Sunday - July 31, 2011

America And The Imperialism Of Ignorance. does that include our money too?

I came across this a few days ago and saw red in all its shades.

I can not begin to tell you how pissed off I was reading all of this. Or even a part of it.
Not being very articulate or terribly literate either, my immediate response was filled with four letter words and combinations of same.  And while this is perhaps about the worst of the anti-American crap I’ve read so far, and in a conservative paper I want ya to know, I became angrier still at many of the comments made by idiots in tin hats that followed his Americans are stupid diatribe. 
To be sure, not all Brits think this way. BUT …. a lot do and so you’ll understand my frustration living here, and coming up against this sort of thing from time to time. 

Wife says I should know better then to read idiots.  Thing is, that’s hard to do when ur surrounded by em.  And many get their info from … ?  Darned if I know. One person writing in comments even says that America was so paranoid after WW2, we thought we were going to be invaded by the Brits and so started shoring up east coast defense.  Have you ever heard or read anything so insane?

So then …. I managed to get through this without using any ‘F’ words.  Not sure what that means.

Take a look fellow Americans ….. 

Forget Russia, forget Iran… is America the greatest threat to world peace, asks ANDREW ALEXANDER in his provocative new book
By TONY RENNELL

Truman was in an ebullient mood after his first summit meeting with a senior minister of the Soviet Union, who’d made the mistake of interrupting the U.S. President. ‘I gave him the old one-two,’ he proclaimed with a swagger, ‘straight to the jaw!’

The Russian departed, complaining that he’d never been spoken to before in such a way, not even by his boss, Josef Stalin.
From that moment in mid-1945, relations between West and East plummeted and would soon enter the big freeze of the Cold War.

America often acted tough abroad to avoid being seen as weak back home

The confrontational pattern of world politics was set for the next 40 years — a constant clash between the two super-powers, underscored for all of us who lived through it by the terrifying threat of global annihilation from their huge nuclear arsenals.

But, according to veteran current affairs commentator and Mail columnist Andrew Alexander in a provocative new book that rips apart decades of U.S. foreign policy, all that was totally unnecessary.

The Cold War would not have happened — should not have happened — if it had not been for America’s profound ignorance of the rest of the world and what made it tick.

Between 1945 and 1991, Washington’s gigantic power coupled with immense naivety made the world a much more dangerous place than it need have been.
What’s more, it’s still doing so. In the Cold War’s successor, today’s so-called ‘war on terror’, only the enemy has changed. America’s skewed approach to international affairs remains the same.

History repeats itself. Just as the U.S. concocted the fantasy threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in 2003, so at the end of World War II it conjured up and exaggerated the menace of a rampant Soviet Union set on world domination.

It was the small-town politician Harry Truman, catapulted from vice-president to President on the death of the revered Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found himself facing — as he was assured by his excitable intelligence service — a communist red tide that would sweep over Europe and Asia unless he stopped it.
Afraid of being thought of as weak — a perennial paranoia of U.S. Presidents as they look over their shoulders at the rednecks in their electorate — he acted tough, hence his roughing up of Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister in 1945.
‘I am tired of babying the Soviets,’ he wrote. The only way to rein-in Russia was ‘with an iron fist and strong language’.
But Truman was tilting at windmills. The idea that Stalin’s exhausted nation had the will or the resources to conquer any more of the world than the eastern half of Europe it already held sway over was absurd and groundless, says Andrew Alexander.
Yes, it was now a superpower to be taken seriously, and would be formidable if not downright obstructive in negotiations. And, yes, it wanted to secure its borders with a firm grip on the countries around it. But global conquest was not on Stalin’s agenda.

Government papers from the Kremlin archive show that, at that crucial point in 1945, the Soviets were intent on finding a working relationship with the West, not fighting it.
If the Americans had been smarter, if they had grasped the intricacies of Moscow’s mindset, if they had ignored communist rhetoric and concentrated on realities, if they had stopped to think instead of rushing in like blind bulls in a china shop ……
Instead, the real possibility of a stable post-war settlement that would reduce tension
in the world was blown out of the water by Truman’s wholly unwarranted and ill-informed belligerence.

Moscow countered intransigence with intransigence. The descent began from mutual suspicion to outright rivalry and the brinksmanship of the Cold War.
Behind his Iron Curtain, Stalin — cut off from the world community and with no one to answer to — purged the last vestiges of democracy from those East European nations whose fate Truman had been so concerned about.
Not for the last time, American foreign policy achieved the precise opposite of what it intended.

Minds were now firmly closed, positions immoveable. When Stalin died in the early Fifties, a new regime in Moscow hinted it was time to call off the dogs and work towards peaceful co-existence with the West.
But Washington hawks interpreted this as the Soviets running scared. They piled on pressure to widen the gap, not close it.
The arms race speeded up; spending on the military soared relentlessly. Dr Strangelove ruled.

Foreign policy and the art of diplomacy and compromise were reduced to the simple issue of military preparedness.
Meanwhile, any event in whatever part of the world — Greece, Italy, Berlin, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, the Middle East, Israel — took on a confrontational East-West dimension. In any international issue, no matter what the subtleties, all that mattered was where Moscow and Washington stood. Invariably, they took opposite sides.

From what they perceived as their moral high ground, free-thinking Americans howled at the Russians for being enslaved to communist ideology, ignoring the fact that their own belief systems were equally questionable.
In Andrew Alexander’s words, a ‘messianic mission’ developed that all countries should be remade in America’s image — despite the demonstrable fact that democracy is not a universally saleable commodity in all parts of the world, let alone a global cure-all.
At the heart of the problem was — and is — America’s deep-seated ignorance about the cultures of the countries it wants to change. The average American takes little real interest in the outside world.

THERE IS A LOT MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM HERE

Below the fold I have posted some reader comments. But if you go to the link you’ll see all of them. You will note with interest, if you’re an American reading this, that anyone making pro American comments or not agreeing with the column, has earned a number of red down arrows.  In fact, I haven’t seen any green pro American arrows so far.  Just shows ya.

One of the flaws in this I see, is the diplomat saying even Stalin didn’t speak to him that way. Yeah. He’d have just had ya shot and your family too for that matter.  And that quote by Truman doesn’t sound like him at all.  At least not stated that way. But it doesn’t matter. 

I am not saying we have always had it right btw.  Heaven knows that isn’t the case.  But I sure as hell don’t believe we’ve played any worse then anyone else and we are not the devil or his spawn.  I will say however that I wish we really could rediscover isolation to some degree, stay out of everyone else’s business, stop playing Officer Goodguy and tell the world to go fuck itself, keep our money at home, stop ALL foreign aid and quit the UN.  I guess I just HAD to get that one ‘f’ word in here.

   Saturday - July 30, 2011

Inside the Lefty Mind

Oh Yeah? Well Frost This!




Former Congressweasel Martin Frost proves he failed Logic 101:


Tea Party = Taliban


I guess this is another example of that “kinder, gentler political rhetoric” that the left demanded after the Tuscon shootings. After they had flooded the airwaves for a week with their blame-the-Right vitriol, just about when the counter arguments from the right started to hit the MSM. And then they abandoned it within a week or two, as soon as the right was done with their feeble protesting that the news networks didn’t carry anyway.

Here’s Frost’s mind blowing logic: Tea Party folks don’t want budget compromise. The Taliban is not known for compromising either. Therefore Tea Party = Taliban. How about that? If you are in favor of spending sanity, then you are a terrorist.

Holy shit, what a dumbfuck this guy is.

The tea party Taliban

Ten years ago, the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed two gigantic figures of Buddha, carved into a hillside 18 centuries before. The world was aghast at this barbarian act taken in the name of religious purity. But was powerless to stop it.

We now have a group of U.S. politicians seeking political purity, who seem to have much in common with the Taliban. They are tea party members; and because of blind adherence to smaller government, they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work. Like the Taliban, they see compromise as an unacceptable alternative.

A dozen paragraphs later, his weasel worded essay suggests that Boehner give in to the left in the name of compromise. And that the Tea Party people learn to go along to get along.

WRONG.

Boehner’s bill failed. At it’s heart it was nothing more than a reduction in the rate of baseline spending increase. THIS IS NOT A SPENDING CUT. This is “Ok, I’m broke, but to try to get un-broke, next year I’ll try to spend more, even though the “more” is less than original spending increase I’d planned.”

HUH? Only in DC is a smaller spending rate increase seen as a cut. In the real world, it’s called spending more. Which can’t be done right now. So damn tootin’ it failed. As it should have. Now we’ve got to look at Hairy Reed’s BS bill, which is even worse. That one better fail even faster.

The whole idea of the Tea Party is the First Rule of Holes: when you get to the bottom, stop digging. Period. There is no more money. Our national debt is already larger than our GDP. The nation’s credit rating has just been cut, for the first time in history. What on earth is the matter with these cretins in DC that they can’t understand the most simple of solutions: STOP SPENDING MORE. STOP SPENDING MORE THAN YOU TAKE IN?

Remember Odipshit’s “kitchen table economics” remark a couple months ago? That was pure cynicism on his part, but it really is that simple. No spending increases on ANYTHING. Cut EVERYTHING by a fat percentage - 20% or more - right off the bat. We are at the debt ceiling. That means no more money can be borrowed. Easy solution: next year’s budget has to be based on the amount of revenue collected, and not borrow a penny. But with a bad economy, projected revenue is much higher than actual revenue. So use the actual revenue numbers, and then decrease them 10% just in case. It’s what any one of us would do at our own kitchen tables.

But golly gosh, the reality of doing that is that the federal budget will have to be cut by a full third, just to stay within their actual revenue base. Because the whole damn budget is predicated on borrowing a full third of the money every year, year after year. Yeah, so? What part of “live within your means” don’t you shysters understand?

But it’s the Tea Party people who are terrorists. “Radical extremists” according to Harry Reid the other day. Taliban according to Frost; terrorists. Terrorists because we demand the smallest bit of common sense from those in charge.

Fuck you Harry. And Fuck you Frost. And fuck Politico for even posting such a load of lefty bullshit.

No compromise on spending sanity is NOT terrorism nor is it extremism. It’s simple common sense. Something completely absent from the brains of every last jerkwad in DC, either side of the aisle. 

how appropriate

President Obama to be commemorated on new $1 food stamp.

After all, he’s done more to get more Americans on food stamps than any other president in history. 39% more folks in just 2 1/2 years. 1 in 7 now use the program. Oh SNAP!

It’s even better than you think: paper food stamps are no longer used. Recipients get a credit card they can swipe at the grocery store; there is no visual stigma involved any more. So the Obama Buck would exist, but never be seen, and quickly forgotten about. Just like those stupid dollar coins, and hopefully, just like his one term pResidency.

A Bigger Punchline

... and the old joke concludes “and she slapped her hands together and said “I TOLD you not to park the truck in front of the house!!”

Iceberg, Dead Ahead!

Massive iceberg blocks the town’s harbor : “Big Berg Blocks Boats”

An impressive iceberg arrived in Newfoundland’s Goose Cove in mid-July. “Icebergs float in from Greenland,” said the photographer, Gene Patey. This one briefly blocked the town’s harbor before breaking apart and melting, “but the fishermen took their chances.”

The Northern Peninsula’s international reputation as ‘Iceberg Alley’ continues to grow as more than a dozen gargantuan blocks of ice float down from Greenland. The largest, a chunk calved from the Petermann Ice Glacier, is yet to appear around the tip of Newfoundland however it was last seen off Battle Harbor on the Southern Labrador coast, yesterday.

A few miles away in St. Anthony, the icebergs are coming down in droves. Locals are making some quick summer money taking tourists out to see them. It’s a very good year for icebergs. Goose Cove and St. Anthony are towns on the northern end of the island of Newfoundland, which sits at the east end of the Bay of St. Lawrence where the St. Lawrence River empties into the sea. Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia lie to the southwest, Labrador to the north. St. Anthony bills itself as the “iceberg, whale, and moose capital of the world”, and locals report that there was still snow on the ground as of last month; “it has been a cold summer thus far”. That isn’t too much of a surprise; the ice cold Labrador Current runs along the south side of the island, keeping the warmer Gulf Stream current far out to sea. And the continental shelf is quite abrupt there, so it is possible that the iceberg in the picture is not shelved, but floating.

That same Labrador Current should push the icebergs into the waters off the coast of Maine in another month or less, assuming they don’t all melt on the way as they usually do.

More interesting stuff in the same neighborhood: Did you know that Canada is less than 16 miles away from France? Seriously. You can take a ferry back and forth. Within the “12 mile circle” is the tiny island of St. Pierre. This is not a territory of France but an actual part of France, even though the area is called “Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon”. They use the Euro as currency, they have their own time zone, their electricity is 220v just like in France. They probably only have one shower on the whole island, just like France.

I leave it to you to debate why this summer is such a great one for icebergs. These ones come down from Greenland. Climate change, higher thermal activity from the Greenland hotspots, just random fluctuation, more seismic activity causing more calving, Eskimos being naughty with crowbars, etc?

   Friday - July 29, 2011

that face

pc wusses rename ‘gun quarter’ after 250 years

Pig ignorant pc schmucks just never stop looking for things to condemn.

These would be the very same folks who are ashamed of past Brit success and apologizing for even being Brit.  Freeken jerks.

I can’t think of anything to add to this.  Not that it needs me as the sorry event speaks for itself.

Here, see if you can make sense of this liberal pc bs.

Birmingham’s historic Gun Quarter is renamed… because PC critics say it glorifies crime

By ANDY DOLAN

It encapsulates a manufacturing heritage stretching back 250 years.

During the Napoleonic Wars, almost 1.9million muskets, rifles, carbines and pistols were manufactured for the Government in the district’s numerous weapons factories.

But Birmingham’s historic Gun Quarter is now to be renamed because of concerns that it could be linked with the firearms crime which blights other parts of the city.

Officials said residents no longer wanted to be associated with weapons of war.

Instead the district to the north and west of the city centre will be known as St George and St Chad in recognition of a local church and Birmingham’s catholic cathedral.

Yesterday, opponents of the rebranding exercise said the Gun Quarter had been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, while even the Dean of St Chad’s Cathedral said the decision sounded ‘irrational’.

Tim Huxtable, Birmingham City Council’s Tory head of regeneration, said the decision had been taken after a public consultation, although one petition received by the council was signed by just 50 people objecting to Gun Quarter. 

He said: ‘We listened to the local community, which is the whole point of consultation. The views of local people seem quite clear.’

Just had a thought.  This one line, ‘We listened to the local community, which is the whole point of consultation.’ Yeah. That one. Funny how this ‘consultation’ thingy works. Innit?  Seems like the consultations that get listened to and acted upon, are always the easiest or the least inconvenient for the ppl in power. This was an easy decision.  But despite consultations some few years ago, our local post office is still closed. Consultations are nothing but bull shit. It’s tossing a noisy dog a bone. Nothing more.

Sir Albert Bore, leader of the opposition Labour group, said: ‘What kind of nonsense is it when we replace the Gun Quarter with St George and St Chad?

‘Like it or not, and I am not into the arms trade myself, the Gun Quarter has a historical connection with this city. This is just political correctness.’

The name change was described as a ‘terrible shame’ by the owner of one of the few surviving gun makers in the district.

Simon Clode, managing director of Westley Richards and Co, said: ‘This is an important part of Birmingham’s history. The area is not well occupied by gun makers now, but it’s still the Gun Quarter.’

The Very Reverend Canon Gerry Breen, Dean of St Chad’s Cathedral, said the name change was ‘almost as irrational as deciding not to call the Black Country the Black Country’.

Reverend Larry Wright, Rector of St George’s Church, however, said he was among those who had lobbied the council to change the name.

‘We wrote on behalf of our own congregation – many of whom wanted a name change to move away from any suggestion that this area was associated with gun crime,’ he said.

‘But they could have come up with something snappier (than St George and St Chad).’

A council spokesman insisted the gunsmith area would live on as a separately defined part of the new St George and St Chad quarter.

SOURCE

So Busted

“They Were Pushed” Part 2:
Another Inconvenient Truth: Polar Bear Researcher Suspended Over Integrity Issues

A leading climate scientist whose report in 2006 of drowning polar bears in Arctic waters galvanized the global warming movement—and were highlighted in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning climate-change documentary—has been suspended, possibly over the accuracy of his observations.

Charles Monnett—who manages as much as $50 million worth of climate research on Arctic wildlife and ecology—was told on July 18 that he was being put on leave pending an investigation into “integrity issues”, according to a letter posted online by the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which is questioning Monnett’s suspension.

The complaints against the Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) remain unclear, and the connection to his seven-page 2006 peer-reviewed paper on the drownings are unknown, despite a months-long or longer investigation.

PEER charges Monnett’s suspension amounts to a witch hunt.

“The quality and continuity of the scientific work he’s overseeing is distinctly being jeopardized,” Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, told FoxNews.com.

His group alleges the Interior Department is violating its own rules and regulations, and that the ongoing investigation seems intended merely to disrupt Monnett’s body of scientific work.

Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, could not speak directly to Monnett’s case but said he believes the public has a right to be skeptical about scientific claims related to global warming.

Even if every scientist is objective, “what we’re being asked to do is turn our economy around and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on the basis of claims about what’s going to happen to the climate,” he said, adding later: “If global warming really takes hold here in the next few years and bad things start to happen, then we can act. But right now, I think we should just be sitting on our hands, observing.”

Documents provided by PEER indicate investigators are focusing on observations that Monnett and fellow researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004, while conducting an aerial survey of bowhead whales. The report said they observed four dead polar bears floating in Arctic waters after a storm. They detailed their observations in an article published two years later in the journal Polar Biology; presentations also were given at scientific gatherings.
...

In the peer-reviewed article, the researchers said they were reporting, to the best of their knowledge, the first observations of polar bears floating dead offshore and presumed drowned while apparently swimming long distances in open water—suggesting “that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues.”

The article and presentations drew national attention and helped make the polar bear something of a poster child for the global warming movement. Al Gore’s mention of the polar bear in his documentary on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” came up during investigators’ questioning of Gleason in January.

In May 2008, the U.S. classified the polar bear as a threatened species, the first with its survival at risk due to global warming.

So there you have it: two researchers were flying around counting whales, and saw FOUR dead bears floating in the water. Not 4,000. Not 40,000. 4. Just four. And then assumed a cause of death for them without doing any kind of investigation. Because raging freezing storms never killed anybody, right? Or ate some bad food and died from food poisoning? Or went for a swim less than 30 minutes after eating? And from that one published assumption Al Gore made himself a propaganda movie, snagged himself a Nobel Prize, and threw the whole damn planet into a 6 year tizzy. All based on 4 dead bears found in the ocean after a major arctic storm. And a profligate species got onto the endangered list, even though local bear counts and reports by natives showed that their population was perfectly healthy and growing.

Somewhere a bunch of seals are rolling on the beach laughing their asses off, because they know the truth. Under the cover of the storm, the bears were pushed.

ROBLMAO

update: Considerably more coverage on the story here, details that show Monnett is the world’s leading drowning bears = global warming scientist, and perhaps the AGW quote of the decade:

Interview transcripts with Monnett are here and they are laughable. Really: the guy can’t remember if it was 3 bears or 4 he saw without looking at his notes. The whole bear scare was based on one observation during one transept flight (a back and forth “mowing the lawn” kind of flight used to count whales in a certain area) and the 3 (or was it 4?) dead bears seen in that small area were extrapolated to thousands more in the larger overall area. That’s junk science. It isn’t even good statistics; you can’t identify a trend based on one observation. But that was the snowball that started the whole AGW avalanche.

CBullit has a bit more, plus snooch updates.

Don’t expect Monnett to be tarred and feathered; it’s the Obama administration after all who is doing the investigation. Which means that Monnett is guaranteed to be found innocent if he happens to be black. But I don’t think he is. But I’m not holding my breath either. I expect a whitewash, or some sub-minion to get thrown under the bus.

Prang!

Ah, that explains it. It wasn’t an accidental launch after all, just one that screwed up.

Flight Anomaly Causes Missile Test To Fail

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – An unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile was destroyed over the Pacific Ocean early Wednesday, minutes after it blasted out of a California coast underground silo on a flight to test the weapon’s reliability, the Air Force said.

It’s the second Minuteman 3 test problem in five weeks at Vandenberg Air Force Base, located about 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The latest Minuteman 3 missile was launched at 3:01 a.m. Wednesday and was destroyed five minutes later because of unspecified safety concerns. Designed to carry a nuclear warhead, the three-stage intercontinental ballistic missile has a range of more than 6,000 miles. It travels to approximately 15,000 mph at an altitude of 700 miles.

Air Force controllers detected “a flight anomaly and terminated the flight for safety reasons,” said Col. Matthew Carroll, chief of safety for Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing. “Established parameters were exceeded and controllers sent destruct commands,” Carroll said in a statement. “When terminated, the vehicle was in the broad ocean area northeast of Roi-Namur.” Roi-Namur is an island in the northern part of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, some 4,200 miles from Vandenberg.

There were no details on what went wrong and a Vandenberg spokesman said there won’t be any further information until Thursday. The Air Force said there will be an investigation.

Don’t you just love Mil-Speak? “Established parameters were exceeded” means “our rocket lost control and went spinning across the sky”. That’s what is called a prang.

buys bike from cop auction, then arrested for stealing the bike.

Hey darn it …. while I’ve been breathing paint thinner and bon fires and trimming hedges and depressed because I can’t afford to fly first class, Drew has the time to go bowling?  Ah well. RHIP. Right? lol.

Well done on winning week Drew.  Now back to the keyboard.

This story belongs to the Keystoned Kops. Yeah. Stoned. Must-a-been. It’s funny in a way. Except for the poor victim of plod bungling.  And as someone pointed out in comments and we thought about when reading it in the paper, what about his cost for fixing up the damn thing?  Apologies are meaningless.  If civilians have to own up and pay up, in full, then the police dept.  should too.

H/T Surrey Constabulary Blog

Police sold me a stolen motorbike .. then they took it back

A team of officers raided a man’s home to recover a stolen motor-cycle – which he had bought from a police auction weeks earlier.

Kris Lech bought the bike in good faith for £500 and then spent £700 refurbishing it.

Kris Lech, 29, bought the Yamaha bike from an official sale of recovered vehicles in Addiewell for nearly £500 and repaired it with £700 worth of new parts.
But a mix-up meant that when he tried to register the vehicle with the DVLA it appeared as stolen. Officers from Tayside Police ordered that the bike be seized and Mr Lech’s Muirhouse home was searched for four hours for other “stolen property”. Today Mr Lech told how he was still waiting for an apology as well as compensation.

Tayside Police insiders said there had been a “double whammy” of mistakes and that they had never seen such a gaffe. Mr Lech, who moved to Edinburgh from Poland six years ago, said he had been left “highly embarrassed” and “stressed” by the incident, especially as he had spent so much money fixing up the motorcycle. It has now been returned to its original owner.

Mr Lech, a handyman who bought the motorcycle for work, said: “I went to the auction because I have bought things from police auctions before and I have had no problems. I paid for the bike, transported it home, ordered new parts to fix it up, put most of the new parts in the bike, and sent off to the DVLA to register it. Then on July 6, six police officers came to my house and searched the whole place while I was at work. My girlfriend was highly stressed and angry, and I was devastated when I found it was gone after all the work I’d done.

“I felt embarrassed that people in the street had seen what happened when I am decent and hardworking. I was told to contact Drylaw Police Station the next day to find out more about the bike, but even though I have done so three times I have heard nothing about getting any money back. They took all the old parts and the new parts I bought.”
He added: “I would like answers. You don’t expect to be buying something dodgy at a police auction.”

It has emerged that the bike, which was taken from a house in Carnoustie last March and reported as stolen, was spotted a month later being driven without number plates in Dundee and confiscated by police.
But an error on the police national computer system meant it did not come up as stolen property.

Police discovered that the vehicle was registered to a house in Carnoustie, but when an officer visited the property, a man who answered the door said he knew nothing about it.
Three months later, the unclaimed bike was auctioned off, but after the new owner, Mr Lech, fixed it up with new parts and registered it with the DVLA, it was then flagged up as being stolen and officers ordered the raid.

A police source said: “This guy bought the bike at a police auction, completely legit, and it seems there has been a double whammy of errors – a mistake on the computer system and a possible human error. Somewhere in the system there has been a serious breakdown. There are checks in place to stop this sort of thing, but the system isn’t perfect.

“I’ve never heard of anything like it. It’s unbelievable that this has happened, but it has. I’m pretty sure this guy would be high on the list for compensation.”
A Tayside Police spokesman said: “We can confirm the vehicle had been reported stolen and inquiries are ongoing.”
He added that a letter was being sent to Mr Lech with details of a refund for the purchase of the bike.

Surrey Constabulary

Watch Your Head It’s Getting Crowdered In Here

Crowder and the Debt Ceiling

gween council suggests meatless day to save planet. union says drop ded

OK, in the scheme of things this itty-bitty bit of nonsense isn’t a big story. But it sure does point out in caps and bold, how the tree hugging liberal left planet savers not only think, but what lengths they’re willing to explore to get their way.

I have no problem at all with someone making suggestions and then simply letting people make their own choice. However, you need to understand the following.
The town council’s Green Party introduced a vegetarian day, as a part of it’s election manifesto in May of this year.
How’s that for a political issue?  And to think. These wild eyed zealots get themselves elected to office.

Alright, so their grand idea has been rejected. People have spoken.  Does it matter?  Well ... only in the short term.

Take a look.

MEAT-FREE MONDAY DUMPED BY BINMEN

By Tim Ridgway

Refuse workers caused a rumpus over a plan to ban meat from the menu.

Brighton and Hove City Council’s Cityclean workers are used to a beefed-up offering at lunch with bacon butties and lashings of lamb top of the wish list.

So they were left horrified when caterers at the council’s depot in Hollingdean, Brighton, decided to offer only meat-free meals.

The idea of “meat-free Monday” formed part of the Green manifesto before the party took control of the local authority in May.

The Cityclean depot was the first to introduce the change.

But managers have been forced to shelve the scheme immediately after the workers refused to let them give chops the chop for even one day a week.

One worker said: “As a result of potential grievances and general disgust at being told no meat would be served in the staff canteen, the policy has been abandoned and they will return to serving meat every day from now on.”

Central services cabinet member Jason Kitcat said: “We are not looking to force this on staff which is why we talked to union representatives before it was introduced.

“The idea is to find ways to get staff and people to talk about the issue.

“We will continue to keep having conversations with staff to find out ways forward.”

Meat Free Monday was launched in 2009 by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney as “a simple and straightforward idea to show everyone the value of eating less meat”. 

It claims not eating meat for one a day a week can save people money, reduce the impact on the environment and help people live healthier lives.

Supporters include Sir Richard Branson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Joanna Lumley.

A council spokesman said: “It’s disappointing if the concept hasn’t gone down too well.

“But we’ll work to communicate the benefits better and work closer with the workforce in any future plans.”

source

Humankind is by nature carnivorous.  There are many who aren’t.  Many are vegetarians. Hey, their choice.  But Sir Paul has spoken publicly about meat eaters and the ruination of the planet and environment issues related to the meat industry. If he and the gweens had their way, they’d most likely have a ban.
All for the good of humanity naturally. And the twees and fowusts and Bambi.

Me Too

While I can’t plead as much physical effort as Peiper, I’ve been on a mad honey-dew project the past several days myself. Or perhaps a plethora of them. My wife had most of the week off from work, because the doctor she works for changed his vacation plans and decided he’s going now instead of later. And being a doctor, and therefore a Great I Am, he decided there was no reason to keep the office open when he wasn’t there. So all the admins, techs, and lesser doctors lost a week’s work. Not the smartest business model IMO, but that’s the way it goes.

So we’ve been doing things. Cleaning like mad. We were away for a day trip and came home to a swarm of fruit flies in the kitchen. Thousands of them. Must have been eggs in some piece of fruit. Extra fun, but after several days I’ve got them beat. Fixing the computer; the suddenly dead monitor messed with our plans and had to take priority. Another large and involved electronics project that gave me lots of heavy lifting and required me to re-wire the stereo again. Etc and so forth.

All of this hasn’t left me much of any time to sit down and blog. No time, actually.

Hey, we won all 7 in bowling this week. That should put us about 15 points up over the 2nd place team, and with just 4 weeks left in this little summer league, that’s where we want to be. No exceptional bowling to report, though I’m giving myself the save for game 2. My team was having a tough time of it, and if I hadn’t battened down and thrown 50 over for a 235 we would have lost. Teamwork! The last 2 weeks of a season are always play off rounds on any bowling league, 1st place team plays 2nd, 3rd place plays 4th, etc. If we can hold onto that 15 point lead until then, then we will have a lock on 1st and have no worries. One of the guys on the 2nd place team moved to the southern end of the state last week, so they’ve brought in a replacement. I know the guy, a really great guy and he’s a superb bowler. Like 240 average good. Ouch. So it’s almost a given that they will be winning most of the nights they play from now on, though their handicap is going to seriously spike. We’ll see. But my team really wants that silly little trophy, so the fight is on.

So what’s this shiite I hear that a ICBM accidentally launched itself in California? Has NORAD been hacked by the Chinese or something? I haven’t even had the news on in more than a week.

   Thursday - July 28, 2011

trying to do things right at the least and better if I can

It’s 6:50p as I start this. I don’t generally boot this late. Dog tired after last two days. Jeesh, I feel almost like I’ve been employed at hard labor.  Well, one section is done and another started earlier. Mildew,rust , paint and Kurust and thinner and headache.

Had to spend lots of time doing outside first. They have a curious custom over here called bon fires.  But not exactly at we know em back home. Or maybe depending on the state you’re from.  Ppl light bon fires and burn their grass and branch and hedge cuttings etc. Sometimes I suspect they burn more then that.  If the wind is in the wrong direction, well I guess you can imagine how uncomfortable that will be.
There have been a few times when it’s been inside the house as well.  Thankfully not recently.  So anyway, there I am breathing the fumes, taking aspirin and replacing the headache with a stomach ache.  And that last is because I forgot to take my morning dose of something called Omeprazole, which is meant for folks with a gut like mine.
So you might say that last bit of hurt was self inflicted. There is a ton of work to do this year. Stuff I ignored last year. Now wish I hadn’t.  But when we got back after three months in the USA, I don’t know what happened really.  Neither of us seemed to want to get started on projects or make any effort regarding the house or planning for things to be done. So things really piled up.

To be quite honest, I might not have booted at all tonight. I’m tempted to tell a lie and say I’m so tired I’m seeing double. Truth is, I just tired but unlike other nights, I can see fine. Thing is, it’s very cool downstairs where I am, but way too warm to go up to bed.  The temps didn’t seem at all hot today. The house was quite cool all day long. Not so upstairs.  This summer (so far) has been mostly kind to my way of thinking. Only one or two other nights this year when it was too warm upstairs.  And can you believe it, some nights I get up and change into flannel PJs. It’s been that cool.

Got the results of last week’s X-ray of knee.  The bad news is they could find nothing wrong.  It’s all normal. Yeah that’s bad news cos how the hell can they cure something that ain’t broke?  Just because it sometimes feels like it is, doesn’t mean it actually is faulty.  Like the back up lights on our car.  Suddenly without warning, nothing.  They both just didn’t come on when the car was put in reverse. So we know there’s wire or a bulb or something wrong cos we can see it.  But there’s nothing to see in my knee.  If there was, they could fix it. Rewire or change the bulb or something.  Oh well, it hasn’t been hurting in over a week.  Maybe it got tired of vexing me and found another victim.  Hopefully one of my neighbors with a dog.

This house project I’m working through is a lot of work, which btw I enjoy doing.
It’s taking longer then it should of course, and I don’t tend to look for shortcuts.
What I mean is, I just can’t do anything by half measures.  Well, John Updike wrote something about me that was in a national paper. Yeah.
I happen to see this quote.

“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”

Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago. But I’m still here trying my best to do things better.

Stay Tuned..

   Wednesday - July 27, 2011

ain’tent dead yet

Having computer problems. Monitor dying. Can barely see screen even in dark room with brightness turned up all the way. Must go find a new monitor.

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