly ever out of work I don’t think.  There were others to be sure.

But then things picked up a bit and didn’t look too bad after all.  Because I found country singer Randy Travis was also born on this date ...
BUT .......The really, really GREAT NEWS is that I share this date with ........

GEORGE WILL .... May 4th, 1941

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE WILL AND A LOT MORE HAPPY AND HEALTHY ONES TO COME. CHEERS!

Posted by peiper     on 05/04/2009 at 02:07 AM   
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   Saturday - May 02, 2009

A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF OBITUARY FROM ISRAEL.  BOOTED JUST TO POST THIS STORY.

Salamo Arouch, who died on April 26 aged 86, survived the Auschwitz concentration camp by fighting exhibition boxing matches for Nazi officers; his harrowing story later inspired a Hollywood film.

FROM THE TELEGRAPH SATURDAY OBITS

Born in Greece of Jewish descent, Arouch became middleweight champion of the Balkans, but his professional career was cut short by the Second World War and the German invasion of his homeland. Like thousands of other Greek Jews, he and his family and friends were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Ordered to fight other prisoners for the entertainment of the Nazi guards, Arouch escaped the gas chambers. At the end of the war he emigrated to Palestine and witnessed the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. His story was the basis for Triumph of the Spirit (1989) starring Willem Dafoe, much of which was shot on location at Auschwitz, with Arouch making an emotional return to the site as an adviser.

Salamon Arouch – he dropped the final “n” and was always known as Shlomo – was born in Salonika in 1923 into a family of Sephardic Jews. His father taught him to box, and in 1937, when he was 14, he made his debut in his home town, knocking down his opponent twice to win by a technical knockout.

Adopting a traditional style of jabbing and crossing, by 1939 he had an unbeaten record with 24 knockouts. His fancy footwork earned him the nickname “The Ballet Dancer”, and before the outbreak of war he was reportedly a member of the Greek Olympic boxing team.

Drafted into the Greek military, Arouch became a member of the army boxing squad. But when the Germans overran Greece, he was arrested and, because he was Jewish, deported with his family to Auschwitz on March 15 1943.

All the female members of his family were gassed on the first day, as were all the children and infants. With his father and younger brother, Arouch was forced into slave labour. When a Nazi officer found out that inmate 136954 had been a boxer, Arouch was forced to fight in matches held at the camp on Wednesday and Sunday evenings.

These bloody encounters – often preceded by juggling gipsies and dancing dogs – involved Jewish and gipsy boxers at Auschwitz; they were forced to fight each other, with Nazi officers placing heavy bets on the outcome.

The bouts ended only when one fighter was unable to continue. For the winner there would be bread and soup; the loser would be executed and incinerated.

On his second day at Auschwitz Arouch’s first fight was against a Polish Jew, with a senior officer at the camp, one “Hans”, acting as “referee”. Arouch knocked the Pole out. Twenty minutes later, he knocked out a six-foot Czech with a single punch to the stomach. “He fold like a camel,’’ Arouch remembered. “Hans says: ‘You good, you good.’”

For the next two years, Arouch would fight two or three times a week in a smoke-filled warehouse for the amusement of his Nazi captors, knowing that a single defeat would almost certainly result in death. Thanks to his speed and nimble footwork, he could beat opponents who outweighed him by more than 100 pounds. On one occasion Arouch (135lbs) claimed to have knocked out a 6ft 6in, 250lb gipsy fighter in 18 seconds.

His toughest opponent was a German-Jewish boxer called Klaus Silber, who had an undefeated pre-war amateur boxing record (44-0) and who had never lost any of his 100-plus fights at the camp. His fight with Arouch was so fierce that at one point, both men fell out of the ring. Silber went on to stun Arouch and then to knock him down. But Arouch recovered to knock Silber out. After the fight, Silber was never seen alive again.

By the time Arouch was removed from the slave labour force and put to work in an office, his entire family had been murdered. His father was executed after becoming too ill to work; when his brother, Avram, refused to pull gold teeth from those gassed in the ovens, he was shot dead on the spot.

Arouch managed to survive at Auschwitz for nearly two years, racking up a record of 208 knockouts. When the camp was finally liberated, he asked the British forces if they had any boxers who would fight him in an exhibition. When two were found, Arouch knocked them both out.

Asked how he approached his life-or-death battles at Auschwitz, Arouch admitted he felt terrible. “I trembled,” he said. “But a boxer had to be without compassion. If I didn’t win, I didn’t survive.”

While searching for members of his family at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, Arouch met 17-year-old Marta Yechiel, from his own home town. After their marriage later that year, in 1948 he emigrated to the fledgling state of Israel and served in the Israeli Army, where he continued to box. In civilian life he ran a successful shipping and moving business in Tel Aviv.

Salamo Arouch’s wife and four children survive him.

Posted by peiper     on 05/02/2009 at 05:54 AM   
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   Friday - May 01, 2009

Brit Airline Bows Down to Islam

Sorry Peiper, I saw this UK story and had to run it.

The British airline, BMI, has removed Israel from the electronic maps displayed to passengers in some of its planes, Army Radio reports. The report claimed that the reason was to avoid offending Muslim passengers. However, the maps showed passengers the direction of Mecca.

Israel does not appear in maps on BMI flights between London and Tel Aviv, and Khefa, the pre-independence Arabic name for Haifa, appears on the maps.

In addition, the electronic maps display the distance between the plane and Mecca.

The airline claims that the map has not been changed due to a “logistical problem.” Instead, it has presently been removed from the two planes that transport passengers to Tel Aviv.

“For this reason, the inflight entertainment system in the two planes was made to adapt to the passengers flying to and from those destinations and therefore the map showed mainly places holy to Islam,” the airline company said in a statement.

BMI denied that it had a political agenda. “If BMI had any political agenda in order not to anger neighboring countries, it would not have invested so much in the Tel Aviv line,” the company stated.

BMI is apparently bending over backwards to accommodate the sensitivities of its Saudi passengers. The British weekly Sunday Times reported last week that a stewardess was fired because she refused to don an abaya head covering and to walk behind male flight attendants on a flight bound for Saudi Arabia, regardless of rank.

The BMI internal document issued to crewmembers bound for Saudi Arabia stated: “It is expected that female crew members will walk behind their male counterparts in public areas such as airports no matter what rank.”

The flight attendant, Lisa Ashton, refused to abide by BMI’s policy, and was fired when she refused to travel to Saudi Arabia if she would be required to don an abaya.

You go, sista. But don’t hold your breath waiting for all those international womyn’s rights groups to rally ‘round.

In other exciting UK news, Mattel has released a special edition Chav Barbie. She comes with several seedy outfits and her own tattoo gun.

PS - who is this Cheryl Cole woman mentioned in that article?
Gosh Drew, why not just be Mr. Google and answer your own question?

Posted by Drew458     on 05/01/2009 at 11:09 PM   
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no comment necessary

Anyone who would pay $35 for these ugly ass sneakers, much less $540, can’t be taken seriously.

As a news item, it gets a fail. As a fashion statement, it gets a FAIL. Especially when combined with high water stretch pants. Yikes.

I don’t even want to read the article. But here it is anyway.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/01/2009 at 08:08 PM   
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and back home again

I had to run for a couple days to do some unscheduled family stuff. Back now. Except right this instant I have to grab a shower and go do my Friday night job. Must remember to bring a power saw and an extension cord; I’ve got some huge packing crates to chop up.

Back later.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/01/2009 at 03:42 PM   
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THIS OLE HOUSE AND WATER, COOL,CLEAR, WATER. HOLD THE GAS!

OMG, the instant I saw the title I thought maybe it was you or your neighbor!

How’s that gas leak situation going?

[ Peiper’s neighbors are rebuilding the whole house, so they have the lawn torn up, and all the pipes and wires are breaking. Extra extra fun to live next door to! ]
Posted by Drew458

Drew posted that yesterday and when I saw it this morning the idea came to me that perhaps I should tell everyone what’s been happening the last couple of daze.  No, I’m not trying to be arty. DAZE is what we feel like we are in.  Pay attention. There will be a test when we come to.

This olde house is named Avalon. All houses on the street have names. No numbers. Avalon is one of three dormer bungalows built between 1923 and 1926.  Ours was the second one built and the last, in ‘26 was called Roydon. It still is.  That bungalow was knocked down last year and there’s this large red brick eye sore in its place now.

Avalon was owned by a wonderful old fellow, a glass eyed veteran of the first world war. He passed away some 23 years ago and the MIL looked after the empty house and kept it looking lived in.

There was always the worry of squaters or travelers who could have easily moved in and just taken it.  They do that sort of thing and as most of you already know, are quite successful in getting away with it.  I guess mostly because nobody has the guns to just shoot the bastards graveyard dead. 

Well, the lady who was raised in Avalon married a Harley Street heart surgeon. Yeah. Think MONEY in caps.  She just could not give up her girlhood home and so it was maintained all these years until her own passing a bit over a year ago.
By maintained I mean they kept and paid for heat,gas,electric and water.  If repairs were needed, they got done and the bills went to the doctor and his wife.  The lawn was done every other week even if it didn’t need it. Hedges were trimmed etc.  When the MIL fell too ill to continue, the wife took over once we’d moved here.

Washing was done in our house but in winter as I discovered when I came here, the wet laundry was carried next door to the vacant Avalon, where it was all hung to dry usually overnight but sometimes perhaps another day.  That was because Avalon had central heating and the temp. was kept at around 70 degrees all winter. Day and night.
Electric here btw VERY EXPENSIVE.  MIL had no dryer nor did she want the expense of one. Hardly anyone has air and windows open outward almost everywhere and so NO screens on windows in summer.

Well, the old Avalon is now gone. The lady who grew up here passed away and her husband and granddaughter sold the place a bit over a year ago, at the very top of the market. Money to money.  The place was sold to a local dentist and his family and two freekin dogs and yes they do damn well bark, for very near one million dollars if your thinking in American terms.  It has a very large lot in back, longer then ours but I don’t think quite as wide though I could be mistaken. Anyway, it’s bigger. 

So this all brings me down to the last couple of stress filled days.

See that tree to the right? Yeah. That one.  Well, it’s large ok and its roots deep AND ..

it sits right on top of the main gas supply.  Long before demolition started, gas and water and electric to Avalon were cut off.  Ah but …. our house and Avalon have shared since the homes were built, the same water main.  Right. Should the water be turned off in one house, the water gets turned off in the other two.  Gets interesting huh? Hope so.

They did something so that our water wasn’t touched and all was fine.  I guess they were able to cap Avalon and leave ours in place.  When the house on the other side of us was built last year, they got a direct water line and were taken completely off the old system. But they are also on a water meter now.  We are on the old flat rate system.  There were no meters when this place was built.

So, the day before yesterday I wasn’t feeling too well, didn’t post anything and at one point had a headache but didn’t detect any odor. At first.  I’ve been taking photos of the demolition as it goes along and went next door and stood in front of where the old gate used to be.  There was a hole in the ground, the tree was gone, a pipe was sticking out of the ground and the guy who’d been running the digger that took the tree out, was then using a gas powered saw to cut up the fallen tree.  Two years ago that tree had been pruned because part of it fell across our front yard in a heavy wind.  So there he was cutting and suddenly it caught us.  Wife had come over to join me by then and we both suggested that there was a gas leak.  But the fellow doing the sawing suggested it could also be just earth and rotted vegetation as there was a bit of that about.  But no, we insisted it was gas and sure enough, it was.

When the tree came up, it tore a pipe attached to the main below.  Where that yellow paint is.  Gas company was out there and four guys walking around with clipboards etc.

About 7:15 that night, a two man crew from the gas company came out and started to dig out the main pipe. At 8pm there was this cloud of gas, of course ya couldn’t see it, but as my wife’s room is downstairs she caught almost the full force of it. Her room is in front and not that far away from the exposed pipe.

It passed and she almost did too but just ended up with a ripping headache and a bit of nausea which I’d caught earlier.  By 8:15pm they had it capped, but for now it’s temporary as they have to come back at some point and do something else and so the hole remains but is covered for now with a couple of metal sheets or planks. Whatever. It’s covered till they come back when ever that is. ? 

That was all the day before yesterday.  You’ve heard that when it rains it pours?  Yeah well, sometimes it ain’t rain.  Sometime ya just get pissed on. Like during political elections but I’m not going there. For now anyway.

So the nice man and his digger are doing what diggers do and all is well.  We thought.

I was tired and needed to stretch and went out on the front porch and as his machine turned and he saw me, he cut the engine and asked me if we had running water.  Huh?
Oh no.  I don’t wanna hear that.  Everybody from the new owner to their architect and the builder were advised on more then one occasion about the water supply.  Which our friendly digger guy had managed to run over and broke a pipe below ground.
Doesn’t end there however.  Wouldn’t you think it would?  But no.

First of all, the digger says he wasn’t advised of where exactly the water pipe was but only that it might be somewhere under what was once a driveway, long grown over with grass and weed.  Also, it turned out the pipe was not buried all that deep.  Only about 8 inches under the top.  He was digging a foot down and caught a small pipe out of which water flowed.

We are talking very old very original lead pipe, I think it’s lead.  So he called his boss who called a plumber who got there about 20 minutes later. BUT … no parts that would fit anything that old.  Photo.
Old pipe off to left, blue is new but it isn’t pipe at all as it comes rolled but I guess it’s what they use. I shot this from upstairs room.

Posted by peiper     on 05/01/2009 at 06:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Daily Life • Personal •  
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NY jeweler steals gold bullion—bit by bit , over a six year period.

Up way earlier then usual this AM and found this bit of news when I checked email. Came from Yahoo but I imagine everyone knows about it by now.

What struck me was the time she could possibly face in prison for this.
Now I am not saying that ppl who steal shouldn’t be punished. However, I really find this sort of penalty, if carried out, lopsided in view of the terms given thugs who maim and rape and kill.

For example, a group of miserable low life vermin they be habing dare fun bro, raped a young girl here and got 7 years. Which of course they will never serve all of. But perhaps had they stolen millions they’d have got life, and then perhaps served 12 years.

Got it. Comes the dawn.
Money wins every time and is always worth more then human life in what passes for the Criminal Justice System.

NY jeweler steals gold bullion—bit by bit

Talk about lining your purse...Reports Thursday said that for six years a woman used a purse with a false bottom to steal tiny amounts of gold from the New York jewelry manufacturer where she was a vault manager.

NY jeweler steals gold bullion—bit by bit

By the time she was caught, reported the Daily News and New York Post, she’d amassed 500 pounds (227 kilos), equivalent to almost 31 gold bars.

She needed a suitcase and a couple dozen buckets to return the loot to her employers, the newspapers reported.

The woman, aged 50, faces 25 years in prison if convicted, the Post said.

GOLDFINGER

Posted by peiper     on 05/01/2009 at 12:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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   Thursday - April 30, 2009

Muslim Failed Asylum Seeker Kills Girl & Walks Free.  Another day, another victim.

H/T TheOPINIONATOR

Muslim Failed Asylum Seeker Kills Girl & Walks Free

TheOPINIONATOR
30 April 2009

I have chronicled many instances of British judges being soft on muslim criminals - especially illegal immigrants or failed asylum seekers . So here comes yet another case of a FAILED ASYLUM SEEKER - driving without a driver’s license or auto insurance - who was responsible for the death of a 12 year old girl & left her to die pinned underneath his car. Yet this man was allowed to walk free by an idiotic immigration judge to wage yet another appeal of his deportation status.

“A failed asylum seeker who left a young girl dying under the wheels of his car after a hit-and-run accident has been freed to the disgust of her family. Aso Mohammed Ibrahim was due to be deported after his applications for asylum and citizenship were kicked out. But the 31-year-old Iraqi Kurd has been released on bail from custody while he makes yet another appeal to stay in the UK. He says it is too dangerous for him to return to his homeland. The father of 12-year-old Amy Houston, who was mowed down by Ibrahim’s Rover car as she went to the shops more than five years ago, has spoken of his outrage.

Paul Houston, 39, an engineer, said: ‘It’s an insult to my daughter. I walk around the street and I’m looking over my shoulder every two minutes thinking, “Am I going to see this bloke?” ‘How many more appeals does he get? It is my duty as a father to see this through to the end.
‘If I didn’t fight then another person would find themselves in this position and I don’t want anybody else’s kid to get killed. He’s just laughing at the British justice system. It is so wrong.’”

Free: Ibrahim was disqualified and driving with no insurance when he hit Amy and left her to die

“She was trapped beneath it (car)but Ibrahim responded by getting out and running off. “

I ask - like Amy Houston’s father does -How many denials does an asylum seeker get before he has exhausted his appeals? How many little girls will die because Aso Mohammed Ibrahim is undoubtedly still driving around - unlicensed and uninsured?

What does it take, in Great Britain, to get deported?

What does it take, in Great Britain, to get deported?

Trick question or quiz? Hmmm. Lets see. Oh I know. What’s it take to get the heave ho?
Uh ... Use the dreaded ‘N’ word?  And mean it.
Hurt the wrong minorities feelings?
Make queer jokes?
Say mean things about muslims.
Admit to being a racist?

HEY ... BMEWS. THAT’S IT!  If I admit to the above, will they pay my way home? Damn. What a deal.

Really terrific horrific system they have in place here.

THIS LINK FOR THE DAILY MAIL WITH PHOTOS

I didn’t mean those remarks to make light of this and hope it wasn’t taken that way.  It’s pretty damn sick and damn well frustrating to read this sort of thing so often, and know there is not a darn thing anyone can do. If you look at the comments by readers in the mail, or almost any paper, the vast majority are fed up with this kind of thing. But it never changes. It’s always business as usual. And that’s totally maddening.

Posted by peiper     on 04/30/2009 at 04:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Editorials • Illegal-Aliens • Insanity • Outrageous • RoPMA • UK •  
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