Every Pleo is autonomous. Yes, each one begins life as a newly-hatched baby Camarasaurus, but that’s where predictability ends and individuality begins. Like any creature, Pleo feels hunger and fatigue - offset by powerful urges to explore and be nurtured. He’ll graze, nap and toddle about on his own -when he feels like it! Pleo dinosaur can change his mind and his mood, just as you do.

Pleo’s natural disposition is alert and inquisitive. He ambles about with a bright eye, swaying tail, and leisurely pace, content to explore the sights, sounds, shapes, and textures of his world—and that, of course, includes you.

If your Pleo loves a good tug-of-war or shows off in front of friends, congratulate yourself—it’s all the fun you’ve had together that has made him the good sport that he is. In his excitement, he just might let loose with a few hoots and honks.

Let’s not forget that this Camarasaurus is just a baby. Something in Pleo’s new environment scares him ---hear him whimper? Does Pleo ever get upset? Well, everybody has his limits -let’s just say you shouldn’t hang him by his tail for too long.

Leave a sociable Pleo alone too long or interrupt a game of tug-of-war and Pleo may become sad. How can you tell? That pleading call and forlorn look let you know that he’s looking for a friendly pat or another chance to grab his favorite toy.

Stroke Pleo from head to tail, and he’ll blissfully arch his back. Call out to him or shine a light, and see how he responds. Just like us, Pleo experiences the world through his senses.

Pleo is a fully articulated sensor loaded baby toy dinosaur, about 21” long, that can see, hear, learn, interact, play, sulk, explore, eat, nap, get angry or sad ... and teach your kid how to interact with animals. Pleo has a 32 bit main microprocessor and several 8 bit motor control microprocessors. Almost as good as a real pet, and no litter box. You can even download holiday themes - temporary personalities? - for her, including one that lets you use Pleo as a burglar alarm/watchdog. And a lifesystem operating system upgrade, in case your kid ever gets bored with the 1001 things this awesome little robot can do.

from the Hammacher Schlemmer ad blurb:

Winner of the prestigious Nuremberg Toy Innovations Award, this is the first fully-animatronic simulacrum of a one week-old dinosaur (a Late Jurassic period Camarasaurus.) It is programmed with distinct behavior routines that respond differently to stimuli, creating a one-of-a-kind personality for each one made. It has a sophisticated sensory system comprised of a color camera, two sound sensors, two infrared sensors, 14 servos, 106 gears, eight touch sensors, an orientation sensor, and four foot switch sensors, all of which form a biomechanical skeleton that delivers smooth, natural movements. The dinosaur’s unique accelerated lifespan passes through three distinct phases; when you first turn it on, it acts like a hatchling for the first 15 minutes. For the next two hours, it acts like an infant by exhibiting hunger. For the rest of its life, it acts as a juvenile, and is fully-responsive to light, sound, and touch. Its outer skin is Krayton rubber, and the young reptile’s rechargeable battery provides one hour of operation and requires four hours for a full recharge. Ages 8 and up.

You can also download software that let’s you create your own tricks for Pleo, like making her dance, as well as a couple troubleshooting tools.

This is some darned amazing stuff ... Pleo sells for about $349 but might show up at Target or Wal Mart for a bit less. Extra battery pack, $49.

OK, I took out the video because it was a right pain in the buttocks. It’s the last one over at the Pleo web site. Go there and see it.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/06/2008 at 03:58 PM   
Amazing Science and Discoveries • Fun-Stuff • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Now with sound

Hear them whine! Hear them yip! Watch them nap! Catch them at feeding time! See them play! Just leave the sound on and drive your own dog crazy! Iiiiiiitt’s PuppyCam!

Hey, at least it’s not another post about what’s his face. See? It’s change you can believe in!

The dogs are all of the Shiba Inu breed. They turned 4 weeks old on Tuesday, and have been TV stars since birth.

Females:
- Autumn (Purple collar)
- Ayumi (Yellow collar)
- Amaya (Red collar)

Males:
- Aki (Green collar)
- Akoni (Black collar)
- Ando (Blue collar)

Posted by Drew458     on 11/06/2008 at 03:08 PM   
Fun-Stuff • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

flag of convenience

Seattle rediscovers patriotism, now that The One shall be King. Get used to stuff like this, it’s only the beginning.

Red, white and true blue: City hoists Old Glory

Barack Obama’s presidential win held a poignant significance for liberal Seattleites: This is their America, too.

The feeling was evident in jubilant partying in the streets, in quiet moments of reflection and in blossoms of red, white and blue.

With newfound patriotism, Seattleites want to wave the flag, hang it from their homes and stick it on their cars.

“The thing that’s kind of astounding to me is I never ever would have cared to own a flag,” said Rosemary Garner, 42. “This is the first day in my life I actually feel this funny sense of pride about my country. It’s a very foreign feeling, but it’s a good one.”

Garner, a self-described “flag virgin” who lives on Capitol Hill, bought eight flags Wednesday—some to wave and others to stick on her car to “mix and match with some nice Obama and peace signs. Then I bought a couple of flags for some friends who wanted to hang them from their truck along with their biodiesel stickers.”

How does Seattle feel about the election?

The answer is in the numbers: King County voted 72 percent for Obama. Incumbent Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott, whose district includes Seattle, won 85 percent of the vote.

The answer is in their words:

“I’m finally proud to be an American again, after eight years of being ashamed,” 66-year-old Mark Lowney said, ticking off a list of complaints, including the Iraq war.

“It’s just a rare feeling to feel that type of, I don’t know, national connection,” said Noah Kriegsmann, a 33-year-old builder from West Seattle. He feels that Obama’s win will help America’s standing in the world, and he bought a flag to fly on his truck, though he admitted it felt strange to see the flag in his hand.

“I have just historically felt shame for what the symbol of this country is internationally. Being in someplace like Morocco, and Canadians have their flag on their backpacks—I would never ever do that,” he said.

“I voted for McCain, but I’m not sour grapes,” said her friend, who did not want her name used. “I’ve tried to be supportive of all our presidents, whoever it is. It is a hard job—and worthy of respect.”

At All the King’s Flags in Ballard, people have been snatching up American flags.

“Just today I’ve had a noticeable rush on U.S. flags,” said James Sawyer, assistant manager. “I had a lady come in and she said she’s happy to be an American again, that’s why she was buying a flag.”

There’s more too, including an excerpt from the Flag Act, to remind the new Suddenly Americans in Seattle that the flag really isn’t just for wiping your ass with and then setting on fire. I’m sure there will be a steep learning curve for them, so this article will have to be reprinted several times until they can overcome their old reflexes.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/06/2008 at 01:14 PM   
Patriotism • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

ANOTHER BATTLING BRIT.  1854 AND THE VALLEY OF DEATH. WHAT A STORY HERE.

First-hand account of the Charge of the Light Brigade unearthed

A graphic first-hand account by the last survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade, describing his ride ‘in the valley of death’ during the Crimean War, has been unearthed.

By Nick Britten
Last Updated: 12:02PM GMT 06 Nov 2008

Pte James Olley, of the 4th Light Dragoons, who was in the van of the 1854 cavalry action, tells of how he relentlessly fought the Russians despite having an eye blown out and a chunk of his head torn off.

The three-page document is believed to be one of the only eyewitness accounts by a frontliner and is expect to fetch about £2,000 at auction.

Pte Olley, who was aged 16 at the time, recalled how he charged into battle against the Russians and was shot through the left eye.

He added: “I still rode on and fought through the lines of the enemy.”

He wrote: “A little further on my horse was shot down - I caught one of the horses, which was coming back without its rider who had been shot out of his saddle.

“I turned it round facing the enemy - I mounted it and rode down to the Guns, when I was attacked by a Russian Gunner who I cut down with my sword.

“I received a severe wound on my forehead which went through the skull bone.

“The man I cut down.”

The account is a sobering antidote to the romanticism that has grown up around the disastrous charge into the face of Russian artillery by British cavalry under the command of Lord Cardigan during the Battle of Balaclava.

With such lines as “All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred”, Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Bridge is a typical example.

Despite his injuries, Pte Olley, from Holt, Norfolk, lived until 1920, when he died at the age 82.

He wrote how he had raised the alarm that morning, having spotted the Russians advancing, before “every man was called to his horse”.

“All the Light Brigade were soon in their saddles ready to do their duty or die - order was given to advance and back up the Turks.”

After a couple of advances and retreats, they were ordered to charge the Russians.

Pte Olley said all went well initially before they were suddenly overwhelmed.

He wrote: “After a time we prepared to return when, to our surprise we found that we were overpowered by the enemy.

“When we got through we rode into our encampment what few there were left of us.”

The document, signed and dated 1897, goes on sale at Ludlow Racecourse on November 6.

http://tinyurl.com/6ny37r

OKAY PEOPLE NOW PLEASE GO TO THIS LINK http://tinyurl.com/6k5hvk WHERE YOU WILL FIND A BIT MORE INFO INCLUDING A SAMPLE OF THIS GUYS HANDWRITING.
Amazing!  Looking at this guys photo, I swear I’d never challenge this guy even as an old man.  Does he look like he’d be easily frightened?

What a contrast to that wimpy embarrassing blot on the Royal Navy who (recall last year was it) was taken with other navy personal by Iranians and cried about losing his ... what the hell was it he lost?  An iPOD or some such device?  Remember that silly looking clod?  They kept him in the navy as I recall.  This old fellow would kick his dumb ass.  Try telling this guy you had a hard childhood or ate too many twinkies or yeah, try political correctness on the likes of him? Ha.

I know this photo isn’t too good.  The one in yesterday’s paper wasn’t bad and had more detail. But for some reason, the Telegraph didn’t give us an online photo, and the Daily Mail did but they enlarged it online and so lost detail.  But the written stuff at the Mail is good.  I LOVE this stuff.

Posted by peiper     on 11/06/2008 at 07:15 AM   
Miscellaneous • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

Barack Obama, come to save the world.  (GOOD. NOW ARE WHITES, “FREE AT LAST?")

Interesting stats in today’s morning paper. I hadn’t realized before how high the numbers would go but, apparently Obama got 95% of the black vote. Not a surprise of course.  But also and much apparently white votes are going downward

Barack Obama, come to save the world

By Bryony Gordon
Last Updated: 8:01pm GMT 05/11/2008

Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Barack Obama is the new president of the world and we can all sleep soundly in our beds, having sweet dreams that involve skipping through fields hand in hand with loved ones to a soundtrack of The Greatest Love of All, as butterflies flutter overhead. Goodbye terror, farewell loser, hello change. Whatever will wannabe Miss Worlds wish for now?

(the point of this article was that young Brits in numbers were encouraging Americans to vote Obama while they didn’t even know and show no interest in, their own politics here at home. Article is followed by lots of angry comments on her comments.)

http://tinyurl.com/6b2tzy

Barack Obama’s historic victory: Now we need to find out what ‘change’ means

By Simon Heffer in New York
Last Updated: 7:01pm GMT 05/11/2008

This is a pivotal moment in America’s history and, therefore, that of the world. In a country that forced black people on to separate buses within recent memory, and drove them away from polling stations at elections, the advent of a black president has a resonance that should not be understated. It is easy to be distracted by an event that proves, as the new president-elect said in his victory speech on Tuesday night, that in America anything is now possible, and old bigotries and barriers have finally been broken down. But that is not the sole, or main, significance of what has happened.

America is in economic turmoil. Its place as the world’s superpower makes it a magnet for challenges by rogue and aggressive states, and more of these are certain to come - President Medvedev of Russia has already started squaring up to President-elect Obama. Neo-conservatism tried, and largely failed, to deal with those and other lesser challenges over the past eight years. From January, a very different one will be applied. Barack Obama has come this far on a tsunami of rhetoric and charisma. Now he must undertake a responsibility for which those qualities will not necessarily qualify him. He must govern.

On a balmy election night in the plaza outside the Rockefeller Centre - a skyscraper and estate built in the depths of the last great economic meltdown as an act of defiance towards it - a packed crowd watched Mr Obama’s march. Despite the solidity of New York behind the Democrats, there was still no great euphoria - that has been confined to America’s equivalent of the chattering classes, and to the new president’s home turf in Chicago. There has, though, been an act of faith by the US electorate on a gigantic scale, as it thrusts this unproven and untested man into the teeth of these challenges. The public is relieved to hear the burial service read over the grave of the 43rd, discredited presidency. We must now see how long it will be able to suspend its disbelief over the programme of “change” promised for the 44th.

We have seen this in Britain: one is constantly reminded of the advent of New Labour in 1997, the massive expectations of “change” and - inevitably - the consequent disappointment and disillusion. The Republicans claim Mr Obama made spending promises totalling $1.3 trillion during the past 21 months. It highlights the confrontation with reality that he will have to face when he enters the White House on January 20. Yet this is only part of it. To match the Democrat victory for the presidency, there has been an even more significant set of gains for the party in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

His party can now with ease get any law it wants on to the statute book. Mr Obama needs, in that context, to begin his transition to power by asking himself one important question. Did he, and his party, win so heavily because America has shifted notably to the Left - or did they do so simply because they were not Republicans?

If the answer is the first contention, we may well be about to see the greatest era of radicalism in American politics since Roosevelt. If America really is no longer an instinctively conservative nation, Mr Obama can proceed with tax increases, the extension

of public services such as healthcare, the introduction of environmental legislation, the legitimisation of many millions of illegal immigrants, and the provision of federal funds to pay for abortions. It is not beyond possibility that Mr Obama could even find himself taken prisoner by his own party, as Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, leads it through a radical programme that takes the new president at his word about “change”.

http://tinyurl.com/6maajw

Posted by peiper     on 11/06/2008 at 03:21 AM   
Editorials • Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

   Wednesday - November 05, 2008

Mor Prufe of Stoopid

NJ voters passed the Voter Bond Approval, which was also on the ballot.

It was very sneakily worded. It looked like a measure for the state to raise money by selling bonds, and it seems that doing so would require voter approval ...

Public Question #1
VOTERS TO APPROVE STATE AUTHORITY BONDS PAYABLE FROM STATE APPROPRIATIONS

QUESTION
Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential governmental functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of the Constitution?

INTERPRETIVE STATEMENT (on the ballot)
This amendment to the State Constitution will require voter approval of new laws that allow the State to borrow money by issuing bonds through any State agency or independent authority backed by a pledge of an annual appropriation to pay the principal and interest on the bonds. New laws to allow the issuance of these State authority bonds for State government purposes will be subject to voter approval. State courts have ruled that the State constitutional requirement that the Legislature and Governor must seek voter approval for bonded debt does not apply to such borrowing. That requirement is followed only for proposed State bonds that contain a binding, non-repealable pledge to pay off the bonds directly with State taxes. Most State authority bonds can be issued without voter
approval because the payment of the bonds is backed only by a promise of the Legislature and the Governor that they will enact appropriations in the future to meet the bond payments. The courts have said this is a legal means of avoiding submitting the issuance of debt for voter approval. Laws to permit such debt that are enacted after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution will have to authorize voter referenda for approval of such debts. Exceptions to voter approval for authority bonds will be permitted if the bonds are to be paid off from 1) a source of revenue dedicated by the State Constitution, which only the voters can establish, or 2) an independent non-State government source of payments for use of projects built or obtained with the borrowed money, such as highway tolls or user fees.

For those of you who have the good fortune not to live in New Jersey, this is an example of the weasel worded government we have to deal with every day. For those of you who do live in New Jersey, this was a test of your ability to read between the lines and to filter out the bullshit. You failed, utterly.

Read the above and figure out what you think it really means, then read the truth below the fold:

What this measure really means is that former Goldman-Sachs executive, zillionaire, and rotating Senator/Governor John “seatbelts” Corzine (D, as if you ever had any doubt) wants his buddies in the finance business to sell bonds for the state at a nice fat profit, instead of the state selling them directly. And to pay for it he wants to put in toll booths on the 3 remaining major highways that don’t currently have them. The “voter approval” bit is smoke and mirrors; they wrote in a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. Literally. Oh, and to get there he’s likely to sell the highways to private companies, after using the very money these bonds raised to first build those toll booths. (step 1: collect underpants. step 3: profit!!)

Seeing as NJ is the only state in America that actually loses money with the Easy Pass toll collection system, this is some serious brain fart. Now add in that the traffic density in this tiny state is so high that our axiom is nearly true that a driver with a flat tire in Bergenfield can tie up traffic in Atlantic City (over 125 miles away). We are world famous for gridlock at “rush hour” and rush hour lasts 4 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening. And that’s not counting “sun glare”. So let’s put in more toll booths, because highway traffic is already moving too fast. Oh, and they will also jack up the fees, on such things like firearms licenses, by several hundred percent.

New Jersey voters approved this crap, 57.3% to 42.7%. Assbites.

Thank God they defeated the “Judicial Appointments” measure that would have let local politicians appoint all the local judges, instead of the current appointment process that makes the State Senate do it. That one was the biggest invitation to machine-politics corruption I think I’ve ever seen.

And yes, NJ changes it’s Constitution left and right. Because it’s a living document you know ...

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, ”which is to be master - that’s all.”

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2008 at 01:20 PM   
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

a blade of grass, growing

John could use your help. So could your local food bank, I’m sure.

John Kauza
494 Mechlins Corner Road
Pittstown NJ 08867

Tell him the soup can guy from the grocery store sent you. He doesn’t know my name, he never asked for a cent, and he has no idea I’m writing this. I doubt if he has a paypal account, but I’m sure that if anything comes his way for the food bank it will go to the food bank. You can spot an honest man, and he is one.

I went up to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast and to buy the Morning After newspapers. I can’t tell you the last time I bought an actual newspaper, and I could write for hours about the naive idiocy I’ve read in the stories therein. But that’s another post.

I was coming up the aisle and saw an old man trying to get some soup cans off the bottom shelf. He had to squat down with his shaky knees while holding onto the shopping cart handle. Various lady shoppers were detouring around him, wearing various looks of annoyance and impatience.

“Hey, do you need a hand with those?” I asked him.
“I sure could.”

So I knelt down on the floor and got the cans for him. Dozens. Every last can of Beef Noodle soup in the store. He sure must love this kind of soup! No, it wasn’t for him. He was buying it for the soup kitchen over in Phillipsburg. ( a small city in NW NJ that has a lot of low- and no- income families ). He goes shopping for them in the off-hours when the stores aren’t too crowded. I let him know that I’d grown up working in grocery stores, and that any store will always get him a clerk to help him if he asks at the desk. He thanked me for my help and we both went on our way.

I got my OJ and was on my way to the check out when I passed him in the frozen food aisle. He was buying the bargain brand Banquet frozen dinners by the dozen. I jokingly said that he didn’t have any trouble reaching those. We chatted again, and that’s when I noticed his shirt had the Order of the Arrow monogram. I was in Scouts when I was a kid. Cub Scouts, Webelos, Arrow of Light, Boy Scouts, Merit Badges, the whole bit. Nearly 30 years later and that arrowhead still impresses the hell out of me. In my day it was a very rare sign of the best of the best. We talked some more. “Scouts doesn’t teach morals anymore”, he said, “I don’t know what the world is coming to. It’s just one more activity, like soccer camp. Parents just drop off their kids and leave. They don’t even attend the Eagle ceremony, and that’s the biggest event in a young man’s life. And now the country is turning Socialist. That’s not what I served three tours in Vietnam for. I didn’t have to go back the last two times, but I felt my country needed me. And when we all came home, what happened then was disgusting.” Turns out he is also the Scout’s Shooting Sports Program Director for this whole big chunk of the state. Teaching boys how to shoot guns. In New Jersey. Talk about an uphill battle.

So I talked a bit more with this kindred spirit, asking him about the food bank. Were the Scouts involved? Were they funding this? No to both. The whole thing was out of his pocket. “I’ve been part of the food bank in Phillipsburg for 10 years. We used to help out 78 families, now there’s 459.” I said that we always had a can or two for the food drive barrels, and that I’d always gone out of my way to put old clothes, cleaned, in the Goodwill boxes, until I learned what a con that is. [Those clothes get shredded, the pulp gets sold to China, and some of the earnings get distributed. Meanwhile the management gets paid enormous salaries. None of the clothes actually go to your neighbors in need.]

So I got his card, wished him luck, and gave him $20 to help his efforts. And you’re damn right I thanked him for his military service and let him know that it was the right thing to do.

We don’t need big government programs to help each other out. What we need are more people like this guy, John Kauza, to make an effort close to home. Willing to get involved, willing to actually do something. One more blade of grass, growing, sending down roots.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2008 at 11:53 AM   
Heroes • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

So now it starts

via the Gates of Vienna, we find out that Russia has thrown down the first test of Barry’s Mettle.

Medvedev’s challenge to Obama

Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday became the first world leader to throw down a gauntlet to US president-elect Barack Obama, declaring that the Kremlin would station missiles in the tiny Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, in response to US plans for an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe.

Remember, Joe told us the world would test him right away...I guess he was right.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2008 at 11:51 AM   
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JOE THE PLUMBER EXPLAINS ECON 101 to President Obama.  (from Rich K)

Well what a morning this has been.  BMEWS posters prove again and again that they write better material then the speeches written by the pros and spoken by (mostly) amateur speakers.  I wish Mr.McCain had done this.  Or Mrs. Palin.

This was under comments by Rich K and again, I wanted it posted here and I hope it will be copied and passed around.
Hey Rich, maybe a year from now someone will be checking it out on Snopes.com to see if there really is such an act.

JOE THE PLUMBER EXPLAINS ECON 101

Barack Obama discovers a leak under his sink, so he calls Joe the Plumber to come and fix it. Joe drives to Obama’s house, which is located in a very nice neighborhood and where it’s clear that all the residents make more than $250,000 per year. Joe arrives and takes his tools into the house. Joe is led to the room that contains the leaky pipe under a sink. Joe assesses the problem and tells Obama, who is standing near the door, that it’s an easy repair that will take less than 10 minutes. Obama asks Joe how much it will cost.
Joe immediately says, “$9,500.”

“$9,500?” Obama asks, stunned. “But you said it’s an easy repair!”
“Yes, but what I do is charge a lot more to my clients who make more than $250,000 per year so I can fix the plumbing of everybody who makes less than that for free,” explains Joe. “It’s always been my philosophy. As a matter of fact, I lobbied government to pass this philosophy as law, and it did pass earlier this year, so now all plumbers have to do business this way. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act of 2008.’ Surprised you haven’t heard of it, Senator.”

In spite of that, Obama tells Joe there’s no way he’s paying that much for a small plumbing repair, so Joe leaves.
Obama spends the next hour flipping through the phone book looking for another plumber, but he finds that all other plumbing businesses listed have gone out of business. Not wanting to pay Joe’s price, Obama does nothing. The leak under Obama’s sink goes unrepaired for the next several days.

A week later the leak is so bad that Obama has had to put a bucket under the sink. The bucket fills up quickly and has to be emptied every hour, and there’s a risk that the room will flood, so Obama calls Joe and pleads with him to return.
Joe goes back to Obama’s house, looks at the leaky pipe, and says “Let’s see ? this will cost you about $21,000.”
“A few days ago you told me it would cost $9,500!” Obama quickly fires back.

Joe explains the reason for the dramatic increase. “Well, because of the ‘Joe’s Fair Plumbing Act,’ a lot of rich people are learning how to fix their own plumbing, so there are fewer of you paying for all the free plumbing I’m doing for the people who make less than $250,000. As a result, the rate I have to charge my wealthy paying customers rises every day.

“Not only that, but for some reason the demand for plumbing work from the group of people who get it for free has skyrocketed, and there’s a long waiting list of those who need repairs. This has put a lot of my fellow plumbers out of business, and they’re not being replaced. Nobody is going into the plumbing business because they know they won’t make any money. I’m hurting now too, all thanks to greedy rich people like you who won’t pay their fair share.”

Obama tries to straighten out the plumber: “Of course you’re hurting, Joe! Don’t you get it? If all the rich people learn how to fix their own plumbing and you refuse to charge the poorer people for your services, you’ll be broke, and then what will you do?”
Joe immediately replies, “Run for president, apparently.”

Posted by Rich K

Posted by peiper     on 11/05/2008 at 09:30 AM   
Blog Stuff • Humor • Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

JOHN MCCAIN AND A VERY WELL WRITTEN EDITORIAL COMMENT BY OUR GRUMPY OLD FART.

I have another thought and nothing to do with McCain but none the less a reminder.

Obama is NOT a stupid man either friends.  Call him whatever you want to, but let us NOT underestimate this guy.
And because it’s worth repeating and it won’t be the last time,

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don’t let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere.
Skipper

I’ll have to admit I wasn’t thinking along these lines the last week or more.  GOF has stated the case very well.  I don’t think it should be hidden away under comments and so am taking the liberty of posting it here.

Yeah, there are things about Mr.McCain that rile us. No denying that.  But on the other hand ... well.  Grumpy’s point of view is very much valid.

Like everyone, I knew that McCain had spent time in the Hanoi Hilton. What I had NOT known until a few months ago was that he was in a training film I was required to watch in Navy boot camp: “Trial by Fire - The Ordeal of the USS Forrestal”.
The Forrestal fire started at 10:50 local time and took until 4:00 the next morning to fully defeat. It killed 134 people and injured 161. It began when an electrical surge switching from external to internal power lit off a Zuni missile, which skated across the deck and impacted an external fuel tank of an A-4, immediately engulfing two aircraft *that were awaiting launch* in a pool of burning fuel. The pilots who suddenly found themselves in the middle of that flaming pool were LCDR Fred White and LCDR John McCain.

I’m sure there are many other events in that man’s life of which I am still unaware. Nonetheless, no one can rationally deny that John McCain is the quintessential old warhorse, harder to put down than a charging rhino and with apparently more lives than a cat. And it is likewise inarguable that, even as a young man, he more than once found himself in circumstances where he not only had to make the right decision, but had to make it RIGHT NOW, with only seconds to assess the situation. He is no stranger to high-stress decision making, nor has he been for many decades.

Do we disagree on things? Hell yes we do, most notably on immigration and campaign financing. But as my mother pointed out to me, when pressed on immigration reform, he once told the questioner, “Well okay then, what would you do? You may not like my solution, but it IS a solution, it can realistically be made to happen. Ideal solutions are often useless in a less than ideal world.” In other words, when you’re sitting in a burning aircraft is NOT the time to bitch about proper maintenance being done on the aircraft that just mistakenly fired a missile into you. You deal with what IS.

I think it would be fitting and proper if, sometime today, we were to all take a moment to acknowledge the respect this man has long since earned. And to reflect on how deeply flattering it is that people such as him consider US worth fighting, dying.... and yes, putting up with the dishonor of modern politics… to defend.

Posted by GrumpyOldFart

Posted by peiper     on 11/05/2008 at 08:32 AM   
Editorials • Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

John Bolton: Letter to the next president.

WHILE I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, I HOPE.

THE EU IS DRAFTING A SIX PAGE LETTER TO OBAMA WITH SUGGESTIONS OF CLOSER C0-OPERATION WITH THE EU.

AND ... I may not spell her name correctly but it doesn’t matter cause she’s an ignorant slag anyway.  I guess she’s smart enough to write books (which I haven’t read).
Erika Yung ?  or is it Erica Yong, Yung?  Crap.  You know who I mean ,I m’ sure.  If ya don’t I guess it doesn’t matter.

I was up ALL night listening to results and commentary on BBC radio 4.  They naturally held interviews with many Americans over the course of the evening but this total and worthless bag of poo really got my goat.  Even the BBC guy was trying to stop or cut away and why they didn’t I’ll never know. So here’s the deal folks.

She had to be drugged or drunk or both.  I can’t properly convey the sound but ....

sheee spo-----ke veeeeerrrr - rrry, veeerrr-ery slooooooooooo-oowwwwwleeeee

She was dragging out each and every word in a very low voice but not slurred like a drunk would.
OK .. so here the bitch is talking to a foreign audience telling everyone that at long last the reign of the “paranoid” Cheney is over and that,

“I tell my european friends when they have asked me how could Americans have elected a moron to be their president, I explain to them that we never elected George Bush.  The Republicans rigged the voting machines in the last three elections and stole the elections from the people. So then they understand why we have a moron for president. The Republicans stole the last three elections with rigged voting machines.”
Erica Yung on BBC-4 (radio) last night.

Oh yeah .. a personal note from me to the eu. go and eff yourselves. You’ll find the hole for that purpose located directly under your noses.

OKAY, NOW HERE’S A PART OF THE LETTER BY MR. BOLTON. BE SURE TO READ ALL AT THE LINK.

Congratulations, Mr President-elect, on your victory. After the longest presidential campaign in our history, you now have 77 days to prepare to govern. While foreigners might see eleven weeks as an eternity, you know only too well that it is precious little time to select your top advisers and then subject them to our cumbersome FBI and ethics screening of their backgrounds, their finances, their potential conflicts of interest, and whatever skeletons are hanging in their closets.

America’s Image

Do not let global “public opinion” about the United States, from Albania to Zimbabwe, dissuade you from doing what you think is right for America. Your job is to defend and advance our interests and values, a task which invariably will displease our adversaries, and even many of our friends, especially those who wish we were, well, more European in our behaviour and attitudes.

What we must do, however, is more effectively advocate the policies you will be pursuing. Failure at both the political level in Washington and abroad, and at the level of the career Foreign Service, made the Bush Administration one of the most tongue-tied Presidencies in our history. We should try to shift international public opinion to support our policies, not modify our policies to try to satisfy international public opinion. The State Department will not understand this distinction. You must.

A final word

Many U.S. and foreign commentators have been quick to tell us that America is in decline, and that our role in the future will not be what it once was. They will be correct only if you fall prey to their pessimism.

And if you do, rest assured that they will shortly turn critical of “American isolationism,” just as they have been critical in recent years of “American unilateralism.” You will never satisfy them. Defend America and its friends, and the rest will take care of itself.

http://tinyurl.com/69ewrb

This is NOT the entire open letter that appears in this morning’s paper.  I hope you will all take the time to read it all. Grab the link above.
Like Drew and others, I am not feeling great today.  Worried I guess but then at my age I have less future then most of you do and so maybe less time to worry about things.  Don’t misunderstand please.  All I’m trying to say is that statistically and given family age patterns blah,blah, I can’t say with any certainty I’ll still be around in four years at age 75.  Although I sure hope I and BMEWS will still be here of course.
BUT .... just in case and because , as I mentioned to Drew once, Ya Never Know ....

Both Drew and Rancino and others here as well, have the tech know how and the software to improve the image I have here.
Perhaps if you guys SAVE it for four years you will be able to improve it.  That’s in case I ain’t around to do it meself, once I’ve learned how.
Maybe by then that jerk Al Franken will be voted out once he proves what an ass he really is, and he can go here. The possibilities are endless.

In the four (more then) years I’ve been here, this toonist has not once, not ever drawn the Bush govt. in anything but a bad light.  Make that a nasty light.  So here.  Have some fun with this.  Hey look, it’s simple.  If I don’t laff I’ll cry and laughter’s better.  I think. Maybe. OK, not much to laugh at this morning.

Posted by peiper     on 11/05/2008 at 03:32 AM   
Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

   Tuesday - November 04, 2008

a new day, a fresh start

i call for the dissolution of the Republican Party. They have failed us. They have ignored us. They are as corrupt as the left. they ARE the left - there is no way in hell you can convince me that John McCain is anything to the right of what a normal Democrat should be. Juan McAmnesty. McCain-Fiengold. The Maverick. And this was the best they could find. We put a lot of hope in Fred, but he turned out to just be an actor. No fire Fred. No effort Fred. No chance Fred. You suck Fred. Buh bye.

Right now it looks like that fucking idiot Al Franken from Air America is going to take a Senate seat for Minnesota. How in the name of seven grizzly hells did that happen? The man is an utter whacko, and yet the Republicans can’t even defeat this guy. Admit it, the GOP is over.

No, we need a new party. Now let’s sit down and figure out what that party should stand for. And what kind of people - by which I mean people’s outlooks and worldviews, because we have to be EAGER to take folks from all walks of life and from every social strata and from every color of the rainbow and from every religious affiliation going. So we want whites, blacks, browns, yellows, greens, grays, oranges, and neon zebra stripes. Whether you’ve found rebirth by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, or whether you think thunderstorms are incarnations of the divine. It has to be a big tent, and that tent needs lots of open flaps to let in the crowds. That means we all have to ignore most of each other’s attributes, and instead focus only on the worldviews that bring us together.

We need a whole new platform. We need to examine and debate each and every plank in that platform and even the nails that bind it together. Perhaps there is still some good wood left in the GOP raft that we can salvage before it sinks beneath the waves, but there are planks in there that are rotten too, and they need to go. Even if those planks are cherished, because we’ve had our initials carved in them for 36 years. They leak, and that rotten wood doesn’t support the base. Worse than that; a whole huge slice of people are afraid to step on that raft because of that one rotten board.

We also need a name. A new name, without ties to failed parties of the past. New America Party?

I have 1000 or more people coming to visit here every day. At least 800 of them are from the USA. Since my blog stats show me that I get a whole lot of repeat traffic, this ought to mean that I get the same big crowd coming back every day. Or often enough. Which means that most of you have some alignment for what passes for Conservatism these days. And that means you OUGHT to have enough smarts and awareness to come up with some ideas. So let’s hear them. What do you want, what don’t you want. You don’t have to write an essay. You don’t have to be funny. If the best you can do is 5 or 6 words then that’s fine. But put those words out there. The debate starts here, one blade of grass seeking to take root. That is, until the new USSA Civilian Security Force shuts this place down. Because that day is coming faster than you think, especially if we just sit on our supersized American asses and complain that other people didn’t find the perfect solution for us. Rise up. Speak up. Stand up. While you still can.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/04/2008 at 11:32 PM   
The New Conservatives • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

One Last Show Of Bias

Google has a state by state election results tracker. It doesn’t seem to be working exactly right I’d say. Not that any of this will matter in the morning.

New Jersey is called “blue” for Obama, with basically none of the vote in. The news folks made the call at 8:05, 5 mintues after the polls closed.
Virginia has 41% of the precincts reporting in now, with McCain ahead by almost 120,000 votes, but somehow that state is too close to call ...

Interesting and good news: I drove her over to the polling place, and she voted. With almost an hour left to go, 75% of our little district had turned to vote. And that’s not including any absentee or military ballots. Pretty darn good.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/04/2008 at 08:52 PM   
Politics • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

… but by the content of his character

Rancino finds some worthy graphics that point out the obvious.

I have often wondered if most job interviews should be done between keyboards so that no “-isms” could influence things. This election is the biggest and longest job interview that ever was.

How would perceptions be different if we never saw the candidates, or if they looked like this? Think people’s minds would be the other way ‘round?

Is it just me, or does Obama in whiteface look like an underfed baby Ahnold? (and I think that’s John Edwards’ hair there too)

Original image from The Grey Group, an advertising design agency.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/04/2008 at 02:29 PM   
Miscellaneous • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink

EU-sless idiots

via Kims

Pirates protected from EU task force by human rights

A new EU naval task force will be unable to take tough action against Somali pirates because it must respect their human rights, its commander has admitted.

The pirates of old at least knew where they stood if captured - they would be jailed and hung, or possibly made to walk the plank. But those policing the high seas today have no such potent sanctions to impose on 21st century buccanneers, as the human rights of the successors to Blackbeard and Captain Kidd are being put first.

The European Union’s first naval task force is due to arrive next month in the Gulf of Aden to combat the region’s unprecedented piracy scourge, which is being fuelled by the demand for cash and weapons in lawless Somalia. Ten EU countries, including Britain, have pledged support for the force - yet they may find it difficult even to make an arrest.

“In the old days, when the navy would catch a pirate, they would tie his hands and feet and throw him back in the sea,” said Captain Andres Breijo, the Spanish head of the new anti-piracy mission, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. “Now they have human rights.”

Somalia is a “failed state”, Capt Beijo added, and the West fears that if the pirates were handed over to the Somali authorities they would be tortured or executed. Instead, his task force will only be permitted to keep a protective watch over merchant ships in the pirate-infested waters, which punctuate one of the world’s most important trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal. Despite the presence of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Royal Navy vessels also in the vicinity, dozens of ships have been hijacked this year, including a Ukrainian vessel carrying battle tanks and World Food Programme vessels delivering humanitarian aid to the heavily armed pirates’ war-torn homeland. Capt Breijo was reflecting the frustration felt by Europe’s admiralty due to their restrictive rules of engagement. Modern European navies are now so mindful of the legal loopholes they face in tackling pirates that they often instruct commanders to simply let them go.

After deciding pirates would not be successfully prosecuted if brought back to Europe, the Danish navy set free a crew of ten in September, dropping them off on a Somali beach after holding them for six days. The Royal Navy admits, unofficially, that it is under similar instructions.

“What can you do?” said Capt Breijo.

Well, if it was up to me, the answer would be real easy ...

Posted by Drew458     on 11/04/2008 at 12:22 PM   
Pirates, aarrgh! • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink