The Are Some Things ~ and Some PEOPLE

…BOTH parties seem to agree on… 😀

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. ???????????????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/1t0LnCkSsy

— gayPATRIOT (@GayPatriot) July 1, 2015

Isn’t It Just a BITCH When Those Police BodyCams You Squawked For

…document EXACTLY what they’re supposed to? Blows your County Commissioner privileged dramatic reading of a racially profiled, illegal traffic stop all to bits.

County commissioner May faces backlash after video

Escambia County Commissioner Lumon May has become the subject of considerable backlash since video of a confrontational traffic stop involving him and a Pensacola Police officer became public last week.

The video shows the commissioner yelling at the female officer to call her supervisor after she pulls him over saying his license plate number doesn’t match his vehicle. May later said he was out of line.

“Should I have allowed myself to escalate my voice? Absolutely not,” May said. “But should I have been detained? Absolutely not. I’ve got to be more sensitive and, and they’ve got to be more sensitive as well. If you make a mistake, you admit it and try to move forward to a solution.”

His windows are also tinted too dark and you’ll notice that’s NOT an apology.

Traffic stop begins at the 2 minute mark.

Treebeard’s Nose Fell Off

I guess I can’t leave it where it landed 

So Today’s News: Confederate Flags, ISIS Lopping French Heads Off, Bombing the Railroads Near Cairo, Tunisian Seaside Massacres, Kuwait Mosque Explosion

… “Mummy, get my girlfriend back for me, or…THE CHICKENS GET IT!!!”

For reals.

Alabama teen goes on chicken massacre when mother didn’t fix his relationship, deputies say

Limestone County sheriff’s deputies say a domestic incident in Elkmont ended with several dead chickens and a young man in jail.

The charges are against 18-year-old Haden Smith. Deputies say Smith’s mother called them after he sent her threatening texts and killing her chickens. Deputies say Smith texted her Thursday morning saying he would kill a chicken every fifteen minutes unless she contacted his girlfriend’s parents and mended his relationship with his girlfriend.

The “New” Normal

…is abby-normal, as Mel Brooks would put it.

Only NOWHERE near as funny.

EPA chief says climate change deniers not ‘normal’

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency appeared to hurl barbs at Congress on Tuesday, referring to an unnamed group of climate change “deniers” who aren’t “normal” and who won’t “carry the day” in a democracy.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made the comments while addressing a climate change summit at the White House Tuesday to frame the effects of global warming on public health.

…”I’ve batted my head against the wall too many times” trying to convince climate change deniers that global warming is occurring, she said. “You can have fun doing that if you want,” but “if the science hasn’t already changed their mind then it never will.”

She said she is convinced that the climate deniers will not win in the campaign to address global warming. “In a normal democracy, it is not them that carries the day,” McCarthy said. “It is normal human beings that haven’t put their stake into politics above science.”

“It’s normal human beings that want us to do the right thing,” she added. “And we will.“

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A Confederate Flag Flying History Lesson From Ebola

So, over the past three days I’ve had to rebut some pretty stretched logic, repeatedly, so screw it, here’s my take on the South Carolina (SC) bit:

First, history lessons, the colloquial “Confederate Flag” is not, nor has ever, represented the Confederate States of America (CSA), in fact it was proposed as a replacement for the Stars and Bars and rejected. The battle flag, that saw use from the Battle of Manassas onward as the CSA battle standard, was the Southern Cross, the colloquial modern day “Confederate flag”. There is a large difference between battle standards and national flags, battle standards allow you to find, follow or recover position with the rest of your group, which is the reason it replaced the Stars and Bars on the battle field, as the original CSA flag, the Stars and Bars, looked too much like Union colors, which caused confusion within the ranks during pitched battles.
Why did the Southern Cross become the colloquial “Confederate flag”? The answer is a combination of general ignorance, which is on rampant display currently in both social and corporate media, and it’s adoption by a number of less than savory groups in the South, from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), directly after the war, to the Democratic Dixiecrats, who tried to make sure that the mistakes of the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case, Plessy v Ferguson, remained the norm in the 1940s. Arguing that the Southern Cross doesn’t have negative connotations is as equally ignorant as arguing that the Southern Cross is indeed the national flag of the Confederacy, but we’ll get back to that.

While the Dixiecrats effectively lost their push to make sure that “separate, but equal” from Plessy v Ferguson remained in effect, effectively co-mingled property segregation, their remnants were successful in 1962 of getting the Southern Cross flag flown over the capitol dome of the SC Statehouse. It would remain there for just shy of forty years. In 2000 it was removed, under a compromise, and place next to the Confederate monument; the compromise itself required a two-thirds majority to remove it from grounds. Keep in mind, this is a battle standard, not a national flag, not put in place to honor the individuals concerned with the monument. The flag is not lowered while the United States national flag flies at half-staff, which is nothing short of atrocious.

Make no mistake, the Southern Cross has very negative post-war historical connotations. I’ve seen it repeatedly stated that this is about “heritage” the past few days, but if that were true, there’d be no issue with removing the battle standard and instead putting one of the actual three CSA national flags in it’s place: none of which have an iota on the Southern Cross for negative impact, even with fighting a war partly about slavery. Personally, I’d say the Blood-Stained Banner, the last of the three, is quite likely the most accurate as it was the flag under which the Confederacy lost and was one of the flags surrendered at Appomattox. While both the Stainless and Bloodied Banners bear the Southern cross, they are not the Southern Cross which was adopted by a multitude of blatantly racist groups for more than 150 years of American history. Though, I doubt the multitude of people on the other side arguing racism would see a difference, so the actual Stars and Bars might be a better choice to fly.

This is a State decision, regardless of how much anyone argues it: it’s statute, SC will do as it does. However, let’s not pretend there aren’t better options than the hyperbole of either side of either restoring it to the State capitol statehouse or the absolute removal of a historical remembrance, from State grounds or personal property. This particular flag that is being argued over, is not a part of the war memorial, but added to the lower State grounds to remove it from the dome.

Personally? Replace it with the Stars and Bars, solves most of the issues on both sides. The actual one, not the one that talking heads keep claiming is the CSA battle standard. Plessy vs Ferguson might be one of the worst decisions in the history of any non-tyranical, statutorily guided nation in the history of human kind. I hope the members of the Justice Brown SCOTUS are turning in their graves.

Because Climate Change!

Gerbil Warmening causes a glacier to, um, grow

From NOAA Earth Observatory: Since measurements began in 1895, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier has been thickening and steadily advancing into Disenchantment Bay. The advance runs counter to so many thinning and retreating glaciers nearby in Alaska and around the world.

…According to Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Kansas, Hubbard’s advance is due to its large accumulation area; the glacier’s catchment basin extends far into the Saint Elias Mountains. Snow that falls in the basin either melts or flows down to the terminus, causing Hubbard to steadily grow. In addition, Hubbard is building up a large moraine, shoveling sediment, rock, and other debris from Earth’s surface onto the glacier’s leading edge. The moraine at the front gives the glacier stability and allows it to advance more easily because the ice does not need to be as thick to stay grounded. (If it is thin, it can start floating and will not necessarily advance.)

But of course, Gentle Readers, savvy types that you are you already knew all about this.

Generation Princess And The Pea

Sorry, I don’t do “micro aggression”

Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies.

Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police.

Requests for faculty to quit perpetrating these teensiest of microaggressions are thankfully just that—requests—although the fact that they come straight from the desk of UC President Janet Napolitano lends them some muscle. On January 5, Napolitano dispatched letters to UC deans and department chairs inviting them to attend seminars “to foster informed conversation about the best way to build and nurture a productive academic climate.” That’s bureaucrat-speak for learn to keep your mouths shut.

Trigger Warning: I do Macro Aggression.

As Hard as Dylann Roof and Now the National Media Are Trying to Gin Up a Race War…

…Charleston is having none of it.

15,000 unite in Charleston! #CharlestonShooting pic.twitter.com/wuiybwnJOT

— YBR (@YoungBLKRepub) June 22, 2015

God bless them, every one.

#America

200 Years Ago Today

You Just Wanna Eat This Little Pumpkin UP!

Keeping It Clean and Simple

And infinitely preferable to the shreiking warbles of some anthems past.

I Am Starting to Wonder If Faux Black Activist Rachel Dolezal

…took faux painting lessons from fabulous fabulist Ward Churchill?

Rachel Dolezal's painting The Shape of Our Kind is a near duplicate of J.M.W. Turner's 1840 The Slave Ship. pic.twitter.com/DGC7GkkPiu

— Jolie Adams (@Jolieishere) June 15, 2015

A Sunday Morning Song As I Fry Up Some Eggs

We’re Going VERTICAL, Mav!!!

Some People Need To Get A Life

Well, ok, a lot of people do. Today’s example are these folks

Paleontologists Slam ‘Jurassic World,’ Call Movie ‘Major Step Backward For Accuracy’

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – “Jurassic World” is poised to make monster money at the box office this weekend. And while that’s certainly good for Universal Studios, it’s a pain in the neck for another group: paleontologists.

They say while it’s good the movie series has renewed interest in dinosaurs, audiences come away with skewed ideas about how dinosaurs really lived
.
“You deal with these inaccuracies over and over every time you give a talk,” James Kirkland, who has been involved in the discovery of 20 dinosaurs, including the Utahraptor, told CBS News.

He would rather filmmakers focus on science, and not make people believe that a T-Rex can’t see you if you stay perfectly still or that velociraptors can open doors.

“It gets really old after a while,” Kirkland added. “If they wouldn’t do that, we wouldn’t have to deal with this. We could step to the more interesting issues like what we are discovering next.”

Are you kidding me, you pomptastic ass? Repeat after me: It’s. A. Friggin. Movie.

What’s next? The American Society of Anthropology complaining that Orcs are actually humble farmers and not the violent bloodthirsty beasts that LOTR (awash in the morass of its Gondor Privilege) portrays them as?

I’m With The Firemen

I really really hate these obnoxious douches with these drones

As drones become more prolific, people are starting to form two camps: those that love them, and those (like this chimp) that think they’re privacy-stealing, hazardous nuisances. Guess which side a group of firefighters from upstate New York were on?

As the firefighters from Montgomery and Coldenham in New York were working to put out a house that had caught fire on June 4, a local man named John Thompson decided to fly a drone over the scene to film the proceedings. The firefighters put up with the drone for about 10 minutes and then turned their fire house on it, in what looks to me like annoyance. They send another blast its way about a minute later.

I see one anywhere near my property and I will do what I can to knock it out.

We Will Sell No Wine Before I Drink Most Of It

Some drunk Orson Welles out-takes

Is There Nothing It Can’t Do?

Global Warmening. It makes people hot. And when people get hot, they take off their clothes.

And when you take off your clothes you know what happens next

Malaysian tribal leaders blame a group of Western tourists, including two Canadians, for triggering a deadly earthquake by taking naked photos of themselves on a sacred mountain, a local official told NBC News on Monday.

Tribal and political leaders across the state of Sabah have called for the arrest of the 10 tourists after they allegedly stripped on Mount Kinabalu last month, said Masidi Manjun, the state’s tourism, culture and environment minister.

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of reports that the two Canadians had been barred from leaving the country. The department said it was working with local officials but was unable to confirm whether there had been any arrests.

On Friday, one week after the group allegedly took the naked photos and posted them on social media, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck 5 miles south of the 13,500-foot summit on Malaysian Borneo. Sixteen people were killed, and more than 100 climbers were trapped for a time on the mountain.

The Kadazan-Dusun tribe believe that the “disrespectful” actions of the tourists were responsible for triggering the earthquake, Manjun said.

The logic of my argument, like the Science, is clear.

Ebola Gives the HuffPo a THOROUGH Fisking

…as they agitate to liberate Guam.

“Guam–the only occupied U.S. territory in the Pacific–was the first island to be invaded by the Japanese and the last to be liberated by the United States.”

The only occupied US territory in the Pacific? If you’re looking for civilian US territorial populations during WWII, why not mention the Philippines? I notice it is mentioned only in passing, which suggests some ignorance of Philippine history, especially during the time period being discussed. The Philippine islands were attacked at virtually the same time as Guam, ironically in the midst of seeking their independence from the United States, and weren’t liberated from Japanese forces until March of 1945, almost a year after the liberation of Guam. The Philippines may have departed as a US territory in 1946, but let’s not pretend that they weren’t one and that we didn’t lose American and Filipino lives over that area to make a facile appeal to emotion case that purposely or ignorantly devalues lives lost.

Philippine (civ/mil) and United States military deaths were between half a million and a million and a half, by most estimates. Guam losses were between one to two thousand dead, with the census at the time placing the population at 20,000; while “10%” might be statistically correct if we assume the most extreme estimations, it is absolutely feckless to insinuate that our honored dead matter more or less than some other grouping of our dead, only relative to the landmass on which they are killed or that their impending status as a non-territorial organism of the United States somehow made their lives worth less.

“The United States, however, continuously disregards Guam’s sacrifices….not only did the act fail to provide meaningful citizenship rights, it explicitly stated that the president could still dispose of Guam’s land for military purposes at will.“

The Organic Act and subsequent Acts until 1952 gave the exact same citizen rights as other territories enjoy to this day. Here on Guam individuals have all the benefits of being an American citizen, except for voting for President; the population of which could move towards becoming an associated free state, like Micronesia, an incorporated territory or remain an unincorporated territory. The 14th Amendment assures individuals of citizenship rights in territories, and the Organic Act incorporated Guam as a territory, rather than a military rule. It is well within the power of the people of Guam to incorporate, move for independence or remain, if that is their wish. The fact that author implies they are simply being stripped of their due rights is blatant victimization, as though they had no say in their relation to the United States. This is vaguely ironic to put forward; especially given the absence of nearly any mention of the Philippines, a now independent self-governing body that peacefully achieved that independence, directly after WWII, from the U.S. and then booted the remaining U.S. military out 1991.

“Guam’s veterans receive inadequate medical services and communities adjacent to military bases generally obtain the least investment of any community under the U.S. flag.“

As the U.S. Naval hospital on Guam cares of retirees, active duty and more, while also working with Guam Memorial Hospital to take on emergency care of the local population, when and where they can, I’d love to see some backing of this statement that actually makes a legitimate comparison to contiguous US services offered to my fellow veterans, much less citizens surrounding those bases.

“Now, a proposed military buildup is opening old wounds as it aims to bring 35,000 additional military personnel to Guam and take up 2,500 more acres of land.“

The author is overshooting that number by 30,000 additional military personnel. Only 5,000 Marines and their families are planned to be moved to Guam. The 2,500 acres are on Northwest Field, which is military land already. The effects of that are the installation of a range and possible impacts to the Ritidian Wildlife Refuge, near it, which is a separate argument based on environmentalism.

If the author wants to make the case that US territories, or even specifically Guam, as Puerto Rico has had a number of votes on the matter, should be encouraged to vote on their status as a territory? That’s fine, I’m all for it. However, the author chose not to bother actually examine history, because it would have been inconvenient to an appeal to emotion fallacy she wished to propagate. The author appears to seek value and devaluing the lives of US military, citizens and territorial citizens lost and impacted by the war, based on where they were lost, to further add emotional emphasis to that fallacy. That includes the lives of a great number of people on this island and even my own family members, who fought through this island chain to push the Japanese back from US territory.

TL;DR The author should be ashamed. The Huffington Post should have invested at least an iota of effort in fact checking.

~ Ebola

The contents of this rebuttal are the personal views of the poster, not the views of the Government of Guam, United States Government, military or any of its components.

This Could Be The IPO For Me

Yummy yummy

Malaysian maker of edible bird nest products plans $30 mln Nasdaq IPO

Malaysia’s Swiftlet Eco Park Holdings Sdn Bhd, one of the country’s largest makers of products developed from edible bird nests, said on Monday that it plans to list on the Nasdaq stock market.

The company aims to raise $30 million through the offering of a 30 percent stake and the listing is expected within 18 to 24 months, Chief Executive CH Tan told reporters after signing an agreement with New York’s QMIS Finance Securities Corp , its consulting partner for the IPO.

Swiftlet Eco makes coffee, skin care products, puddings and candies with nests made from swiftlets’ saliva, a delicacy that has been popular in China for its alleged health benefits for hundreds of years.

Swiftlet saliva.

June 6th, 1944

“The tide has turned.

Oh, Yes

Semper Fi…Dad.

“He Is Moving Like A Tremendous Machine!”

I cry like a baby watching him run.

Military Aircraft Crashes Are SO Gutwrenchingly Tragic

…it makes your blood boil when you sort of already knew one DIDN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN at all.

What a WASTE.

Pilot Error Caused Black Hawk Crash in Santa Rosa Sound

The Louisiana National Guard has confirmed that pilot error led to the tragic crash of a Black Hawk helicopter in the Santa Rosa Sound, killing 11 servicemen during the failed training exercise in March.

The investigation determined that the direct cause of the accident was “spatial disorientation” of both pilots, which caused them to lose control of the aircraft.

…07:35 (P2) — “Gee, it’s dark as (expletive). That don’t help none.”

07:52 (CE1) — “Wow, it’s really dark.”

08:05 (P2) — “We’re gonna take it real slow guys.”

10:05 (P1) — “Yeah, it’s too dark to see the (expletive) water.”

11:36 (P1) — ” Ah, ah, you take the controls Dave.”

11:49 (P2) — “Watch out, we’re in a bad right turn.”

11:55 (P2) — “Watch your altitude, attitude G-Wayne attitude, level.”

11:58 (P2) — “Level.”

12:00 (P2) — “Level.”

12:00 (P2) — “Climb, climb.”

12:03 — END AUDIO

When your lead helo TURNS BACK almost immediately into the TRAINING flight because of socked in conditions, guess what, Gonzo?

YOU don’t stay out.

You turn right around and follow him back in. Everybody lives.