It’s a Different Perspective

“It doesn’t bother me. Obviously, me being a devout Catholic, it’s a conflict of interest. Then again, God supported David when he killed Goliath,”

…through a Marine sniper’s scope.

Whilst Trying to Figure Out Why the Camry is Eternally Cranky

…I came across this little gem. It made me laugh.

3/31/03: My brakes were squealing like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

We’re Not Talking Pugs in Pearls

…or a ripe peach at a fruit stand.

HEIRESS PICKS OUT ASIAN BABY
CASEY Johnson, the 26-year-old Band-Aid heiress who has everything money can buy, is planning to adopt a baby girl from Kazakhstan.
The 5-foot-2 blonde told September’s Vanityy in her Beverly Hills house. “I got a crib, and a changing table, and I got a car seat, and a stroller,” she said, and an item she couldn’t resist: “The cutest leopard baby bikini. Oh my gosh. She is going to be dressed to kill.”

Yup. Short of an Easy-Bake Oven, that about covers everything you need to play the ‘Mommy Game’.

Nitrogen in Your Tires

…Marty Mailhot, manager of the Tire Warehouse in Topsham, said the idea is catching on with consumers, who are purchasing nitrogen for tires for cars, trucks, motor homes and lawn tractors. He has even tried it on footballs and inflatable tubes pulled behind boats.
He has a retort for those who pooh-pooh the notion of paying for nitrogen when there’s plenty of free air for the taking.
“I say, ’Why are you drinking that bottled water when there’s a pond out back?”’ he said.

I’d give it a second thought since there’s no danger of looking like the Hindenburg. And since I really am terrible about checking the tires in any case.

I Think I Can Do One Better

…than Michelle Malkin in her post today…

“When do terrorists warn civilians?”

…about the leaflets the IDF is dropping to warn Lebanese civilians in Hizbollah target zones. We were watching a FoxNews live report from the scene of the destroyed building in Qana. Their reporter was horrified by the children’s bodies being pulled from the rubble and speaking to everyone on site. That included the fellow who (we believe) owned it. He was brokenhearted by the destruction of family, friends and his home, but he was really pissed that the zero dark thirty…

PHONE CALL WHICH WOKE HIM UP AND WARNED HIM TO GET OUT OF THE BUILDING

…didn’t give him enough time to get his stuff out. major dad and I looked at each other in utter and complete astonishment.

“The Israelis CALLED this guy to WARN HIM?!!”

(We can only figure he wanted his ‘stuff’ more than getting the people out safely first.)
I’ve been scouring Fox and the web all morning for the clip (It was on just as the Israelis were announcing a news conference about the Hizbollah rock barrage taped coming from that site.) and haven’t found it yet, BUT I HAVE found numerous instances recounted online where a phone call’s been answered to hear ‘a voice in broken Arabic’ telling them to “get out NOW“.
I don’t think Hitler was jingling anyone in the U.K. in 1944 either. It’s a helluva a way to run a war and still take it in the chops as ‘disproportionately forceful murderers’. Hat’s off to the IDF.
Now finish the bastards.

Another Bubble Set to Burst That Bears Watching

…and they don’t handle setbacks as well as we do, physically or emotionally. It’s fascinating stuff.

China’s economy is out of control
China is growing so fast — using cheap money to build steel mills, highways and textile factories it doesn’t need – that the coming crash grows uglier by the day.
…In the second quarter, China’s gross domestic product grew by an extraordinary 11.3%. That’s a significant speed-up from 9.9% growth in 2005, 10.1% growth in 2004 and 10% growth in 2003.
That’s a problem, because an economy can have too much growth. In China, it has led to massive overinvestment in manufacturing assets in sectors already suffering from oversupply. Investment in fixed assets — everything from steel mills to cement plants to oil refineries to highways — grew by 30% in the first half of 2006.
Although the reported profits of China’s largest industrial enterprises climbed 28% in the first half of 2006 over the same period in 2005, companies in some sectors have seen profits squeezed, sometimes to the vanishing point. According to government numbers, 80% of the profits in the Chinese economy went to companies in the oil, power, coal and nonferrous metals sectors. The other 30 sectors of the economy shared just 20% of corporate profits.
The iron and steel sector is the current poster child for the problem — and a worrying sign of things to come in other sectors. Profits in the sector dropped by 20% in the first half of the year. The problem is overcapacity. Too many steel companies have added too much capacity, driving down the price they can charge for their product.
…Higher prices pull more money into real estate, of course. In the first six months of 2006, real estate investment climbed 24.2% over the same period in 2005. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 1.41 billion square meters of housing were built from January through June 2006, up 21% from 2006. And as the boom ages, prices soar and excesses multiply. Units in the Tomson Riviera luxury apartment complex in Shanghai, for example, are priced at as much as $20 million. (I love the complex’s slogan: “dedicated to the elites.” How things have changed in Communist China.)

But then it gets you wondering, “so…what does happen if China comes apart at the economic seams?” Would a cataclysmic social restructuring in quite possibly a horrendous and bloody manner erupt at some point? I mean, you don’t get to vote throw the bastards in Beijing out every four years.

Quotes of the Day

On Beirut…

We’re not helping one bit, risking the lives of American Marines serving over there, trying to keep peace, when they’ve got a bunch of jackasses who want to kill each other. I’d get out of there and let them shoot. – Senator Bary Goldwater

…and the Marines…

You would think that over a period of 23 years that the United States military, the memory of the barracks bombing would have faded. It hasn’t.
When Secretary Rice talks about perhaps a peacekeeping force, the first question in a U.S. officer’s mind is, does that mean us? No one in the military wants a replay of 1983.
-MARK PERRY

…in 1983.
From an OUTSTANDING CNN Presents: “Marine Barracks Bombing”. (If you can’t find it re-scheduled, the transcript’s here. )

As soon as we suffer casualties, we will cut and run.
We are a paper tiger.
-ADMIRAL JAMES LYONS, U.S. NAVY (RET.)

Oh yeah, we do. And the whole Islamic world knows it. They’re counting on it.

Hans Brix Is In Town, I Guess

Evidently the Security Council is threatening to write a letter telling the Iranians how angry they are…

(thanks to Bill at INDC Journal for the pic…)

Mel, Mel, Mel.

You are just such a douchebag.

A New Quagmire! Just In Time For Fall!

Now it’s the fault of those darn Joooos:

The Israeli bombs that slammed into the Lebanese village of Qana yesterday did more than kill three dozen children and a score of adults. They struck at the core of U.S. foreign policy in the region and illustrated in heart-breaking images the enormous risks for Washington in the current Middle East crisis.
With each new scene of carnage in southern Lebanon, outrage in the Arab world and Europe has intensified against Israel and its prime sponsor, raising the prospect of a backlash resulting in a new Middle East quagmire for the United States, according to regional specialists, diplomats and former U.S. officials.

The Arab Street! They’re outraged!
Well, la-dee-frikkin’-da. They attack civilians, rather, they target civilians, and then they hide their brave fighters amongst their own women and children or amongst UN nannies. Which means that some of those folks are going to get killed when the fighters are attacked. Horrible, horrific, sad. But unavoidable if you are going to fight and destroy Hezbollucks.
I’m really somewhat puzzled by this concern about “striking up anti-US resentment” in the region. As if the people in the ME were, prior to 2000, all founding members in good standing of the “We Love America So Much Society.”

“What the conflict has exposed in a really clear way is how linked all these issues in the region are to each other,” said Mara Rudman, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton White House now at the liberal Center for American Progress. “The worst-case scenario . . . is a much more radicalized Islamic fundamentalist Middle East and much more isolated Israel and a much more isolated United States and fewer people to talk with.”
Haass, the former Bush aide who leads the Council on Foreign Relations, laughed at the president’s public optimism. “An opportunity?” Haass said with an incredulous tone. “Lord, spare me. I don’t laugh a lot. That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what’s Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?”
In the long run, he and others warn, the situation could cement the perception that the United States is so pro-Israel that a new generation of Arab youth will grow up perceiving Americans as enemies.

What these folks have failed to realize is that ‘talk’ accomplishes nothing here. Nothing, except give the Islamists time to grow and infiltrate, to wear down a little more the spine of the West. They want to rule us. They want to destroy us and our precious way of life.
I was sitting in church yesterday, sort of in the middle of the sanctuary, and I was looking at the backs of all the folks in front of me. As it was rather warm outside a lot of the young ladies were wearing off-the-shoulder tops or tops held up with little straps; nothing tarty, mind you, but just normal summertime clothes. And I thought “These kids would be lambasted (at best) as whores and disgraces to the honor of their families were we under Sharia; hell, a few of these girls might even be killed by their brothers.”
Depressing times.

And He Shall Be Known By His Persian Name

…”Salamadamadingdong”, which translates to

“Maynard Krebs“

Iranian President “Salamadamadingdong” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas” which will now be known as “elastic loaves,” state media reported Saturday.

Keeping the culture pure.

Zeppelin discovered!

Graf Zeppelin, that is.

Poland’s navy said today that it identified a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea as almost certainly being Nazi Germany’s only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin — a find that promises to shed light on a 59-year-old mystery surrounding the ship’s fate.

Backround on the ship here.
Cool stuff!

A Refreshing Reality Check

Not about this horrible news…

Tour de France winner failed drug test in race
Team to dismiss Landis if excessive level of testosterone confirmed

…but about his mother’s reaction to it.

Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn’t blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but “if it’s something worse than that, then he doesn’t deserve to win.”

Required Reading

While Islamic groups in Britain openly brag about how they are going to subdue the country by violent means or call for beheading those insulting Islam, Bryan Cork, 49, of Carlisle, Cumbria, in the Lake District, was sentenced to six months in jail for standing outside a mosque shouting, “Proud to be British,” and “Go back to where you came from.” One British court ruled that even use of the word “immigrant” as an insult could amount to proof of racial hostility.

…from the Brussels Journal. It’s a litany of lessons to be heeded in this age of “fl*p charts”, “bl*ckout”, “hate crime”, “where does it end?” PC/sensitivity madness here. Europe ~ even Australia (!) ~ is already surrendering to the dark side of legislated social behaviours. Religious extremists are now ‘entitled’, vice ridiculed and condemned.
Swill Salute: the BlogFaddah

Speakin of the Religion of Pieces and Sensibilities

…I don’t think now is the time to dump this guy ~ an ARABIC speaking Sergeant ~ regardless of who he spends his off time with.

Army Dismisses Gay Arabic Linguist
A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified.
Bleu Copas, 30, told The Associated Press he is gay, but said he was “outed” by a stream of anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C.
…The policy is becoming “a very effective weapon of vengeance in the armed forces” said Steve Ralls, a spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a Washington-based watchdog organization that counseled Copas and is working to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

By All Means, Speak Softly

Groups Urge Sensitivity in Hezbollah Probe
Leaders of the country’s Muslim, Middle Eastern and South Asian communities are urging the FBI to use sensitivity if it investigates possible activities by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah on U.S. soil.
Twenty-five groups, including the Islamic Society of North America and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, urged FBI Director Robert Mueller in a letter Wednesday to issue instructions to field offices and agents to avoid unwarranted profiling and respect the legal protections of people they may question.
“We want the FBI, obviously, to protect our nation from those who do us harm, but we want them to focus on actual credible evidence of wrongdoing and not target people based on their ethnicity or religion or based on First Amendment political expression,” said Farhana Khera, head of Muslim Advocates, the lead drafter of the letter. “We want to avert any kind of raw fishing expedition-type initiative.”

…as long as you USE a big, f*ckin’ stick (I mean a BIG one.).
And as long as “sensitivity” doesn’t mean not asking enough of the right questions because you might hurt someone’s feelings or offend their religion of pieces sensibilities.

He Gave Courage, Honor and Commitment

…a leg to stand on.

Carl M. Brashear, the first black U.S. Navy diver, died Tuesday. Brashear, 75, was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film “Men of Honor.”

He died at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth of respiratory and heart failure, the medical center said.
Brashear retired from the Navy in 1979 after more than 30 years of service. He was the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee, the result of a leg injury he sustained during a salvage operation.

An incredible man. God speed, Master Chief Petty Officer.

What Is It With Chicago?

Foie gras and now…WAL-MART.

Brushing aside warnings from Wal-Mart that it might take its business elsewhere, the City Council approved an ordinance Wednesday that makes Chicago the biggest city in the nation to require big-box retailers to pay a “living wage.”
…The ordinance passed 35-14 after three hours of impassioned debate.
The measure requires mega-retailers with over $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet to pay workers at least $10 an hour in wages plus $3 in fringe benefits by mid-2010. The current minimum wage in Illinois is $6.50 an hour and the federal minimum is $5.15.

Hell, I’d wear a smiley blue vest for that ~ or Home Depot orange, because it affects them, too. But it sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Besides being hugely discriminatory, the chains’re competitive because they pay entry level wages. The catch being if you stick around long enough, you have the potential to actually make a living. No, you’re not buying a Ferrari, but it IS a living. This was pushed through by a coalition of churches and rights groups, but there were other voices that aren’t going to be heard. One of them was the bishop of an Apostolic Church of God* who was worried about the new jobs that are going to never open. Or the old ones that completely disappear because of this; Jobs that folks who aren’t so well off and want to work need desperately. But that extra $3 for two minimum wage earners adds up to another body at minimum wage. How are the big boxes going to make up the additional cost? I’d lay money on letting somebody go.
We’ll see if this survives the court challenges that are coming. There are other ‘living wage’ laws in other cities and no one’s folded up their tent. But I haven’t seen any figures on what the impact was on the communities’ employment figures, their retail expenditures or what it cost in lost tax revenue from a smaller number of workers.
*corrected ~ see complete story below
UPDATE: The full AP Report notes :

Other cities with living-wage laws include Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico; San Francisco; and Washington.
…The first Wal-Mart in Chicago itself is set to open in September, and the Bentonville, Ark.-based company has more than 40 other stores within 50 miles of the city.
Wal-Mart said that its average hourly wage is almost $11 an hour in the Chicago area and that the lowest wage that will be paid at the new West Side store will be $7.25 an hour.

The AP article with the background info here.

“I think it’s immoral to pass laws that will rob people of jobs. I think there’s something wrong with that,” said Bishop Arthur Brazier of the Apostolic Church of God on the city’s South Side.
Lisa Cox is transferring from a Wal-Mart store in the Chicago suburbs to the new West Side store just five minutes from her home.
“Now I can just walk down the street to work,” said Cox, 40, who during her eight years working at Wal-Mart has advanced from a $7.25-an-hour cashier to a $13.40-an-hour customer service supervisor.
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce president Jerry Roper warned that the business community will push back if the measure passes.
“We will go back to the business community after Wednesday … and make sure they know which aldermen voted to kick thousands of jobs … for Chicagoans and millions of dollars of tax revenues that could be helping our schools out of Chicago,” Roper said.

This Would Be My Kinda Luck

…if it included a deadly Indian attack immediately afterward.

Sometime around 1610, archaeologists figure, a thirsty colonist in Jamestown set his brass pistol on the side of a well as he pulled up some water and accidentally knocked the weapon in.

D’oh! Great stuff hauled up from the bottom of a well.

A Little Success’ll Do Wonders

…for the soul. Bad guys killed and captured, IED material and weapons snagged and three hostages rescued. All in a day’s work.

Marines from Regimental Combat Team 5’s, 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, and soldiers from 2nd and 4th Brigade, 1st Iraqi Army Division, rescued three Iraqi hostages in an intelligence-driven operation July 23.
The three were personal assistants and bodyguards to Dr. Rafa Hayid Chiad Al-Isaw, an Iraqi government official in Baghdad.
…The three were held captive by al-Qaeda insurgents in a spiderhole complex for 27 days. The hostages were beaten with electrical cords, bitten and threatened with their lives at gunpoint by their captors. They were treated by Coalition Forces medical personnel.
The three were taken hostage by al-Qaeda insurgents west of Zaidon, a rural area south of Fallujah. They were rescued near Fuhaylat, southwest of Fallujah.
Also recovered nearby was a significant weapons cache, including a fully-assembled suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. Marines also recovered IEDs and IED-making material, mortar tubes and round, artillery rounds, machine guns, bulk explosives, anti-tank mines, rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, AK-47 assault rifles, small-arms ammunition and video cameras.

BITTEN? (I know the answer, but I have to ask…what kind of whack monkeys are these religion of pieces a$$holes anyway?)
Sierra Hotel and a big OO-RAH! Keep roundin’ ’em up, Jarheads.

“Get Yer Paws…”

“…offa my property.” And the Ohio Supreme Court agreed.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that a Cincinnati suburb cannot take private property by eminent domain for a $125 million project of offices, shops and restaurants.
The case was the first challenge of property rights laws to reach a state high court since the U.S. Supreme Court last summer allowed municipalities to seize homes for use by a private developer.
The case involves the city of Norwood, which used its power of eminent domain to seize properties holding out against private development in an area considered to be deteriorating.
The court found that economic development isn’t a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes.

Let’s keep clarifying those state constitutions and local laws, folks. It’s the only way to beat these people ~ they either legislate to protect private property or vote them out and elect someone who will.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways

Well, mysterious to us at least because we’re such self-centered morons. Well, ok, I’m a self-centered moron; I won’t presume to speak for the rest of you. Anyhow, I have to say in general that I tend not to put a lot of stock in these sightings of Saints or Visions of the Virgin Mary that gather headlines from time to time; I’m not questioning the people’s faith that claim to see these visions, mind you, but rather it’s just not the way I picture the Big Guy to work and I’m really not comfortable with this mystical vision stuff, but of course your mileage may vary.
But there are times when I read something that makes me think the Big Guy is dropping us a little hint. I mean, what are the odds that in the week when Israel is fighting Hezbollucks that some guy digging in muck with a backhoe would uncover a 1100 year old manuscript of Psalms buried there, and further that

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations’ attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

How cool is that?

“Apparently Deliberate”

So Kofi is “deeply distressed” by the deaths of four UN “observers”:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was “deeply distressed” by the “apparently deliberate” strike.
“This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would be spared Israeli fire,” he said in a statement.
“Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the U.N. force commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular U.N. position from attack.”

Well, certainly in my lifetime the UN has caused as much harm to Israel as Hezbollucks has, what with all the sanctions they’ve put forth and with the UN providing a forum for anti-semitic forces through out the world to have their disgusting positions legitimized. Look, I’m sorry that these guys were killed, but the UN has done nothing to endear itself to Israel, and these Powder-Blue Helmeted Rape Brigades can not expect to go traipsing about in the midst of war zones (and let’s not forget that these UN observers have been in southern Lebanon for years, and they have been effective at stopping what, exactly?) and not catch the occasional round.

An Adventure at Sea

Lucky land lubber John at Castle Argghhh! He gets to go sailing in (and for) a most worthy cause. She’s

DD-574 ~ the U.S.S John Rodgers…

…and they’re bringing her home.
Fair winds, following seas and we’ll work on being dockside in Mobile when ya get here.

July 13, 2006

“They fired the first harpoon at her yesterday and today EOD set off bombs. It only took an hour but she’s been taking hits all yesterday from the other ships….she just wouldn’t sink.”
..She wasn’t designed to sink. She was designed to fight, to stay afloat, and carry her crew through the perils of enemy hostilities. How confusing the last moments must have been for this great lady to have the guns of those she held so dear fire the fatal blows that would carry her to the depths of darkness. May she rest in peace, and may all those who served upon her feel her presence with each misty spray of ocean breeze.
Farewell USS BELLEAU WOOD (LHA-3).

Indeed.

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